CSA Battle Flag

[Double J]

Southern pride still runs deep in the hills of Tennessee, and the old flag still waves. Even the state flag bears a resemblance. I fly both the U.S. flag and the C.S.A Battle-flag. Both are for the pride of my country and my family heritage. I've been asked a couple times to take down the "Rebel" flag. I'm not a racist. In fact I'm of French- Cherokee descendants. For me, that flag is an American Flag, right down to it's 13 stars and the red, white, and blue colors.
I've never heard of a slave ship that sailed under the CSA Battle-flag.
If I were to fly the C.S.A. National flag, I could understand the problem, But most people wouldn't know what that is anyway.
There's a little Rebel in all of us so what is the problem with showing pride in the history and people of America?

[Doug.38PR]

By and large, I agree. It is part of our culture and heritage. There are a lot of good people in Texas and Louisiana that fly that flag, hold heritage conferences and balls and do it all in the name of love (of their home, history and heritage) not hate.
(Personally, I wouldn't have ANY problem with someone flying the CSA national flag 1, 2 or 3)
Like it or not, the South is de facto it's own country. The Bible Belt and Solid South is not something out of someone's imagination. I love the flag because it represents local identity and culture.

[applesanity]

You're not flying the rectangle one, right? The square ones are infantry and artillery.

[The Law]

I think the CSA flag has been unreasonably singled out as a symbol of slavery. There was slavery LONG before there was a Confederacy or the flag. When people claim it represents slavery, I just roll my eyes. IF anything, it represents rebellion and has nothing to do with slavery.

There are bigger fish to fry than worrying about that flag.

However, I do take issue with the guys a few units down who have a German flag with the Swastika on it. That represents nothing but hate mongering.

[rem33]

Sad what the CSA flags have came to represent. Ancestors from both sides of my family fought for the Confederacy. To my knowledge none ever owned a slave. I own a nice CSA flag I have had for many years I keep it folded now days and am ashamed to fly it. I live in Idaho and the desecration that flag ans what it has come to represent here is a shame. Actually make me angry!

The war it's self wasn't about slavery till England was about to get involved. Lincoln in his wisdom knew if slavery was an issue England would back away from Southern support, which is exactly what happened. Slavery was a issue but no way the primary reason for that war, and the CSA flag should not represent those sentiments. Sadly they do in most eyes.

[Doug.38PR]

http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig/wilson3.html
Here is a good article by Prof. Clyde Wilson, professor of History at the University of South Carolinia about how the South has been long respected throughout American history (after the War) and the superficial forces at work that crop up from time to time to trample it out (like now).


http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig/wilson1.html
here is a good piece by him back when the South Carolina flag mess was going on.

I hate to see KKKers, Aryan Nationers, Skin-Headers etc. use the American Flag, CSA flag and Christian Cross mixed in with their groups. All three of those are honorable symbols of bravery and sacrifice.

Politically Correct people (usually psuedo intellectuals, urbanites, typical college professors, so-called civil rights ministers, news personel, Republicans, Democrats, etc.) who reduce CSA flag and the men who died under it (in a war that cost more lives than any war in American History and cost the South about 40% of of it's male population and destroyed it's industry) to "racism" and slavery are disgusting human beings who have no depth or understanding and want only to tear others of the past down to make themselves look good.

[Hugh Damright]

As far as I am concerned, the Confederate Flag represents the same thing that the US Constitution and its properly ratified amendments represent ... things like free government, rule of law, constitutionalism, and federalism ... I believe in these things ... and so I fly the Confederate Flag.

[Doug.38PR]

This should be an interesting thread as it will show how many true blue Southerners there are on this forum AND how much influence the Southern "gun culture" has in RTKBA AND how many NON Southerners appreciate the principles stood for under the CSA banner.

[rem33]

I hate to see KKKers, Aryan Nationers, Skin-Headers etc. use the American Flag, CSA flag and Christian Cross mixed in with their groups. All three of those are honorable symbols of bravery and sacrifice.

YUP! them sunsabi**es should be allowed to carry anything but a Nazi flag.
Like all Americans they have their right to express but Doug is correct it is sad what symbols they or groups like them use.

[Guy B. Meredith]

I agree with Doug.

The flag has come to represent the Redneck stereotype, but should be remembered for the real politics and history that created it.

[SecDef]

YUP! them sunsabi**es should be allowed to carry anything but a Nazi flag.

Yet the nazi's weren't the first to use that symbol. How would you feel if I flew it over my house? "But I'm not a nazi" would be a poor protestation to your anger, no?

Sometimes times change and certain perceptions of certain objects change. The confederate flag has negative connotations now.

[applesanity]

I think I'll quote myself. Or rather, George Pickett:

"Up men and to your posts! Don't forget today that you are from Old Virginia!"

[oldbillthundercheif]

That flag means different things to different people and the only thing that is certain is that someone will see it differently than you see it... and that person will probably be offended.

Too touchy for me and besides that, my ancestors fought for the North.

Fly it if you want to, but don't expect others to understand your reasons.

[rem33]

My take is it's too bad the South didn't drop slavery, get England's support and proceed to kick some north butt. Durn we are still to this day living under to much New England rule. Teddy and the anitgun liberal type of thinking and fools from that part of the country. Is one primary reason I have wolves almost in my backyard.

I do to a tiny extent understand the reasoning of the south back then from Eastern ideals forced on us poor rural Western hicks. I am opening a can of worms here I probably shouldn't and if this is to much Mods delete it.

[applesanity]

Is this going to turn into a "what was the civil war fought over" debate?

Funny, because all my black friends agree: "money and power. They just want you to think it was about freeing my poor, defenseless ancestors, so they can feel good about themselves."

It was money and power. Most wars in all history are about money and power. Nobody fights for morality. Morality can't justify the expenses of war. If you were being moral, you wouldn't be killing in the first place. If you're claiming to be moral, you've either been duped, or you're doing the duping. The south was ****** off that it was being shoved around like the evil stepmother does cinderella. So it excercised its right to secede.

The confederate flag is about states' rights, about freedom, and about standing up against bloated central beauracracies.

And after carpetbaggers decided to "reconstruct" the south, the confederate flag became a symbol of old, traditional times. When Yankees weren't running around claiming that it was all about freeing slaves.

[rem33]

Yet the nazi's weren't the first to use that symbol

Reversed it was also a Indian symbol as what I have no idea. In a reversed form it graced a very old building in the town I grew up near but even reversed it became so controversial it was unfortunately removed. Sad the the local populace wasn't better educated as to it's true meaning in this case and left as a historical mark as I suppose it was intended.

[Doug.38PR]

If those who think the CSA or any symbol or flag shouldn't be flown because it might "offend" someone, what do you think some American Indians think about the American Flag. A flag that flew over armies after the War to slaughter Indians out west and, as some eastern tribes like the Cherokee see it, was used to relocate them.
Should we haul down or alter the American flag because it is offensive to some? Should we consider it an ugly thing because KKKers use it? Should we feel guilty about flying it because Phil Sheriden marched under it to go to slaughter Indians (it was he who said, "the only good Indians I ever saw ere dead ones.") and slaughter Southern civilians?
NO, as a Southerner, I see the American flag in the same light as Geo. Washington, as the men who raised the flag on Iwo Jima, as the men who fought and died on the field in ever war in American history. And, dare I say, Col. Joshua Chamberlain's BRAVE charge at Little Round Top against my ancestors. It was he who said of the Confederate soldiers and their flag at Appomattox:

Our earnest eyes scan the busy groups on the opposite slopes, breaking camp for the last time, taking down their little shelter-tents and folding them carefully as precious things, then slowly forming ranks as for unwelcome duty. And now they move. The dusky swarms forge forward into gray columns of march. On they come, with the old swinging route step and swaying battle-flags. In the van, the proud Confederate ensign--the great field of white with canton of star-strewn cross of blue on a field of red, the regimental battle-flags with the same escutcheon following on, crowded so thick, by thinning out of men, that the whole column seemed crowned with red. At the right of our line our little group mounted beneath our flags, the red Maltese cross on a field of white, erewhile so bravely borne through many a field more crimson than itself, its mystic meaning now ruling all.
The momentous meaning of this occasion impressed me deeply. I resolved to mark it by some token of recognition, which could be no other than a salute of arms. Well aware of the responsibility assumed, and of the criticisms that would follow, as the sequel proved, nothing of that kind could move me in the least. The act could be defended, if needful, by the suggestion that such a salute was not to the cause for which the flag of the Confederacy stood, but to its going down before the flag of the Union. My main reason, however, was one for which I sought no authority nor asked forgiveness. Before us in proud humiliation stood the embodiment of manhood: men whom neither toils and sufferings, nor the fact of death, nor disaster, nor hopelessness could bend from their resolve; standing before us now, thin, worn, and famished, but erect, and with eyes looking level into ours, waking memories that bound us together as no other bond;--was not such manhood to be welcomed back into a Union so tested and assured?

To those who claim to be offended, I would say it is more about them seeing you enjoying something and taking pride in something and wanting to take it away from you just to feel important. They see you having a good time and don't like it.
I am proud of the Confederate Flag and the men who fought under it. And I say with confidence that I am in better company than the shallow men who find it "offensive" or think it is inappropriate.

[Playboypenguin]

I hate to see KKKers, Aryan Nationers, Skin-Headers etc. use the American Flag, CSA flag and Christian Cross mixed in with their groups. All three of those are honorable symbols of bravery and sacrifice.

I agree. I have always seen that flag as an important part of American history. The flag did not represent slavery. It represented a group of American states. At the time slavery just happened to be an acceptoble reality and many wanted it to continue as such. To label the flag as standing solely for slavery is overly simplistic, unfair and it is just another case or judging historical events by modern standards and then passing judgement. You have to judge such things by the time they came from and not by our current values. But when hate groups and zealots use it as a symbol it really sullies it. I feel the same way when extremists wrap themselves in the American flag.

[SecDef]

I feel the same way when extremists wrap themselves in the American flag.

But that is precisely the moment I think flag burning is appropriate

[BlueTrain]

There were no bloated central bureaucracies when soldiers were carrying the stars and bars, so it can't be for that. But saying the war had nothing to do with slavery is like saying the revolution had nothing to do with Great Britian. Actually, the person that said it was about money and power hit the nail on the head. In the north and south both a relatively small minority ran things, which I suppose is largely the way it still is. That's called an oligarchy, I think. Naturally, they ran things for their own benefits, which I suppose is largely the way it still is. In the south, it happened to be plantation owners, most of whom owned slaves, some as many as 500. Thoreau said it was hard to have a Southern overseer but harder still to have a Northern one. But I'll have to take his word on that.

The funny thing, rarely mentioned, is that there were rebels in the north. No, they didn't support the south but they didn't support the law, either, the ones about returning runaway slaves. Probably some tomfool notion about unjust laws or something like that. Even funnier is the fact that traditionally Southerners feared rebellion more than anyone.

Well, I didn't get a chance to fight in that war then and I'm not going to fight it now.

[rem33]

But saying the war had nothing to do with slavery is like saying the revolution

had nothing to do with Great Britian.

Yes, very much so I think, but, if my understanding is correct, Not until Lincoln declared the emancipation proclamation was it official.
Some one correct me I am wrong.

[tube_ee]

where the wounds of the Civil War do not burn as deep as they do in places where the war was fought. I acknowledge those wounds... though I do not understand them. Spending time in Uncle Sam's Yacht Club made thier existence clear, but I could not, and cannot, feel them the way those back East do.

Here's my take.

Ignoring for the moment the rights and wrongs of seccession, I am forced to agree with James McPherson that, without slavery, there would have been no seccession. The State's Right for which the South left the Union was the right to own other human beings. That, I cannot support. You cannot do right in defense of such a wrong. The battles in support of that great evil were fought under this flag. For those who were the victims of that evil, I can easily understand how the flag could come to sybolize the evil itself. The fact that groups who beileve that slavery was not evil, and that white people are inherently superior to others, have appropriated that flag makes that association all the stronger. And rightfully so.

Against that, you have to consider the identity of symbols. For those whose ancestors fought bravely, and often died, under that banner, the flag has a different meaning, one which honors the sacrifice, while at the same time ignoring the evil. And it's an evil that many who fought under the Stars and Bars did not themselves participate in.

How do you separate the two? Can it be done? I doubt it. We humans are a symbolizing species. It's built into us, to associate real events and real emotions with abstract symbols. This symbol has two meanings, which are so fundamentaly different as to be irreconcilable. Both are correct, since the meaning resides in the person, and not in the symbol.

So, maybe the only thing we can do is to consider that the symbol may not mean to another what it means to you. At least when it comes to an individual's choices. If you choose to fly the Confederate battle flag, you should be prepared for others to take offence. And you shouldn't diminish their reaction. If you are, truly, not a racist, then you should be able to convince someone that you intend no racism by flying that flag. If you can't do that, then you've got a decision to make, whether the person with whom you're dealing is worth more to you than your symbols. Some people aren't going to agree with you. That doesn't make them wrong, because you're not definitively right.

When it comes to the actions of government, it's different. I don't see the problem with citizens deciding that thier State flag (or whatever) should not include this symbol. Given what it means to them, they're perfectly within their rights to object, on the basis that the inclusion of that symbol indicates that their government is in agreement with those ideas.

As a non-Christian, I would object to the inclusion of a cross on my State's flag. Because I don't think that the State should be Christian, even if a majority of it's citizens are. But if you want to put one on top of your house, I won't object. The individual citizen may express things that the government cannot.

--Shannon

[Doug.38PR]

Ignoring for the moment the rights and wrongs of seccession, I am forced to agree with James McPherson that, without slavery, there would have been no seccession. The State's Right for which the South left the Union was the right to own other human beings. That, I cannot support. You cannot do right in defense of such a wrong. The battles in support of that great evil were fought under this flag. For those who were the victims of that evil, I can easily understand how the flag could come to sybolize the evil itself. The fact that groups who beileve that slavery was not evil, and that white people are inherently superior to others, have appropriated that flag makes that association all the stronger. And rightfully so.

McPherson, while he has done a lot of valuable work, is wrong. Slavery was more the weapon than it was the issue. Also, the North and South were (and are) two different countries and cultures with two different worldviews which have been in existance since the original colonies were settled in the 1600s. They were also present during the Constitutional Convention with the Hamiltonians and Jeffersonians. Economic forces were at work. The mindset of the Northeast was so that even if slavery wasn't around, it would have found something else (and still does even to this day in other issues, such as anti-Guns, Animal Rights, Gay Rights, Environmental regulations, etc. which all boil down to controling property and rights of other people) to crusade against to use as a weapon against the rest of America.



As to whether owning slaves in and of itself is evil is a very simplistic view of history. I am not for manstealing (the international slave trade) I am not for going back to slavery, I think slavery had many evils attached to it and we are far better off without it (or are we really without it? Now we are all slaves under a National Plantation to a large extent), but the issue itself was a complicated matter in it's day and was not soley the South's responsibility. The New England slave traders were the ones who brought the slaves from Africa (most of whom were sold to the Caribbean not the South). The condition of the slaves from Africa and how 8,000,000 ignorant slaves (who were far removed culturally and educationally from Western society) would be freed in America. How a fortune in property in slave labor would be compensated to owners, many of whom had inherited these slaves from several generations back. Then you had the attitude of the majority of Americans, north and south, towards black people. Many would not accept them into society. Northern states passed laws discouraging and even banning migration of blacks across their borders. The whole Slave State/Free State controversy was not over people who "loved slavery" and people who "loved freedom" but rather people who wanted to bring their slaves into common territory and people who didn't want black people "contaminating" the new Territories. Even Lincoln's motivation was to keep the West "A white man's" territory or land. It is far more complicated than silly 2nd Grade history lessons (from Public schools) make it out to be.

This whole notion that the North were "good people who hated slavery and loved freedom" and the South were "eeeeevil people who wanted to keep slavery and hate black people" and that's the story of the Civil War is asinine.

[Number 6]

I'm New York born and Massachusetts bred, but I fly the First Pattern Confederate National flag; i.e., the "Stars and Bars," on the birthdays of Lee and Jackson (if the pole isn't frozen) and April 30th - the Original Memorial Day.

Note also that my high school teams are the "Rebels;" there was an ANV battle flag painted on the back wall of the playing field for DECADES and, while I was there, home football games began with the tallest senior boy leading the team onto the field dressed as Robert E. Lee.

And all this in Kennedy Country!

[Doug.38PR]

Wow!

Oh well. As Dr. Wilson notes in the above links I posted, Lee and Jackson were considered good and admirable American heros not too long ago.