How long before the American flag has to come down?

Farrakhan: I Don’t Get Debate Over Confederate Flag, ‘We Need to Put the American Flag Down’

Farrakhan said, “White folks march with you because they don’t want you upsetting the city, they don’t give a damn about them nine.”

He added that when the police took suspected shooter Dylann Roof to Burger King they were saying “You did a good job. Kill all them [bleep.]”

Later, he declared, “I don’t know what the hell the fight is about over the Confederate flag. We need to put the American flag down. Because we’ve caught as much hell under that as the Confederate flag,” comments that were meant with cheers and applause. He added, “Who are we fighting today? It’s the people that carry the American flag.”

@Gary Miller:

The Confederate flag will soon be coming down in South Carolina.

I’d give odds that it won’t be. It requires a 67% vote in both houses in SC and that ain’t gonna happen.

@JisterJ: What is not so amazing is how the left, bereft of any successful programs or even the prospect of one, spends all their energy creating turmoil, hate and conflict in order to create the chaos they need in order to have any hope of maintaining a grasp on power.

The Confederate battle flag is now exposed as such a divisive symbol of hate and racism; how could this have been missed just one week ago? How could Obama and Clinton missed that characteristic and used it in their campaigns?

Does being so stupid and gullible embarrass you?

@Ditto:
As to the Burger King story: Roof might be an evil murderous bastard, but he has RIGHTS.
We cannot by law starve a suspect.
Not even one who confesses.
Now, if police ever gave ME Burger King, I’d go after them for cruel and unusual punishment!

@Redteam:

The Confederate flag is not a symbol of racism to anyone except racists.

It’s the battle flag of a Confederacy that fought a war against the United States of America in an effort to preserve the institution of black slavery. Despite recent efforts at historical revisionism, that is precisely what the Civil War was about.

Perhaps the suggestion that we consider an analogous situation was missed earlier. Those that find the banner most offensive have their reasons. It’s entirely understandable that they wouldn’t want to see it flying over their state capital, displayed in their public schools, etc.

@Greg: I guess you refer to the use of historical fact to refute the revisionist history of the left as revisionist. Just because you WANT to believe something doesn’t make it true.

@Greg: As long as you are going to study History According to MoveOn.Org, you will remain ignorant. I see no imminent change ahead.

@Aqua: Well said and welcome back.

@Aqua: Re the removal of the flag—I stand with South Carolina’s Conservative Gov. and two Conservative Senators on this issue.

@Redteam:

. The issue was far more than slavery and the fact that so many still don’t recognize that is/was part of the problem.

Slavery was the overwhelming concrete reason. What does “states rights” mean divorced from the question of slavery? All the major concerns that the South had sprung from their disagreement with the North over the expansion of slavery. The South rightly knew without the expansion of slavery, they would eventually be outnumbered by “free states” in Congress, which threatened the perpetuation of slavery. To say that it was about something like tariffs, but then to ignore the fact that the engine of the entire Southern economy was a brutal regime of slave labor, makes little sense.

But luckily we don’t have to speculate. The Southern states were quite clear about the primary reason for secession. Just a sampling:

South Carolina

…A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all the States north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States, whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery. He is to be entrusted with the administration of the common Government, because he has declared that that “Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free,” and that the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction. This sectional combination for the submersion of the Constitution, has been aided in some of the States by elevating to citizenship, persons who, by the supreme law of the land, are incapable of becoming citizens; and their votes have been used to inaugurate a new policy, hostile to the South, and destructive of its beliefs and safety.

Mississippi

Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery—the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin…

Louisiana :

As a separate republic, Louisiana remembers too well the whisperings of European diplomacy for the abolition of slavery in the times of an­nexation not to be apprehensive of bolder demonstrations from the same quarter and the North in this country. The people of the slave holding States are bound together by the same necessity and determination to preserve African slavery.

Alabama:

Upon the principles then announced by Mr. Lincoln and his leading friends, we are bound to expect his administration to be conducted. Hence it is, that in high places, among the Republi­can party, the election of Mr. Lincoln is hailed, not simply as it change of Administration, but as the inauguration of new princi­ples, and a new theory of Government, and even as the downfall of slavery. Therefore it is that the election of Mr. Lincoln cannot be regarded otherwise than a solemn declaration, on the part of a great majority of the Northern people, of hostility to the South, her property and her institutions—nothing less than an open declaration of war—for the triumph of this new theory of Government destroys the property of the South, lays waste her fields, and inaugurates all the horrors of a San Domingo servile insurrection, consigning her citizens to assassinations, and. her wives and daughters to pollution and violation, to gratify the lust of half-civilized Africans.

Texas:

…in this free government all white men are and of right ought to be entitled to equal civil and political rights; that the servitude of the African race, as existing in these States, is mutually beneficial to both bond and free, and is abundantly authorized and justified by the experience of mankind, and the revealed will of the Almighty Creator, as recognized by all Christian nations; while the destruction of the existing relations between the two races, as advocated by our sectional enemies, would bring inevitable calamities upon both and desolation upon the fifteen slave-holding states….

@rich wheeler: @Tom: You still blather about the reason for seceding; the reason for FIGHTING was because the North invaded the South. Without going into the intricacies of what all was right or wrong about that, the people that FOUGHT (not the Confederacy itself) is what is memorialized. I find it baffling why some cannot get this into their heads.

It is the people, not slavery, which did the sacrificing and they fought, not for slavery, but for their homes and states. You can cut and paste your off-the-shelf thoughts all you like, but it does not change the FACT that the soldiers and vast majority of the commanders had no slaves and did not fight for slavery… much like the vast majority of Federal soldiers did NOT fight to abolish slavery; they fought because they were conscripted.

They were all Americans, fighting and dying.

@Tom:

If they fought for the Confederate army then they fought for the perpetuation of slavery in the South.

Nope. Wrong, again. They fought to keep the Yankees out of their states, towns and farms. Being a dependent leftist, you cannot conceive of the independent spirit and honorable ideals, but this is what the SOILDERS (those we memorialize with the icons of the Civil war, such as the Battle Flag) fought and died for.

Please feel free to feel really good and satisfied with yourself for supporting the removal of some things you have decided represents this or that; perhaps it assuages those guilt feelings due to racism. However, please be aware that there are those that see through this thin and silly facade and think it quite stupid.

@Tom: No, there’s no convincing me, because I rely on facts, not ideology. There have been many blacks that have come forth and stated that the flag either does not bother them or they realize that, for better or for worse, it represents their heritage. But, of course, those are not really “people”, are they? They have developed independent thought and cannot be trusted to toe the “correct” party line, so who (on the left) cares about their views?

No, sorry, I have too much knowledge to be “convinced” by BS.

@Tom: Bill can be a hoot-re flag–“blacks ( note his consistent failure to capitalize) for better or worse realize it is part of their heritage.” A truly bizarre statement. Even for Bill.

@rich wheeler:

Does he really believe what he writes? It’s hard to believe it’s possible… But he seems pretty sincere! Haha.

@Tom: Slavery existed for many years prior to the CW. Why did the war start in 1861 and not any year prior to that? Specifically, 1820 (Missouri Compromise which effectively created two countries- one slave holding, the other non-slaveholding); 1832 (Nullification Crisis); 1846 (Wilmot Proviso); 1850 (Compromise of 1850); 1854 (Kansas-Nebraska Act), or 1857 (Dred Scott)? All of those, except 1832, dealt with slavery as the flashpoint. Why didn’t the war start over slavery during those years?

@Tom: 72

If they fought for the Confederate army then they fought for the perpetuation of slavery in the South.

Ok Tom, can we assume that would be true for those that fought for the USA during the civil war as slavery was still legal and existing in the North at the time? In fact slavery still existed in the North after the civil war ended. So did those that fought under the US flag do so in supporting those rights to own slaves? Do you advocate taking the US flag down because some fought for slavery under that flag? Just asking, if you’re gonna be consistent.

@rich wheeler:

The ridiculous meme perpetuated by some southerners that the war was not PRIMARILY about slavery has been shown to be blatantly false.

This statement can be used to prove, unequivocally, that an Ivy league education can be total Bullsh*t. Anyone that went to a college/university in the USA and came out believing that the civil war was about slavery should demand a refund. They failed to be educated.

This is what the North was fighting for:

In July 1864, during the Atlanta campaign, Sherman ordered approximately 400 Rosewell mill workers, mostly women, arrested as traitors and shipped as prisoners to the North with their children. There is little evidence that more than a few of the women ever returned home

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_in_the_American_Civil_War

Which flag was Sherman flying?

@another vet:

Good question. I’m sure all that history built upon itself. The precipitating factor was obviously Lincoln’s election. Although not a Radical or abolitionist, the South clearly saw his election as an existential threat to their way of life.

You’re learned man. Many of the declarations of secession were quite clear on the slavery issue and the weight they gave to it. The entire Southern economy was inextricably tied to slavery and the Southern aristocracy were the beneficiaries. I’m perfectly fine with the argument that the average infantry grunt wasn’t personally fighting for slavery. But the Confederacy, in its own words, most certainly was.

@another vet:

I don’t believe I said the war was fought to end slavery. The North’s main objective was to maintain the Union. Slavery was the major conflict between the North and South. And I do believe that the main reasons for secession were all linked to slavery. You say states rights. I can’t seperate that from the South’s overriding concern with being left alone to pursue its peculiar institution.

What would have happened? Certainly moral pressure was building on the South. And political pressure. The Southern states knew that if more free states entered the Union it would be a threat to their regional autonomy. Then again, many in the South dreamed of expanding the slave empire into the Caribeen and South America.

My guess is that slavery would have collapsed at some point in the late 1800s or early 1900s due to economic and technological changes. I don’t think a war was necessarily a given, but it could have meant decades more of brutal slavery. Millions of more people born into and dying in bondage. This is all just speculation.

@rich wheeler:

I believe Aqua’s education was almost certainly superior to your mama’s home schooling.

I’m not familiar with Aqua’s education, but I’m familiar with your lack of it. You should have had some of Mama’s schooling, you wouldv’e likely learned a lot.

@rich wheeler:

I stand with South Carolina’s Conservative Gov. and two Conservative Senators on this issue.

Yeah, if the people of the State want it down, it’s their call. Georgia took the battle flag off our State flag several years ago.

@Tom:

If they fought for the Confederate army then they fought for the perpetuation of slavery in the South.

That is just not true. Your statement is just as close-minded as someone saying slavery wasn’t one of the central issues of secession and the war. When we were just a little baby of a country, the south was very powerful. Virginia had the most representatives and it made most of the northern States upset. At one point, Timothy Pickering of Massachusetts formulated a plan for the North to secede, such was the hatred between the North and the South. This was in 1802, long before the Southern secession. The North embraced industry and immigration, while the South leaned more toward agriculture, less federal government, more States rights. This isn’t an opinion, this is a fact.
In 1800, Virginia had 22 representatives and New York 17. In 1820 Virginia had 23 and New York had 27. Everyone knew New York was going to increase that margin by the 1830 census. In 1828, the US government imposed the Tariff of 1828, a result of the War of 1812. The South was hammered by this tariff. Producing over two thirds of all exports, the South took the brunt of the tariff. The tariff was a result of the Northern States protecting their industries from cheap British imports. South Carolina was hit the worst and declared the tariff unconstitutional and therefore null and void within the boundaries of their Sovereign State. In 1832, after the compromise tariff was signed into law, South Carolina declared it null and void as well and was preparing militarily for federal enforcement. Jackson (the single biggest jack-a$$ to ever be elected president) was ready to march on South Carolina. Another compromise tariff was signed into law in 1833 which South Carolina begrudgingly accepted. But the damage was already done. The South was talking about secession long before the election of Lincoln. The South did not take kindly to the threat of federal enforcement and still does not to this day. The election of Lincoln was just the last straw. Lincoln ran on a platform of an all powerful federal government. He believed in a national community, not the sovereignty of the States.

The South

@Aqua: Excellent write up, Aqua. It points to the fact that the controversy was ‘primarily’ states rights with the issue of slavery being one of the rights they would have to give up.
As I pointed out earlier, if slavery were the only issue, there were states in the north that slavery was still legal in which did not secede.