Posted on 11/26/2002 2:36:03 AM PST by WhiskeyPapa
Hell fire, y'all! White folks done voted to take Georgia back 40 years!
Well, that's it. The (white) people of Georgia have spoken, and they've told us that the confederate flag is more important than anything else in the world. And make no mistake, folks -- as far as the governor's race was concerned, it was all about the state flag. Angry rural white people turned out at the polls in numbers not seen since the days of Lester Maddox to vent their fury at that danged ol' Liberal King Rat Roy Barnes.
What you heard on Nov. 5 was not a Republican earthquake. It was the sound of progressive men like William B. Hartsfield and Robert Woodruff and Charles Weltner rolling over in their graves. For the first time in a generation, the reins of Georgia government have been handed over to a wide-eyed hick who proudly panders to the neo-confederate crowd, a shadowy and racist gang of baccer-chewin' morons most city folks had believed to be extinct, if not permanently powerless.
And now these clueless crackers are running amok, planning to embarrass us all by restoring the confederate emblem to the state flag and transforming zombie-like Democratic state Senators into right-wing Republicans by the busload. And it's all being orchestrated by Ralph Reed. God help us.
History books say that Eugene Talmadge, the legendary race-baiting Georgia governor, often boasted of the fact that he'd "never carried a county with a streetcar." It was a pretentious rejection of modernity, as if being backwards was somehow a worthy attribute. But the Talmadge following was comprised of an ignorant gaggle of bumpkins and Klan-affiliated rednecks, so I guess there is a legitimate comparison to what happened to Georgia on Nov. 5. Just like "Ol' Gene," Perdue's victory came from an overwhelmingly rural base.
I am old enough to remember the Georgia countryside in the late 1960s, when "Maddox Country" signs were plentiful. I'd foolishly believed for most of my life that those days of racist politics in Georgia were long gone. When "Sonny Country" signs bearing the confederate flag began popping up earlier this year, it worried me -- but not seriously. "Surely we have progressed beyond such foolishness," I said to myself.
Well, I was wrong, by God. Yee-haw!
Of course, suburban Republicans are now spinning their asses off, swearing to anyone who will listen that Perdue's election had nothing to do with race or the flag, but was actually due to Barnes' alleged "arrogance," a charge that anyone who has met the governor knows to be ridiculous. But try as they might to muddy the waters, establishment Republicans cannot dispute the shocking and disturbing videotape of Perdue supporters waving confederate flags on election night as the governor-elect mocked the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. Nor can they deny the backwater election demographics, or the legions of gloating boneheads from racist groups like the Sons of the Confederate Veterans and the League of the South, all of them taking credit for Perdue's victory.
Yes friends, the sleeping giant redneck has awakened, and he don't give a damn about what uppity colored folks think about the confederate flag. He's out stomping across Georgia like some kind of mutant yokel Godzilla, wreaking humiliation and destruction upon our hard-earned image as an enlightened place to do business.
To their credit, Democrats didn't play the race card during the election. And if they had, they would've probably been screwed anyway. It's tough to battle against a race-bating enemy like state GOP chairman Reed, who once said, "I do guerrilla warfare. I paint my face and travel at night. You don't know it's over until you're in a body bag."
Reed and his Republican nightriders may have lynched Barnes -- but at what price? This klutzy clan has painted itself into a corner: If they put the flag to a vote, the state will pay mightily. If they don't, the rednecks will revolt, and the world may be subjected to a petulant spectacle of white-trash madness not seen since Sherman lit a match.
Either way, Georgia's hard-won image as the progressive leader of the south will suffer.
Jeff Berry is buying up confederate flags as fast as he can -- and burning them.
I take it back. I like 'baccer-chewin' morons' better.
But, the article is dismissive of all them dumb pickup drivin' red neck crackers from the South, so naturally, Wlat loves it.
"I'm just glad these secessionist clowns aren't on my porch in white shirtsleeves with little phamplets and tracts explaining how secession will "work", like some twisted variant of Mormon missionaries. It's enough that we have goobers in the corncrib as it is -- I'd just as soon not to have to spray for 'em, if you get my drift.
And Dan - from an earlier message in this thread - don't taunt me too often. That fibreglass head of Nathan Bedbug Forrest's horse is just *begging* to wake up next to you in bed some morning. I've already had calls from Vincent "The Toecutter" Spaglioni, SJ, asking if he could take the contract for free, just to do me a solid. I told him to hold off for the moment because he does such exquisite work that I wouldn't want to waste it on frivolity. Suffice it to say that he didn't get his nickname in a lighthearted way.
But I have a strict policy of never damaging people who are obviously demented, retarded, insane, seriously damaged already or secessionist morons, so you're probably OK on four counts out of the five right now. Saved by playing your little dixienet.org Dungeons & Dragons game -- whoda thunk it, eh? :-)
[end]
Walt
These people cant figure that the Southern flag never was raised to fight against slaves or runaway slaves or black Africa. If anything, it is muslims and black Africa that is waging a war against black America that they consider priviledged or infidel. To associate the Southern flag with racism is also one of the biggest stereotypes since Southerners knew more about blacks than Northerners who happened to be racist in fact.
The Southern flag was raised to end a war declared by the North, and while some argue that the South started the war before that by insisting on collaborating with coercive black African slave traders and on insisting on priviledges above that of the rights of slaves and of Northerners to abolish priviledges that influenced federal politics, one can still argue that the South did not draw the blood of war with the North outright. Unless there is evidence of terrorist operations by the South against the North, I do not see where the Southern flag can be associated with hate, war and war starting lunatics. It is not the case.
For all I know, he could have come from New York two years ago. Yeek.
That's as much as you know either, I bet. But it didn't stop you from from making a typically ludicrous neo-reb assumption.
Walt
Check the record:
"We affirm that these ends for which this Government was instituted have been defeated, and the Government itself has been made destructive of them by the action of the non-slaveholding States... They have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery; they have permitted open establishment among them of societies, whose avowed object is to disturb the peace and to eloign the property of the citizens of other States. They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes; and those who remain, have been incited by emissaries, books and pictures to servile insurrection.
--from South Carolina Decl. of Secession
"...[the Northern States] have united in the election of a man to high office of the President of the United States, whose opinions and purpose are hostile to slavery. He is to be entrusted with the administration of the common Government, because he has declared that the `Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free,' and that the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction."
"They demand the abolition of negro slavery throughout the confederacy, the recognition of political equality between the white and negro races, and avow their determination to press on their crusade against us, so long as a negro slave remains in these States."
--Texas Declaration of Secession.
"Our cause is thoroughly identified with the institution of African slavery."
-- Mississippi secession convention
Soon to be CSA congressman Lawrence Keitt, speaking in the South Carolina secession convention, said, "Our people have come to this on the question of slavery. I am willing, in that address to rest it upon that question. I think it is the great central point from which we are now proceeding, and I am not willing to divert the public attention from it."
"As soon, however, as the Northern States that prohibited African slavery within their limits had reached a number sufficient to give their representation a controlling voice in the Congress, a persistent and organized system of hostile measures against the rights of the owners of slaves in the Southern States was inaugurated and gradually extended. A continuous series of measures was devised and prosecuted for the purpose of rendering insecure the tenure of property in slaves. . . . Emboldened by success' the theatre of agitation and aggression against the clearly expressed constitutional rights of the Southern States was transferred to the Congress. . . . Finally a great party was organized for the purpose of obtaining the administration of the Government' with the avowed object of using its power for the total exclusion of the slave States from all participation in the benefits of the public domain acquired by al1 the States in common' whether by conquest or purchase; of surrounding them entirely by States in which slavery should be prohibited; of those rendering the property in slaves so insecure as to be comparatively worthless' and thereby annihilating in effect property worth thousands of millions of dollars. This party' thus organized' succeeded in the month of November last in the election of its candidate for the Presidency of the United States... the productions in the South of cotton' rice' sugar' and tobacco' for the full development and continuance of which the labor of African slaves was and is indispensable.'
--Jefferson Davis
From the Confederate Constitution: Article I, Section 9, Paragraph 4: "No bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law denying or impairing the right of property in negro slaves shall be passed."
Article IV, Section 3, Paragraph 3: "The Confederate States may acquire new territory . . . In all such territory, the institution of negro slavery, as it now exists in the Confederate States, shall be recognized and protected by Congress and the territorial government."
From the Georgia Constitution of 1861:"The General Assembly shall have no power to pass laws for the emancipation of slaves." (This is the entire text of Article 2, Sec. VII, Paragraph 3.)
From the Alabama Constitution of 1861: "No slave in this State shall be emancipated by any act done to take effect in this State, or any other country." (This is the entire text of Article IV, Section 1 (on slavery).)
Alexander Stephens, Vice-President of the Confederacy, referring to the Confederate government: "Its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery . . . is his natural and normal condition." [Augusta, Georgia, Daily Constitutionalist, March 30, 1861.]
On the formation of black regiments in the Confederate army, by promising the troops their freedom: Howell Cobb, former general in Lee's army, and prominent pre-war Georgia politician: "If slaves will make good soldiers, then our whole theory of slavery is wrong." [Battle Cry of Freedom, p. 835.]
A North Carolina newspaper editorial: "it is abolition doctrine . . . the very doctrine which the war was commenced to put down." [North Carolina Standard, Jan. 17, 1865; cited in Battle Cry of Freedom, p. 835.]
Robert M.T. Hunter, Senator from Virginia, "What did we go to war for, if not to protect our property?"
Alfred P. Aldrich, South Carolina legislator from Barnwell: "If the Republican party with its platform of principles, the main feature of which is the abolition of slavery and, therefore, the destruction of the South, carries the country at the next Presidential election, shall we remain in the Union, or form a separate Confederacy? This is the great, grave issue. It is not who shall be President, it is not which party shall rule -- it is a question of political and social existence." [Steven Channing, Crisis of Fear, pp. 141-142.]
Senator Hunter of VA. During the Negro Soldier Bill debate on March 7, 1865, the SOUTHERN HISTORICAL SOCIETY PAPERS notes him as stating his opinion of the Bill as follows:
"When we had left the old Government he had thought we had gotten rid forever of the slavery agitation....But to his surprise he finds that this Government assumes the power to arm the slaves, which involves also the power of enamcipation....It was regarded as a confession of despair and an abandonment of the ground upon which we had seceded from the old Union. We had insisted that Congress had no right to interfere with slavery, and upon the coming into power of the party who it was known would assume and exercise that power, we seceded....and we vindicated ourselves against the accusations of the abolitionists by asserting that slavery was the best and happiest condition of the negro. Now what does this proposition admit? The right of the central Government to put slaves into the militia, and to emancipate at least so many as shall be placed in the military service. It is a clear claim of the central Government to emancipate the slaves."
"If we are right in passing this measure we were wrong in denying to the old government the right to interfere with the institution of slavery and to emancipate the slaves."
"He now believed....that arming and emancipating the slaves was an abandonment of this contest - an abandonment of the grounds upon which it had been undertaken."
The slave power threw down Old Glory to protect slavery.
Walt
You forgot big hair.
Walt
Then show that.
Walt
For the first time in a generation, the reins of Georgia government have been handed over to a wide-eyed hick who proudly panders to the neo-confederate crowd, a shadowy and racist gang of baccer-chewin' morons most city folks had believed to be extinct, if not permanently powerless.
Berry plays on two crude Southern rural stereotypes: the hick and the baccer-chewin' moron. This is unfavorably contrasted with the city folks to whom no disparaging modifer is appended. Its assumed by inference city folks are better than than that rural rifraff. And to complete the picture of the ignorant Southern country bumpkin, the author reminds us they're shadowy, racist, and the neo-confederate crowd. All you need to know about rural Georgians is they don't represent the South and its unthinkable they take over the government. Needless to say in the author's warped reality, Sonny Perdue is the unspoken embodiment of all that he finds wrong with Georgia after the Nov. 5th election. It really couldn't be any clearer how his picture of rural Georgia is at complete variance with the facts.
Do you think Perdue made fun of Dr. King in his victory speech, or not?
Walt
And the old Georgia state flag
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