Tailgate Weekly Debate Topic:

[I Like Soup]

This is not a hypothetical, it is a direct answer to your question about issues with the American flag and brutalities, but the current US flag wasnt adopted until 1960. Now if you look at it from a foreign point of view, your opinion of the current flag may have a different meaning.

 

Hell, you can make arguments about the US flag and genocide with the American Indians, and have issues with it due to slavery. Perch is exactly right that history IS written by the victors, and in this case the South lost and is no longer a country.

 

Actually, that is the point of view I was looking at it when SEC wrote that.

 

Anyway, I'm sure when Custer was running around killing Indians in the 1870's, and in general the wars on the American Indians in to the mid 1880's, there was no mistaking the United States flag and what it stood for, albeit with less stars.

 

As for the debate question, I do feel the Confederate flag isn't appropriate in public buidlings, but it does have it's place in American history, whether right or wrong.

Edited March 22, 2011 by I Like Soup

[BeeR]

I'd take issue with this. Lincoln fully intended that the defeated confederacy would not be "punished" but readmitted as fast as possible.

Which is meaningless re. the statement "Surrender in 1865 was followed by a plethora of punitive measures against the ‘slave’ states," since he died. In fact, even that statement is kind; the North often treated the South very unjustly after the war.

 

As for the flag itself, it has been co-opted by all sorts of buffoons and is no longer the banner of incredible bravery, which it most assuredly was, but rather the banner of racism and intolerance. A sad thing to happen to an honorable emblem.

True enough.

 

And while the Nazi comparisons are more than a little dicey, there is something to be said for the Nazi soldiers who were brave and honorable men who were simply brave and patriotic and did not really know/realize the disgusting tenets of the leaders they were directed by...as with many of the Confederate soldiers. Very few Southerners actually owned slaves, but in those days, the world wasn't nearly so "small" and if you think that North vs South thing is big in America now, lol. It's hardly a whisper of what it was then, to put it mildly.

 

 

The American flag flew over the White House and every other public building in the land during Jim Crow, so let's ban that too. It's absurd that the Confederate flag should represent just one aspect of a certain period in time, but the race hustlers have pretty much won that argument. The Georgia flag was completely changed because Zell Miller caved to pressure from the NAACP. To me it seems like that gang occasionally runs out of things to be pissed off about, so they brainstorm and come up with new targets.

Well duh. Race card: all powerful baby. Remember: 2 wrongs make a right.

 

I am not for banning it.

 

I am against using the flag as a substitite for the American flag that seems to be part of the lawsuit in the original article. The confederate flag is a part of US history and should not be banned simply because others have usurped its purpose. However, when and in what context it is used is very important in its symbology and purpose.

 

if it is used to truly display a sense of history like the Daughters of the Confederacy, then by all means! If it is used by a skinhead group to incite a violent reaction then I would be against it morally, but recognize their right to do so for free speech.

 

More than anything I am sad that a symbol of our history ( and the flag that some of the best military minds in the history of the US fought under) has been corrupted and used as a political football because some hood-wearing idiots used it as a banner to spread their hate-filled message.

Well said.

Edited March 22, 2011 by BeeR