President Trump Defends The Confederate Flag's Heritage And Southerners Prideful Love For It

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump declined to say the Confederate flag was an offensive symbol in an interview broadcast on Sunday, saying it is a source of pride for people who love the South.

The Republican president was asked on “Fox News Sunday,” if the flag, considered a symbol of slavery and oppression by most Americans, was offensive.

"It depends on who you’re talking about, when you’re talking about,” Trump responded. “When people proudly had their Confederate flags they’re not talking about racism. They love their flag, it represents the South. They like the South ... I say it’s freedom of many things, but it’s freedom of speech.”

And the Founding Fathers rebelled against the UK and so were traitors by your definition. Not only did they rebel against their country but some modern historians even claim their desire to save slavery played a role in their declaring independence from Britain (https://www.counterpunch.org/2011/05/23/was-the-american-revolution-fought-to-save-slavery/). I take it you also see almost half the Scots, who recently voted 45% to leave the UK, as traitors. And the Catalans who want freedom from Spain. And the Ukrainians, Latvians, Armenians, etc. who rebelled against the Soviet Union. And every other group that wanted their own independent nation and to be allowed to choose their own forms of government? Or is it just Southerners who have special standards applied to them?

In my book, people fighting for independence aren’t traitors; people who sell out their side like Benedict Arnold are traitors. Arnold wanted the British to regain total control over the colonies and was paid to help; the South wanted only control over the South and for Northerners to continue on as they pleased. In that regard, this wasn’t even a real civil war like we normally see, where two sides fight for control of the same nation; this was just a failed independence movement that the North crushed with military force.

I only wish you were right about the left today. They’ve been rioting and making a lot of anti-American noise. I haven’t seen anything to indicate they are on the verge of forming their own independent nation with their own laws, currency, borders, values, traditions, etc.—although I think it would be better for everyone if they did and left us to salvage rest of the United States. I’d be more than happy to give them a few (or even several) states to make them all go away and take their leftism with them. Otherwise they may end up with all the power eventually.

For all his faults, FDR’s administration was the first one that put more federal money into the South than extracting money out of the South. The legacy of the war, the Occupation and the ruinous Morrill Tariff had in the words of one administration official, reduced the Southern states to the status of “a colony”. This had been the richest region of the country until the war.

Exactly. Give them the Left Coast (though not the inland portions of Washington, Oregon and California), Chicago, Miami and the strip running from Occupied Northern Virginia up through Maine. We can talk about a few other areas like Denver and New Mexico. Let them depart in peace.

We would be so much better off without them. We will of course have to build strong walls to keep any of the Lefties from sneaking back in after their country, Libtardia inevitably collapses.

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