The Confederate Flag

[Ben.]

I don’t see anything wrong with the confederate flag… being ¼ Louisianan and ¾ Midwestern… I see it as a symbol of “States Rights”, YES I used the term and NO I do not equate that term with the evil of segregation and racism, but it is time that people saw slavery as not the cause of the civil war but a symptom of the profound different beliefs in the role of government between the north and the south, with federalists in the north and those in favour of a much more loose “confederacy” in the south… I see a reason to reject totally the misuse of the confederacy’s flag, as some in the UK (where I am at present) for example misuse the Union Flag… I think to ban the CSA’s flag is to rewrite history in black and white… to quote from Faulkner in “Intruder in the Dust”…

“For every Southern boy fourteen years old, not once but whenever he wants it, there is the instant when it's still not yet two oclock on that July afternoon in 1863, the brigades are in position behind the rail fence, the guns are laid and ready in the woods and the furled flags are already loosened to break out and Pickett himself with his long oiled ringlets and his hat in one hand probably and his sword in the other looking up the hill waiting for Longstreet to give the word and it's all in the balance, it hasn't happened yet, it hasn't even begun yet, it not only hasn't begun yet but there is stll time for it not to begin against that position and those circumstances which made more men than Garnett and Kemper and Armstead and Wilcox look grave yet it's going to begin, we all know that, we have come too far with too much at stake and that moment doesn't need even a fourteen-year-old boy to think This time. Maybe this time with all this much to lose and all this much to gain: Pennsylvania, Maryland, the world, the golden dome of Washington itself to crown with desperate and unbelievable victory the desperate gamble, the cast made two years ago....”


…I do not think that anyone with an ounce of southerner or American in him can deny that these men in both armies fought for great things than simply abolishing or preserving slavery, I will never give into racism or intolerance and have nothing but contempt for the south’s ridged opposition to Civil Rights and its treatment of the African American population after and before the civil war right up until the 1970’s, that said I think mistakes where made by both Johnson and Nixon in their handling of the issue…and with that in mind I am proud of the confederate flag and the real values it represents not those it was hijacked to represent…            


As for the Nazi Flag of Germany... I dont think you can ban it... but it is a symbol of such a hatful ideology and destructive system of belife that I think that any display of it should most certainly be frowned upon... having said that... who the hell would fly the Nazi Flag?!?!?!?!

   

[Ben.]

great post Ben
couldn't agree more

Thanks... Faulkner quote was probably a little bit dramatic but hey where would this broad be without a little drama and it reflects my deep attachment to the confederacy and the good values it stood for not the things it was hijacked by both the right and left to represent…  

[Ben.]

I am afraid I agree with States Rights... the end to slavery was done in the worst possible way, a gradual emancipation process would have been best, the Emancipation proclamation its self merely freed slaves in the regions which where openly in revolt against the United States Government… however morally slavery should have been ended immediately really… that said looking at it in the long term both morally and economically a more drawn out gradual process of emancipation would probably have been best however with a long war and the re-election of Lincoln over McClellan in 1864 this option was really never available…