It took you quite awhile to say that IYHO there is no difference between southerners and Nazis.
How can any of you say that someone displays a Confederate flag as a display of racism when there are so many reasons to display ANY flag? I mean, what are flags but vague symbols? And even if someone has a Confederate flag up because they support slavery, so what? It’s not like they own slaves, and as said before:
“the right of freedom of expression is only defended when it refers to expression of popular ideas.”
And that comparison of the Confederate flag to the Nazi flag comes pretty close to pissing me off, which very rarely happens.
Most of the people I know who display a CBF see it as a symbol of general rebellion, and to a lesser extent ‘Southern Pride’. In my experience people who fly it seem no more likely to be racist than those who don’t. I had one black friend who had a large CBF in his room when I was a teenager, and more recently knew a black guy who had a CBF bumper sticker on his car. People who assume that everyone who displays it are racists are the prejudiced ones.
Despite MEBuckner’s point, most people seem to display it because it’s a sign of rebellion. In our recent flag vote, we learned 60% of Mississippian’s don’t think of it as a racist statement anymore.
Maybe it’s the liberals who need to get a grip?
So the 40% who do think it’s a racist statement don’t count?
ElvisL1ves wrote:
… which those wacky Southerners, in keeping with their redneck reputation, have dubbed “swamp coolers”. 
Utter nonsense. The vote was not about “Do you think the CBF is a symbol of racism?” It was about whether or not to retain a state flag that incorporated said symbol. Thus, the only conclusion you can draw on racism from the flag vote is that 60% of Mississippians didn’t care whether or not it’s a symbol of racism.
The Nazis were our enemies during World War II.
The Confederate states were traitors and enemies of the United States of America.
I would say the Nazi/Confederacy correlation holds water.
Many proud citizens lately have been outraged at recent events concerning the breaches of security in the Federal government.
No doubt some of these folks live in the south and display their Confederate flags proudly.
A traitor is a traitor is a …
Get the point?
Germans are embarrassed about their Nazi past.
Southerners need to choose.
Well, maybe they already have.
God Bless America!
(Yes, my conclusion there was intended as hyperbole.)
That’s not what I’m reading from MysterEcks’s post. It seems to me that he’s saying that the Confederacy lost, and lost badly. Whatever your thoughts on the reason they rebelled in the first place, they took those cause(s) and consigned them to the dustbin of history, never to return, much quicker than would have happened naturally if they had not acted. On top of that, they had their cities destroyed, crops ruined, and a good portion of their young men killed, not to mention being militarily occupied for over a decade, for their trouble. The only thing sparing them from being remembered as the biggest collective fuckup in history is Hitler and company coming along and managing to be even less competent. In short, using the Confederate Battle Flag to display your southern pride is like displaying your deep and undying love of baseball by wearing a Tampa Bay Devil Rays jersey.
Did I get that about right, MysterEcks?
jimpatro wrote:
secession = traitor ?
Then I guess the original 13 States were all traitors of Great Britain when they openly declared their independence in 1776, too.
As Talleyrand noted, after defecting from France to Russia, “Treason is simply a matter of dates.”
Also, don’t forget that “History is written by the winners.” The American Revolution succeeded, therefore its participants were patriots. If it had failed, they’d have been traitors.
From the English perspective, they most certainly were.
Tracer - not quite. The 13 Colonies ere just that - colonies - and not equal members of the United Kingdom. Bear in mind that the Revolution started because they had no legal recourse, meaning no representitive in congress.
As far as I remember, at no point prior to the Civil War did anyone prevent the southern states from sending Senators and Congressmen to Washington.
“Treason doth never prosper: what’s the reason? Why, if it prosper, none dare call it treason” – Sir John Harrington (1561-1612)
Perhaps I should let Saint Zero correct you minty but we were not voting to retain our state flag. The State Supreme Court ruled that no state flag had been properly chosen and so in effect we had not had a state flag for many years. So we voted on the design for our state flag. One design was the one that we thought was the state flag and the other looked like it belonged on the back of a speed boat. The design incorporating the Confederate Flag won. There was a large turn-out for this vote, but a small black turn-out in comparison. However, there were more than expected black votes for the “old flag” and in a couple of cases it carried black precincts.
minty green and I have participated in another thread about this subject http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=67979
It is possible that we will be voting on another flag sometime in the future, but on this particular vote, it was not really a vote trying to get rid of the “old flag”. Also the old flag was supposed to have been installed in the late 1800’s, so unlike GA and SC it had not been designed in the 1950’s as a reaction to intergration.
Uh, yeah kniz. You bet. The voters of Mississippi didn’t choose whether or not to retain a flag that incorporated the Confederate battle flag. Because in reality, Mississippi hadn’t had a flag at all for, like, a century or so. Matter of fact, there hadn’t been a state flag over the capitol or in the “Mississippi” entry in the Encyclopedia Apologetica for a long, long time. And all those voters were, like, asked to draw a pretty picture of a flag that they thought best represented the state of Mississippi. It’s entirely coincidental that the voters designed, without any sort of context or history, a design nearly identical to the flag that the Klan had been flying ever since the rednecks and peckerwoods got their asses kicked for owning slaves 140 years ago.
How could I have been so deluded?
I’ve heard many Southerners complaining about how they are the victims of the last acceptable stereotype. Someone needs to tell them to get in line behind the dozens of other groups that make the same claim. I don’t think that the South gets any more insults than other parts of the country, maybe it’s just that people tend to notice it more when their own region is under attack. Still, I don’t see why southerners should take any more pride in their particular heritage than any other part of the country. California gets a lot of abuse in the national media, but people rarely go around waving the state flag out there.
This question is answered in a very well-written 1999 book, Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War (Vintage Departures) by Tony Horwitz. Here’s a quote from the Boston Globe review:
Protesilaus said
Thank you, Protesilaus–you got it exactly right. I’m a little surprised at myself for not anticipating that someone would manage to misinterpret what I said the way kniz did.
Alessan said:
I can’t see how that changes the treasonousness (is that a word?) from the British point of view of then-British subjects on then-British territory attempting to get rid of the British government. This isn’t materially different from the attempted secession four score and four years later–treason, however defined, is in the act rather than in the rationale.