The Confederacy is still there, and still needs fighting.
The flag is truly the least of Mississippi’s problems.
My sentiments exactly. Pissing on Confederate soldiers’ graves is about the best they deserve, no joke, and I think Civil War Memorial Days by Southern states disgusting.
The ancestor I mentioned who fought at Gettysburg, he was on my father’s side. My Confederate ancestor on my Arkansas mother’s side, I found the names of him and his brother or cousin on a roll of his Confederate unit, and both had “Deserted” and the dates of their desertion afterward. (They deserted about six months apart.) Now those two guys had the right idea. I’m glad the authorities of the day never caught up with him, because my ancestor who was his son was not born until after the war.
Yeah Sampiro, it’s hard to be a Southerner sometimes. I was born in 1957. If all I knew of the South was from TV coverage from the 60s, then I’d probably expect the place to be wall-to-wall Klan. I saw my first Klansman in the 1980s. They were demonstrating in a neighboring town that I was driving thru. My first reaction was to look for the cameras that must be filming a movie. I guess I was spoiled by my redneck relations who were more concerned about crops & weather than black folks voting. I was obviously ruined by my eighth grade educated dad who was (and still is) an FDR Democrat. I suppose my family & neighbors let me down when they didn’t lose their minds when my school desegregated. I must be a disappointment in every way to my northern brethren on the SD…except for the fact that I hold my Confederate ancestors in esteem, even though I’m glad they did not win.
If they fought, I hope they fought well.
As you might guess, I don’t. I hope they deserted like Siam Sam’s relatives.
If it makes you feel any better, I have a g-g-grandfather who died in a POW camp in Indiana.
We should have a day to honor all the confederate soldiers who deserted. Now there’s an idea I can get behind.
You don’t seem like you’ve met one person if you don’t think that is a common belief.
The Midwest is often just as crazy as the South, but we’re looking at trends here, not isolated incidents. Hell, Darrell Issa is from California and is as batshit crazy as any of them. But we’ve got more normal people than the South, and if there really isn’t much difference, then why do Southerners bother to take pride in it? They know, and we all know, there is a quality about the South, and whether one wants to dress it up as pro-state or just come out and admit they are racist fucks, we all know that the stereotype is often true
The South has a legacy that’s for sure. I doubt we’d be having many objections to Confederate soldiers being recognized on Memorial Day if it weren’t for the efforts of southerners for the better part of the last 150 years to present their myth of a Lost Cause as the truth.
As someone already pointed out, Memorial Day started as Decoration Day which was a day to decorate the graves of both Union and Confederate soldiers who died during the war. Again, it doesn’t help that southern organizations eventually ended up using the holiday to propagate the Lost Cause myth rather than honoring the soldiers who died.
I don’t have a problem with Memorial Day including Confederate soldiers provided that people don’t use the occasion as a platform to spread lies about the Lost Cause. Unfortunately organizations like the Sons of Confederate Veterans and the United Daughters of the Confederacy exist exclusively to preserve those lies.
The south made their bed and they’ve got to lie in it. It would probably help of Confederate apologist went ahead and admitted that the war was over slavery, that it was wrong and stop clinging to the Lost Cause myth. I don’t think it’s fair to categorize every soldier who fought for the Confederacy as evil. Hell, I feel sorry for them being duped into fighting a war for the benefit of the relatively few who benefited the most from the slave system.
I work in a museum and I get to deal with the SCV and the UDC frequently. Some of the things they believe…
Meh. You gotta feel what you gotta feel, but I’m also a Southerner who loves this region and hates anti-southern bigotry and has gotten in big old fights with Yankees who talk about how nobody with a soul lives in the South or whatever. There’s no need for comic book ethics to say that chattel slavery is probably the worst thing our country’s ever done and up there with the worst things that humanity has ever done; the death toll from the middle passage alone places it in the top 20 atrocities in human history. Mocking people who keep that front and center is a pretty, uh, special attitude to take, as though we ought to say, “Yeah, on the one hand it was a horrifying and nearly unparalleled atrocity, but let’s not make too big a deal out of it.” Chattel slavery is one of those rare things it’s hard to make too big a deal out of.
Frankly if there’s comic book morality in this thread I think it belongs to people who think that soldiering carries some inherent nobility or honor, and if that soldiering is done by people born in the US, doubly so.
Spot on.
For those wringing their hands about stereotyping of the South and Southerners, I’ll point out that in my posts, I have consistently referred to “Confederates” and “traitors.” I have made no sweeping generalizations about the South.
You’re the one who made it about the feelings of the dead, or, rather, my feelings if by some trick of fate I had ended up as a Confederate soldier.
I betcha that in all those cases throughout antiquity, there was a considerable reluctance to honor those who died as traitors to the state that was doing the honoring.
It’s not so puzzling. Treat it as a separate question if you like.
+1
Pretty simple to period (any period) eyes too . . . if they’re in the head of a slave or anyone with the tiniest bit of empathy. (Find me the slavery approving folks that wouldn’t mind at all if they were made into slaves!)
“I raise this glass in honor of the United States soldiers who died in the Civil war . . . and in honor of the Confederate soldiers who died trying to kill them!”
CMC fnord!
But here’s the thing: what are we allowed to say to you that isn’t anti-Southern bigotry?
Even it it’s the same stuff or weaker that you yourselves bitch about (see 1. below), we are labeled as rude Yankee bigots (see 2. below).
Some of us transplants are here because we fit your acceptable “I wasn’t born here, but I got here as son as I could,” model, but a lot of us are here because we are mobile. We’ve seen more of the outside world besides your South, and also besides our original Yankee-land.
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A transplant comments on: State taxes and high sales taxes (in WA vs OR it was one or the other); corrupt local politicians enriching themselves and their cronies (to rival Chicago, but without the local newspapers going after it); People who are just fucking rude while insisting that the South is the friendliest place on earth (which fails to convince anyone who’s lived in Hawaii or the Philippines)
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What a lot of Southerner’s are conditioned to hear when these complaints are voiced: “You crackers hunt niggers for sport, and have sex with your kids or your livestock, whichever can’t outrun you on any given day; which isn’t much of a rece since you’re so fat and lazy. Oh, and you lost the war.”
Which confirms that you should never criticize as an outsider (just as true in friendlier Hawaii as in the South: “there no such thing as a kamaaina.”). But the South does have a lot of problems, and one solution to them is us Yankees: we came down here, with our money and skills and helped make this place what it is today. Responses like “Well bless your heart,” and “Delta is ready when you are” only keeps the problems in place.
Your use of the word “evil” is a non sequitur.
Noted.
Anthony wrote some pretty insulting things about the foreign-born, and also newly-freed slaves, during the period when the 15th Amendment was being considered and passed, she was offended that they could vote when women could not. I point this out not to tarnish Ms. Anthony, but to illustrate that the past is another country, and trying to impose our views onto it is unwise. Lincoln was obviously key to abolition, and yet can only be described as “racist” in his view of black folks.
Not equivalent, no, but of a kind: unsavory views that shouldn’t be held to modern standards.
I agree that we go too far at times as a nation in appointing our soliders as secular saints, but, as long as we’re doing so, I think Confederates should be honored by those who wish to do so. If your objection is with Memorial Day as a concept, the uncritical adulation of American soldiers regardless of the cause (as opposed to side, i.e. the CSA) they fought for, that’s its own issue. That said, soldiering obviously requires great physical courage, which is a trait worthy of admiration.
I must not have been clear, then, I was referring to how we 21st century folk should view the actions of Confederate soldiers. Whether the actual Confederate soldiers thought they were entitled to honor (or dishonor) has nothing to do with whether we should honor them a century and a half later.
Possibly. Civil wars can certainly lead to decades or centuries of hostility and bitterness, though normally this occurs when differing ethnicities or religions are involved, like the Balkans. In cases where the peoples involved are similar, like the American Revolution or the American Civil War, reconcilliation seems much easier to achieve.
And yet, slavery is about as old as mankind, and has only been eliminated from the bulk of the planet in the last 150-200 years or so.
So what? They didn’t live 10,000 years ago, or even 1000 or 500 years ago. They lived in a time where slavery was both wrong by their own claimed standards, and known to be in no way necessary. You keep trying to treat them like they were ancient Romans or some Stone Age barbarian tribe that didn’t know any better. Nor is hypocrisy an admirable quality, such as the hypocrisy of those who opposed slavery for themselves while practicing it on others.
And “it’s always been around so we shouldn’t judge people who do it” is a morally bankrupt position to take. Should we release all the rapists and murderers from prison too while we are at it?
[QUOTE=YogSosoth]
we all know that the stereotype is often true
[/QUOTE]
All stereotypes are often true; that’s why they exist. So is it okay to make sweeping comments about how Jews are clannish and greedy, blacks are lazy and on welfare, Asians are overachieving bad drivers, gays are vapid promiscuous lispers, and Mexicans are menial laborers or gang members because “we’re just talking about trends here, not all of them”?
And while I don’t dispute for a moment that the primary raison d’être of the Confederacy was to keep slavery legal, my problem with Confederates being included in Memorial Day has zilch to do with the issue of slavery; it’s the fact they were not fighting for the U.S. but were in open rebellion against it. Morally, the north did not have a lot of high ground; while the Confederacy was fighting to keep slavery, most northerners were not fighting to end it (colored troops and a very few abolitionists being the exception) and there were racist atrocities committed on both sides of Mason-Dixon during the war, and as always the notion that most enlisted men were no more apologists for the governments they fought for than most U.S. born teenagers in Vietnam were capable of arguing Karl Marx v. Freemarket with anything more than the occasional talking point- they fought because there was a war on (and yes, the same thing goes for most soldiers in the German armed forces in WW2- the notion of an entire side being evil and deserving to have their graves pissed on is a longing from an attention starved subscriber to a puerile mindset).