[trombone] waaaa waaaa 
I’m pretty close to Antietam, so we had a lot of coverage of the event. I gotta tell, I couldn’t be more pleased about the thing. I think we all owe the KKK a great big “thank you.”
I truly beleive that there’s nothing better for equality than to have these cretins show up and parade around, so we can all get a good look at them.
You see a movie like “American History X” with Ed Norton, and a bunch of other cool guys, some with girlfriends playing white Supremacists, and you might say to yourself, “Yeah, that’s evil, but they are kind of cool in their own way.”
But, when you see this band of losers on tv, the illusion is dispelled. These guys are worse than the guys who would dress up and pretend they were vampires.
Did anybody see the clip with the humonguous fat guy in the Nazi outfit literally picking his nose?
And so, anybody entertaining any ideas of perhaps being a white supremacist can watch all what? eight? of these guys on tv, standing around and say “On second thought, maybe I’ll join marching band instead.”
In other words, just seeing these guys is the best argument them. They should come out more often. We should sponsor them at local events.
“Come one, come all, come see the white supremacists.”
It’s the modern day equivalent of a freak show, and these guys serve as a cautionary tale to all of us about taking ourselves seriously.
This is the Gordon Young comment that got the whole thing rolling
. . . and you know what? He’s right in a way. Although Young and his klukker pals are not the ghosts of the men and women that died at Sharpsburg, they are, in a way, ghosts of the Confederacy in that they are the metaphorical specter of a society that has died yet continues to haunt the occupants of its old home. They’re not, however, ghosts of the South, because the South has not died – not physically, not culturally, not spiritually. Southerners should celebrate their heritage of strength, of resurrection, of metamorphosis.
There’s reason to mourn the senseless loss of life (federal and Confederate) at Sharpsburg and there’s much to be learned from the brutality of war. But why do it with symbols that have been co-opted by the ignorant and hateful? It’s a blue St. Andrew’s cross on a field of red with thirteen stars – it’s a blue x and a red rectangle – it’s a damn banner.
Finally, those that think the yanks were the “good guys” and the rebs the “bad,” have such a narrow and simplistic world view and such an ignorance of history that conversation with them is wasted breath. First off, the northern states were interested primarily in stopping the expansion of slavery, a move that meant political death to the South – the body politic of the North was not as obsessed with freeing black slaves as they were with controlling congress. The war was indeed “about” slavery, in a very real sense, for the South, but for the North it was about control – not freeing slaves. If a whore leaves her pimp because he won’t let her do smack (takes her off the streets to long) and the pimp tracks her down and beats the shit out of her for taking off, do we applaud the pimp for his active role in the war on drugs?
This is very, very true, but no one in this thread has suggested otherwise.
The North was only the “good guys” in that their actions directly led to the abolition of one of the most heinous practices that ever occured on American soil.
The South was the “bad guys”, not because they were looking after their own self-interests (just as the North was), but because of what their self-interests specifically entailed.
Discussing the issue in terms of good versus evil is, of course, sloppy. Morality had little to do with the war. But I think its disingenous to portray the North as being “just as bad” as the South. I should hope that an objective observer to the Civil War would be cheering for the side that at least had the pretense of enlightenment as opposed to the one that was willing to slit its own neck in order to preserve an atrocity.
If you think thats a simplistic and narrow worldview, I can live with that.
Nice analogy, but it needs modification. A whore who does smack is only hurting herself. So let’s say that the whore was abusing her kid.
Pimp says “Bitch, quit doing that!”
Whore says “I’m outta here! You can’t tell me what to do with my negroe–I mean kid!”
Then she runs off, dragging little Timmy with her.
Pimp says to himself “Man, she’s messing up my business. I gotta get that ho and I’m gonna make her do what I say about that brat, too! That’ll show her who’s boss.”
So he chases after the whore and beats her until she agrees to be his bitch once again. And she also agrees not to beat up little Timmy. (At least not as much.) Then they kiss and make up.
I don’ think it’s disingenuous to the extent that “just as bad” can translate into “no better.” Or do we give the pimp the Nancy Reagan honorary “Just Say No to Drugs” Award?
emphasis mine
You write as if the North won in a waltz. You might want to review the results of some of the battles prior to Sharpsburg . . . . oh say, Manassas. Most consider the South to have been the far superior army, the northern blockades simply proved too effective. And, since, as you have conceded, the morality of slavery was never really the main isue, then one’s left to ask, what was? For the South, independence from a far away, disconnected tyrant – I remeber another war on American soil with similar aspirations.
You yourself called it sloppy.
Here’s what pisses me off about the whole confederate flag/Civil War thing. Well, one of the things, anyway. I live in Virginia, which was first settled, well, by the Indians a hell of a long time ago, but the first European settlement in Virginia was Jamestown, which was settled in 1607, about 400 years ago.
So Virginia has 400 years of history, some of it good, some of it bad. The Confederacy existed, and Virginia was in it, for about 4 years, from 1861-1865. So the Civil War, in its entirety, as important as it may have been for Virginia, is only 1% of Virginia history. So why give it such primacy of place?
You don’t give people awards for being “not as bad” as someone else, so this bit of rhetoric about Nancy Reagan is a non sequiter.
You’re reading too much into what I’m writing. The North took a lot of losses too. So what? It still doesn’t change the fact that they were willing to fight to the death for two different things, one which IMO was signficantly “less bad” than the other.
When did I say one side was more moral than the other? When did say the South was eeeeevil? That kind of talk is what I meant by sloppy.
But even in your own analogy, the North used slavery as a cover story, while the real reasons for war were below the surface. This doesn’t make them ‘good guys’. Do you honestly think there was a Congressman or a Senator in 1860 who gave a damn about black people or their issues, other than it being a convenient excuse for them to achieve their political and economic ends? If they were such an ‘enlightened crowd’ then why was ‘N.I.N.A.’ allowed to continue in NYC? Why were immigrants, just arriving on the boat, concripted to front line slaughter? How come the rich could pay a political boss to have a poor man report for battle in their stead?
Boiling complex historical events down to simplistic good vs bad or right vs wrong while leaving out the gray areas is the height of revisionist history, and those who will not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
have the pimp erect a system of institutionalized bitch slapping for Timmy over the next 100 years and you’re on to something.
Well put, and I think that’s yet another thing that makes people suspicious of Navy Jack-wavers.
Are you guys reading what I’m writing? I’ve never declared as the North “good guys” in absolute terms. There’s a reason why the quotes are used, too. It’s because characterizing who was right and wrong in the whole fight relies on putting things in relative terms.
Maybe my thought process alludes you. So let’s compare the motives, shall we?
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The North wanted all the power and money that came with keeping the southern states in the Union. They chose to make war in order to preserve these interests. Agree?
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The South wanted all the power and money that came with keeping black people enslaved and dehumanized. They chose to make war in order to preserve these interests. Agree?
Between these two motives, which one strikes most people as worse on the good to bad continuum? Me, I go with number 2. Perhaps it might have something to do with who my ancestors were, I dunno. But the answer seems pretty clear. Now if the South chose to suceed because the North was threatening to take away all their cotton gins, then I’d probably be painting the North as the “bad guy”. But we ain’t talking about no cotton gins.
While I’m not a civil war expert, I know damn well from lectures I’ve attended and from people I know who are civil war experts that your arguments simplistic and your prerequisits are slanted and biased. If the post above is the limit and the extent of your thought process on the Civil War, (and if its not a “Whoosh!”) then quite frankly, I’m done trading posts with you on this subject.
With all due respect, anyone who posits anything like this…
…really shouldn’t be so eager to call anyone’s argument “simplistic”.
You don’t have to be a Civil War expert to understand that.
Honestly, there were. They were a minority, certainly, but there were abolitionist senators and congressmen, like Sen. Charles Sumner or Congressman Thad Stevens, who were genuine abolitionists, just because they thought it was the moral thing to do. (Stevens went further than most, supporting full racial legal and social equality, and even in his will, asked to be buried in a primarily colored cemetary, because all the other cemetaries in his town were segregated.) His tombstone’s self written epitath says:
and in his will, established a school for orphans, insisting that:
The North during the Civil War wasn’t a great shining moral beacon, and there was, of course, bigotry and racism. However, if they weren’t, at first, fighting to free slaves, they at least, unlike the Confederacy, weren’t fighting to keep slaves in bondage.
I’ve read what you wrote and understand where you come from, but it’s a dubious contest you’ve pitted – this race to the bottom – that hardly deserves any sort of relativistic absolution. If Stalin and Hitler got in a fight – oh wait, they did – who’s the “good guy”? Face it, sometimes wars are fought with shitty repressive nations on each side. This need to qualify a “good” and a “bad” side is the result of tribalism and is fed by propaganda. It shows an unwillingness to accept the fact that the darkest aspect of humanity is often the most prominent.
Don’t get me wrong, the South’s history of slavery is shameful but it is a past shared with the entire union as it existed up through 1865 – let’s not even get started on the treatment of the Chinese out west, and the aboriginal Americans on the whole continent.
If the klukkers started waiving the Spirit of 76, would we abandon it, too?
The funny thing is that the Confederate Flag gained enormously in popularity during the height of the Civil Rights Movement. Look at when it was added to Georgia’s state flag, for instance. I have my sneaking suspicion that this idea that the Confederate Flag represents nothing but “pride in the South” is a lot more recent than the other idea.
And like I and others have been pointed out, if you think that both sides were acting so shamefully, then you cannot possibly claim that a battle flag from that single darkest moment in American history is some sort of legitimate celebration. The fact that this was our nation’s worst period doesn’t square well with using a symbol that originated in that moment, in the context of taking up arms against one’s fellows, as some sort of “cultural symbol”.
Sorry, I don’t buy it. Nothing in this thread has convinced me to change my mind.
Exactly, no one should care about a “battle flag” that represents only 1% of their history. Unless… they have another agenda…
Indeed, you will note that I made this same comment earlier in this thread with respect to this very flag.
I couldn’t agree more, and I am not suggesting that the confederate flag be flown in celebration – personally, I find it off-putting. I was responding more to the “good guys” comment and asking that poster to reconsider the stance of the union and some of the symbols of the U.S. and what those symbols might be associated with to others. I think getting torn up about any of these symbols is foolish.
If it became inextricably identified with the KKK’s views, yes. At that point, it will mean the KKK. I mean, if my name was Jon White and I owned a power company, I certainly wouldn’t name my company “White Power”; it would lead to misunderstandings. It’s the same principle.