S.C. Gov. Haley says 'time has come' to remove Confederate flag from state buildings

Fox News ^ | 06/22/2015

[SeekAndFind]

CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) – South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley said Monday the Confederate flag should be removed from the grounds of the state capitol, reversing her position on the divisive symbol amid growing calls for it to be removed.

The Republican's about-face comes after nine black church members were gunned down, allegedly by a young white man who embraced the flag as a symbol of white supremacy.

"150 years after the end of the Civil War, the time has come," Haley said after rousing applause, surrounded by Democrats and Republican lawmakers. "That flag, while an integral part of the past, does not represent the future of our great state"

The flag has flown in front of the state capitol for 15 years after being moved from atop the Statehouse dome.

U.S. Sens. Lindsay Graham and Tim Scott, an African-American appointed by Haley, were standing with Haley during her announcement. When she finished, she hugged Scott and South Carolina's only other black congressman, Democratic Rep. Jim Clyburn.

The announcement came after state lawmakers met urgently with each other and the governor.

The head of the Republican National Committee has also called for its removal.

Senators Ted Cruz of Texas and Marco Rubio of Florida, both of whom are Republican and running for president, said that whether to remove the flag or not was an issue for South Carolinians to determine.

[Pelham]

“But the citizens of South Carolina in 1862 (and now) sure viewed the Confederacy as a different country.”

You don’t get to be a new nation unless you have the firepower to make it stick. The colonials of 1776 declared themselves a new nation and eventually made it stick. The confederates tried the same trick but couldn’t defeat Lincoln’s invasion.

Today they’re just a people descended from that history. Some of them anyway. Nikki Haley is doing her part to wipe out the memory of that past. It’s not her past anyway, her roots are in India.

[Forward the Light Brigade]

Banning the flag will end nothing—the day will come when the US Flag will be banned—Will it stop the racism? No it will just go under ground and somehow be “Cool” with the young in a racist world of the future—Nothing good will come of it—Groups like the NAACP are focused on Symbols and not real problems in the Black communities. This helps no one.

[apocalypto]

You have a point.

[bigdaddy45]

How do you know they aren’t in the majority? Are you the arbiter of what is and what is not popular opinion in South Carolina?

[snippy_about_it]

It does not fly on state buildings, it is part of a confederate memorial behind the statehouse.

[re_nortex]

---

Nothing has changed in the nearly 100 years since Confederate aficionado and leftist zealot Woody Wilson spoke in favor of his DemonRAT-sponsored terrorist wing, the Ku Klux Klan. As it was then, so it remains today, the KKK is an outfit tightly bound to the party that opposed Lincoln and hated Ronald Reagan. The superficial matter of skin color aside, the Klan otherwise marches (with that flag) in lockstop with hussien's liberal policies favoring Big Government and Big Labor.

President Reagan never posed himself with the Confederate battle flag. Neither did Calvin Coolidge. But a lengthy list of 'RAT presidents proudly wrapped themselves in that symbol. And I never saw one at a Tea Party event. Likewise with Ted Cruz.

[DiogenesLamp]

You don’t get to be a new nation unless you have the firepower to make it stick. The colonials of 1776 declared themselves a new nation and eventually made it stick. The confederates tried the same trick but couldn’t defeat Lincoln’s invasion.

The Colonists could not have defeated King George's invasion either, but King George III was not as fanatical as Lincoln. He decided ~ 15,000 casualties was enough. Lincoln held out for 300,000.

Apart from that, this nation founded itself on the principle that people had a right to abolish government's not to their liking and form new ones.

--That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

[DiogenesLamp]

How do you know they aren’t in the majority? Are you the arbiter of what is and what is not popular opinion in South Carolina?

I would say that the fact that that flag has endured there for so many decades is a pretty good indication that the majority approved of it.

[South40]

And I never saw one at a Tea Party event. Likewise with Ted Cruz.

Well...that may or may not be true. You can't always control who shows up at a rally. I know, I attend many. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtHQfkGXQno

[Pelham]

The colonials also had 3,000 French Marines and the French navy. The little remembered Battle Off the Capes is what set the stage for Cornwallis’ defeat at Yorktown. Our French allies prevented the British navy from sending a fleet to rescue Cornwallis from the trap Washington had set for him at Yorktown.

[DiogenesLamp]

The colonials also had 3,000 French Marines and the French navy. The little remembered Battle Off the Capes is what set the stage for Cornwallis’ defeat at Yorktown. Our French allies prevented the British navy from sending a fleet to rescue Cornwallis from the trap Washington had set for him at Yorktown.

Yes, the French helped us, and of course the Union did everything of which they could think to insure that the South could get no help from Europe.

But even so, had George III had the will to do so, he could have laid waste to all the colonies and forced us back into the Union. He forebare. Lincoln did not.

[re_nortex]

Since the Confederate battle flag is so tightly bound to the party of Wilson, FDR, LBJ and hussein, I think this banner is a more apt way to express Southern pride.

While the background color might be in need of revision, the dollar sign (shades of Midas Mulligan) represents the pro-business, pro-freedom, pro-prosperity, pro-enterprise and anti-union thuggery attitude that pervades the region. Without question, what was once the land of slavery has emerged to become the land of unrivaled economic liberty. That's why so many corporations invest in the South today. Its people have made it the economic engine that drives the whole nation.

And politically, the South has undergone a startling metamorphosis. Once invariably DemonRAT, repudiating even Calvin Coolidge, a favorite of President Reagan...

...it's now become the backbone of Conservatism in the Republic. I simply can't see how the Confederate flag is associated with the Conservative cause since its history is steeped in the DemonRAT party. Maybe that's what Tim Scott and Nikki Haley were thinking?

[DiogenesLamp]

I simply can't see how the Confederate flag is associated with the Conservative cause since its history is steeped in the DemonRAT party. Maybe that's what Tim Scott and Nikki Haley were thinking?

Don't really have any interest in the flag, just the fact that people want to tell us "no."

As the Continental Soldier responded when asked why he fought in the Revolution,

"They reckoned that they were going to rule us, and we reckoned that they wern't. "

[matt04]

Amen.

[re_nortex]

You can't always control who shows up at a rally.

I remember that well and there was lengthy thread about that incident here on Free Republic. Most FReepers concluded that it was a false -- ahem -- flag operation. :)

Applying Occam's razor, that fellow waving the Confederate battle flag was most likely leftist plant. Either that or die-hard DemonRAT who hated what the Tea Party really represents. Of course, MSNBC spun it otherwise to fit their leftist agenda. That's the same outlet that claimed George Wallace was a Republican. The flag was also unfurled by 'RATs at Central High in Little Rock protesting Republican President Eisenhower.

Reiterating what I've mentioned previously, it was KKKarter, KKKlintoon, "The Man" Bilbo, Wallace and their ilk who deployed that flag while campaigning. Not Reagan. Not Palin.

[lentulusgracchus]

Sorry Lent, but on this issue I side with Governor Haley. I will concede that the apparent motivation for the flag's removal was ill-timed. As a Republican, she should have had it taken down on her very first day in office ..... In my opinion, Rush Limbaugh got it right today when he made it clear that the Confederate battle flag is 'RAT through and through...always has been, always will be.

FRiend, we really disagree here. Now, as a native of Indiana, I wouldn't have a dog in the fight except for the fact that I am a citizen of Texas, the Most Hated State in all of liberaldom.

All the People(s) of the Southern States have the same stake in this controversy that South Carolina does, which is to own their heritage intact and inviolate, without the revisions of Obama's little friend Squealer that Orwell showed us in Animal Farm. If people in Mississippi want the Confederate Battle Flag in the canton -- the Union, if you will -- of the Mississippi state flag, as they voted 2:1 in favor of in 2001, then they have a sovereign right so to do. But Obama intends to invade that right, and he has made the gutless Republicans of South Carolina his quarry.

The flying of the CBF at the South Carolina Confederate soldiers' memorial is a sovereign act of the State of South Carolina and may in fact be ultra vires the governor to undo, no matter her motive or her allies. The matter should be settled by the legislature, or by referendum, preferably attached to a recall initiative or two.

The CBF is a symbol of all the People, not a symbol of political convenience, which you appear not to have realized: those soldiers paid for their memorial in the most costly coin tenderable, and to despise them at this late date, and to repudiate the symbols of the old Confederacy for the sake of hopelessly attempting to palliate perpetually discontented complainers and cynical agitators is an act of cowardice that will blacken all who embrace Gov. Haley's moral crayfishing and trepidation.

My two cents.

[re_nortex]

Don't really have any interest in the flag, just the fact that people want to tell us "no."

Okay...and I appreciate the point you make. In that case, this flag always serves that purpose well! And it's not tainted with a history steeped in the DemonRAT party.

[lentulusgracchus]

Something tells me that the Battle Flag of the Confederacy will still enjoy plenty of expression throughout the state, wherever private citizens, businesses, societies, museums, memorials, etc. think it is appropriate.

Except that they not go out of doors, nor use the public sidewalks and streets, or go into any public place?

Do you realize the logic of your position, that it constitutes a ban on some people's political and First Amendment rights?

You ready to give up your rights? I'm not done with mine.

[lentulusgracchus]

Lincoln never recognized the Confederacy as a separate country.

Of course not. But pray tell, then, why he turned early and often to "the final argument of kings", and appealed to the arbitrament of the sword.

[lentulusgracchus]

The Confederate flag is not a symbol of hate, it never caused any crime, and the State knows that.

Something well known by an SCV member named H. K. Edgerton, a black man and frequent reenactor who trooped that Confederate color all the way across the South, to make a point and, by the way, "integrate" the Confederate Battle Flag.

It is an inconvenient fact of history that thousands of Southern blacks, and not just slaves attending their masters as the Northern revisionists would have it, served in Confederate ranks, where they were seen and remarked upon by Northern officers and even sketched for Harper's Weekly, in the course of which they passed into American history.

True facks, y'all.