Minty:
from your cite (quoting Bush re BJU appearance)
“I should have been more clear in disassociating myself from anti-Catholic sentiments and racial prejudice,” Bush’s letter read. “It was a missed opportunity, causing needless offense, which I deeply regret.”
Ok. So you seem to be correct that he did not speak out at the time. He appears to have attempted to correct this.
Do you beleive this letter of his is insincere?
If not, why is it still an issue?
Minty:
Aschcroft does say “land of the free,” and riffs for a split second or so on the basic civil rights “Life liberty and pursuit of happiness.”
Clearly his stance is clear. How can you impugn the man for such courageous activism?
Oh, that’s easy.
Hypothesis: Republicans are appealing to racism by supporting the CBF or saying it’s up to the locals to decide.
Evidence: The CBF is widely used as a symbol of hate by white supremacist groups, and is widely perceived as a symbol of hate by non-whites.
Conclusion: By failing to speak up, the 'Pubbies are appealing to racism.
Happy now?
I understood what you meant from the start. What I was saying is that you haven’t made your case. You still haven’t. Because if you grant that many people feel that the flag has other, non-racist implications, it would make sense for the Republicans to support it on that basis. You can’t merely say that because some racists use something as a symbol, anyone else who also uses it is endorsing racism.
Izzy:
I think you’re wrong on the flag issue. I’m sure it used to be a Heritage issue. It was when I went to school in Louisiana in the late 80s.
The flag was everywhere, on stores, in bars, etc. I still have a wallet with the flag that a girlfriend gave me (she’s a public defender, Democrat and about as staunchly unracist as you will find) from that time. She was jus as liberal then, and she wouldn’t have given it to me if she thought is was an active racist symbol. The flag was attractive as a Southern cultural symbol and an attractive anachronism of lost causes.
That has changed dramatically. Go check some of these Southern heritage sites out yourself. The term and the flag now appear synonymous with white supremacy.
Oh, maybe by choosing a venue other than Philadelphia, Mississippi or South Carolina to make your points about the supposed importance of states’ rights?
Or maybe by acknowledging, during a speech on states’ rights, that the concept has been misused in defense of segregation.
I have no reason to believe otherwise. I do not believe, and never have believed, that Bush is a bigot. I do believe, however, that he and his political advisors are perfectly willing to accept the support of bigots, and that they will rarely go out of their way to do anything that would dissuade such support. BJU is a pretty good example of that. It was a standard stop on the right-wing politico circuit, despite being well-known for its discriminatory policies and teachings, because the politicos got more out of it in terms of right-wing support than they lost in terms of sucking up to bigots. After Bush 2000, that math has obviously changed.
Because, regardless of his apologetics upon being caught in a shitstorm of bad publicity, it’s still an excellent example of a Republican leader kissing bigoted ass.
In that respect, Bush’s apology letter is quite comparable to John McCain’s experience with the flag in S.C., where, while still a candidate, he joined the cowardly, sycophantic party line of saying only that the flag was an issue for the people of S.C. to decide. A couple months later, having been ground under by the Bush machine, McCain strongly denounced the flag, its herritage of hate, and his own cowardice in failing to condemn it during the primary. The apology is noteworthy, and says a lot about teh person, but does not eliminate the bigot-appeasement that he felt was necessary to win the primary and the nomination.
IzzyR, it’s also important to remember that the Confederate emblem was added to the Georgia flag in 1956, in the wake of Brown v. Board of Education.
If the flag symbolizes “heritage” to someone, I have no problem with that. They can certainly choose to fly it. But it should never have been made part of a flag which is supposed to represent ALL Georgians, black and white.
This latter is incorrect. You as well have said it is actually a State issue and not a Federal one.
Ok.
That doesn’t follow.
Failure to condemn does not equal support. In Georgia this appears to be the third rail. Touch it and die. I can understand why a Georia politician on either side of the fence might be reluctant to commit suicide by coming out against the flag. Barnes himself appeared to take the quiet route during his election and didn’t come out overtly against it until he took office.
You have not demonstrated a pattern of Republican support for the flag. You’ve given one cite with two examples.
Again, you are making the fallacy of accident. This seems to be the superhot issue of Georgia politics, and thus may constitute a special case, not being representative of the political parties in general.
“Failure to speak up” may also be ignorance or a different interpretation of what is occuring than what you share. It doesn’t prove pandering, it doesn’t prove activism. It seems to me that by definition “failure to speak up” is a mu result. It is not proof of guilt, it is simply nonevidence for innocence.
The situation may not be completely polarized everywhere else as it is in Ga. Take the Mississippi governor and Democrat who is only now starting to get the “eery feeling” that maybe something is wrong with this flag thing.
In other words your conclusion does not follow from your evidence, and your hypothesis is flawed.
Not to mention that the Confederate flag cannot reasonably be said to symbolize “Southern heritage” at all. It always amazes me that, out of 400+ years of post-Colonial history, people pick the most prominent symbol of a four-year period in which the South decided to fight for the moral right to own human beings as they damn well saw fit, then point to that symbol and say “See that? That’s the South!” That flag represents the South in roughly the same proportion that brushing my teeth represents my entire life.
Silence is the functional equivalent of consent. “Hey, Mr. Candidate, Missibamalina wants to fly the swastika over their state capitol. What do you have to say about that?” “That is a decision for the people of Missibamalina to decide.”
McCain fessed up on the flag. Seems like pretty damn good evidence to me, but hey, whatever gets you through the night.
I’m shocked, shocked! that you would say such a thing. Goodness knows, you’ve accepted the rest of the evidence I and the rest of your opponents have shared in this thread. Your reticence to accept my wisdom know has thrown me into a higgeldly-piggeldy of despair. Pardon me, whilst I retire to the library and consider where, o where have I gone wrong?
Scylla, again, the fact that some racists have adopted it as a symbol does not mean that’s all it is.
spoke- & minty, I am aware fo the issues you raise, and I don’t think the Confederate flag has no connection at to current racial issues. But I don’t think it follows that it is being used as a racist symbol.
What it is really about, as I understand it, is whether those who believed and fought for the southern cause at the time were completely Bad Guys who were all about nothing but slavery, or whether they had many good qualities, and fought for some important principles (e.g. the right for a region to make its own moral decisions without being dominated by larger areas of the country that have a different way of life) but were wrong about one central issue of the day. Back in the times when segregation was the way of life, these opinions were probably widely held throughout the south, and there was no need for defiant symbols. But as the civil rights movement progressed there was a much smaller amount of tolerance for people associated with slavery and particularly the fight for it. The flag issue is a way of asserting the positive qualities of these people and the south as a whole during that era.
There have been recent cases where people like Thomas Jefferson (IIRC) have had their names taken off schools, for having been slaveowners. Should such attitudes become more widespread, I expect we would see some of the same type of counter-expression up north as well.
Minty:
Re: McCain
The other interpretation for the MCcain thing is ignorance. The meaning of the flag, and its acceptibility seems to have changed pretty quickly, causing a lot of confusion with some people especially Dukes of Hazard, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and .38 Special fans.
As a symbol of hate it was fairly soft 10-15 years ago, and fairly acceptable. Now it’s up there with the Swastika. It’s possible to be sandbagged by that.
While I’ll buy that the flag was somewhat less associated with racism back in the 70’s, I have a very hard time buying that John McCain was ignorant of its status in Feb. 2000, then had an epiphany in April 2000 that, by golly, the Confederate flag is a bad thing.
Minty:
It appears that Carter failed to speak up on the issue of the flag until 2001. There are pictures of him posing in front of the flag back in the 70s, and don’t forget that he reinstated citizenship for Lee and Jackson during his presidency.
And your statement that silence implies consent is simply wrong. There are other possibilites. In the current environment it may simply imply cowardice, or wise survival instincts (depending on how you view it) It may also imply ignorance, or it may imply a sincere beleif that it is strictly a State issue.
Until you can read minds, you can’t tell.
And, as I mentioned before, you have failed to demonstrate, or offer any evidence that silence on the flag is a predominantly Republican phenomenom.
It looks that way for Carter, why not McCain?
Was Carter campaigning in South Carolina in 2000? And was he specifically asked about the flag during his campaign stop there? I must have missed that.
No. But he gave back US citizenship to Confederate leaders during his Presidency.
How do we interpret that?
You won’t get any argument for me on citizenship. Since seccession was a nullity, they never should have been stripped of citizenship in the first place. As for Carter and the flag, okey doke. Does that throw the door back open to that great Republican bigot Nixon, too? It’s so hard to know where you draw the lines in this debate when you keep changing them.
Yes, that’s why we judge people on their words and their actions.
I did. You just ignored it. Remember where I pointed out–in the context of national politics, which you keep refusing to consider in favor of state politics in the deep South, even though the “Southern Strategy” is by definition a national strategy–that every Democratic presidential candidate condemned the flag, and every Republican presidential candidate took the courageous stand that they really didn’t have anything to say about that issue.
Minty:
You’re not doing that. You’re judging them on lack of words and actions.
Really? I don’t recall George Wallace speaking out against in '72, nor Carter in '76 or in '80, nor Mondale in '84, nor Dukakis in '88, nor Clinton in '92 or '96. Gore may have 2000, but it slipped my mind if he did.
And, quite a few Southern Democrats seem to be curiously silent on the issue of the flag as well. Somehow I’m gonna guess that the Democratic Senator and Governor of South Carolina who appear to be racist panderers are not out there charging against the flag, nor are the Democratic Senator from Florida (just guessing)
Since you are saying that Republicans are typically silent on the issue and Democrats typically vocal, I look forward to a comprehensive national list of where politicians stand on the issue. That will prove your point.
And assuming you can pull off such a neat trick (and I don’t think you can) you still have to prove that silence equals support, which is some weak-assed shit.