So What's The Deal With The Confederate Flag Anyway?

If Robert E. Lee was alive today and reading this thread, he would commend you and your family. During his postwar years, when he ran Washington University in Lexington VA, the US flag flew over the college every day, and only the US flag; the flag he had served under before the Civil War. In all his postwar interviews and writings, he strongly urged everyone in the South to try their best to get over the war, get on with their lives, have some dignity and class, be loyal Americans, and obey the law. He felt that everything had been settled on the battlefield, once and for all. He wanted nothing to do with Confederate sentimentality or monuments to himself or talk of grudges or violent revenge.

To me, Lee represents the very best of Southern cultural heritage; a life of honor, courage, high ethical standards, hard work, excellence, and loyalty. In war, he was willing only to fire upon uniformed troops and their equipment and supplies. In war and peace, he dealt with everyone with honesty and integrity. He never let the chaos of the moment distract him from his true ideals. His word was like a legal contract. If he told you he was going to do something, it was going to happen, if humanly possible.

He was a little stiff and formal for my taste, and I'm not religious like he was, but I can still see that he was an incredible role model.

Show me a redneck with Confederate flags on his car and belt buckle, and I'll show you somebody who in no way resembles anyone that Lee would call a proper, sophisticated, Southern gentleman. That's why the whole issue of Southern heritage has become so confusing.

Maybe we would be better off with a white flag with Lee's face on it, rather than any Confederate flag. Virginia would likely demand that Stuart and Jackson be added (the Confederate Big Three), but that would only confuse the issue.

 

So many people from outside the South get so much of their cultural information from the movie "Gone With The Wind". But... Rhett Butler is such a lying scumbag, and Katie Scarlett O'Hara is such an evil, manipulative bitch. They aren't typical of their time period and culture. The women were a bit manipulative, but not on the level of Scarlett. She's sort of a modernized, feminized, fantasy character from a hundred years later. Robert E. Lee should have been married to somebody like the Melanie character.

Believe it or not, based on their diaries and letters, even in time of war, some of the generals' wives in Richmond managed to become or remain spoiled brat bitches. They didn't sink to the level of Scarlett O'Hara, but they did communicate some extremely unrealistic and inappropriate complaints and expectations to their husbands. I guess money and privilege have a negative effect on almost everyone. Lee's wife was a chronic complainer; nauseatingly self-centered and out of touch. You might think she would have been more worried about her husband, at constant risk of death every day, but no. It was all about her. Oh my, the stores in Richmond are running out of all the finer things for ladies! What is a Southern Belle to do?



Somebody should have slapped her and said, "You're husband's been living in a tent for three years, developing all kinds of stress-related illnesses from all his heavy responsibilities! Grow up!"

 

In Berlin they don't display the Nazi flag in historical pride, they have memorials to the victims of the holocaust.


Where is the equivalent in the US for the victims of slavery? In the south there are only rebel flags and monuments to civil war heros.

Where are the memorials to the boat-loads...no, Ship loads of dead african slaves, and I'm talking about not only the ones that built the wealth of the south with their sweat, muscle and blood and ultimately their lives, but the ones that didn't survive the journey, died at sea or went down with the ship, in chains below deck? Thats the legacy of the south, right along side Robert E Lee.

 

Excellent point! If regional black leaders ever decide that something like that should be built, I'll write them a generous check. It's long overdue. They should decide when and where and what it should be.

The closest thing I've seen is at the Annapolis, Maryland waterfront, built shortly after the TV miniseries Roots first aired. It's a set of African slaves of all ages, cast in bronze, who have just stepped off the slave ship. They look miserable and afraid. Sharp contrast to the big bronze sculpture on the Philadelphia waterfront (Delaware River side), depicting elated European refugees sighting the American shore for the first time.

Damn. I'm getting emotional.

 

The monument in Berlin is always under scrutiny because the same Swiss company that developed the Zyklon B gas in WW2 that profited from murdering Jews ended up being the same company that profited from the memorial for coming up with a special coating that wouldn't allow graffiti to mark the memorial.

That's interesting to note on two fronts.

1) Why would they allow that to happen? There's always talk about it being taken down and rebuilt so the profiting companies cannot profit for what they did and

2) obviously not everybody in Berlin agrees with the monument, still, after all this time.

 

How many of their employees and investors from WW2 are still alive now? Probably close to zero.

Our situation is so different from yours. It's hard to compare. Germany in WW2 was an educated country, while the Confederacy was largely illiterate. Germany never forced Jews, Gypsies, or any other controversial or unpopular racial / ethnic groups to move there; quite different from slavery. Very few black Americans are here by choice, even though they show no desire to move elsewhere.

 

I was born in 1936, a mere 71 years after the Civil War ended, when the South was looked upon by what seemed to be a majority of the Northern states as an inbred, backward, uneducated, slow-talking and slower-thinking people, with low morals and a propensity for incest,” he says. “This was in the days before television, and about all the folks up North knew about Southerners was what they heard, and there were a lot of people who took great pleasure in proliferating the myth, and some still do it to this day.

“The Confederate battle flag was a sign of defiance, a sign of pride, a declaration of a geographical area that you were proud to be from. That’s all it is to me and all it ever has ever been to me,” Daniels writes. “I can’t speak for all, but I know in my heart that most Southerners feel the same way. I have no desire to reinstate the Confederacy, I oppose slavery as vehemently as any man, and I believe that every human being, regardless of the color of their skin is just as valuable as I am and deserves the exact same rights and advantages as I do.


Read More: Charlie Daniels Speaks Out About Confederate Flag Debate | http://theboot.com/charlie-daniels-confederate-flag-debate/?trackback=tsmclip

 

There is no reason they should, they are Americans. This nation is as much theirs as any other American. Obama is certain proof of this. Proof that as a whole, the nation has moved substantially forward from the 50s.

 

Selective quote, I admit, but does flying the CBF change that incorrect perception or reinforce it, at least to Northerners, even today?

 

When I was a kid, my father drove for a trucking company from Tennessee,,,, all the mudflaps on the rigs were of Confederate Flags .. I live in the ghettos of Pittsburgh Pa .. when he brought the truck home nobody ,, none a black person give me any or my family any trouble over it .. When I was in middle school a black neighbor mentally retarded girl was being picked on( bullied on the bus). I defended her because she was my friend not because of any color, the people attacking her were black.. to this day I know in my heart they was what NIGGERS are .., NIGGERS are like ISIS , they are destroying their own culture... Call me a racist I dont give a fuck,, Cause I hate NIGGERS .. As much as I hate ISIS being a Muslim.

 

African-Americans are much more American than African, which is why I don't use that term. They wouldn't fit in, in Africa. In most countries, they couldn't even speak the language.

That's the Chris Rock definition of the word. I totally get it.

Earn a label, you get called the label.

 

Yeah I'm just pointing out things though, that's all.
There's just some hidden humor in a lot of things that I find are worth pointing out.

 

irminsul...you live in Germany....is the Nazi flag a symbol of fallen heroes protecting their homeland or is it a symbol that represented the murder of 6 million jews?

do people fly the Nazi flag over the german capitol to always remember?

is the Nazi flag on peoples licence plates and vehicles etc?

just curious?

there is no humour in that confederate flag.....

 

Okay, I found a couple more. One is in Philly, and another is on the capitol grounds in Columbia SC, believe it or not. It was completed in 2001. A slave memorial was proposed for Washington DC in 2003, but Congress went for a museum instead.

Tonight on Anderson Cooper (CNN), Lindsey Graham was talking about recent proposals to take Lee's name off various things. He brought up the point that George Washington and Thomas Jefferson both owned slaves, but Lee did not, and nobody is trying to purge Washington's or Jefferson's name from public view. It's an interesting point that has been touched on in other threads, a year or two back.

If any statues come down this year, they should start with General Nathan Bedford Forest, founder of the KKK.

 

Cool, there are at least a few then, and one in the deep south too. Thats commendable.

Fuckin' A!

 

Nah you'd get arrested for that shit. Instead the volk tend to use the WW1 Kaiser Jack as its replacement.

Red, white, black are our true colors.

Ironically you see a lot of swastikas in Poland though. I remember on the road to Auschwitz there was a house in the fields with a huge swastika and I was like dayum how hasn't this been vandalized yet?

We can't even anchor a WW2 fighter plane to the ceiling of a museum in its true colors, they're all fake and fantasy colors instead with removed decals. Apparently restoring a fantastic piece of military history in its glory is offensive to the viewers.

Many of us do however drive the VW! The German car Hitler wanted for the people. Though no swatika is observed, I still look at it like a piece of nazi history, much like Fanta Orange which was designed for German soldiers so they wouldn't fund America by buying Coca Cola.

Back to your question though it depends who you ask. Granddaddy woulda said "dunno what they're talking about, we only mowed down white folk and I never killed a Jew."
.

 

Amazon.com is going to stop selling the educational strategy board game "Gettysburg" because there's both American and Confederate flags shown on the board. This is a perfect example of the kind of decision that makes extreme liberals look foolish and out of touch with reality. I don't think any black people are offended by this game.

 

Just ridiculous. Worst part is that in this particular case, it's the kids that lose.
Some kid will never get to play a game that might have sparked a lifelong interest in the civil war and American history.

 

In addition to the game the Movie Gettysburg (1993) is one of my all-time favorites, good thing I secured my DVD before Amazon completely loses its mind and bans its selling and distribution.

BTW today is the anniversary of Pickett’s Charge


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