Those who attended the raising of the 15-by-15-foot flag from the Army of Northern Virginia said the ceremony was not intended to offend, but to honor the South’s war dead in the Civil War.
“The reason why we’re here is to honor the soldier,” said James Thompson, 50, a North Carolinian now living in Richmond. “We don’t see it as a slavery issue.”
Like many who attended, Thompson said his ancestors fought for the South. A Civil War re-enactor, he wore a slouch hat and a rough wool uniform and carried an Enfield rifle.
Washington Post
35 comments:
It's amazing that people don't realize that free speech exists so the government can keep tabs on them.
Last weeks Great Bigot Hunt bagged the lone white supremacist guy who sent out a press release announcing that he was going to turn a village of 24 people in Idaho into a white supremacist fortress.
The other 24 people didn't know him and had no idea of his plans.
The national media and an American Indian task force, spurred on by the SPLC, descended on the tiny village to stave off the impending disaster.
It's getting harder and harder to find bigots to hunt down.
An Enfield? Really? Which model? It might be an anachronism.
I am going to assume the reporter was frightened by a flag that was not a rainbow flag and that the scary gun was scary and the reporter or reporterette was scared and didn't actually pay any attention to what the dude was carrying.
Other than that, however, I am sure the story is accurate.
I can see their point abd they do have a right to take pride in their forebears, most of whom, as Joe Johnston noted, never owned a slave in their lives, although I can understand how black people feel - granted, I'm leaving out the race card players here.
PS The Johnny Rebs would have had some Enfields, bought from the Limeys.
The Enfield was the 2nd most used firearm in the Civil war after the Springfield. The two were so similar, you can use the same ammunition - if you had too.
People forget that if the British had supported the North, instead of selling the Confederates large number of rifles, cannons, powder, uniforms, shoes, etc - and allowing blockade runners to use Bermuda and the Bahamas - the civil war probably would have ended in 1863.
Raising a 15' x 15' Nazi flag is bound to offend people just as raising a 15' x 15' rainbow flag would. It says "look at me." What if we don't want to?
Move along, nothing to see
"those who view the flag as a symbol of division."
Are there people who don't view it this way? It's the flag of a rebellion, seeking to divide the country. It's inherently a flag of division.
Ich fahre die Fahne!
Some German poet.
Well, there you go - I just wish there was more specificity in the "news" article - I was thinkin' Lee-Enfield, which would have been more appropriate for the Boer war. Not to be a boor, mind you. Nor a boar, but probably a bore.
I know, we need a better caliber of commenters around here...
Looks like we don't have any rebels here.
"Its a flag of rebellion"
So is the American flag.
Lee-Enfield - Boer war.
I think USA also used the "Lee-Enfield" in WW 1, since we couldn't make enough 1903 Springfield's.
"Are there people who don't view it this way? It's the flag of a rebellion, seeking to divide the country. It's inherently a flag of division."
It's also the flag of a defeated secessionist movement.
"Its a flag of rebellion"
So is the American flag.
Exactly. And so is the Black Power fist salute. I'm offended. Make them stop.
The people in the Southern States have every right to remember their past and their relatives. Remembering is not necessarily celebrating either.
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
Perhaps our schools might consider this when they deliberately whitewash, rewrite and erase unsavory or unpopular moments in history.
You smart-ass Northerners never get it, do you?
Well, we'll show you. No more cotton, no more soybeans, no more corn. The South will plant only yeast.
Come the harvest, the South will rise again.
On a more serious note, I think it's important to remember that, for Southerners, the Civil War experience is not only the War & defeat, it's the agony of Reconstruction. Reconstruction crippled the South worse than the war did. Northerners don't like to remember this, because it was their fuck-up, and they not only messed up the whites, they also got tired of the whole business & then left the blacks in the lurch, too. How, exactly, should Southerners publicly remember those dark days? It's fun to play at war & dress up in a soldier's uniform & take the kids to Gettysburg. But Reconstruction? Sitting in the sweltering heat outside a tar paper shack while catching hookworm & watching the cotton grow just isn't so much fun.
Fun is where you find it, just sayin'...
@Sixty,
Fun is where you find it, just sayin'.
Tar-paper shacks, et al. gave us the blues & a bazillion songs about honky-tonks, I guess, so there's that.
You can't talk about the fact that young black males, that would be about 4% or 5% of the population, terrorize the other 95%. You can't talk about the fact that huge swaths of this country have been reclaimed for Mexico by the illegal alien invasion. What can you talk about. The horror! the horror! that white southerners might celebrate their heritage somewhere, anywhere. Talking about what's tearing the country apart is verboten by order of the anointed ones. Denouncing a total non-threat is required if you want to be in the club. This is what has been wrought by the super beautiful Althousians. And there's no light at the end of the tunnel.
"Its a flag of rebellion"
So is the American flag
Indeed. That's why you don't see it flown in Britain.
I should note that my direct forebears (the O family) fought for the confederacy. Mississippi regiments, then moved to Texas after the war.
Course, on my other side, my great-great-great-great grandfather and his oldest son died fighting for the Union.
All flags except the U.N.'s are flags of division. Which is also why the U.N. is so useless. The purpose of a flag is to identify those who are different, separate from everyone else. It's a symbol of division like a boarder, or a fence or a name. We should each have our own flag. I call dibs on a pure black on black design. It's slimming, and black is the new black.
I don't allow boarders here. My Border Collie doesn't either.
My great-grandfather fought in the recent unpleasantness between the states. His widow lived long enough to meet my two older brothers, so that war is a bit closer to the present in my family. Paddy O's family has 3 more generations in there - must be like a GaAs chip I once designed - fast multipliers.
I wonder how many of the people "honoring Southern war dead" have the nerve to consider people like Snowden and Manning to be traitors.
The lesson of the War between the States, Reconstruction, Jim Crow and before all that, slavery, is that us white people should have picked our own damned crops.
Sixty, I believe I added one too many greats. James John O fought in the 43rd Mississippi, and was my great-great-great grandfather. He was 32 when the war started.
I'm not sure about the fast breeders, but we're definitely a fertile folk. I'm also, I suspect a bit younger than you. And maybe JimmyO was a bit older at the time than your great-grandfather.
I sometimes wonder what I would do if another such war broke out between states. Would I fight for California? It's a moot question. If California wanted to secede, who in the rest of the country would fight to keep us?
Icepick, I think that's probably right. Or at least pay people a fair wage to do it.
It's fun reading the justifications for slavery, both articulate and passionate, from back in the day along the lines of how much it sucked for poor Whites to be free in the North but to have no other practical choice but to toil away in a factory for subsistence level wages.
Mr. Gorbachev, you and yo' pa'tnah goes PICKA BAILAH COTTON!!!1!!!!!!!!
"white people should have picked our own damned crops."
Its a lesson some still haven't learned. Calling Johnny McCain, calling Johnny McCain...
BTW, I remember the "Beverly Hillbillies" reruns from the 70s. Granny assumed the South had won and corrected Jethro every-time he asserted Lee had surrendered to Grant.
When they went to fight the Grunion invasion, they hoisted the Confederate flag on the truck. Did anyone complain about that?
"The fact is, that civilisation requires slaves. The Greeks were quite right there. Unless there are slaves to do the ugly, horrible, uninteresting work, culture and contemplation become almost impossible. Human slavery is wrong, insecure, and demoralizing. On mechanical slavery, on the slavery of the machine, the future of the world depends."
~OSCAR WILDE, The Soul of Man Under Socialism
Did anyone complain about that?
Of course not. "The Beverley Hillbillies" allowed middle America to laugh both the Clampetts and the Drysdales. Good stuff.
Nowadays we idolize both the rich and the poor on TV.
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