Confederate Flag.... what's it mean to you?

What do you see when you see the Confederate Flag?

  • Tradition

    Votes: 31 49.2%
  • Hatred

    Votes: 4 6.3%
  • Cool orange car

    Votes: 11 17.5%
  • Honor

    Votes: 7 11.1%
  • Something totally other.

    Votes: 10 15.9%

  • Total voters
    63
And kudos to the people of Charleston and SC for dealing with this tragedy as they have. Remember, this was on the heels of an officer murdering a black man. Things could have gone way wrong.

And the irony of all ironies - they were cell-neighbors in jail.
 
Let me say this S L O W L Y for you.
At the time of his death LINCOLN OWNED SLAVES.
He never freed his OWN house servants.

Damn lets not revise history.


Lincoln never owned slaves. His wife's family did, but he himself never did.

He grew up in Kentucky and Illinois, both which were free states.
 
Lincoln never owned slaves. His wife's family did, but he himself never did.

He grew up in Kentucky and Illinois, both which were free states.


Huh? I may be wrong, but Kentucky wasn't a free state. I think it's slave/population % was way lower than the traditional Southern states, but it was a border state, not a free state.
 
but he did believe in segregation. he wanted to send blacks back to Africa or to South America.

Early on he did, but my the time he was assassinated he had changed his views.

Huh? I may be wrong, but Kentucky wasn't a free state. I think it's slave/population % was way lower than the traditional Southern states, but it was a border state, not a free state.

You are correct, I wasn't thinking when I was typing that. They never joined the Confederacy but they did have a slave population. Either way, when his family lived in Kentucky they were too poor to own slaves anyway.
 
Uhh dude.
That flag hasnt flown over a State Capital in over a decade.

At the request of the NAACP the state of SC removed the flag from atop the Capitol and place it at the Confederate Veteran's Memorial Monument on the State House grounds.

Ron your totally right and I should have wrote that differently. I have know you for a while Ron and greatly respect you and I know we have our own views on this and will never get the other to agree. But having the flag flying on the State house grounds is an insult to many people because in the end, the facts of History show the Confedercy was based on owning and expanding ownership of slaves. Its written in documents and documented in speeches made at the time. I understand how some people can see this as heritage because of there familys own history but this particular flag was never installed as history, it was raised as an insult to a particular race when they asked for there rights to be equal as they should. I dont disagree we need not to forget about history and the flag should be in a case or in a museum but not flying on the state grounds.
 
Ron your totally right and I should have wrote that differently. I have know you for a while Ron and greatly respect you and I know we have our own views on this and will never get the other to agree. But having the flag flying on the State house grounds is an insult to many people because in the end, the facts of History show the Confedercy was based on owning and expanding ownership of slaves. Its written in documents and documented in speeches made at the time. I understand how some people can see this as heritage because of there familys own history but this particular flag was never installed as history, it was raised as an insult to a particular race when they asked for there rights to be equal as they should. I dont disagree we need not to forget about history and the flag should be in a case or in a museum but not flying on the state grounds.


Likewise you are a respected friend. I can understand and respect your viewpoint without agreeing with it totally. And I thnk f you read my fist post in this thread it sounds an awful lot like this one from you ;)

I disagree with the role that slavery played in the civil war. You are taking stump speech comments and claiming they are the foundation for beliefs. Remember there was no media in the day, so speeches were the propaganda tool of choice for politicians. George HW Bush said "Read my lips. there will be no new taxes"...read 10 years later would you believe that the entire reason he ran for Presidency was to prevent tax increases? No it was a myriad of reasons including personal political agendas.

Like all good politicians you speak to your constituents and tell them what they want to hear. If a man of the 1860s had aspirations of secession and leading a new Republic and he was speaking to a group of wealthy plantation owners, and he damn well better be speaking to a group of wealthy plantation owners because war is expensive to wage, he would probably have been wise to make sure that he conveyed that their source of income would not be jeopardized. He would likely speak in the vernacular of those people. Even if it didnt represent his core values.

In short, yes you can find isolated quotes to support your position. I can do the same. What it really boiled down to was the NE aristocrats looked down their noses, much like many still do today, at those simple Southerners. If we really want to go down a rabbit hole start researching why African descendants were not counted towards population numbers in agricultual states but were in NE states. That leads to discussions about electoral college and wealth distribution. In the 1850s the wealthiest folks in this country were Cotton Plantation owners. In typical Southern style they didnt discuss their money, but they had it. And as with any point in history with money comes power. The NE had to make sure that power didnt shift to the South. There were numerous taxes created without Southern representatives present to vote that were aimed specifically at redistributing that Southern Wealth. Finally enough was enough.

Now all that said. The dumbest thing to me is the people who want to ar their "The South will rise again" clothing.
Look around you. The SE represents as much as 65% of the entire job creation market for the entire US economy. People are fleeing the rusting and decrepid cess pools of the NE en masse to move south. To enjoy our favorable climate, to marvel at our gorgeous terrain. To recreate in our lakes, beaches and mountains. Every new foreign manufacture who looks to the US for new facilities starts their search and the vast majority conclude their search in this great land. (I'm looking at you Volvo, Mercedes, and 2 more that will be introduced before years end that I'd get chastised for mentioning publicly right now) this country is beginning the climb back out of another stupid labor down turn created by washington bureau-idiocy and is climbing on the back of Southern Manufacturing.

For this last piece, I say look around America. The South has risen and is leading this country today like it would have 150 years ago if not for oppressive jealous regimes. Lets just hope DC can stay out of the way this time, for our people no longer have the stomach to uprise again.
 
I wasnt there but I'm sure what the south was thinking in the 1800's was if the Govt can take our slaves what else can they take. And with that attitude they Succeeded from the union.
I am a supporter of States rights just like my ancestors were before me that fought for the CSA, but I do think the Battle Flag of Northern Virginia, or the Confederate Battle flag as so many call it, shouldnt be flown on the grounds of the statehouse in SC. Wrong place wrong time.



I personally fly Bonnie Blue
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Hate groups and supremacist are distorting the meaning of the flag for the own agenda, people do the same thing with religious literature. It's a flag with colors representing colonial colonies and but used to symbolize the freedom of oppression from a tyrant. The flag isn't racist but some peoples interpretation of the flag is it stands for racism because some groups are using it for their own agenda. Sorry but the flag itself is not racist. Much like guns can't kill people
 
I believe I may have a few old Dixie Outfitters T's from high school. I'll assume those will be next.
 
WOW. Being from "the North", my view of the Confederate flag was one of defiance. It was the ultimate show of , "You aren't going to tell us what to do, and we will even create a new flag and government to prove it". I bet William T. Thompson is rolling in his grave at how easily the masses are ditching it just to be politically correct.
 
WOW. Being from "the North", my view of the Confederate flag was one of defiance. It was the ultimate show of , "You aren't going to tell us what to do, and we will even create a new flag and government to prove it".

That's the closest thing to the truth I've seen in this thread.
The civil war was NOT about slavery ... it was a part of it, but only a part.
The US declared war on the CSA after they succeeded from the Union.
btw- Not all successive states were in the CSA.

Basically the states succeeded because they thought the US government was TAKING to much power and overstepping government bounds by telling the states how to operate. One of those points just happened to be slavery. Most was about economics ..... taxes.

I really don't understand why everyone is so hot on the US about slavery .... it only lasted about 200 years in the US. The rest of the world had slavery from the beginning of recorded history until the early 1900's .... in some 3rd world countries it still exsists.
The largest slave trading colony in Africa was run by AFRICANS who sold their own people into slavery, black Africans .... not white.

Find an old ( 50-60 years) history book and read it. Education now is more about indoctrination on what they want people to think instead of educating.

This discussion at came up at work and I kept hearing "we" this and "we" that ..... I really wanted to ask them how many years they spent in slavery.

No one alive today ever "suffered" in slavery.
Stop beating me over the head with something that happened 200 years ago and not to you!

Matt
 
I had a young boy work for me that did that one morning into work. I asked him later in the day why he was doing that and did he even know what that flag is. His responce to the first part...ehhh was typical redneck noise. He responded to the flag question as to it being "the" Confederate flag. I asked which one...he said "the" again. I tried to school him but his ass draggin...no muffler,big tires make big ruts self just couldn't get it. He liked driving around certain sections of Goldsboro with it waving. i was actually hoping somebody would school him a little differently than I did. I felt like he was disrespecting my ancestors and the state of North Carolina doing what he was doing.

When my family moved from the North to rural Southwest VA in the early '90s, almost everyone I saw flying the flag was pretty much the same as that guy (back of the pickup, etc.), and almost all of them were blatantly racist. I think that's probably where a lot of people's opinion about the flag comes from, just based on negative association. This is completely about the people that use it as a distorted symbol of their beliefs, and the people who respect it as a symbol of heritage aren't generally the people who flaunt it around on the back of a pickup, tell racist jokes loudly in public, stare people down because they're not white, etc.

When you think of people flying the flag, who sticks in your mind the most; the people who fly the flag respectfully during a re-enactment, or the people who fly the flag from the back of a truck while tailgating and rolling coal on people driving an import while yelling out the window?

I know it sounds like I'm oversimplifying things here, but when it comes to popular perception you can throw common sense and historical significance completely out of the window.

I see it as a case of a not-so-small group of highly visible people ruining the popular perception of the flag for everyone else.
 
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I really don't care that they are flying the flag. BUT I don't think it should be flown over any state or federal building. If that flag can be flow so can any other chosen. Gay pride, kkk, black panthers, isis, pow, or any others shouldn't be represented by the government in any way. There should only be two flags flown the nations flag and the states flag period.
 
I really don't care that they are flying the flag. BUT I don't think it should be flown over any state or federal building. If that flag can be flow so can any other chosen. Gay pride, kkk, black panthers, isis, pow, or any others shouldn't be represented by the government in any way. There should only be two flags flown the nations flag and the states flag period.

What do you think about the states that have a confederate symbol on their flag flying over a state building?
 
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