Professor appalled by Rebel Flag in tailgating

It shouldn’t take a football game against a Historically Black College University for us to have common sense.

I am actually more disturbed that this was chosen as a front page picture. Do you feel welcomed at CMU?

Billy: Yes there is controversy surrounding the use of the Rebel flag but would you (general you) really want to use something that is traditionally regarded as being racist? I actually moved from Alabama before starting in the graduate program here at CMU and I can tell you right now that I do not know of a single person who used the flag (not just in Alabama but in other southern states too) who flew it for any other purpose besides racist intentions. Interestingly Wikipedia says “Supporters of the flag view it as a symbol of heritage and the freedom of the distinct cultural tradition of the South from the oppression of Northern government.” I personally would want to use the Rebel flag for this reason either because we should be standing together as one nation, not a nation divided as we once were.

So yes there may be other reasons for flying the flag but I can’t find a single one that I would deem respectable.

Or to use an analogy to another symbol…

The swastika has many other meanings and has in the past been used by many different groups of people. If you saw someone using it, could you honestly say you wouldn’t think that it was being used for racist reasonings?

Sometimes a symbol can end up being so stigmatized that even though it has other uses, individuals tend to not use it anymore because of not wanting to be associated with the negative representation of it.

“To automatically assume and stereotype that a certain flag means ONLY what you claim” might really be “as bigotted and elitist as possible,” but being aware that the flag ALSO means something extremely offensive to one or more groups and deciding to fly it anyway is bigoted in its own right.

Nikki Sics

Expounding farther on the above, allow me to point out the following comparison.
“Hindus seek to reclaim swastika image”
http://www.fpp.co.uk/online/05/01/Hindu_swastika.html

Mr Kallidai said: “A symbol we have used for more than 5,000 years is now on the verge of being banned because of association with the Nazis over which we had no control.

“Hindus wish to continue to use this symbol as part of their religion, but they risk being labelled a Nazi or, in the case of a ban, risk breaking the law. We need to educate people about the historical context of the symbol, its wrong use by the Nazis and its importance to Hindus”.

This is the same exact argument that the SCV and UDC have been using. A mentioned previously, the haters, small in number and
very sporadic in using Confederate Flags, have tainted it in the eyes of some due most part to the hysteria used in the opening opinion by Prof Patterson. To simply toss honor and history out the window to cave to a hate group and submit to political correctness is to give them the victory, and to agree with the haters and thier version of what a symbol stands for – as witnessed above.

I am with the Hindus – fight for the symbol of your ancestors and heritage. When you continue siding with the klan and it’s interpretation of the Confederate Flag (and US Flag and Bible and Cross) you willingly continue to further thier agenda, and continue to further thier ability to intimidate.

Time to rise up and stand against hate.

Ben,

Again, to give credence to the klans vision of the meaning of said venerated objects is to be on thier side. Banning said venerated objects to obscurity is to cave and bury one’s head in the proverbial sand.

Again, ‘though small in number and sporadic in use’. The KKK, born in December 1865, adopted the US Flag in 1866. During the zenith of KKK membership in the 1920′s, they laid claim to 3,000,000 members. It was also on August 8th, 1925 that 40,000 Klansmen marched down Pennsylvania Ave in Washington DC wearing Klan Robes and waving thousands of flags – ALL UNITED STATES!
http://historymatters.gmu.edu/mpimages/mp212.jpg

Compare that with today:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ku_Klux_Klan
“… researchers estimate that there may be more than 150 Klan chapters with 5,000–8,000 members nationwide…”

Compare that with the 40,000 members in the SCV, the thousands in the UDC, the thousands who simply sprot a “Dixie Outfitter” shirt, or as you say – simply think it’s cool to be a Rebel.

No Sir, I believe that even though you speak honest of your opinion, the fact is that the klan has long stopped being the boogeyman and thier limited use was always totally incorrect for the meaning of the Confederate Flag.

Yours, Nikki Sics and Prof Patterson views only further any remaining hate agenda of the klan by saying they are right and EVERYONE ELSE IN THE KNOWN UNIVERSE IS WRONG (as well as “backward thinking racists”) – so stereotype away!

However, LMK when ya’ll are ready to actually do some constructive hate removal. Otherwise step aside.

Being from South Carolina, I can certainly understand the idea of southern pride. I have never really been indoctrinated with it myself. I have on several occasions had to hide the fact that I know we lost some battles during the Civil War (don’t tell my high school history teachers).

I have never considered the confederate flag to represent the southern states. I thought our state flag did a pretty good job of that.

That aside, I still don’t see really any good argument that that flag stands for anything else. Mr. Bearden keeps saying the Kan weren’t all that bad because there were not many of them, well that’s not cutting it. There weren’t many Mason family member either but I sure as hell don’t want them at a picnic.

Michigan lost 13,405 good men in the Civil War. That is reason enough not to fly the Confederate Flag here. You desecrate their memory. And for those of you who cry “We fly the American flag in the South” remember two things: 1) you lost the war and 2) the Stars and Stripes was the flag of our country long before the secessionists raised the stars and bars. Get over it, and get rid of the damn Confederate flag. You can dance around it, waving your first amendment rights all you want, but anyone who has read the history of this great country knows EXACTLY what that flag stands for. Stop being coy.

Michigan lost good men? Well, they might have lived to a ripe old age – or at least died of causes unrelated to war IF THEY HAD STAYED IN MICHIGAN! You cannot complain when you attack a man’s home and get yourself killed or wounded in the process. Neither can you use the excuse of “preserving the Union” when the the word “union” refers to a VOLUNTARY relationship. “Union” at the point of a gun is called conquest and those “united” against their will are not citizens but subjects of the victorious side.

Of course, the illegal and unconstitutional nature of the War of Secession is hidden behind the mendacious claim that the war was waged to end slavery. Slavery was ended in every other “white” nation (although it still exists in some non-white nations even today) without resorting to warfare.

Furthermore, Lincoln offered the Corwin Amendment to the Constitution enshrining slavery in that document IN PERPETUITY – if the South would remain in the Union. The South refused proving that though slavery was an issue, it was certainly not the most important cause.

Sadly, all we have is history written by the winners unless folks do some digging on their own to discover what REALLY happened.

SanityRequired,

Using your logic:

“The Confederacy lost = no flag”

OK, taking that a few steps further…

We beat England twice, so Hawaii should change it’s flag. The Federal Govt beat the Native Americans, so the flags of New Mexico, Oklahoma, Florida, and Minnesota’s Great Seal need to have the depictions of Indians removed and Indian symbols deleted. And of course, the United States lost in Viet Nam, so we must never again show the Stars and Stripes.

The ‘Stars and Bars’ was not a secessionist flag, it was a Govt Flag. The commonly referred to “Confederate Flag” (red with blue X) was a Soldier’s flag. The flag of soldiers carried no baggage of politics nor govt policy.

It is a flag of Honor and should fly.

BTW, the 1st Amendment is EVERYBODYS, not just mine.

Ah, Valerie, historical revisionism. Something that I thought only liberal, Marxist professors indulged in. The South started the war there is NO debate about that, and secession was and is an act of treason. You may dump your government if unhappy, but carving out yourself a nation is completely another, illegal, matter. You are right that slavery was not Lincoln’s first or even fifth concern—but the economic matters which spurred the war were related. No one could compete with the South because they didn’t pay wages, they enslaved their employees. And the stars and bars stand exactly for that dream of a Southern nation and a cotton hegemony that would keep the money coming its direction. And your claim that there are people who are enslaved now (which is absolutely correct)? Is this the Dixie Defense? Kind of like the Nuremberg Defense?
Personally, if the South wanted to secede now, I would say don’t let the door hit you on the way out. We could really do without the backwater, barely civilized Joe Wilsons and scary, “new model army” Eric Princes of the world. Its citizens could have the militarized theocracy they clamor for. . . Oh, sorry, that’s the Taliban.
And speaking of the Taliban, what if someone showed up with their flag at a tailgate? And the the flag’s apologists said, “If you have a problem with it desecrating the dead, the dead should have stayed at home: no one made them join the armed forces.” The Taliban are rebels too who harbored that bin Laden guy, but weren’t in on the attack; we don’t know their side of the story. They would like their own 12th century caliphate. They didn’t care much for their government either.

The South (Confederacy) did NOT ‘start the war’ though many textbooks and commentaries falsely simplify the process by declaring that the South started the War – apparently without provocation – by firing on Union-held Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor. By the time of that incident – April 12th, 1861 – seven states had already seceded from the Union. It was the consensus of most Northerners and Northern newspapers that secession was a constitutional right even if it might not be the best course of action. An editorial in one newspaper, The Bangor, Maine DAILY UNION, on November 12th, 1860, summed up this belief when it stated: “Union depends for its continuance on the free consent and will of the sovereign people of each state… A state coerced to remain in the Union is a ‘subject province’ and can never be a co-equal member of the American Union”.

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Nelson advised the U.S. Secretary of State that it would be a violation of the Constitution if the President used coercion against any state in an attempt to force it to remain in, or return to, the Union. So why, then, did the Southern troops stationed in Charleston fire upon Fort Sumter when public opinion in both the North and South seemed to be on the side of the secessionists? Well, it all goes back to the purpose of Fort Sumter. Sumter was not a military fort; it protected nothing. Rather, its purpose was the collection of tariffs from ships entering the harbor at Charleston. For the Great War of 1861-65 was fought, like all wars, for MONEY. Abraham Lincoln had been asked shortly after his inauguration why the Southern states should not be allowed to leave the Union in peace. His response was a sarcastic question which can be paraphrased in these words: Let them go? Let them go??! Then where, sir, would I get my revenues? Approximately 75% of federal revenues were collected at Southern ports in the form of tariffs and Charleston was a major collection point through Fort Sumter.

In early December of 1860, President Buchanan signed an agreement with South Carolina’s Congressional representatives that forts Moultrie and Sumter would NOT be reinforced nor would they take aggressive action against Charleston. In return, the forts would not be attacked. Shortly after South Carolina seceded on December 20th, 1860, Major Robert Anderson moved the troops stationed at Fort Moultrie to Fort Sumter in an action that disturbed and puzzled the officials in Charleston. Previous to this, in early December of 1860, President-elect Abraham Lincoln had instructed General Winfield Scott, head of all Federal forces, to prepare a plan to hold or retake the forts after Lincoln’s inauguration on March 4th, 1861 despite the agreement signed by Buchanan. General Scott sent a ship on January 7th, 1861 with supplies and 200 concealed troops to reinforce Sumter which was turned back by fire from South Carolina artillery batteries.

In early February, a very aggressive attack plan was presented to again reinforce Fort Sumter but Buchanan would not agree and his Cabinet declared that such a plan would constitute an act of war and would be interpreted as such by the South. On February 25th, President Jefferson Davis of the Confederacy sent a three-man Peace Commission to Washington to discuss many issues including the transition of Fort Sumter from Union to Confederate hands. Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated on March 4th, 1861 and refused to talk with the members of the Peace Commission who were still trying to make headway in Washington. Lincoln also announced that tariffs would continue to be collected at Fort Sumter for the coffers of the Union regardless of the secession of South Carolina. Indeed, Lincoln even joked that any state could leave the Union so long as it continued to send tariff revenues to Washington! However, Lincoln also made it clear that, unlike previous presidents, he regarded secession to be constitutionally illegal and that he was willing to use military force to prevent or overcome any state that attempted to employ it. Thus, military coercion – the waging of war by the central government against the people and states of the South which had been rejected by the People, the Nation and the Federal Government prior to Lincoln’s inauguration – became the stated intention of that same United States Government under its 16th President.

In a strategy later used by the propagandists of Stalin and Hitler, Lincoln then began leaking stories to supportive Northern newspapers that the Federal troops at Fort Sumter were near starvation and in desperate need of provisions. This was an outright lie and is refuted by the communications and records of Major Anderson himself. Additionally, the records reveal that the merchants in Charleston were daily selling foodstuffs to the garrison at Fort Sumter. Nonetheless, Lincoln’s ploy worked and there was outrage in the North over the mistreatment by South Carolina of the troops at Fort Sumter. The President knew he would need Northern public opinion behind him to engage in a war with the South and he needed a cause celeb, a perceived “criminal act” committed by the South against the Union to outrage the public and change the prevailing opinion. Therefore, he ordered a force of three warships to Charleston to reinforce Sumter with an estimated date of arrival of April 15th. This action left President Jefferson Davis in a quandary. Through reports from his own people he was aware of all this activity by Lincoln and he wanted to avoid being goaded into a position where the South fired the first shot which, of course, was exactly what Lincoln wanted.

Now this is very important to understand! Legally the aggressor in this kind of circumstance is not necessarily the side firing the “first shot” BUT THE SIDE CAUSING THE FIRST SHOT TO BE FIRED. In other words, from the point of view of legality, the South having been forced into a military response was not the aggressor but, sadly, the perception in the North would be just the opposite and would therefore provide the public opinion boost necessary for Lincoln’s war plan. The attack on Fort Sumter was a deep, convoluted and extremely premeditated effort to do just what was done, force the South to fire what were apparently the first shots of the war.

Even at the time there were those who claimed that Lincoln well knew the consequences of his action and deliberately tricked the Confederacy into firing the first shot and there is evidence to support this view mostly from the mouth or pen of Lincoln himself. In May of 1861, he wrote to Captain Gustavus Fox, the commander of the relief expedition to Sumter, “You and I both anticipated that the cause of the country would be advanced by making the attempt to provision Fort Sumter, even if it should fail, and it is no small consolation now to feel that our anticipation is justified by the result.” On July 3rd of that same year, Lincoln confided to Orville H. Browning, a close personal friend, about the plan to supply and reinforce Sumter, “The plan succeeded. They attacked Sumter – it fell, and thus did more service than it otherwise could.”

So much for “revisionist history” and the South starting the war!

Simple, Required. Lets say that the US decided to block Hong Kong with warships and demand a “tariff” on all goods going into China. Do you think that the Chinese would have a justified reason to attack? It would be essentially the same thing. The South had seceeded and decided to form their own country. At that point the South would have been an sovereign nation.

As for the legality of the situation? Its called self-defense. Here’s an analogy. A husband and wife fight all the time, because the husband will not work and the wife pays all the bills. After years of constant turmoil and abuse, the wife decides she wants a divorce and starts to leave. The husband decides that she doesnt have the right to leave and blocks her exit. This doesnt convince the wife to stay, so the escalates the situation by picking up a ballbat, threatens her, and begins moving toward her. The wife realizes that there is no escape. She turns and runs toward the bedroom before he can get to her, grabs a revolver, turns and shoots her husband.

In that situation, the husband was the aggressor even though it was the wife who “fired the first shot”.

Dont forget that it wasnt just the South that was targetted by Lincoln. Northern newspapers often referred to him as King Lincoln. He used the military to violated freedom of the press. He ordered that people be held without charge or trial, often only because the had offended him.

In persuit of the war, he ordered his generals to target civilians. Thefts, murders, and rapes were often ignored, laughed at, and in a few cases, encouraged. Yankee Gen. Butler issued his infamous order that any Southern lady who didnt show Yankee soldiers due respect, were to be arrested as prostitutes. This led to a number of rapes by Union soldiers and if the women, or young girls, reported the crime, they were arrested. Southern men finally had enough and risked summary execution by making an attempt on Butler’s life. Gen. Butler, the coward that he was, ran.

Sadly, so little ACTUAL history is made known by academia and so-called “scholars” of the era. Americans – North AND South – have been (and continue to be) victims of people who cannot permit the facts to come to light lest their cherished beliefs be exposed for the lies that they are.

Nothing is more indicative of this total lack of objective and honest reporting than the drum beat of the institution of slavery being the “real” reason for the South’s secession and the North’s noble sacrifice to save both the “glorious Union” and the downtrodden Negro. But the facts reveal that the whole thing is a charade, a house of cards, a total lie from top to bottom. If the states in the South had wanted to preserve slavery, they would have stayed in the Union after being offered the Corwin Amendment to the Constitution (which some believe was authored by Lincoln) which placed slavery into that document IN PERPETUITY.

As for the Negro and the North, few know anything about the “black codes” which forbade Negroes from remaining in or even entering states like Ohio, Illinois and Massachusetts. Even after the war, when the Mayor of Chicago was offered many well trained blacks to fill the desperate need of that City’s wealthy elites for servants, the offer was refused with the comment that Chicago and Illinois would not accept Southern “ni**ers”.

The information – with source materials (many from the Union side) – is out there folks. You don’t have to remain ignorant – unless you are unwilling to abandon the lies and myths of the winner’s version of history.

And another thing. Mostly unknown today is the fact that there were a large number of people in the north, even those in positions of power – in State legislations, in Congress, the Presidents cabinet – who were in favour of disunion. So, obviously, the ideal of secession, i.e. “disunion”, was hardly new, unusual or illegal.

Consider this taken from a book published in 1866 about the origins of the “late war”:
Of the spirit which really actuated the Republican leaders, the testimony of Mr. Douglas-liable himself to no suspicion of disunionism, and who had been, at the preceding election, the candidate of nearly two-thirds of the Democratic party, in opposition to the express “Southern wing”-affords convincing proof. The following passage is an extract from a letter addressed by him, from Washington, to Mr. Hayes, of Chicago, dated December 29, 1860:

“Many of the Republican leaders desire a dissolution of the Union, and wage a war as a means of accomplishing disunion; while others are Union men in good faith. We have now reached a point where a compromise on the basis of mutual concession, or disunion and war, are inevitable”
But the trouble then, and afterwards, was, that the Republicans who were for the Union voted with those who were for disunion, upon questions tending to promote disunion; thus rendering their own private views of no consequence.
In another letter of Mr. Douglas, addressed to Mr. Taylor, of New York, and dated on the same day, he wrote:
“We are now drifting rapidly into civil war, which must end in disunion. This can only be prevented by amendments to the Constitution, which will take the slavery question out of Congress. Whether this can be done, depends upon the Republicans. Many of their leaders desire disunion on party grounds, and here is the difficulty. God grant us a safe deliverance, is my prayer.”
It makes no difference, so far as these special vaticinations are concerned, that the revolution in the end, as revolutions often have done, took another turn than that originally anticipated. Most men believed, at the time, that the separation would be consummated. But those who had been the most notorious disunionists professed themselves “Union men,”
when it became more likely that the North would “take possession of the Government,” and break down the Constitution in its application to the slave institution of the South. This class of persons is graphically described in the following further extract from a letter of Mr. Douglas, dated at Washington, February 2d, 1861, and addressed to a paper in Tennessee, with the purpose of dissuading the people of that State from taking part with secession:
“You must remember that there are disunionists among the party leaders at the North, as well as at the South; men whose hostility to slavery is stronger than their fidelity to the Constitution, and who believe that the disruption of the Union would draw after it, as an inevitable consequence, civil war, servile insurrection, and finally, the utter extermination of slavery, in all the Southern States. * * * The Northern disunionists, like the disunionists of the South, are violently opposed to all compromises, or constitutional amendments, or efforts at conciliation, whereby peace should be restored and the Union preserved. They are striving to break up the Union, under the pretence of unbounded devotion to it. They are straggling to overthrow the Constitution, while professing undying attachment to it, and a willingness to make any sacrifice to maintain it.”
“They are trying to plunge the country into civil war, as the surest means of destroying the Union, upon the plea of enforcing the laws and protecting the public property. If they can defeat any adjustment or compromise, by which the points at issue may be satisfactorily settled, and keep up the irritation, so as to induce the Border States to follow the cotton States, they will feel certain of the accomplishment of their ultimate designs. Nothing will gratify them so much, or contribute so effectually to their success, as the secession of Tennessee and the Border States. Every State that withdraws from the Union increases the relative power of the Northern abolitionists to defeat a satisfactory adjustment.”

This sanitizing of the secessionists is taking a maudlin turn. I am sure that for every historical argument you present, there is an opposition. But as Jim, in his quoting of various documents notes, this *is* about slavery at some level. Not only that, your arguments that distance this issue are disturbing in the sense that they objectify those who *were* slaves, rendering them as property, and of no consequence in the secession. The abolitionists were unyielding on this argument, as they should have been. But there were plenty of active supporters for slavery as demonstrated by the fact that Missourians effectively flooded the Kansas polls to make sure that Kansas would become a slave state, which it did briefly, but was returned to a free state within months. This sparked the Kansas/Missouri border war, which heralded the most vicious fighting of the war (man-to-man fighting), and gave birth to William Quantrell and Bloody Bill Anderson, who perpetrated a massacre of over 200 noncombatants in Lawrence Kansas and the razing of the town long before Sherman’s March. Ironically Sherman’s adopted brother, a union general, tried to bring peace to the area, but never succeeded. The confederate terrorists—because that is what they were: they decapitated some of their victims, and took trophies of scalps and testicles to hang on their horses’ bridles—were allegedly defending Missouri farmers who had their slaves liberated by abolitionists in Kansas. Of course the abolitionists had John Brown and his sons, but they didn’t wreak sheer carnage that Quantrill and his raiders did, raiders such as Jesse and Frank James. This battle WAS about slavery, and Quantrill had full support of the secessionist government that gave him an honorary commission.
I am no apologist for how blacks (please NOT Negros: what century are we in?) were treated by some in the North, but they were not enslaved. Regardless of the northern government’s position, abolitionists effectively rendered this war to be about slavery. And if one defends South’s secession, one must defend the South’s position on slavery because it is part and parcel of split between North and South.

Oh how I feel for with the poor, oppressed, misunderstood, dead white southern slave owners of the 19th century. This is me, rolling my eyes as hard as I can.

Judging people of other ages by today’s morality (or lack thereof) is not only unjust, but stupid. People of every age should be judged by the standard of that age. Furthermore, if one does that, one must find as much (if not more) “moral fault” with the slave TRADERS than with the slave owners. Remember, slavery was an acceptable institution that had been present throughout the ages. It is hardly credible to suddenly decide that Southern slavery was an exceptional situation.

Yet, even using MODERN moral standards, one must acknowledge (however hard it may be) that most slave owners treated their “chattels” on the whole better than Northern industrialists treated their own “wage slaves”! Now whether that was because the slave owner was himself a Christian – like Stonewall Jackson – or simply a shrewd fellow who was not about to “damage” expensive goods is beside the point. The simple fact is, you see many plantation records reporting slaves reaching ages far above the Biblical three score and ten. Indeed, one such record on the Gamble plantation listed a slave as being 100 years old! Given that the lifespan of the day was considerably short of 55, such records preclude pervasive inhumane treatment of slaves or even the charge of planter’s “selling off” unproductive slaves. One has to wonder just how much work a hundred year old slave could do in a day!

On the other hand, the “masses” of laborers used in the factories, mills and mines of Northern merchants were entirely expendable. Their safety and welfare was of NO concern to their “employers”. In fact, many Southern planters were starting to look seriously at instituting a system which did not require feeding, housing and caring for slaves and their families but “hiring” the useful and abandoning the rest to fend for themselves. It would have been INFINITELY CHEAPER for the planters to have such a system since paying the wages of house or field workers would not have been nearly as expensive as paying for their keep for life.

It is most probable that if war had not come, within a few decades, this is the way that Southern economics would have gone. Black field workers and even better trained and educated house servants would still have been in evidence, but the old – and expensive – system of slavery would have been replaced by a more “modern” Northern system of hire, use and discard. Certainly, there were far more blacks available than jobs for them to fill and since those who refused to work and could not support themselves would have been charged as vagrants and imprisoned or driven out, there would have been no shortage of “willing” employees. Of course, the old, the sick and the lame would have simply been out of luck, just as their economic counterparts were in the North.

So let’s stop with the violins all the weeping about the “evils” of slavery, shall we? It was a fact of life in other places than the American South and certainly the American North was equally responsible for the nation’s involvement in the trade. Furthermore, however hard it was for those who suffered under it, there were worse fates as even a superficial examination of the matter will testify – while those who had slaves as ancestors clearly profited from their forefathers’ misfortune.

I’m with you Driver. The true colors of this argument were revealed by Valerie’s last post. Here’s the argument: Slaves lived long lives therefore they must have been treated right. One could say the same thing about various horses I have owned, and the emphasis is on the word OWNED. Human beings do not OWN other human beings: it is immoral, no matter what your old testament tells you. The Abolitionists did have a moral compass that the Southern Slave OWNERS lacked. Period. Not all may have not seen freed slaves as social equals, but they had the humanity that the south lacked, well into the 1960s with Jim Crow and lynchings. They realized what Europeans realized much earlier: owning human beings diminishes your own humanity. And I am judging the period by some of its morals, the morals that state that you can’t grab a person from another country or region, or a person can’t grab you, and sell you into servitude.
And yes, Africans did sell Africans, but it is a logical fallacy to excuse the sins of the south because of the sins of tribal warfare that resulted in captives being sold. I mean, really, this is a horrible defense.
And I take exception to the allegation that I know nothing about the border war. I have studied it for years, and the Jayhawkers’ raids paled in comparison to Quantrill’s atrocities, i.e. Centralia, MO: several union soldiers home on leave (Missouri was split between union and secessionists) were pulled from a train, lead into a field, shot, decapitated, and their heads were placed on others’ bodies, and fence posts. These men were unarmed. And there is plenty of evidence that Quantrill’s raiders raped women and burned out families (which was essentially banishing them to a slow death during this time period) who were composed of only women and children. As one witness said, “it would have been better if they had shot us all; many starved that winter.” They was little or no social support system for those burned out by the raiders. They also castrated men, albeit men over 16, so I suppose that makes it OK.
And yes, the Abolitionists in the north had an investment in making Kansas a Free State, so what? We are supposed apologize for that? My family was one of immigrant families that moved to Kansas because of help from an immigration agent in the north. And my family suffered because they were Europeans who did not believe in slavery: they were burned out in the raid on Lawrence. So this is a personal issue, and one that I probably don’t have much objectivity on. But my family was on the side of civilization and the angels, so to speak, and that makes me proud. The south can’t claim this, nor its revisionist supporters—which makes you a fascist I suppose if the the founder fathers were socialists: give me a ad hominem break here, OK? Do you even know what a socialist is? What socialist democracy is? Oh, that’s Germany! And it’s Ireland. And it’s the UK. Heavens, bring on the collective farms and indoctrination, the death panels! We are such idiots. We bandy these terms around like fourth graders fighting on a playground, yelling insults they don’t even understand at each other.
I’m off to burn Atlanta with Driver

Your atrocity is bigger than ours. Our victimization was worse than yours. The execution of Mosby’s men. The kidnapping of hundreds of mill worker women and children by Sherman from New Manchester and Roswell Georgia and thier forced relocation in Ohio to fend for themselves. The refusal of Lincoln to continue to exchange POWs which created the place called Andersonville.

We can go on and on about this, but getting back to the issue of the thread topic, Prof Patterson is wrong about his assumptions and opinions, as they are emotion based, not factual.

This goes out to Mr Daniel Patterson, who has so far to date remained in the shadows…

- Sir, based on the above, which started this long informative and ery educational discussion, which is based on your emotional views, I must ask the following:
Do you teach your classes based on emotions and feelings, or do you use facts anchored in sound historical and scientific data, with research and an open mind seeking truth?

SanityRequired,

As CLEARLY and PLAINLY offered above, the reasons behind my flag defense stand as they are – with facts and links. Pictures and evidence.

You choose to ignore them, fine, kinda like a horse to water scenario, belittling my efforts and simplifying my position, I am sure I will lose some sleep tonite. However, in the case of what Patterson says and my rebuttal to it proves I stand on truth and all else presented here is opinion amd speculation.

SanityRequired

Thanks and no problem. It is a fine and civil discussion we are having, and we are all better for it. You make a great point in your stance, and while we will probably not change anyone’s minds, perhaps the rougher edges have been trimmed away for a clearer picture of opposing camps.

I think I would like to be witness to a similar discussion between the CBF Tailgater and Mr Patterson. Hopefully these verbal exercizes will take precidence over hysteria and stereotyping that only lead to hardening of minds and continuing division.

Thanks & God Bless
Billy Bearden

SanityRequired said,
“Your defense of the flag is not based on critical thinking; it is based on your “southern pride,” on your trumpeting your heritage, your persistence in letting us all know that the south was wronged, that we don’t really understand history. That is an emotional appeal…” September 28, 2009 at 9:43 pm

The offensive against the Noble Banner of the South (NBS) is also based on emotional appeal, and not critical thinking.
The National Association of the Always Complaining People (naacp) only complaint is “it is a painful reminder of slavery.” Hhhmmm. Well, then there must also be pleasant reminders of slavery. Because the tanned klan (naacp) give their blessings to other so-called “slave museums” all around the country. One would think, based on the naacp’s constant complaints about the NBS, that ALL reminders of slavery would be painful and, therefore, they would oppose them all.
Yet, they do not oppose “slave museums”. In fact they support them wholeheartedly. We can only conclude that they, these museums, must be a “pleasant reminder of slavery”.
I aint wrong and you know it!

Billy Bearden, Valerie Protopapas, “Josephine Southern,” and Jimmy Shirley spend their days scouring the internet looking for discussions such as this one so that they can jump in with the same old cut-and-pasted arguments. Anyone who spends any time on Civil War websites knows every name and argument by heart by now. None of them live anywhere close to Michigan. It’s kind of sad, really.

Sanity Required, really displays how bad the educations system is in the United States of America. Maybe he or she should read: “Southern by the Grace of God”,”The South was Right”, and the book wrote by my black friend entitled “Why I wave the Confederate Flag”. Yes I said black not African American becasue he is American and not from Africa. His ancestors were from Africa! Succession not unconstitutional, raising troops against your own country unconstitutional. The Southern states left the Union just like the entire country left the Indian giving Anglo-Saxon English. After all when Lincoln was a senator he made the direct quote: “Any people that feel the need to uprise and form a new nation should have that right”. And let us not forget the infamous quote from the Northern general and slave owner Ulysses S. Grant. Grant was asked why he kept his slaves after Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, he repied with, “Good help is hard to come by.” The Confederate Battle flag was square not rectangle. The “rebel flag” rectangle version was never flown on the battlefield for it was flown on the navy. I could really go on for days about what is not taught and what is covered up by Yankee propaganda. Yankee by the way was a Cherokee word meaning English, which if one does their research will find out that the Union had a lot of outside help in the “War Between the States”. Note that the English had a hand in its victory, and if anyone ever paid attention to where the majority of the English settled in the Americas as to where the Scottish and Irish settled in the Americas one would see how its a classic battle of English vs. Scotch/Irish. After all it is St. Andrew’s Cross on the Confederate Flag. The Confederate flag isn’t “ethnicitist”! I dubbed that word since race refers to the human race, not ethnicity. I don’t care what the KKK used it for, they can’t change the meaning of the flag and heritage it carries for those who know the truth. It can only manipulate ingnorant and or lazy people’s interpretation and misrepresented opinions against it. After all most people don’t realize that there were seven different big movements of the KKK and that each one stood for something very different. Much like the history of presidential terms in the country’s askewed “history”. Goodnight, and God Bless All, and please people do some actual research and get educated on a topic before discussing it. Don’t speak of what you know nothing about! SPERO-MELIORA!