Heritage? Nah, just hate.

You mean when the board’s racists crawl out from under their rocks to defend the indefensible?

Failure to communicate?

It’s amazing to me how so many otherwise intelligent people have such a hard time with this “treason” thing.

So what if they were traitors? They were still Americans, and (other than slavery) they embodied American values.

You worthless, ignorant idiots need to learn a thing or two from history. You’ve evidently forgotten that the Founding Fathers were traitors to Great Britain. Either celebrate both groups of traitors, or else condemn both.

This is awesome. “Other than slavery” is in parentheses. Suck my dick you fucking turd.

Waving battle flags of the Confederacy and flags of the Third Reich is holding to a long term grudge.

For the most part I’d agree. I really dislike secessionists and have not much sympathy for the true Confederate folks. I just think these absolutes in theses threads are needlessly hyperbolic.

What the fuck are you talking about, dumbass? I was talking about the fact that this subject gets brought up over and over as if it’s some new revalation. I don’t disagree with the OP.

The Confederate cause and the Nazi ones were absolutists indeed. It is not hyperbole to call them what they are: proponents of slavery racism and genocide.

That may be. No sense rehashing too many redundant arguments. But I’ll say this not everyone with a piece of random Confederate gear is a pro slavery nut. I’ll grant that wearing Nazi apparel or Hammer and Sickle is either a deplorable, Halloween participant, or just ignorant of history.

“Slavery” and “American values” are incompatible. You can’t have both of them at once.

Slavery was legal in the United States for the first ninety years of its history and a large number of early American leaders who wrote the country’s founding documents and helped define the values of the country were slaveholders. So clearly they’re not entirely incomparable.

Beware! Smapi is about to label you pro slavery.

After some amendments, they are not compatible anymore.

Indeed, we can’t step into the same river twice.

And that 240 years ago. Our understanding of “all men are created equal” has evolved a little since then to include people who aren’t white, male, or Christian. Anyone who supported slavery back then is incompatible with what we understand American values to be today, and their slaveholding ways should not be celebrated. Allowing slavery to continue for as long as it did was the original sin of our Republic, and as we can see, it’s one we’re still paying for today.

I didn’t say you did, but look at this thread. The usual suspects are out to defend the confederate flag. I was just predicting the inevitable. The SDMB racists are here to defend white nationalism while pretending they’re really just history buffs.

My father and one of my older brothers graduated from VMI. They also know my opinion on Lee, Jackson, and all the rest of the leaders of that treason. There actually is a way to take note of them as historical figures without gushing and calling them great people. Of course, the bigots can’t be bothered to that in a reasonable manner.

Note that neither my father nor my brother supports those confederate leaders.

I don’t care one way or the other about Confederate symbols. Not a hill I’m willing to die on. But I will say this:

If we don’t want to honor those who our current generation consider monsters, people who wear Che Guevara shirts should be treated the same as those who wear confederate flag shirts.

Oh, and don’t fuck with Dukes of Hazzard. That’s an exception and I will die on that hill.

Well, you just disqualified yourself from ever holding elected office as a Republican, so for that I salute you. :slight_smile:

Fine. The slave-raping founding fathers were a bunch of traitors and the British should condemn them.

The slave-raping confederates went to war against their own countrymen. All of the officers should have been executed or deported. The confederates were not Americans; as soon as they seceded they should have lost the right to ever be citizens of the United States.

Take down all the statues and remove all the names from public property. Put everything in a museum called “The Treasonous Scum Center.”

Well, that’s something we shouldn’t do. The people who actually fought and died and suffered through that war chose reconciliation. We have not earned the right to substitute our wisdom for theirs.