South Carolina, tear down that flag!

[jimbob]

Oh, I know. I just think it is funny that the North is being criticized for not adequately trying to stomp on States' rights. As you say, they didn't have the federal clout to do it, but I just find the complaint ironic.

This could be the poster child for why I dislike arguments about "rights" for organisations or groups.

Individual rights, yes. Rights for groups, only in as much as the individuals in the group should have rights.

"States' Rights" was a horrible concept.

 

[Checkmite]

Agreed.

 

[ponderingturtle]

No; attempts to interfere with the Fugitive Slave Act, and the forbidding of slave owners to travel with slaves in free states shows that abolitionist (or even simply free-soil) northerners did not believe slavery was a legitimate "States' right" to be respected.

Strictly isn't that showing also that southerns didn't think it was a states rights issue, as they certainly didn't want to lose their slaves just because they were in some state that slavery was illegal. Hard to be a states rights issue when the states are obligated to ignore it.

 

[Upchurch]

Oh, I know. I just think it is funny that the North is being criticized for not adequately trying to stomp on States' rights. As you say, they didn't have the federal clout to do it, but I just find the complaint ironic.

I posted this link many pages ago, but it's probably worth reposting now.

Perhaps most perniciously, neo-Confederates now claim that the South seceded over states’ rights. Yet when each state left the Union, its leaders made clear that they were seceding because they were for slavery and against states’ rights. In its “Declaration of the Causes Which Impel the State of Texas to Secede From the Federal Union,” for example, the secession convention of Texas listed the states that had offended the delegates: “Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan and Iowa.” Governments there had exercised states’ rights by passing laws that interfered with the federal government’s attempts to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act. Some no longer let slave owners “transit” across their territory with slaves. “States’ rights” were what Texas was seceding against. Texas also made clear what it was seceding for — white supremacy:

We hold as undeniable truths that the governments of the various States, and of the confederacy itself, were established exclusively by the white race, for themselves and their posterity; that the African race had no agency in their establishment; that they were rightfully held and regarded as an inferior and dependent race, and in that condition only could their existence in this country be rendered beneficial or tolerable.​

 

[Checkmite]

Strictly isn't that showing also that southerns didn't think it was a states rights issue, as they certainly didn't want to lose their slaves just because they were in some state that slavery was illegal. Hard to be a states rights issue when the states are obligated to ignore it.

Yep. The "states' rights" argument is purely post-hoc creative reinterpretation of the actual history and ever was.

 

[jimbob]

There's that old time-honored tradition of greeting the black president on his motorcade on his trip to the south****

https://twitter.com/nytimes/status/621515129486745600

****kind of. Oklahoma wasn't actually a state during the Civil War.

At least they understand the heritage.

Maybe non*-racists might begin to feel somewhat uncomfortable about displaying that icon of hate.


*ETA: and those racists who don't want to be thought of as racists - the "polite racists". I presume they occur in the US as well as the UK ( A dying breed here I think).

 

[pgwenthold]

At least they understand the heritage.

Maybe non*-racists might begin to feel somewhat uncomfortable about displaying that icon of hate.
.

First you have to get them to quit denying that it IS an icon of hate.

You can claim all the heritage you want, but don't try to claim for a second that it is NOT a symbol of hate. Because those folks on the streets of OkC were not waving the flag because they love Obama.

 

[jimbob]

First you have to get them to quit denying that it IS an icon of hate.

You can claim all the heritage you want, but don't try to claim for a second that it is NOT a symbol of hate. Because those folks on the streets of OkC were not waving the flag because they love Obama.

True, but it must be getting harder.

I hope.

 

[Meadmaker]

It’s amazing how things go off into the weeds.

Let me repeat my point in a different way. If you judge the people of North and South by today’s standards, they’re both rotten to the core. One of them is worse, but they are both bad, and not just a little bit bad.



It’s interesting, though, that it seems important to disagree with that message. I’m not sure why. I think it has to do with projection of some sort of belief onto that message. The message itself is fairly straightforward, though. The people were just people. They were a product of their time and situation. There was nothing about those people that made them inherently different from us. They had the same genes. The same brains. They are Homo Sapiens, like you and me. In the same circumstances, you would do the same as them, because you are them. It’s easy to think yourself superior sitting here in your own world, but it’s not realistic. The existence of slavery within the United States says something about the people who formed the country, and who continued its existence for 90 years after, but it also says something about us, because, at our core, there is no difference between them and us.

Now, about that flag.

The people who flew that flag 150 years ago were part of history. They weren’t evil. Their cause was evil, but they weren’t. Their flag could be a symbol of the cause, or of the people, or even of the place. I don’t mind representing the people, or the events related to the flag, or the place where it was flown. I just don’t want to do anything that glorifies that ideology. So does the flag do that?

If we look at the SC statehouse flag, I think we might be able to say that it does, or at least did when it was put up. Ok. Take it down. Let’s not let it seem like we support that cause.

But what about the Ocala flag? Standing next to Spain and France and Britain, what does it signify? I don’t think there is any hint that it signals support of that ideology. It just refers to a point in time in history. You can’t erase history, and you shouldn’t try. Good and bad, it all happened.

What about flying on a battlefield? I think it symbolizes one of two armies that clashed there, in the greatest clash of arms the world had yet seen.

And what about that flag on a coaster in a gift shop on that battlefield? What does it represent to the person buying it? Well how the heck would I know what it represents, and why should I give a hoot? It’s a coaster, for Pete’s sake. Don’t you have anything better to do than try and figure out if someone is having impure thoughts while using a coaster?

 

[Meadmaker]

Yep. The "states' rights" argument is purely post-hoc creative reinterpretation of the actual history and ever was.

But it was a contemporary argument.

Hurrah, hurrah
For Southern rights, hurrah.
Hurrah for the bonnie blue flag
that bears a single star.

Lincoln referred to states' rights in that inaugural address you seemed to have read.

It was baloney at the time, too. Everyone knew that it was all about slavery, but it wasn't post-hoc.

 

[Upchurch]

Let me repeat my point in a different way. If you judge the people of North and South by today’s standards, they’re both rotten to the core. One of them is worse, but they are both bad, and not just a little bit bad.

Is it worth asking you to support this claim about how the side that got rid of slavery was rotten to the core?

 

[dudalb]

Yep. The "states' rights" argument is purely post-hoc creative reinterpretation of the actual history and ever was.

And the South were sure as hell willng to violate states rights when it came to the Fugitive Slave law..............
Frankly,Slavery and "States Rights" are so intermixed it's hard to seperate them.

 

[Giordano]

It’s amazing how things go off into the weeds.

Let me repeat my point in a different way. If you judge the people of North and South by today’s standards, they’re both rotten to the core. One of them is worse, but they are both bad, and not just a little bit bad.



It’s interesting, though, that it seems important to disagree with that message. I’m not sure why. I think it has to do with projection of some sort of belief onto that message. The message itself is fairly straightforward, though. The people were just people. They were a product of their time and situation. There was nothing about those people that made them inherently different from us. They had the same genes. The same brains. They are Homo Sapiens, like you and me. In the same circumstances, you would do the same as them, because you are them. It’s easy to think yourself superior sitting here in your own world, but it’s not realistic. The existence of slavery within the United States says something about the people who formed the country, and who continued its existence for 90 years after, but it also says something about us, because, at our core, there is no difference between them and us.

Now, about that flag.

The people who flew that flag 150 years ago were part of history. They weren’t evil. Their cause was evil, but they weren’t. Their flag could be a symbol of the cause, or of the people, or even of the place. I don’t mind representing the people, or the events related to the flag, or the place where it was flown. I just don’t want to do anything that glorifies that ideology. So does the flag do that?

If we look at the SC statehouse flag, I think we might be able to say that it does, or at least did when it was put up. Ok. Take it down. Let’s not let it seem like we support that cause.

But what about the Ocala flag? Standing next to Spain and France and Britain, what does it signify? I don’t think there is any hint that it signals support of that ideology. It just refers to a point in time in history. You can’t erase history, and you shouldn’t try. Good and bad, it all happened.

What about flying on a battlefield? I think it symbolizes one of two armies that clashed there, in the greatest clash of arms the world had yet seen.

And what about that flag on a coaster in a gift shop on that battlefield? What does it represent to the person buying it? Well how the heck would I know what it represents, and why should I give a hoot? It’s a coaster, for Pete’s sake. Don’t you have anything better to do than try and figure out if someone is having impure thoughts while using a coaster?

News flash: people do awful things. On average, people in the past did and believed things that many of us now see as awful. Every country has part of its history that many now see as repellent, and the best countries have made an effort to recognize their past bad behaviors and to do better now and in the future. And it is not a binary issue, evil or good, and we should lump all groups who did or thought evil things equally with one another (in fact that would make the "good" grouping vanishingly small). I first consider how much evil a given person or group did to others, and if they were products of the prevailing beliefs of their times or stood out as usually evil: if one was racist in 1800 I condemn them less than if they are still racist in 2015. One hopes that there is progress in the world and some people catch on earlier than others. By 1865 the North clearly had begun to understand that slavery was evil; instead the South as a whole wished to continue and spread it to new states. I see this as a clear moral separation, and it is absurd to suggest that because the North once had slaves (even though they abolished it later) or was racist (compared to how many non-racists in the USA at the time?) they were essentially equivalent to the South morally.

People who supported awful causes at the time of the associated events are more difficult. Often living people want to celebrate the bravery and dedication of the dead who died for causes, even the dead who died for causes that we now see were evil. But it is tricky: one must recognize the person and not the evil cause in the celebration. Germany has been able to do this by recognizing their citizens who fought in WWII because they were forced to, or did so out of a sense of patriotism, rather then devotion to Nazi beliefs.

It is not usually considered okay to celebrate the people who instigated or directly promoted the evil cause, no matter how dead they are or how brave they may have been. We prefer to not celebrate Himmler even though he viewed himself as a patriot fighting for Germany.

But even when we feel comfortable in honoring the non- or less- culpable dead, we must to very careful to honor the person, and not the evil cause for which they happened to fight.

The Confederate flag inevitably symbolizes the evil cause, and not the "innocents" who fought for it. Honoring them by waving the Confederate Flag actually does a disservice for these dead.

My main concern is that governments in the USA no longer use the Confederate flag as a government symbol. I am not proposing banning it because that is a free speech issue. But I don't see how a government agency should promote it in a gift shop. And if a private business concludes that selling merchandise with the Confederate flag is a bad business practice, then I don't see why anyone should require them to do so.

Finally, although I feel that people should be free to fly the Confederate flag if they wish as private citizens, I also feel free to conclude that either they are telling me that they support the racist causes it symbolizes, or they are clueless.

 

[NoahFence]

I'm trying to figure out how so many people can support that flag, when the racism it represents manifests itself TODAY.

The confederate flag being the beacon of white power isn't history. It's current. Sorry if my bringing up reality hurts the delicate sensibilities of the good ol' boys who love flying that rag out of ignorant heritage. Make a flag out of some other source of southern pride. Put a silhouette of Dale Earnhart on a flag and call it a day.

The last lynching I can find a record of while taking all of 5 seconds out of my busy day to do so was in 1998. I have PANTS older than that. (they don't fit)

This is not history. This is current. Ask the survivors of the Charlestown shooting if this is history or if this is current.

I'm sick to death of the ignorance and flat-out willful STUPIDITY of the people who support flying that rag. I'd personally rather wipe my ass with it.

 

[Giordano]

Their flag could be a symbol of the cause, or of the people, or even of the place. I don’t mind representing the people, or the events related to the flag, or the place where it was flown. I just don’t want to do anything that glorifies that ideology. So does the flag do that?

Yes, absolutely: the Confederate flag glorifies the ideology, for the reasons carefully and repeatedly described up thread. George Wallace, Lester Maddox, and the KKK clearly understood that. Most of the 1950s and 1960s Southern State governments clearly understood that; that is why they revived it and chose to make it a symbol of the pro-segregationists.

No, the Confederate flag cannot just be a symbol of the people, or even just the place. It was created expressly for the pro-slavery forces, it was revived by the pro-segregation forces, and it is still used to terrorize many Blacks and other minorities. It is closely associated with these events, and one cannot simply now state "Well in my head when I waive it, it represents Mint Juleps and home cooking" without looking clueless or worse. The meanings of symbols (and words, which are also symbols) aren't just anything that you wish them to be. I can't use the word "red" and claim that because words can mean many things, I intend the meaning "green."

There might be somewhat more argument in favor of certain other symbols and words. For example, there is a word starting with n that means lazy. It was apparently not derived at all from a similar sounding word that is a racial slur for Blacks. I could try to insist on use of the n word for lazy to prove my point that it is not really related to a racial slur. But I fail to see any sensible reason to do so. If people have widely concluded that the word is a racial slur, it has indeed become a racial slur. And I see no reason to offend people whether or not I think in my own mind that they shouldn't be offended. To insist on my interpretation is silly, unnecessarily stubborn, and truly offensive whatever I intend it to be.

 

[Meadmaker]

I'd personally rather wipe my ass with it.

Well it won't be as easy as it used to be. Amazon.com took their confederate flag toilet paper off their site.


(Just in case anyone wasn't following the thread near the beginning, that's true.)

 

[Meadmaker]

There might be somewhat more argument in favor of certain other symbols and words. For example, there is a word starting with n that means lazy. It was apparently not derived at all from a similar sounding word that is a racial slur for Blacks. I could try to insist on use of the n word for lazy to prove my point that it is not really related to a racial slur. But I fail to see any sensible reason to do so. If people have widely concluded that the word is a racial slur, it has indeed become a racial slur. And I see no reason to offend people whether or not I think in my own mind that they shouldn't be offended. To insist on my interpretation is silly, unnecessarily stubborn, and truly offensive whatever I intend it to be.

Actually, it means miserly. Stingy.

It's interesting that you would use that example, because I was thinking of it, too. Of course, I came to exactly the opposite conclusion. Niggardly is a perfectly appropriate word, with no racial connotations whatsoever, and should be used when it is appropriate. When people are offended, and someone points out its true meaning, the offended people should admit their mistake.

Language is somewhat more malleable than history, but words still have meanings. You can't just decide a word means something and expect everyone to go along with it.

But...that's a digression. I want to go back to your main point about the Confederate flag, and ask you how to apply it in a specific case, that I have already brought up.

Ocala, Florida has a flag display with the flags of France, The United Kingdom, Spain, The Confederate States of America, and the United States of America. Should they remove one of those flags? Why or why not?

Anyone else could also weigh in on this if they choose. I have already provided my answer.

(Sorry, Upchurch, I will not provide evidence that the flags actually exist, or that Spain actually controlled the land where now sits the city of Ocala.)

 

[Meadmaker]

The Confederate flag inevitably symbolizes the evil cause, and not the "innocents" who fought for it. Honoring them by waving the Confederate Flag actually does a disservice for these dead.

Well, context is everything, in my opinion, but I agree with much of this post, including the quoted portion above, for certain meanings of "waving".

 

[Checkmite]

Is it worth asking you to support this claim about how the side that got rid of slavery was rotten to the core?

Tu quoque is the order of the day. The North had slavery at some point, else they couldn't have got rid of it right? This apparently makes them morally equivalent to those who had slavery and not only never grew out of it, but went to war to keep it going.

 

[SezMe]

Ocala, Florida has a flag display with the flags of France, The United Kingdom, Spain, The Confederate States of America, and the United States of America. Should they remove one of those flags? Why or why not?

You've raised the Ocala situation many times. Let's assume, just for the sake of my post, that the use of the confederate flag in that particular circumstance is a valid exhibition of its historical context for that city.

Now: So what? Are you arguing that that situation generalizes to all of the South? To all displays of that flag? That that one historical circumstance then makes the claim of its historical interpretation universal?