The Confederate flag should be taken down and burned.

originally posted by: ProfessorChaos
To Southerners, it was the Union that represented tyranny, not the stars and bars. The Confederate flag represented resistance to the tyranny of the North.

Well, they sure knew a lot about tyranny didn't they?

It's the same now with many Republicans, they're hypocrites. They preach about rights, liberties and freedoms, while campaigning against the freedoms of LGBT people, for instance.
The same back then. They preached about the "tyranny" of the North, while wanting to inflict their own brand of tyranny on their slaves.

The same with the "revolution" preachers now too, they claim to be all about freedom and liberty, but at the same time they all rant about a revolution to INFLICT their political ideology on others, people who VOTE for their DEMOCRATICALLY elected government. Their arguments just don't stand up, they are not being restricted or their rights and freedoms removed.

You can't have it both ways. You can't preach about your freedoms and liberties while also suggesting that everyone else doesn't deserve freedoms and liberties. THAT is the ultimate hypocrisy.

originally posted by: Kali74
a reply to: Greathouse

Yet every declaration of secession was about the right to own slaves.

This isn't entirely accurate the south saw themselves as battling over control. In the government theor votes dwindled as the population was dwarfed by northern states. The north had immagration from countries like Ireland because t he potato famine. This means the north had access to cheap labor allowing them to produce everything. The south was dependent on the north for any goods they needed. In the south they were poor and to them they saw all the money heading for northern states. By the way even plantation owners didn't have alot of money this was because the north taxed the south heavily. Property taxes on a plantation were huge well over what a factory would pay in the north. So with dwindling representation taxes and poverty caused many southern to fight. Very fwe slave owners fought in the civil war and most southerners didn't care about slavery. To them it was all about how the system was set up to favor northern states and well to be honest it was. Was slavery an issue of course was it the main issue no.

a reply to: dragonridr

It was also a matter of States' rights as defined by the Constitution. Before the Civil War, the common term for this nation was 'These United States'. It was seen as a nation built of States, which were to a degree, self-sovereign. When the president emancipated the slaves (which is a law I FULLY agree with, just to be clear), the Southern states saw it as both a destruction of their sovereignty and an economic death sentence. As much as modern historians like to portray the Southerners of the time as dim-witted bigots, the main voices in protesting the Emancipation Proclamation were landowners who relied on the labor force.
Now, I'm not saying that there wasn't a general belief that people of African decent were inferior to caucasians. But that was a product of the contemporary educational system. The truths one knows are generally only the ones they learn.
Even Charles Darwin wrote about the inferiority of the 'Negro'. It was a product of the teachings of the times. Before the Wright Brothers, it was commonly taught throughout the world that flight was impossible. And it was believed. That didn't make it true, but the average person knew no better.
Now, before I get the endless attacks for 'defending racism', I'm not. Plain and simple. There is no place for it in the world today, given that the scientific misconceptions we once held are long dead.
I am merely trying to expand on a very valid point Dragonridr made. And for anyone on this board with the good sense to pay attention to the points Dragonridr makes, you'll know that they are never ill-considered, thoughtless, or uneducated.

a reply to: snarky412

Utopia!!!, yes, I have been there. A small community in central Australia. No unicorns but a saw a lot of crap on the dirt "lawns".

Kind Regards,

Bally

a reply to: Rocker2013

You believe in tolerance, correct?

It can be taken down but do not expect it to be any solution. Some will then be happy for a day, have their riot and we'll be back to the same old situation.

Much in the way that many black people use the dreaded N word to refer to each other, maybe they will decide to put that flag on their cars while barring others from doing the same.

People are not going to change over that action but it can be tried I suppose.

originally posted by: HomerinNC
You DO know what you call the 'Confederate flag' was originally called the 'Confederate Battle Flag', correct?
THIS is the REAL Confederate flag:

The reason the Battle Flag flies over the state capital maybe to represent those that died in the war, as a memorial maybe?

If I hadn't looked in this thread I'd never have known that.

Any day I learn something new is a good one.

I'm glad you pointed that out. It's actually not a widely known fact. I missed that post earlier, but I'm glad I caught your reply to it.

a reply to: Greathouse

That's revisionist history. I'm sure people have shown this, but you and the people who starred your post are WRONG. The war was about the right to own and transport slaves.

Slavery, Not States' Rights

The VP of the South, weeks before the war:

The new constitution has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution African slavery as it exists amongst us the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution.
...
The constitution, it is true, secured every essential guarantee to the institution while it should last, and hence no argument can be justly urged against the constitutional guarantees thus secured, because of the common sentiment of the day. Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the government built upon it fell when the "storm came and the wind blew."

Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner- stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth. This truth has been slow in the process of its development, like all other truths in the various departments of science. It has been so even amongst us...

Historian Adam Goodheart

When you go back and you look at the actual documents, many people have said since then that it was about states' rights, but really the only significant state right that people were arguing about in 1860 was the right to own what was known as slave property — property and slaves unimpeded — and to be able to travel with that property anywhere that you wanted to. So it's clear that this was really about slavery in almost every significant way, but we've sort of pushed that to the side because of course we want to believe that our country is a country that's always stood for freedom. And ... certainly it's difficult for some Southern Americans to accept that their ancestors fought a war on behalf of slavery.

a reply to: AmericanZombie

I must not be American enough to be racist yet?

a reply to: seagull

Eradication isn't the request. Removing it from display at government buildings is the request. Burning it is just a symbolic gesture...

Flying any flag in the US is protected free speech, the right of an individual to display whatever flag they want should always remain... unless your HOA forbids it (lol).

I don't see why everybody is upset at a flag they say represents "slavery" even though slavery still exists today, except on a much wider scale and in a different form.

Perhaps we should ban the American flag next huh.. considering it represents oppression and destruction.

a reply to: Greathouse

If only 6% of Southern Whites owned slaves why were the other 94% fighting?
The answer to that came from a poor captured Confederate private - a Union officer asked him "why are you fighting us?".
"Because y'all are down here" was his reply.
Once you know the extent of the damage done by Union troops to the farms, homes and industry you can easily understand why they joined up to fight.

People who say we should burn the stars and bars is disregarding the sacrifices made by millions who had no connection to slavery whatsoever and were not fighting for it.

It's the same as blaming all of us for what the 1% does.

a reply to: Asktheanimals

A simpleton justifies flying the confederate flag at government buildings? Why exactly was the Union down there anyway? It was because the slave owners got the population all hopped up and used their belief that black people were inferior to do it. Hopped up enough to fire first and support secession.

I wonder if the OP would ban/burn "Huckleberry Finn" because of some of the word usage contained therein as well?

a reply to: Kali74

I have ancestors who fought and died under that flag.
None of them owned slaves.
If I were to fly a Confederate flag it would be to commemorate them.

a reply to: Asktheanimals

I have ancestors that fought and died in the confederacy too and I have always hated what that flag stood for. No one is saying that YOU can't fly that flag if you want to. It should not be displayed at government buildings nor be part of state flags.

a reply to: Asktheanimals

Speaking of burning old glory and connotations of racism - watch and listen to this - posted on Live Leak about 12 hours ago.

The battle flag was never adopted by the Confederate Congress, never flew over any state capitols during the Confederacy, and was never officially used by Confederate veterans’ groups. The flag probably would have been relegated to Civil War museums if it had not been resurrected by the resurgent KKK and used by Southern Dixiecrats during the 1948 presidential election.… It is no accident that Confederate symbols have been the mainstay of white supremacist organizations, from the Ku Klux Klan to the skinheads. They did not appropriate the Confederate battle flag simply because it was pretty. They picked it because it was the flag of a nation dedicated to their ideals: ‘that the negro is not equal to the white man’. The Confederate flag, we are told, represents heritage, not hate. But why should we celebrate a heritage grounded in hate, a heritage whose self-avowed reason for existence was the exploitation and debasement of a sizeable segment of its population?

Gordon Rhea

a reply to: eXia7

You are wise beyond your years. I mean, just consider all the Empire Building we've done. All those foreign countries we have invaded, and massively oppressed. (Oh, wait, I'm getting word from my producer that this is inaccurate.)
All those installed dictatorships we created. (Wait, what? They voted for their own leaders several times over already?)
Take 3:
American has actively participated in the drstructr7ction of minority and women's rights since 20...
(Oh, COME ON, REALLY? THE FIRST TIME WOMEN COULD VOTE IN AFGHANISTAN SINCE THE 70'S? I'M TRYING TO PAINT US AS THE BAD GUYS HERE. GIMME SOMETHING TO WORK WITH! )