That’s a Navy Jack so far as I know. This is a gadsen flag. Similiar but just a bit different.
I’m trying to really understand this but I don’t see anything in your link that resembles a Navy Jack but I do see the Confederate battle flag.
I see a lot of what I call “hillbilly” stands on the sides of roads here in Arkansas selling that kind of stuff. Most of them proudly display the Confederate flag but I only see a few who display various swastika flags either incorporated into the Confederate flag or the American flag.
It just goes to show you that perception is varies from person to person. I’ve seen that flag many times before I just didn’t know what it was called and I can’t say it ever offended me. Then again I’m not particularly offended by the Confederate flag but I’d never fly it because it might give people the wrong impression about who I am and what I’m all about. I used to think it was ok to fly the flag over the capitol in S. Carolina until I learned that it was placed there in response to the civil rights movement and then I reversed my stance.
From a purist vexillological point of view, the Battle Flag of the Army of Northern Virginia was the familiar “Confederate Flag” in a square configuration. The familiar rectangular shape would have actually been the Second Naval Jack. Note that the Second and Third National flags of the C.S.A. both used the now less common square version of the “Southern Cross”.
So, when Askia talks about the “Naval Jack”, he means the Confederate Naval Jack, AKA “the Confederate Flag”, not the “Don’t Tread on Me” rattlesnake flag of the U.S. Navy.
That’s for clearing that up, MEBuckner, and for fixing the code in my last post. Also, thanks to Askia for attempting to answer my question, even though his explanation went right over my head. I’m not all that knowledgeable about flags and I have never heard someone refer to the Confederate flag as the Navy Jack. Though I was aware that the original battle flag was square I didn’t know they had another one for their navy.
I think definately the flag should be banned in schools (although symbols on cars in the parking lot are should be out of the bounds of school control.) As an Arkansan, I have never understool what exactly “southern pride” is about if it is not about racisim. What exactly are you proud of? Educated people in the south generally see it as sybol of stupid redneck-ery rather than pride in anything. The type of people who do display it typically do nothing to help this image. Although I am not exactly offened by it (I am white, if it matters), I tend to instanly label the wearer of the symbol as an idiot. Allowing it in schools is inviting disruption.
Freedom of expression is a civil right here in the U.S.
Unfortunately, some of us are prone to use such rights in bad taste, with no or little regard as to how it might offend: willful or with ignorance, seems to make little difference to the offended.
There will always be the flag and cross burners, nazi marchers, etc. While offensive to many, many of those so offended have died and would die to ensure that this civil right is not taken away.
Tolerance can be very hard at times, yet intolerance… well witness the backlash resulting from the muhammed caricatures. We are better than that.
IIRC the South lost about ooooh 150 years agoand the CSA abolished. The Confederacy is not the enemy of the United States, so I would find it hard for the treason charge to stick. Anti-US maybe.
There is a time and place for everything. Unfurling a Confederate flag during a multi-cultural assembly…not appropriate. If the boys felt their culture is getting short-shrifted by multiculturalism, why not go to the school officials and ask to display positive aspects of Southern Americana during the assembly. Why do it as an act of rebellion and protest, like multiculturalism is inherently anti-Southern? That’s what makes these guys look like unsympathetic doofuses.
I don’t believe in unlimited free speech in school. Unless it’s presented in the context of a history class, I don’t think the Confederate flag belongs in the school setting. Too many people find it hurtful and offensive.
Welll…there I’m not sure I can agree. The court’s standards for school free speech are probably pretty good, and as I understand it, they work like this:
-Kids don’t have unlimited right to free speech in school, any more than I’ve got unlimited right to free speech if I’m sitting in Senate Chambers while the president gives a speech. As long as the restrictions are content-neutral, they’re not likely torun into problems. Assuming the school would have punished students who spontaneously hung a banner that said, “Brush your teeth every night!” during the assembly, they’re in the clear.
-Content-specific restrictions can have a place in schools, as long as the restriction is specifically linked to preventing disruption of an academic learning environment. In this case, I think that a content-specific disruption would probably fly. Assuming that the assembly served a legitimate academic purpose (and I think that, given the facts we have, that’s a fair assumption), a confederate flag being hung is an act intended to disrupt the academic activity.
-When students are less disruptive with it, things get harder to judge. Here’s a great article on the subject; since I don’t have a pure opinion on the subject, I’ll leave it with the article.
Personally, I would define civil war as;
a conflict between two (or more) factions within a country, over control of said country, e.g. El Salvador in the 80’s.
Confederate soldiers were not citizens of the USA, they were citizens of the CSA.
Constitution of the United States : Article III Section 3
Treason against the United States shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort…
If you accept that “Confederate soldiers, at least those born in these United States, were citizens”, how can you define their acts as anything other than treason?
I agree with you that probably most educated people in the South see the Confederate flag as a symbol of “stupid reneck-ery” – if, by that, you mean racism. But not every redneck is stupid or a racist. Some rednecks are reasonably educated. (Exceptions: Quarterbacks who are sacked eleven times in the biggest game of the season.)
Southern pride is about the same things that people who live in New England would be proud of: family history, traditions, food, humor, regional history, a sense of place, character, language. We add to that our own particular multi-culturalism – more African-Americans, Cajuns, Scot-Irish, Gullah, Cherokee, a few Melungeons and others. We have a reputation for hospitality that we live up to a good part of the time. We are known for our storytelling, music and literature. (Heck, half the people I know have the sole ambition of becoming minor Southern writers.)
Having pride doesn’t mean that we don’t acknowledge our flaws. We own up to them fairly quickly and we take a lot of guff. We have produced more Presidents than any other part of the country, but nobody’s perfect.
Is there any reason why I shouldn’t be proud of my Southern heritage?
No one still alive has levied war on behalf of the CSA. The CSA is not, I repeat not, an enemy of the United States. Even if there where such a place, it surrendered. Again, not an enemy.
Also, would you consider someone displaying the Iraq flag during the start of the war treason?
Not according to the United States. If the soldiers were citizens of the CSA and not the USA then Lincoln wouldn’t have bothered to come up with his 10% plan and pardon the vast majority of those who rebelled.
As you’ve framed it, no reason whatsoever. That’s the kind of positive, inclusive self-image that communities and regions can be proud of.
But the problem seems to be that some (not you, I hasten to add) argue that the flag of a secessionist movement, dedicated to preservieng racial slavery, and which was only used for ~ 5 years, is the best symbol of that southern heritage.
Personally, I don’t see how it’s appropriate to focus on that one, heavily-laden-with-ugly-baggage symbol as the only way to express pride in that positive southern heritage, as some of the flag-wavers seem to say.
My ex raised this exact point. I can display an Israeli flag to show pride in my faith and the homeland they created. Yet he can’t display a German flag without being considered “supremacist” (his word). He’s not a white supremacist; he’s of German ancestry and rather proud of that.
Which raises another question: One could argue that the United States is guilty of committing atrocities against various groups, so is an American flag a symbol of those atrocities or is it a symbol of the freedom and liberty we profess?
I agree, it depends entirely on your audience. We know it’s mostly revered in the states but we both know plenty of hotbeds worldwide where an American flag’s appearance at anti-American political rallies is a precursor to burning it in effigy.
Sometimes it’s both. Heh. In my freshman year in college during a speech on political freedoms in a Humanities class, I did a big rah-rah report praising free speech and almost burned an American flag I purchased to make a dramatic point celebrating the first amendment as my closing. :dubious: Man, that little mixed message didn’t go over very well at ALL. I still have people walking up to me at homecoming with their spouses saying shit like, “Honey, this is the guy I told you about who almost burned an American flag in class.”
The flag was THIS size. The way people retell the story now they make it sound like it was this big.
The Confederate battle flag is not about Southern “pride” or heritage any more than the Olympic banner is.
The South existed from the time of Ponce De Leon, let’s say, until 1861 without that flag. The flag then flew for a period of 4-5 years during which the South was most explicitly by its own definition NOT part of the United States. Then the flag was not flown or added to statehouses for nearly another hundred years – I’m sure the specific dates it was added to state flags can be googled, but they were during the 1950s and 1960s.
Like the Confederate battle flag, the Olympic flag represents a specific event, and has been flown in the South quite regularly for many years, although periodically. Unlike the CBF, the Olympic rings were at least flwon in the South while it was part of the US.
People who want to commemorate the Confederacy seem to ignore that, overall, it’s a tiny fraction of Southern heritage. If it’s the fraction they’re most focused on, we need to ask them why they like that part best.
