Government soldiers marching on its sovereign soil. I’m ok with that.
About what? That your comparing the US Revolution to the Civil War is invalid or that your attempt to be clever about the uniforms fell on its face?
Please remember this is Great Debates. The topic should remain the debate at hand, not personal matters.
RickJay
Moderator
Whats being connected is the Republican Party realized it lost the 5 of the last 6 popular votes so it can no longer afford to rally non university educated white rural men at the cost of alienating everyone else. And while it’s unfortunate that 9 dead people have become a Cause not entirely relevant to the facts, without outrage nothing ever gets accomplished.
A rebel flag flown over a government building should never have been a thing to begin with.
The level of stupidity of your comment would be equal to stating that the Germans didn’t wear steel helmets in WWII, because you found a picture of an ss-unit that wore a fez.
You’re right, guess I hit a snare and some are too pissed off.
As I see it, we’ve got several issues:
-Vast economic disparity between black and white folks, due to lots of historical issues and institutional racism.
-A white-supremacist culture in South Carolina that manifests in a ton of different ways.
-A culture in which violence against black people is treated as inevitable or necessary.
-A culture that makes guns easily available.
-A culture that does not adequately teach young men how to channel their aggressive tendencies.
-A racist flag.
If you allowed me to choose which issue we’d change in response to this shooting, the flag would be my last choice. But if you tell me we either change the flag or we change nothing, I’ll take the flag change.
(And no, I’m not interested in debating any of the above points; if I were, I’d phrase them more carefully. If you want to tell me that one of them is sloppily phrased or impugns the constitution or makes me a poopyhead or whatever, go ahead and get it out of your system; my point is that this relatively unimportant issue is the only issue that has any chance of being addressed at this moment, so we may as well.)
You’re not very good at this “making a point” thing, are you?
That said, you have stepped further over the line that anyone else. No warning, but cut it out. You had time to see my message before writing the one before this one.
This line of increasingly personal shots will cease, by all posters, immediately. You too, Mr. Miskatonic.
RickJay
Moderator
I fully endorse your using photoshop for good, instead of evil. Nice work!
Thou rockest. But then again we knew that all along.
(this is gonna make the next Skynyrd show a bit awkward with the line about lovin’ the governor 
)
… and brainstorm! Replace them all with rainbow rebel flags! (pink saltire on rainbow background). Hey, it’s a symbol of “pride”, right? 
Why, you little devil you!!
Right, but it’s not durty libruls taking the flags down. Who is and why is what is really going on.
I’m a Northerner of German extraction while my husband was a Southerner from a long line of Southern predecessors. I asked him once why the south was so darn proud of their role in a wrongful war that they had lost. After all, all of my German family members would have chewed a bag of nails before they’d have flown a Swastika flag or boasted about the German heroism or achievements in WWII. American Germans use the Nazis as a cautionary tale – showing us what we need to be watchful against lest it overtake us again. We’re rather like former alcoholics who give even cooking sherry a wide berth. We know where it took us and how easily it took us there and we don’t want to take even the first step in that direction ever again.
Yet Souherners revel in their losing role in an unsanctionable conflict - sporting the Confederate flag and yelling about the yankees. They don’t seem to take any shame at all in their role as slavemasters fighting to preserve a way of life dependent on the ownership of other human beings. Juxtapposed to that are the many white Southerners who are appalled by slavery and shamed by their connection with it. Yet you’ll still see these same folks happily waving the Confederate flag at a Bama or Ole Miss game without blinking an eye.
Part of it is, I’m sure, the fact that the Union by and large did embrace their conquered brothers like brothers when they were reincorporated into the country. We allowed them their war museums, memorials, honorariums to the heroes of the confederacy, etc. And we permitted them to continue to wave their flag over their public buildings along with the stars and stripes.
Perhaps we were too lenient and allowed this to continue when we should have stopped it earlier. If not immediately after the war, then certainly at the time segregation became illegal.
I agree with those who say that there is no need to tear down their war memorials, or rename their public buildings. As a country, we have always maintained that Southerners continued to be Americans, even when they attempted to secede. As such, we can’t complain when they honor the heroes. But perhaps it’s time to bypass any future uses of Confederate names, to retire the flag (its prime symbol) and let the entire era fade into history where it belongs. One hundred and fifty years has been long enough to refight this conflict.
I’m in Alabama, too. Haven’t heard anyone in my office talking about the flag at all. Which is somewhat of a surprise, actually. But I didn’t hear about the Confederate flag being taken down until yesterday afternoon on the news. And I’m not on Facebook, so nothing to report there, either. I have to say, I was surprised by the removal, though. Is anyone taking bets on whether it goes back up again?
George Wallace was the governor of Alabama when this was released. He loved the song, especially the line, "In Birmingham they love the governor," and he made the band honorary Lieutenant Colonels in the state militia. Wallace may not have listened very carefully however, as Ronnie Van Zant explained: “The lyrics about the governor of Alabama were misunderstood. The general public didn’t notice the words ‘Boo! Boo! Boo!’ after that particular line, and the media picked up only on the reference to the people loving the governor.” Van Zant added, “We’re not into politics, we don’t have no education, and Wallace don’t know anything about rock and roll.”
Hell, I didn’t notice it was "boo boo boo’ I thought it was a standard musical ‘woo woo woo’ or ‘hoo hoo hoo’ or just a ‘oooh oooh oooh’. Given that they then just dismiss the whole thing using Watergate and saying “doing what we can…”
Are you trying to be funny? The ENTIRE FLAG is just 4 French fleurs-de-lits taken from the symbol of French royalty! And their motto is “Je me souviens,” or “I remember.” Hmm, remember what?
Moreover, LHoD has already established that ignorance is no excuse for bigotry, so just because people have no idea what a flag means makes it no less hateful.
So if it’s insulting to The Republic that former confederate states memorialize their history in their flags, it is also insulting to Canada that Quebec memorializes its history in its flag. Or it’s insulting to neither and people can grow up.
Frankly, I’m far more shocked by Southerners being insultingly rude than I am by the descendants of the French being so. Ever been to Paris?
Link here to the official flag of the Province of Quebec:
Link to the official Coat of Arms of Canada.
Is…is that a fleur-de-lis on there, next to the harp? And is that a fleur-de lis flag on the other side from the Union Jack?
Wow. You’d almost think Canadians were proud of their bilingual part-French heritage. Like that was their national policy or something.
Meanwhile, the United States is not “half-slave, half-free”. We don’t publish all our government signs and pamphlets and websites in two versions, one for the free states and one for the “slave-holding-states”.