Part of it is just the human condition. There are prejudiced and stupid ideas that have hung around for much, much longer than anything Confederacy-related.
I think a lot of it is that many people like to take pride in their regional or family history; but in this case that history is an evil one. So they try to come up with rationalizations or revisions of history to “prove” that their ancestors weren’t as monstrous as history shows them to be.
If memory serves, displaying a Nazi flag in Germany is illegal; however, displaying the Confederate flag in the United States of Americfa is considered to be excercising one’s right to free speech.
Also one’s right to annoy Yankees.
As did a proposed 13th amendment, supported by Abraham Lincoln, that would have protected slavery as an institution.
The south has centuries of history to take pride in. Why does it keep focusing on the five worst years of its history?
Because those years were just the violent culmination of what because its defining feature; the obsession with slavery.
I don’t have any evidence so consider this an IMHO answer. My theory is that the continuing sympathy for the Lost Cause is due to the forgiving nature of Reconstruction. The German occupation was less compromising. German leaders had to work with foreigners who uniformly regarded the Nazis as inhuman monsters. They had to deal with that to remain in politics.
There were plenty of Northern administrators in the postwar South who viewed Confederates as inhuman traitorous bastards but others did not. And both conquered and conquerors shared a dim view of black Americans. Also there was no other group to put the onus on and Northerners simply did not want to turn Southern society on its head. All Southern leaders were Confederates and Northerners wanted to work with them. That wasn’t possible if Northerners continually rubbed their counterpart’s noses in their shameful past. So former Confederates were required to swear loyalty to the Union but not to admit (to themselves or to others) the depravity of their conduct. Without some other Southerners to blame or the cathartic acceptance of responsibility they were left to defend their actions. And their descendants continue to defend their legacy.
The people you see waving around the Confederate flag are probably racists. If you think of the type of people who wave flags, they’re not the people who waste time thinking about an issue.
There has been a strain of political thought in the U.S. going back even before the Articles of Confederation, that emphasizes the right to self government. Its not as strong as it was in say 1775, but it exists. If it wasn’t as strong as it was around that time, we wouldn’t have been successful in gaining our independence.
Valid comparisons could be drawn between our secession from Britain and the South’s attempted secession from the U.S.
Now. If we were never successful in achieving our independence, would that self-governmental strain still be present in American politics? Yes.
Would folks fly the “Stars and Stripes” from the back of their pickup? Probably not.
Those you see with it painted on their pickup trucks, OTOH, are simply assholes.
Which does not equate to local autonomy, states’ rights, etc.
Yes it does.
I have an idea… like it or not, slavery was legal, had been for hundreds of years, and many livelihoods depended on it.
Exterminating jews was never any of those things by any stretch of the imagination.
Aw, the Arizona branch of the site is down. 
I was hoping to link up with my Confederate brothers and maybe be named a general or something.
What, you think the Nazis invented pogroms against Jews? Even the word “pogrom” refers originally to massacres of Jews; it’s been a Christian sport for a very long time. The Nazis were just the latest in a long line.
And what does it matter if it was legal? I don’t know if the Nazis bothered to make what they were doing legal, but I doubt that “Hey, the Holocaust was legal” would be an argument with much traction. As for “livelihood”; so the monsters profited by their monstrousness. That makes them no less monsters. For that matter, the Nazis did try to profit off of their atrocities; does that make them more forgivable?
I imagine something you’ll very rarely see admitted in the former Allied nations, is that so many prominent people agreed with that Hitler fellow about the Jews, at least at first, and didn’t appreciate that he he carried it so far. 'Cause then they had no choice but to confront the nature of the prejudice they themselves were carrying around, and what its logical conclusion would be.
No one really cares about agrarianism or history or whatever. It’s about racism. Occam’s razor usually works, you know.
That’s not so. After the Cold War started western occupying powers found it expedient to overlook the pasts of many Germans who were seen as useful for rebuilding and rearming West Germany. Look at, for instance, the attempts by former Waffen-SS (a criminal organization) members to get military pensions after the war.
Are you comparing the swastika to the confederate battle banner? What most people call the confederate flag is not nor was not the confederate flag. If you don’t know that, look it up.
I can trace my family to the Confederacy; one of my admittedly distant relatives was tortured to death by northern soldiers----the torture is well documented and is beyond denial. I’m fed up with the entire north-south thing. Get over it.
I’m not referring to the Negroes voting; I’m referring to farms and houses being burned to the ground and I’m referring to southerners not being left with the means to earn a living. The opening of a thread like this one denigrates the south. We go over this confederate is evil stuff time after time; get over it.