The Confederate Flag

That they should voluntarily surrender their freedom of expression because other people have a personal problem? Is that how you think freedom works? Fretting over what everyone else thinks? Most adults accept that if you have a problem, it's your personal problem.

All evidence to the contrary.

Aw.

Again, aw.

Most people like to feel a part of something.

Do you have a problem with things like Gay or Black Pride too?

 

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Didn't a long time a law was passed that the confederate lag can't be flown on government buildings land?

 

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Is essentially saying "fuck you" to all of your black neighbors an aspect of this "Southern pride" of which you speak?

 

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Why?
Alex

 

Sounds like that old "Fuck you Jack, I'm alright" attitude.

So you support the KKK? How's about those Nazi sympathisers?
They deserve this freedom of speech and expression?
Please be intellectually honest and surprise us.

Do you? I don't mean just your usual rhetoric, I mean really...If a gay or black family moved in next door, would you take it as normal, introduce yourself and become friends.
Please be intellectually honest and surprise us.

 

I guess if you want to mainrain the rage, division and hatred in the USA then flying the confederate flag is intelligent thing to do...
If you don't then it is plain stupid.

Like flying the Nazi flag in Israel. Pride in slavery, pride in failure...hmmm.... plain stupid most like.

 

The regional heritage they were and are celebrating was one of declaring war against their fellow Americans, prosecuting that war to the extreme - including killing their fellow Americans by the tens of thousands for years on end, - and in all ways including outright murder committing treason,

in defense of slavery.
A world based on industrial scale chattel slavery, in which every institution and every custom and every detail of daily life was founded in racial bigotry and defended by terrorism, is the regional heritage they are proud of. There is no other heritage involving that flag available to them.

Well, somebody's wrong.

My bet is that the fringe minority of black people who think that white people who take pride in what the Confederacy fought for
(which you can read about in the many thousands of letters, laws, public declarations, and so forth, that the white people who started the Civil War, fought for the Confederacy, and were eager to justify what they were doing, wrote at the time)
are not racist

are probably wrong.

My bet is that the overwhelming majority of black people, including the major intellectual voices and the ones who make sense in public and the ones who are the best educated and the ones who have the most experience dealing with those white people and the ones who know the most about the actual behavior of those white people and so forth,

are probably right.

I know for a fact that their assessment agrees fully with my own life-long experience of white people who display the Confederate flag - including the ones who claim it is a matter of regional or community pride (often, in my case, while having lived their entire lives - outside of their service in the Union military- in Minnesota).

 

As far as I'm aware, nobody's ever explained - or even examined - this southern/regional pride, this celebrated tradition/heritage of which we hear so much. I've seen the revived secessionist flag (usually held aloft over someone receiving federal benefits of one kind or another) and those dishonest statues (defeated generals depicted as if they had been victorious). I don't understand what positive achievements those two symbols are meant to represent.
The Georgia peach, I understand: it's admirable. The Kentucky thoroughbred - awesome. Tennessee whiskey - yay, bring it! There is lots to be proud of - why keep dwelling on a lost bad cause?
The Germans moved on, in spite of being cut in half, rebounded better than ever, in 50 years. Why can't America manage it in 150? I suspect many people just don't want to. That civil war is the most exciting thing they ever participated in and they just can't stop fighting it.

 

Maybe Vociferous could explain what exactly them Southerners are so proud of? (re: Confederacy etc)

 

It's cute that your attempting to protect freedom of expression especially when you believe freedom from slavery is a personal problem.

 

The East or West coasts didn't rise up on the backs of slaves. Anything else "distinct" about southern culture?

 

Mint juleps - good.
Coal - bad.
Cotton - good idea, lousy execution.
Banjo - good... in mederation.
Jug bands - pretty bad.
Hush puppies - very good.
Go on....

 

Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should. And if you think you should, be prepared for the backlash that will accompany those actions. So sure, you can raise a confederate flag in your yard, but be prepared for people to see you as a racist. “You” not being you specifically, you in a broad sense.

 

Well said, and similarly applying in other areas.

Again, well said...same of course applies to Japan and the Japanese people, more particularly so since they had to endure two nuclear bomb attacks.

 

They also eschewed militarism from that time until the very recent past. No standing army, no war song for an anthem
("Thousands of years of happy reign be thine;
Rule on, my lord, till what are pebbles now
By age united to mighty rocks shall grow
Whose venerable sides the moss doth line."
God save the emperor, only without god.)
no celebration of old lost wars and no gun-totin' civilians.

 

We don't need this for example.
Alex

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They're just exercising their freedom of expression...
until the people they piss off exercise their freedom of expression, and then they get all het up.
It's like the Christian supremacists getting their knickers in an umbrage every time they're not allowed to exercise their religious freedom by depriving other people of civil rights.
Privilege is hard to relinquish - especially for those near the bottom of the heap who have hardly anyone to push around. If there's no unpopular kid in the whole school, how can little bullies validate their miserable existence?

 

I was in Japan about 12 years ago and did a extensive tour, including Hiroshima...I was struck and totally gobsmacked by the absolute politeness and respect the average person showed, at least those that I came in contact with. Beautiful and Impressive!

 

For the present, their long-established national identity and nuanced culture has healed over the last period of warfare. That's the bright side. But don't get them mad! Inside and underneath, they're just like other people.

 

Why do you think expressing yourself must be a "fuck you" to anyone? So if enough people don't agree with you, you don't express your opinion? Are you afraid of what they'll do to you?

LOL! I'm not here to try explaining normal human behavior to those perhaps functionally in the Asperger's spectrum.

Yet their national flag is still that of the German Reich. How's that different from the Confederate flag, other than one being the country's official flag?

Many white people see BLM as racist against them, since them simply saying "all lives matter" is met with hate for including whites. Does that mean no one should carry a BLM sign? See, it always works both ways. Someone can always find an excuse to be offended by just about anything. But I agree, anyone, with any view that others do not like, shouldn't expect to have their view accepted. And I really don't think those flying Confederate flags do. People have opinions, and they either stand by them no matter what or abandon them. I have more respect for the former, even if I don't like their views. Freedom of expression isn't worth a damn if it doesn't also protect views I don't like.

LOL! After WWII, Japan was legally forbidden from having a standing army for any but self-defense.

See, that's what people do who want you to know that they are using it to express racism. And they probably love people like you, who just assume that any Confederate flag inflates their numbers. Makes it easier for them to spread fear. Seeing as some people now believe the official US flag is also a symbol of racism, you're just feeding that irrational fear.