Fatal shooting Charleston SC

[Cackalacky]

Mississippi to propose removal of Confederate emblem from state flag | US news | The Guardian

 

[NDgradstudent]

The question is why should it be on government property by the capital. It can be in a museum, people can paint their car like the general lee, or their living room or fly it in their front yard.

But memorials (owned and paid for by the government and on government property) are okay? Street names are okay?

 

[Cackalacky]

 

[pkt77242]

But memorials (owned and paid for by the government and on government property) are okay? Street names are okay?

Personally I don't think that it should "fly" on government property. What do you mean by street names? I have no problem with General Lee St. or Stonewall Jackson Dr. (not sure if those are real street names, I just made them up right now). As has been discussed in this thread the people fighting the war are very much a different topic then the flag. I would probably be against Confederate Flag Way.

 

[pumpdog20]

So Graham has broken out with a case of John Wafflehouse Kerry Syndrome.

Well the president has had opinions that have evolved, no reason anyone else can't either.

 

[GoldenDome]

TYT said it best on this issue. Fox News continues to embarrass themselves and their viewers.

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/V6SOdFrvWpI" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

 

[IrishJayhawk]

Personally I don't think that it should "fly" on government property. What do you mean by street names? I have no problem with General Lee St. or Stonewall Jackson Dr. (not sure if those are real street names, I just made them up right now). As has been discussed in this thread the people fighting the war are very much a different topic then the flag. I would probably be against Confederate Flag Way.

In fact...

409 Stonewall Jackson Dr, Wilmington, NC 28412 is Recently Sold | Zillow

8438 Stonewall Jackson Drive, Jonesboro, GA For Sale | Trulia.com

11600 Stonewall Jackson Drive, Spotsylvania, VA | Trulia.com

102 Stonewall Jackson Drive, Elizabethton, TN 37643 - HotPads

714 Stonewall Jackson Drive, Conroe TX 77302 - HAR.com

201 General Robert E Lee St, Stanley, NC 28164 is Off Market | Zillow

Check this one out...
201 General Robert E Lee St, Stanley, NC 28164 is Off Market | Zillow

General Lee intersects with several other generals.

 

[ulukinatme]

The bottom line in the South Carolina Confederate flag debate is this:

There are two sides to it. On one side are the people who see the flag as symbolic of the racism that at one time was just a part of everyday life in the South.

On the other side are those people who see the flag as symbolic of their ancestors' fight to maintain their way of life, not all of which was racist. And they have a point.

The problem is that they both have valid points. But no matter that the "historians" have a point about the flag's ancestral value; the hatred, intolerance, and downright abuse that it also stands for should outweigh their "honor". The sooner that both sides acknowledge this, the better things will be.

Well said. I didn't grow up in the South, nor have I ever lived there, but I acknowledge that the Confederate flag has come to stand for something other than slavery in recent years. It's a symbol of Southern pride for many, but the unfortunate fact is it's also a symbol associated with slavery and the Civil War which will forever tarnish it's legacy. Much like #Gamergate and the retaliation of a few idiots against some women in that industry, the symbol has been sullied and at one point it could no longer be redeemed because of the actions/words of a few outspoken individuals. In cases like this the vocal minority are heard the loudest, and as a result it probably is time for the "Southern Pride" side to accept that the flag needs to go.

Even though I'm not from the South I always identified more with the other side that viewed the flag as a symbol of their current way of life, not the way of life they once defended. Whenever I saw the flag being displayed the people displaying it were not promoters of racism or segregation, they were just normal people that loved the South or they were "rednecks." I think the damage has been done though, and it's impossible to take that flag back as it continues to be used for racist agendas.

 

[Bogtrotter07]

"they're not shit on the damage we can apparently do to ourselves on a regular basis."

Not to get off topic but I quoted that because we practically created ISIS so in a way, we did do that to ourselves.

Speaking of ISIS being practically created by us is an excellent point. But again when you say "us" clarify. Because there are some elements of US policy, administration, and political force that were incredibly instrumental, as opposed to others. Isn't that true?

I want to make sure I am not perceived as talking politics here, civilian or military. Because the bulk of the "us" that caused the room for ISIS to grow and flourish, is above what we see as politics; just as the group that fomented insurrection in the south in the late 1850's was, also.

 

[Emcee77]

Why should the "hatred" outweigh the "honor"? Lots of people believe that the American flag is a symbol of racism, genocide, etc.- how many have the believe that for us to take the American flag down? How many people have to be offended for us to rename streets, destroy memorials, and burn flags?

This is probably neg-reppable disingenuineness, possibly trolling. You seem like too smart a guy to make such a specious analogy.

I thought about responding but (a) I don't want to feed a troll and (b) there's not really a controversy to discuss anymore.

Once politically sacrosanct, Confederate flag moves toward an end - The Washington Post

The GOP’s remarkably rapid political shift on the Confederate flag - The Washington Post

 

[Bogtrotter07]

Why should the "hatred" outweigh the "honor"? Lots of people believe that the American flag is a symbol of racism, genocide, etc.- how many have the believe that for us to take the American flag down? How many people have to be offended for us to rename streets, destroy memorials, and burn flags?

Are you serious?

 

[Emcee77]

The bottom line in the South Carolina Confederate flag debate is this:

There are two sides to it. On one side are the people who see the flag as symbolic of the racism that at one time was just a part of everyday life in the South.

On the other side are those people who see the flag as symbolic of their ancestors' fight to maintain their way of life, not all of which was racist. And they have a point.

The problem is that they both have valid points. But no matter that the "historians" have a point about the flag's ancestral value; the hatred, intolerance, and downright abuse that it also stands for should outweigh their "honor". The sooner that both sides acknowledge this, the better things will be.

I can't remember the last time I've seen eye-to-eye with kmoose, but this is pretty close to how I see it.

 

[NDohio]

Here is a really good article written by a radio personality in Charleston. He used to defend the flag.

The ‘Southern Avenger’ Repents: I Was Wrong About the Confederate Flag - The Daily Beast

 

[pkt77242]

Confederate battle flag: What it is and what it isn't - CNN.com

 

[Bogtrotter07]

I'm sorry, isn't this exactly the point I was making?



Right, which is why I said said it makes sense to me that people would want to remove all symbols related to the Confederacy.

Thank you for giving me a shot to explain my point.

Yes most actors selected their side based upon state loyalty versus union, and a lot of other motivations were stirred up to use as justifications for a) treason; and b) an immoral offensive war. But if the originators had anything but a motivation to preserve slavery, and only that issue when they manipulated the American population, there is no evidence supporting any alternative.

The sole reason for all the activities that led to the civil war was slavery. Period. Therefore the only reason for the civil war was to protect slavery, the subjugation of an entire group of dark skinned people, for economic and personal reward. It doesn't matter what reason is used. Everyone was aware that the slavery issue was central.

My first wife had some ancestors from Kansas, three brothers who served for the Union at Antietam(Sharpsburg), Gettysburg, and in a number of other engagements. I had a chance to read many of their preserved letters. Anyone who has done so, knows that these people were aware of how central the issue of slavery was to their fighting and sacrifice.

The original point was that that flag of the Army of Northern Va., was created as a result of a social, political, then military movement that came into existence solely to protect slavery. And then subsequent points that its popularity soared in the early and mid twentieth century as it was promoted by racist, anti-desegregationist, and others is even more clearly correct.

No one can honestly claim that banner is anything but a symbol of racism. And anyone that says that that is all the American flag is, is a traitorous piece of shit. America has been far from perfect, but I don't think there is a parallel between what the American Flag stand for, and that of any other on the face of the earth, past or present.

 

[IrishLax]

Thank you for giving me a shot to explain my point.

Yes most actors selected their side based upon state loyalty versus union, and a lot of other motivations were stirred up to use as justifications for a) treason; and b) an immoral offensive war. But if the originators had anything but a motivation to preserve slavery, and only that issue when they manipulated the American population, there is no evidence supporting any alternative.

The sole reason for all the activities that led to the civil war was slavery. Period. Therefore the only reason for the civil war was to protect slavery, the subjugation of an entire group of dark skinned people, for economic and personal reward. It doesn't matter what reason is used. Everyone was aware that the slavery issue was central.

My first wife had some ancestors from Kansas, three brothers who served for the Union at Antietam(Sharpsburg), Gettysburg, and in a number of other engagements. I had a chance to read many of their preserved letters. Anyone who has done so, knows that these people were aware of how central the issue of slavery was to their fighting and sacrifice.

The original point was that that flag of the Army of Northern Va., was created as a result of a social, political, then military movement that came into existence solely to protect slavery. And then subsequent points that its popularity soared in the early and mid twentieth century as it was promoted by racist, anti-desegregationist, and others is even more clearly correct.

No one can honestly claim that banner is anything but a symbol of racism. And anyone that says that that is all the American flag is, is a traitorous piece of shit. America has been far from perfect, but I don't think there is a parallel between what the American Flag stand for, and that of any other on the face of the earth, past or present.

I read every word of this post, and I still have no idea what we supposedly disagree on.

I've explicitly stated similar stuff on the Civil War in other threads that predate this one where that was a point of discussion. I'm honestly a bit of a Civil War buff, and I strongly doubt that there is anything anyone will post here on the conflict itself that will add to my knowledge base on that.

Maybe the point of my recent posts was unclear... what I was trying to communicate is that the idea of "good guys vs bad guys" is total bullshit. If anything, it is "bad guys vs bad guys." The amount of immoral fuckups that had leading roles in the Union is astounding. Lincoln was anti-black, and that narrative has been almost hilariously altered over the course of history. Initially, he was against the expansion of slavery, but nothing else. He didn't want it ended, he believed blacks were an inferior race that needed to be kept separate from whites at all cost, and he didn't have any strong moral objections to slavery. Over time and with many discussions with Frederick Douglass his position gradually evolved on some of those issues... but he was WAY behind the curve, not leading the charge, on emancipation and civil rights. His Emancipation Proclamation was a strategic para-military move against the Confederacy, nothing more. It specifically only affected slaves in those states and slaves continued to be legally held in Union states until the 13th Amendment years later. Why not free ALL the slaves if his goals were morality driven?

So I take offense of people singling out guys like Calhoun as "racist" when you could pin the same label on Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, etc. It's hypocritical and ignorant of the times. All WASPs were racist as hell in that era.

 

[BGIF]

Alabama governor orders Confederate flags taken down - CNNPolitics.com

Four Confederate flags were removed from a state Capitol monument today at 8:20 am on the order of Gov. Bentley. A spokesperson said the move was permanent.

Bravo Gov. Bentley!

 

[BGIF]

Roof wanted to start a civil war, he might have finally brought closure to one.

 

[Emcee77]

So I take offense of people singling out guys like Calhoun as "racist" when you could pin the same label on Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, etc. It's hypocritical and ignorant of the times. All WASPs were racist as hell in that era.

Right, I get it, and I agree.

There are serious objections to be made to putting up monuments of Confederate figures. As Jayhawk put it (I think Lax may have misinterpreted this post):

I think there's a difference between being products of their time and being a general in the army that was fighting to keep slaves.

There is a sense in which a statue of a Confederate general is not very different from displaying a Confederate flag on government land. It can send a perfectly appropriate message to educated people, about heritage and duty to one's home state, but it sends the wrong kind of message to the most ignorant people, and the unfortunate consequences of that latter message may outweigh any benefit to sending the former kind of message. Obviously a statue of Washington or Jefferson doesn't celebrate any aspect of their racism, as a statue of a Confederate general in uniform on a horse holding up a sabre may seem to do.

But just calling a Confederate general or statesman "racist" fails to make any useful point. It just doesn't accomplish what it is trying to do. Obviously, many of the Union generals and statesmen were also "racist" by today's standards, so you get nowhere by writing "racist" on a statue of Calhoun.

You might as well write "sexist." No doubt he believed that women shouldn't be able to vote; so did most people in the mid-nineteenth century. It doesn't make it right, but applying the label just doesn't make any meaningful criticism.

EDIT: Let me be clear, I'm not necessarily saying that we should take down all statues of Confederate generals or statesmen. I'm just saying, there is an intelligent way to argue for that and an ignorant way, and spray-painting "racist" on a statue of a Confederate figure is the ignorant way.

 

[Cackalacky]

Alabama governor orders Confederate flags taken down - CNNPolitics.com

Four Confederate flags were removed from a state Capitol monument today at 8:20 am on the order of Gov. Bentley. A spokesperson said the move was permanent.

Bravo Gov. Bentley!

Wow...the ball is rolling.

 

[NDgradstudent]

Wow...the ball is rolling.

So I assume no more Civil War battlefields (which are federal parks) can sell Confederate flags, either? They have done so forever, of course, but they probably will not survive The Revolution.

 

[Whiskeyjack]

Why should the "hatred" outweigh the "honor"? Lots of people believe that the American flag is a symbol of racism, genocide, etc.- how many have the believe that for us to take the American flag down? How many people have to be offended for us to rename streets, destroy memorials, and burn flags?

You seem to be concerned with trends here. I'm usually also dismayed when a small emotivist minority of internet SJWs successfully bullies a spineless politician or school administrator into removing an historical or traditional symbol. But that's not what's happening here. Racism and the oppression of non-WASPy peoples are definitely parts of American history, but there are very few Americans who feel that our flag is primarily a symbol of those sins.

In the Deep South, African-Americans make up, on average, about 25% of the population. The Confederate Battle Flag symbolizes for them many of the same things that the Swastika symbolizes for the Jews. So to the extent that state governments in the American South continue to endorse the flag as a collective symbol, it sends a powerfully negative message about a very large demographic within those very regions.

So to answer your question directly, if someday a quarter of all American citizens come to associate Old Glory primarily with racism and genocide, then it will probably be time to discard it as a symbol of our nation. But that is extremely unlikely to happen.

So I assume no more Civil War battlefields (which are federal parks) can sell Confederate flags, either? They have done so forever, of course, but they probably will not survive The Revolution.

Nonsense. The Confederate Battle Flag will not need to be white-washed from federal parks anymore than the Swastika has been from federal museums.

The NYT's Ross Douthat just published a relevant article titled "For the South, Against the Confederacy":

“The American South has always been the most barbaric, backward region in any developed democracy,” Vox’s Dave Roberts tweeted in the midst of a long day of Confederate flag talk on Twitter yesterday. “Can we admit that now?”

Roberts is Southern-raised himself, a point he hastened to add, and I very much am not: The Douthat family has roots in Virginia way back when, but my branch drifted west through Arkansas to California, and my mother’s family are deep New Englanders, as far from Dixie in body and soul as you can get. I had ancestors fighting on both sides in the War of Southern Intransigence, but I identify as a Connecticut Yankee, and my fourteen-year-old self wanted to fix bayonets on Little Round Top, not charge to doom and glory with George Pickett.

But I am a cultural conservative, and I think that qualifies me to say something, at least, about the question of southron “backwardness” and its implications for how we think about the region and its past. Because it’s both the case that Roberts is right — by any Whig-history standard, the American South has always been well behind the times — and the case this backwardness explains part of the South’s distinctive appeal, not only to racial revanchists (though certainly to them), but to anyone looking for an alternative to the master narrative of American history, a kind of domestic Otherland in which certain things lost in the march of progress might be found.

If you’ve never felt dissatisfied enough with progress to go looking for these things, then the appeal of anything tangentially connected to Dixie can seem entirely mystifying … and especially its appeal to non-southerners, who don’t even have the ancestral excuse for valorizing the land of slaveholding and segregation.

But people who have gone looking, whose Tocquevillian rue about what modernity homogenizes and grinds away has sent them questing for alternatives, often find in the South scattered elements of the case against progress that they’re searching for. Some of these elements are intellectual — the line running back from Wendell Berry through the Southern Agrarians to Jefferson, for instance, is one of the strongest counter-narratives available to any American dissatisfied with liberal and libertarian visions of human flourishing today. (I didn’t say it was all that strong, mind you.) Others are those features of Southern culture that can make the rest of America seem dull or flat or hollowed-out by comparison: The literature and poetry, the music in all its varied forms, the religious and metaphysical horizons, the folkways and the manners, the food (the food, the food), everything about Louisiana, and the enduring martial culture on which the wider nation’s military has long relied (and still relies today).

And from the conservative’s perspective, crucially, these elements and features seem to exist and flourish, enriching the lives of all Americans, precisely because of Southern “backwardness.” They are not, as Roberts implied in a follow-up tweet praising his native region’s “music & literature & art,” somehow incidental to its distinctive, slow-to-modernize history. Rather they take the forms they do because the South’s trajectory has been different, because it stands apart.

Which leads to the temptation, to which many southerners and not a few cultural conservatives have succumbed, to regard the Confederate States of America as the political and historical champion of all these attractive Southern distinctives, the road not taken down which they might have flourished more fully, and to invent narratives in which Robert E. Lee’s soldiers fought and died for God, chivalry, states rights, Mardi Gras and Low Country cuisine and the philosophy and poetry of Allen Tate. Again, the progressive mind understandably finds this temptation bizarre and mysterious, but the conservative mind does not: Even a secession-hating Yankee like myself has felt, at certain moments, the pull of that idea, the lure of that fantasy …

… which is precisely why it’s so important for conservatives to keep their eyes fixed on the actual realities of the Southern cause, in which certain things worth loving were subsumed, leagues-deep, by the explicit, unstinting defense of ideas and practices and institutions that deserved to die a thousand deaths and be buried without honor. Fixing our eyes thus leads to uncomfortable conclusions about conservatism in American history: It requires acknowledging that the most culturally conservative region in our country, the place that most manifests certain of tradition’s virtues, does so against a historical backdrop of cruelty and corruption that modeled nothing except the machinery of hell. But only with that acknowledgment can you get to a place where the virtues of Southern exceptionalism can be appreciated honestly (rather than with constant elisions and omissions); where the case for some forms of “backwardness” can be made with a clean conscience; and where a future true to the fullness of the Southern past can be mapped out.

The Confederacy, and the cruel way of life for which it fought and fell, is not the lost Southern alternative to modern American civilization. It’s the reason the American South couldn’t offer, and didn’t deserve to offer, such an alternative. Which is an excellent argument, one among many, for why the southland’s conservative friends and admirers should be eager to see its flag furled and put away.

 

[kmoose]

So I assume no more Civil War battlefields (which are federal parks) can sell Confederate flags, either? They have done so forever, of course, but they probably will not survive The Revolution.

Why would you assume that? Has any retailer been barred from selling confederate flags? Businesses made the decision to stop selling a controversial product. It's not like the government banned the sale of them.

 

[ACamp1900]

I'm glad grad is here, without him I'd have never known about the grand ole conspiracy... first, they'll take our flags, next they'll take the right to vote away from the white man... has been confirmed.

 

[NDohio]

So I assume no more Civil War battlefields (which are federal parks) can sell Confederate flags, either? They have done so forever, of course, but they probably will not survive The Revolution.

Do you have a brother named Pat?

 

[ACamp1900]

I'm honestly curious to find out which IE leftist grad actually is.......

 

[pkt77242]

Pol: Charleston victims 'waited their turn to be shot' - CNNPolitics.com

 

[GoldenDome]

Typical fear monger argument. What are you so afraid of?

 

[Bogtrotter07]

Here is a really good article written by a radio personality in Charleston. He used to defend the flag.

The ‘Southern Avenger’ Repents: I Was Wrong About the Confederate Flag - The Daily Beast

With my rep I said, "Wow! What an incredible article." It was so good that I wanted to quote a portion of it here. It is an extremely good point for those among us who can't admit we are racist, or have racist tendencies. (As opposed to those of us who do admit it!)

But in all these threads about all these topics, in which race plays a part, I see that it breaks down to political loyalty or personal prejudice. So much so that you can almost predict who will say what (generally), in each. But all these threads are tied together, and our comments are really more about ourselves (and our prejudices) than the matter at hand :

I said the flag was about states’ rights. I said it stood for self-determination. I said it honored heritage.

I argued the Confederate flag wasn’t about race. I believed it. Millions of well-meaning Southerners believe it too.

I was wrong. That flag is always about race. Whatever political or historical points the flag’s defenders make, there will never be a time—and never has been a time—in which millions of Americans have looked at that symbol and not seen hatred.

We can argue for the rest of time whether this is fair or not. And for the rest of time, that symbol will still be seen in an overwhelmingly negative light.

Those who see hatred have political and historical reasons too.

This has always been the Confederate flag debate game. One camp’s arguments are supposed to trump the other’s.

I’m not here to settle those arguments. I tired of them years ago.

But I am here to say there is something at stake far more important than this symbol.

Heritage might not be hate. But battling hate is far more important than anyone’s heritage, politics, or just about anything else. We should have different priorities.

I now have different priorities.

Dylann Roof is a reminder of what’s at stake.

***

The week before a white supremacist murdered nine black men and women in my hometown of Charleston, I was angry at my fellow conservatives.

A 14-year-old black girl attending a pool party in McKinney, Texas, had been manhandled and thrown to the ground by a police officer. The girl had done nothing except talk. She was just standing there with other teenagers.

It was revolting to watch. I asked others to imagine it was their daughter.

The overwhelming response was that she was a “thug” who was “no saint” and needed to be taught “respect.” The comments were as revolting as the act—an adult mob praising the assault of a 100-pound, half-naked and scared black kid. I pleaded again for people to stop defending this. It got uglier.

It bothered me greatly, probably because at one time I might have done the same thing.

In my role as a conservative radio personality, I would’ve likely joined in in calling a group of excited black teenagers, or protesters, “thugs.” I might have called illegal immigrants criminals or worse. Muslims would’ve been slandered as terrorists.

Ugliness was a stock-in-trade.

I thought a big part of being conservative meant picking a “side” and attacking the other. I thought not caring what others thought or felt was part of it. Some of my Confederate flag debates certainly reflected that mentality.

This is something ideologues do and is by no means exclusive to the right, as evidenced by the way some liberals cartoonishly portray conservatives, Christians, and, yes, Southerners.

Ideologues ridicule and dehumanize people at the expense of their personhood. Ideologues believe some groups must be attacked, and although the groups are comprised of flesh-and-blood human beings, it’s better not to think of them as people too much—it could get you off message.

It’s crude collectivist thinking. It’s an intentional lack of sympathy. It’s dehumanization. It’s at the heart of everything that’s wrong with our politics and culture.

In its most extreme form, it’s what’s wrong with Dylann Roof.

So I have come up with a litmus test to determine if any member is racist :

A) Do any of you believe that a girl in a bikini holding a beach towel, standing with her friends and laughing is a thug?

B) Do you believe "blacks" or "African-Americans" have it too easy today?

C) Do you believe that any discussion point should or could be argued because there are automatically two (legitimate and moral) points to every argument?

If you answered yes to any of these, you probably had racist tendencies that others pick up even if you don't see it.

PS : You could add a fourth question, "Do you not know the difference between a "voluntary ban" and a "prohibition"?

 

[IrishLax]

There is a sense in which a statue of a Confederate general is not very different from displaying a Confederate flag on government land. It can send a perfectly appropriate message to educated people, about heritage and duty to one's home state, but it sends the wrong kind of message to the most ignorant people, and the unfortunate consequences of that latter message may outweigh any benefit to sending the former kind of message. Obviously a statue of Washington or Jefferson doesn't celebrate any aspect of their racism, as a statue of a Confederate general in uniform on a horse holding up a sabre may seem to do.

Hmm... you're a smart man Emcee... may have just changed my opinion on this whole thing.

But just calling a Confederate general or statesman "racist" fails to make any useful point. It just doesn't accomplish what it is trying to do. Obviously, many of the Union generals and statesmen were also "racist" by today's standards, so you get nowhere by writing "racist" on a statue of Calhoun.

You might as well write "sexist." No doubt he believed that women shouldn't be able to vote; so did most people in the mid-nineteenth century. It doesn't make it right, but applying the label just doesn't make any meaningful criticism.

EDIT: Let me be clear, I'm not necessarily saying that we should take down all statues of Confederate generals or statesmen. I'm just saying, there is an intelligent way to argue for that and an ignorant way, and spray-painting "racist" on a statue of a Confederate figure is the ignorant way.

Yeah, this is what I was trying to get at, and I think you said it more eloquently than I did. When I see someone spray paint "racist" on that statue my thought isn't "yeah! why are they celebrating a racist! you get 'em!"... my thought is "this person might could write this on the headstone of every WASP that died in that century and be factually accurate by today's standards."