Well let’s take a guess. Now that the flag is being taken down all over the place and removed from many retail sale sites because after recent tragic events (and in the longer historical view) it’s not really seen as appropriate to be honoring and celebrating it, who is the happiest person about this sea change in attitudes?
Progressives … pretty happy.
Black people tired of seeing this historical symbol of their oppression honored by being plastered all over public buildings and other sites … quite happy.
Meh, it’s the same “They’re coming to take our guns and bullets!!” mentality.
My favorite quotes from across the internet have been the “I didn’t even WANT one but now that I know the liberals are trying to take them, I bought THREE!”
Hah, yeah, you sure showed me by spending $40 on shit you didn’t want. Way to stick it to us…
I note that ultimateflags will also happily sell you a Nazi flag, a Soviet ‘hammer and sickle’ flag, a Japanese ‘Rising Sun’ flag, and an apartheid-era South Africa flag…along with pretty much any other banner you can think of.
I have, in my lifetime, bought two small(grave size) Confederate flags for the grave of a Confederate veteran. He’s buried in the same small country cemetery where I will be buried and, in the past, I’d seen US flags placed on his grave. I didn’t think that was correct.
He was not related but his daughter married my maternal grandmother’s brother, my great-uncle George. He had a son, dead at sixteen, that was named R.E. Lee Lastname, so I don’t think he would have wanted a US flag on his grave.
If I’m so inclined I may do it again, if and when I see a US flag placed on his grave. That should be reserved for those who served the United States.
Good for him. Whoop-dee-doo.
As long as the American government, in all areas- state and local, continue to bring down the flag, he ain’t the happiest guy.
And when the government finally stops using it except in a display in a museum, he can sell one to every racist everywhere, and he still won’t be the happiest guy.
Need not or can not? I can’t speak for Baker but I would consider it. I would have to think long and hard about it but I can’t say 100% I would never do it. I would need more information and a lot of soul searching to decide. Is it needed? Not really; the person is gone and beyond what anyone thinks of him/her. But I hope we aren’t talking can not; I like free expression (even of ideas and things I may personally hate) too much to want to go there.
For one Wermacht veteran I knew as a kid (brought here at first as a prisoner then came here to live) his family has planted what he considered his battle flag (more the Prussian eagle and Iron Cross than the swastika) on his grave now and then. My Dad had the American Flag and the old Chinese Flag (until I got tired of replacing the Chinese one because of morons stealing or destroying it) since he was a veteran of both Air Forces and very proud of the fact. My brother is hoping for a Vietnam Service Flag for his grave - and Lord knows that war wasn’t/isn’t universally loved.
You want to be the judge of what is appropriate over someone’s grave to memorialize, celebrate, honor, or commemorate their life, I got no issue with that - go for it. Personally my preference for soldiers is for unmarked graves in an open field so they can’t be desecrated or politicised by anyone. But if that is the deceased’s wish or gives some comfort to those left behind even generations later, so be it - I got no issue with that either.
Your motives and efforts to respect those who served in the Civil War are well warranted. Civil War combatants should be honored for their commitment to a cause they believed in, irrespective of the outcome and the belief systems that started the war.
I will say that I don’t think the Confederate Flag should fly over any official governmental state facility. But I have no objection to using the flag to remember those who died fighting for something they believed in.
I didn’t say anything about people being prohibited from expressing themselves.
But that same freedom allows my to express my disapproval of someone honoring the grave of a Nazi soldier for that soldier’s service in the German army.
In the same way, I judge someone negatively who feels the need to honor a former Confederate soldier for his service in the Confederate army.
In my view, expressing reverence for someone’s military service is precisely a political statement approving of that service. There’s no other reasonable interpretation in my view.
What I find repugnant is a living person honoring, commemorating, memorializing, or otherwise giving expression to the idea that someone’s service in any military force is admirable, commendable, or otherwise positive, when that military service was in service to an unambiguously reprehensible cause, whether it was the Confederacy, Hitler’s war, the Khmer Rouge, etc.
This is precisely what I disagree with. Those who served in the Confederate army should not be honored for their commitment to what I view is an unambiguously reprehensible cause.
If this person is your ancestor, perhaps he—like most people—had some good qualities. Was he a loving father? Was he a skilled artisan? Did he contribute to some charitable cause? If so, then I see no problem in honoring what was good in that person. Service in the Confederate army is unambiguously not good. So I judge negatively anyone who feels it appropriate to honor that.
Again, this is not a matter of legal obligation. I am exercising my right to free thought in judging that person negatively in the same way that that person is exercising his right to free expression in visiting that grave and doing whatever he is doing.
A lot of people die for causes that they believe in. We as civilized people should only honor such commitment when that cause—in our current moral and ethical judgment—was a worthy cause.
And if he was a doctor or a nurse in the Nazi military? Do you hold them in the same contempt?
There’s no other reasonable interpretation*** ← Really!? Really !!?
Come on, out loud & in public. Either you have the courage of your convictions or you don’t.
So you do not nor will not approve of any soldier who died or served in the US Armed services in any of the ‘sand box’ fighting? Or do you approve of those fights?
What about:
Viet Nam
German service?
Israeli service?
Patriot Guards?
KSC’s of Korea?
Russian soldiers who served from 1939 to 1946?
Russian soldiers who served from 1947 to present day?
Will you allow deceased felons to have a marker? If so, what can be used on then, dates only? Or?
My Paternal Grandmother was German. She worked in the POW camps in Texas during their use helping Nazi soldiers. She spoke fluent German. Are you for real about you opinions enough to go in person to that town and state openly that her grave marker needs to be changed because she gave help & comfort to Nazi soldiers?
Granted, joshing aside, there’s still arguably a procedural difference between laying a flag on a casket, and putting a little flag on the headstone on Memorial Day.
My apologies for going long but this is a subject I have put a lot of thought into. I’ll keep it as short as I can.
No other reasonable explanation huh? How about love for your family or ancestors? As a former SDS, you can guess that I don’t care for a lot of the choices my brother made. But if it does come down to me acting, I will see that his wish is carried out - no matter how personally repulsive I may or may not find it. Because, if in no other case in the universe, I can promise you that I am honoring the soldier and not the cause.
Like most soldiers, he didn’t fight for a cause - he fought for the guy next to him. Not the US Flag, not apple pie, not against the Red Menace. His only cause was the other guys in the Green Machine and trying to get home alive with as many of them as possible. That, in the fewest basic words, was his goal; not some ill-defined cause. Our Dad didn’t fight for any cause really; other than maybe personal freedom. He joined the AVG/Chinese Air Force because it was the fastest way away from his father and the coal fields he was born in. Not because of the “looming threat of Japanese Imperialism”. Cause? Seriously, how many soldiers in the end fight for a cause? Some I am sure but I’m betting, from everything I’ve read, that the percentage is very small. Nations may, governments surely do. But your average rank and file?
Our opinions of which causes are reprehensible and which are not may differ (although to be honest I doubt they differ very much). But what I don’t think differs is the experience of the average soldier. And if putting a small marker in the ground gives someone a sense of that soldier, a tiny bit of respect for or connection with that individual, I’ll find a way to live with it. Even if my opinion is different.
Don’t get me wrong; on a certain level I understand and respect your opinion. I must admit that there are symbols and flags that make my gut twist. Where we differ is where we really hate seeing them displayed. Government buildings; sure. Tattooed on the living; damn betcha. Other places probably as well. But in a graveyard next to a headstone or even on it? Sorry - there you lost me.
Still, I seriously wonder the percentage of people who want to get rid of this “Confederate flag” but are okay with this flag. Must be some variant of the US flag right?
There is no chance that flags will be banned in the US. You can fly a swastika, just don’t expect the neighbors to be happy. There is lots of precedent, especially internationally that guns can be confiscated. Even if you think that that is a paranoid pipe dream (unlikely in the US), there is tons of precedent that certain categories may become impossible to buy, thus thinking that it is a good idea to acquire one now is not illogical, even for “base” motivations like profiteering.
If you wish to make an analogy, it is more analogous to either: “I want this but it will be in very low supply in the future” or “I want this now so that I can sell it for a tidy profit.”
How many states used that flag, in living memory, to signify support for terrorism against American citizens? It’s not just that the Confederacy was bad. It’s that the battle flag was used to support terror against people who are still around today.
FWIW, I don’t think Georgia or anybody else should be using that flag either, but the battle flag is a different symbol with a different, and much more recent and raw, meaning.
Valid point, but my question is how many people even know that for half of the life of the Confederacy, the “Confederate flag” is not one that they recognize, and that “the stars and bars” refers to that one and not the saltire/St. Andrew’s cross/“X” one. And that for the remainder of the Confederacy, the “Dukes of Hazard” flag was used, but even then it only covered about 1/4 of the area of the flag and the rest was pure white.
Maybe it’s just me but I don’t understand all the hype over the stars N bars.
If people want to wear/use them why would anyone want to prohibit this? In my mind it shows a persons mindset and I would spend less time giving them the benefit of a doubt when dealing with them.
As for the flags on graves; who the fuck cares? If the grave doesn’t belong to me and giving the flag gives family a sense of well being why should I, or anyone else, care?
I’m sure that everyone in the rebel army wasn’t fighting to keep slaves and there were people who believed in states rights. If I’m correct Robert E. Lee didn’t support the succession but when Virginia voted to secede he followed along with the state, not for the right of slavery.
However for me the real reason that I don’t want the flag to be suppressed is far more simple, I want people who are racist to fly their flag proudly so I won’t waste any more time that is necessary on them.
:rolleyes:
