Exactly when did the Confederate flag become a racist symbol?

Loading

nancy-pelosi-demotivating

 

What day was it? What year?

I can’t help wondering, especially as the old hag from Northern California worth $100 million who employs non-union illegal aliens for her Napa winery has tried to “ambush” the GOP with a resolution pushing the removal of the Mississippi state flag from the Capitol.

So when did it happen? When the Confederate flag become racist? I posed that question to several liberals on numerous news websites and absolutely none of them could offer anything remotely intelligent.
Was racist when Fritz Hollings sent it up the pole as Governor of South Carolina in 1962?

In 1962, during his term as Governor, the Confederate battle flag was flown above the SC Statehouse underneath the U.S. and state flags where it would remain for thirty-eight years. In 2000, the state legislature voted to move the flag from above the Statehouse to a Confederate soldiers’ monument in front of the building.

Was it racist when Jimmy Carter posed with it?

 

carter and flag

 

How about when Bill Clinton kept elements of the Confederate flag in the Arkansas state flag?

 

What about this?

Clinton-Confederate-Flag-550x494

 

Was it racist when Clinton supporters used it?

 

hillary flag

 

Pelosi was Speaker of the House until 2012. Wasn’t it racist as recently as three years ago? So why, Pelosi , did you not act back then? Alzheimer’s?

Or it is simply another pathetic, pandering, painfully obvious liberal ploy to once again score cheap political points on another tragedy?

0 0 votes
Article Rating
Subscribe
Notify of
45 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments

I don’t recall Piglosi having a cow about this flag when she and her libturds controlled the House and Senate and Obola was President!!

It was not flown over a Capital building until the 1960’s at the start of the civil rights movement. That good enough for you? Yeah, it’s a racist symbol.

@Lester: Ok, so what you’re saying is that it was racist Democrats raising the flag to show resistance to the Civil Rights movement was the moment the flag became a racist symbol. Got it.

@Lester:
You need to read and review history, you are wrong again, a usual and recurring occurence for your posts. There iconic photographs of Teddy Roosevelt running for president in 1904, with the Confederate flag in the background of his campaign in the South.

The Confederate battle flag – like all flags – is a symbol. Symbols have no inherent meaning; only what meaning is assigned to them. And there is no “requirement” that all people assign the same meaning to any specific symbol. Nor is there any “requirement” that the meaning assigned (by some people) to a symbol won’t change over time.
So, the Confederate battle flag is a symbol of racism to some because they choose to make it so. And it has been a symbol of racism to some for a long time. Others see it as a symbol of heritage for people who fought and died for states rights. Others just didn’t care.
The real problem is that the statists are “stealing” the meaning of traditional symbols and forcing everyone to use the meanings they choose to apply. But then, forcing others to comply is what statists do . . .

So by that logic, no one should judge someone flying an ISIS flag or a flag with a swastika on it believes because symbols have no inherent meaning?

@Jeff: So by that logic, no one should judge someone flying an ISIS flag or a flag with a swastika on it believes because symbols have no inherent meaning?

The swastika was already here in the states when our first colonizers landed.
Some natives here used that particular design.
I actually almost bought a quilt from a reservation gift shop with four swastikas on it.
In India the swastika was and is a symbol of something else, preceding Hitler’s birth by hundreds of years.
So, Yes, the same symbol can mean different things in different cultures.

(When Spaniards began exploring southern North America they found crosses on thresh holds of homes. They presumed these natives to be Christians because they thought the cross could ONLY be a symbol of Christianity. They were wrong.)
So are you.

@Bob: Good points, Bob. When my brother died, I found a picture of us as kids camping out. We’re standing next to a tent and my brother is holding a rebel flag. At that time, I’m sure either of us barely knew what a black person was, let alone be racist about it. The flag was just a symbol of rebellion- a topic much loved by youth 😉 We’re not even from the south, although are parents are. I’m sure the raising of the flag by southern states back in the 60s was as much about being told what to do by a meddling federal government as it was about race. Nobody likes to be told to do anything. Even now, I feel the clamor for the flags removal is more than enough reason to keep it flying.

@Jeff:

I didn’t say that you shouldn’t “judge” someone based on what symbols they show. Some symbols have a consensus meaning – at least today – and it is not unreasonable to “judge” someone based on that consensus meaning. The swastika was appropriated by the Nazis and now has a consensus meaning of racism and genocide.
Flags are *intended* to have a consensus meaning. That’s why people “rally round” them.
The problem is that the statists are (successfully) changing the consensus on what the Confederate battle flag means in our society. I wish it weren’t so because I like the more traditional meaning of rebellion against an over-reaching government . . . but I don’t get to dictate what meaning the people in general assign to a particular symbol. That’s what statists do.

I bet Gold’s Gym is counting their blessings that Roof wasn’t JUST posing in his Gold’s Gym shirt, but also with this flag.
This fact deflected blame from their gym.

@Lester: It was flown in 1961. Does that year ring a bell? Since you are so smart, I will wait for your answer.

Working in a shop, we often called people “skillets” to imply a single-purpose, practically useless person. A black guy that worked in the shop one day said that was a slur, since skillets (of the cast iron variety) are black. Hmmm…. really. Well, we don’t mean it that way. And we just kept using the term.

Apparently racism is today in the eye of the beholder; if I think something you do, say or have is racist, you must relinquish it (well, if I am liberal and you are not, anyway). Does anyone but me see this as a dump truck load of crap?

@Bill:
That skillets example is hilarious.
Reminded me of how ”niggardly” and ”Devil’s Food Cake” as well as ”Black Hole” all became ”racist.”
It is sad that we keep falling to the lowest denominator of the most ignorant critics.

That flag has always been racist it was the flag that traitors fought under in order to keep their right to own human beings that had black skin.

And was it racist when Dems flew it ? Of course it was. But now it seems like only one political party wants to keep flying a flag that has always been racist. And few GOPers will dare to say time to come down.

Liberals just can’t exist without having a scapegoat to blame for all troubles of the world. Reminds me of communism, especially when they CHANGE own love/hate, acceptable/banned priorities at the first order from Great Wise Leader. Just like commies used to do and their russian successors are doing now.

I wonder what if the next psycho mass murderer will come out in a rainbow or “legalize weed” tee? That would be an epic brain jammer indeed.

not sure when BUT definitely it is now.
Of course for the American Jews that were also the target of the Klan that flag also has very bad memories

This ”issue” certainly has grabbed all the headlines.

So…..
what’s it diverting our attention away from?

1. It could be the vast incompetence of a president (Obama) who would place as human resources director for the largest employer in America (our gov’t) another ”wise Latina.”
Her only prior work experience was on the Obama campaign.
But Obama made Katherine Archuleta resigned head of the Office of Personnel Management.
She had been on the Obama campaign when she showed what she thought of Romney who she laughed at for being afraid of Chinese hackers as well as Russian ones.
Here’s her Tweet:

Now the OPM she headed has been hacked badly.
Obama called, he wants his 1980’s foreign policy back.
She’s fired. (resigned????)
Too bad all those ethnic and sexual deviant hires in her dept., will stay.
21 million Americans were hacked. (Possibly including Obama, himself)
She just sat there like a bump on a log.

And/Or…..

2. It could be the proof that IRS targeting of Conservatives stemmed from DOJ and White House.

Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “The FBI and Justice Department worked with Lois Lerner and the IRS to concoct some reason to put President Obama’s opponents in jail before his reelection.

And this abuse resulted in the FBI’s illegally obtaining confidential taxpayer information. How can the Justice Department and FBI investigate the very scandal in which they are implicated?”

Good question.
The Obama Team response to the 2010 Shellacking was to use the Dept. of Justice (AG Eric Holder) to weaponize the IRS and go after groups -like Tea Party Groups- organized under the financial umbrella of 501(c)(4) donation structuring.
http://www.judicialwatch.org/press-room/press-releases/judicial-watch-new-documents-reveal-doj-irs-and-fbi-plan-to-seek-criminal-charges-of-obama-opponents/
http://freebeacon.com/issues/judicial-watch-lois-lerner-doj-officials-and-fbi-met-to-plan-criminal-charges-for-obama-opponents/
http://aclj.org/free-speech/bombshell-fbi-doj-colluded-with-irs-lerner-to-bring-criminal-charges-against-conservatives
http://theconservativetreehouse.com/2014/12/04/a-transparent-conflict-of-interest-treasury-secretary-jack-lew-blocks-white-houseirs-email-release/

ABCCBSNBCCNN just didn’t have the time to cover these two stories.
Confederate Flag, doncha know.

The sheer capriciousness of this kerfluffle astounds me. The Confederate Flag has to go, but Bill Cosby’s stars on the Hollywood walk of fame stay for “historical reasons”…. say what?

The Confederate flag is not the “official” flag of the Confederacy. Actually, it is the battle standard that was adopted by Confederate soldiers, after the Civil War. They adopted the standard because they liked its look. During the war, Confederate soldiers primarily fought without a flag, opting to use that man as one more infantryman on the battlefield. It is only in popular lore, movies and TV where the Confederate standard appears in the field.

During the lowering of the Confederate standard, I was wondering how soon will it be the American flag will be lowered. We’ve already seen the misguided and ill-informed who believe the American flag represents oppression and are showing their disrespect for it by stepping on it, or burning it.

@Nanny G: Yet another reason for law abiding citizens to oppose the government keeping gun ownership records or their health records. Obama addressed cyber security repeatedly, yet like almost everything, he has done nothing, as we see.

@john:
That flag has always been racist [sic] it was the flag that traitors fought under in order to keep their right to own human beings that had black skin.

Flags are not racist. They are only cloth and don’t have enough intelligence to be racist. For some, the Confederate battle flag has been a symbol of racism for a long time, but just as I don’t get to dictate that the *only* meaning is one of rebellion against an over-reaching government, neither do you (or the other ignorant statists) get to dictate that the *only* meaning is celebration of slavery of those who efficiently produce melanin.

Your ignorance is established by the fact you think it is reasonable that thousands of southerners marched off to war when less that 5% of them owned any slaves. However, slavery was indeed one of *many* states’ rights issues that led to rebellion – including punitive tariffs that were solely intended to keep the southern states poor.

Just as there is no requirement that all people assign the same values to symbols, so also there is no requirement that all people at war are there for the same (or mirror-image) reasons. It’s true that by the time the northern states had fully mobilized, their rallying cry was to end slavery. But retaining slavery was not the only reason the southerners were there. If it had been, 19 out of 20 of them would have gone home because they didn’t have any slaves anyway.

@john:

And was it racist when Dems flew it ? Of course it was.

I asked Lester what significance the year 1961, the year the flag was raised, had. He is, apparently, still looking it up. How about you, john? Do you have any idea what the significance of that year was and why the flag went up?

If it was racist, why did the Clinton’s embrace it in Arkansas? If it was racist, why hasn’t there been an uproar before now? If it was racist, why haven’t YOU been demanding it come down?

If you are fooling anyone at all, john, it is only yourself.

Yes, the Southern Cross was a symbol of racism when the Southern Dixiecrats created it, when Carter allowed himself to be photographed next to it, and when some Clinton administrator used it as a bumper sticker or whatever. The Deep South remained with the Democrats until President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act, lamenting that the “nigger bill” was going to lose him the South for a generation. It turned out much longer than that. The North and South immediately “switched sides” as you can see by comparing the presidential voting results. Republicans continued with the “Southern Strategy” because, as Nixon’s political strategist put it: “The more Negroes who register as Democrats in the South, the sooner the Negrophobe whites will quit the Democrats and become Republicans. That’s where the votes are.” That’s why the “Party of Lincoln” happens to be the party defending the Confederate battle flag.

The reason people were not complaining about it before is because no one was getting shot to death at black churches in hopes of bringing about a race war just like a lot of racists were hoping for in the 60s. Obviously, it’s not going to start a real war, but it did ignite a war of words and now liberals want to show all the racists that inspired Roof that they lost and the South is not going to rise again so that they know shooting up black churches is not going to do them any good.

I have some sympathy for stories like Lester gives regarding kids or the apolitical using the flag simply as a generic symbol of rebellion. There’s even a good number of southern blacks who defend the flag based on myths about thousands of blacks who fought on the side of the Confederacy. But I don’t have much sympathy for people like Bob who try to argue that the South didn’t secede because of slavery. Every state secession statement and quote from the Confederate politicians cites slavery as the reason for the war and the Constitutional right to property as the right to keep slaves. Just because less than 5% of Southerners own slaves doesn’t mean they didn’t profit from it, and besides, most Republicans aren’t millionaires, yet they roundly defend the elimination of the millionaire estate tax, or “death tax”, as well as lower taxes for millionaires whose Capital Gains taxes are already lower than those who work for a living, all because they’re the “job creators”.

Any modern day Republican who argues that the financial crisis was caused by banks being forced to lend to minorities or wouldn’t shut up about Obama being born in Africa but said nothing about McCain or Cruz and then wants to turn around and talk about how the flag isn’t about racism should try looking at themselves in the mirror because I doubt it’s a coincidence that every racist hot-button issue the GOP throws out just happens to work on someone who got it in their head that the Southern Cross isn’t racist.

And yes, the swastika is an ancient solar symbol that can be found in some ancient civilizations. Hitler adopted it because he believed the Indo-European Aryans conquered Iran and India and subjugated them under the white man. So if an Indian is using it, that is one thing, but if a German whose parents were skinheads tries to tell you that it has nothing to do with Nazi Germany, then you know that they’re engaging in the same kind of historic revisionism that many Southerners are now attempting, because if it was really just meant as a symbol of rebellion or state rights or something, they would have chosen the original Confederate flag that had the Southern Cross in the corner against a white background (as a symbol of the white race) rather than the Confederate battle flag, which was revived to protest blacks being given equality in the 60s.

@Jeff:

Congratulations! You just unloaded the biggest load of horse hockey to be seen on the pages of FA in a long, long time.

I suggest you read more Thomas Sowell/Shelby Steele and less HuffingtonPost/DailyKos.

@john:

That flag has always been racist

Were you born stupid, or did you learn it later in life? A flag is a piece of cloth.

I just love this ‘liberal socialist thinking” It’s okay for a woman to decide to kill her baby, but for somebody to decide to fly a flag, oh hell no. There have been many thousands more slaves living under the USA flag than ever lived under a Confederate Battle flag. And there were many more native Americans slaughtered under USA flags than Confederate flags, but the Confederate flag is the ‘bad’ flag? Only in the liberal mind can such total crap exist.

@Bill:

Do you have any idea what the significance of that year was and why the flag went up

I’m gonna guess 2 things. One it was the 100th anniversary of the Civil War starting and 2. It was the year JFK became president. and most important, it is the year I finished my 4 years in the Navy and became a civilian again. I’ll go with No. 1.

@Jim S:

but Bill Cosby’s stars on the Hollywood walk of fame stay for “historical reasons”

That’s not what they said. They said he was awarded the Star for his accomplishments in the movie/film/tv business. And that the accomplishment was still there and they did not have a practice of taking an award back once it had been earned and awarded.

@Jeff: You are so full of Sh*t, it’s hard to know where to start. First, I can’t find even one true statement in that whole soliquy. Read the Secession statement of the state of Virginia and tell me which paragraph the word ‘slavery’ is in.
Why did they use a different battle flag? Because the one you suggested looked too similar to the US flag on the battlefield. If you’d read anything at all about it you would know that was why. But then your agenda wasn’t truth, was it?
McCain was born of two American citizens so he is natural born, Cruz was born of one American citizen in Canada and is not natural born, so is not eligible and Obama was born of no American citizen (of legal age) and was born in a foreign country so is not natural born and is not eligible. Jindal and Rubio are also not eligible.

based on myths about thousands of blacks who fought on the side of the Confederacy.

That doesn’t need refuting, it’s just a stupid statement.

All in all, Jeffy, you wrote up a fairy tale of how liberals wish it were. You can put your head back down in the sand.

@Redteam:

And that the accomplishment was still there and they did not have a practice of taking an award back once it had been earned and awarded.

That is what I would call a historical reason. One which I agree with more or less. It’s the hipocracy that bugs me…

@Jeff:

Any modern day Republican who argues that the financial crisis was caused by banks being forced to lend to minorities or wouldn’t shut up about Obama being born in Africa but said nothing about McCain or Cruz and then wants to turn around and talk about how the flag isn’t about racism should try looking at themselves in the mirror

Just to point it out… when McCain was born, the Canal Zone where he was born *was* US territory. It’s well established that a child born to US military or diplomatic personnel who are citizens on assignment are natural born citizens.

John,

When you say “let a woman kill her baby”, you’re talking about creating a law based on the religious belief that “life begins at conception”. Scientifically, that statement is incorrect. There is plenty of life on earth that does not procreate sexually (even some lizards), about half of all conceptions are expelled by the human body, many times based on factors like nutrition and stress, and some eggs split after conception, producing identical twins, which means that a second life (or soul) would be “created” after conception. I sympathize with the desire to have a hard black-and-white line for defining murder, but nature provides a lot of gray. Setting all of that aside, there is no talk about making the Confederate battle flag illegal.

Yes, there were many slaves under the American flag and most whites at the time were for slavery so most Americans were racist. Most northerners who fought to free the slaves still did not believe whites should be able to marry blacks, including Lincoln himself, so Lincoln and the majority of Americans all the way up until the mid-1990s, when acceptance finally rose above 50%, were racist, but that does not mean they were equally racist. America was racist when they fought the Nazis but they were not equally racist as the Nazis, which is why most people worldwide still associate the swastika but not the American flag with racism. If you think this is some liberal belief, just try walking around with a Nazi flag and try to explain to a conservative WWII veteran why a symbol has nothing to do with the historic reality that created it and see how far that argument flies.

The Confederate battle flag was specifically chosen for a war fought to keep slavery and then used again in the 60s to symbolize the South’s opposition to Civil Rights and desegregation. William Porcher Miles, who designed the flag, said that the Wilmont Proviso, which would have banned slavery in territories taken from the Mexican War, was a threat to “the honor of a slaveholding people”. He rejected the Compromise of 1850 and argued against the concept of inalienable rights, saying in reaction to the Declaration of Independence that “Men are born neither Free nor Equal”.

If Confederate sympathizers would just come to terms with the fact that the reason the South seceded from the Union was to keep slavery and that the South then fought against every attempt to enact Civil Rights and desegregation after that, I think they would have far more moral authority to contest certain negative aspects of the North such as the scorched earth campaign and the carpetbagging.

Redteam,

Slavery is cited as the reason for the war in the first paragraph of the Virginia Ordinance of Secession: “the Federal Government having perverted said powers, not only to the injury of the people of Virginia, but to the oppression of the Southern slaveholding States.”

Of course I know the reason the Confederate battle flag was used by the army in place of the official Confederate flag. If you read more closely, I wasn’t talking about the Confederate army at all. I was saying if modern Southerners had just wanted to use the Confederate flag as a symbol of generic rebellion or Southern pride, then the official Confederate flag would have sufficed. Instead, the flag being used today was popularized in the 60s in defiance of civil rights and desegregation. It’s like someone saying they’re flying a red swastika flag for Aryan pride, not to commemorate the Nazis.

Obama was born in Hawaii. There were newspaper announcements dated to his birth. His birth certificate was confirmed by Republican officials and fact checkers. There was no “long form” certificate in Hawaii at the time. Obama’s mother was born in the United States. And no, that crazy “his mother was just 3 months shy of being classified a ‘natural born citizen'” argument doesn’t fly because subsequent acts of Congress relaxed the requirement to two years after the age of 14 instead of five and made the law retroactive to 1952.

Jim S,

The question for me is not whether McCain is a “natural born citizen”. It’s the fact that Republicans obsessed over Obama’s birth as a way to delegitimize him as president, demanded his birth certificate, and then fell for all these conspiracy theories about why it was fake, yet they never gave McCain or Cruz a second thought, and racism has nothing to do with it?

@Jeff: How about in the second and third trimesters, when the human form is clear, there are clear reactions to stimuli and it has been proven that the embryo can feel and react to pain? Still OK to kill it? When DOES humanity begin, Jeff? What is the moment up to which we can go and just be killing “a blob”?

@Jeff:31

If Confederate sympathizers would just come to terms with the fact that the reason the South seceded from the Union was to keep slavery

Why would they want to come to terms with something that is not true? That might be like you believing Obama is not a doper.

The Confederate battle flag was specifically chosen for a war fought to keep slavery

You’re confused.

Slavery is cited as the reason for the war in the first paragraph of the Virginia Ordinance of Secession:

ask you one question and you get it wrong. That only stated who the US was discriminating against. You need to read on down to find their reasons. I realize that won’t serve your purpose, but a spade is a spade.

Obama was born in Hawaii.

I’ll bet you think LHO killed JFK. There are newspaper stories telling you he did.

His birth certificate was confirmed by Republican officials and fact checkers.

No expert has ever given a decision that it is legitimate. The Fact checkers you mentioned are tools of the Dimocrats.

There was no “long form” certificate in Hawaii at the time.

LOL, I guess you’re trying to be funny. There have been several long form ones published on the web from that time period. From the same hospital on the same day.

.

And no, that crazy “his mother was just 3 months shy of being classified a ‘natural born citizen’” argument doesn’t fly because subsequent acts of Congress

You’re clearly not familiar with what the term ‘natural born’ means. It means that because of your circumstances of birth, you are a citizen. If a law has to be applied to ‘fit you in’ then you are ‘naturalized’ not natural born. Also, natural born means ‘both of your parents’, not just one of them. Obama’s (claimed) father was a British citizen which would mean dual citizenship and natural born does not apply to dual citizens. (had they claimed his ‘real’ father, they might not have had a problem)

The question for me is not whether McCain is a “natural born citizen”

Both of McCain’s parents were/are American citizens. That’s all it takes.
Why would anyone question McCain? If they have ‘normal’ intelligence they know he’s a natural born citizen. Question Cruz? He is not a natural born citizen. His father was/is Cuban and he was not born in the US. I didn’t realize there was a question about that. When did racism enter the picture about Cruz? Never heard it mentioned.

@Jeff:

Yes, there were many slaves under the American flag and most whites at the time were for slavery so most Americans were racist.

Have you ever been diagnosed as retarded? A slave, at that time; was a tool. Just like owning a horse or cow. Do you think that the blacks that were capturing and owning and selling other blacks were racist? Don’t you think that they were doing it because that’s what the economy and way of life were at the time? At that time, the most certain way to insure you had labor was to own the workers. Is it owning a slave that makes a person a racist, or does the owner have to be white and the slave black? If a black person owns a slave, is he a racist? I don’t think slavery had anything at all to do with ‘racism’, I think it was totally an economic situation.

Bill,

Scientifically, new life does not “begin”. It gradually individualizes itself from old life. Our humanity comes from our consciousness, which like life, only forms into an individuality gradually over a long period of time. Modern Americans are pretty much unanimous in society respecting the protection of infants rather than them being owned by their parents or whoever conquered their parents like in the old days (Gen. 22; Num. 31; Ps. 137:9). Around 90% of abortions are in the first trimester. Different laws set up different time periods which are themselves overturned by circumstances like rape, incest, and danger to the mother’s life, but all lines are arbitrary, human-designed distinctions on some level.

Redteam,

So the North was discriminating against slave-owning states without slavery being the reason for the discrimination?

“Natural-born” has been argued to mean different things by different people. McCain’s eligibility was not automatically universally acknowledged from the start but was quickly settled when Obama and Mrs. Clinton co-sponsored a bill settling the question instead of turning it into a wedge issue as Republicans eventually did.

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2015/mar/26/ted-cruz-born-canada-eligible-run-president-update/

Dr. Neil Krawetz, Jean-Claude Tremblay, Tea Party member John Woodman, and WorldNetDaily technology consultant Ivan Zatkovich are four experts who have validated the birth certificate. The conspiracy would involve a vast network of people and government agencies over decades starting on the day of his birth. Ted Cruz has been running for president for three months without any complaint from Republicans.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/04/29/expert-says-obamas-birth-certificate-legit/

Africans who sold captured enemies to slavers were not racist. They were tribalist. There were some societies like the Sumerians that had slaves but saw it as a financial situation that anyone could find themselves in. Slavery in the South was based on a racist philosophy of white supremacy, so that whites could not be sold as slaves but blacks could. This racism even contributed to the white color of the 1863 national flag, called the “White Man’s flag” by it’s designer.

“[Senator and abolitionist Seward] seeks to alarm his auditors by assuring them of the purpose on the part of the South and the Democratic to force slavery upon all the States of the Union. Absurd as all this may seem to you, and incredulous as you may be of its acceptance by any intelligent portion of the citizens of the United States, I have reason to believe that it has been inculcated to no small extent in the Northern mind… You too know, that among us, white men have an equality resulting form a presence of a lower caste, which cannot exist where white men fill the position here occupied by the servile race… if it should ever come to pass that the Constitution shall be perverted to the destruction of our rights so that we shall have the mere right as a feeble minority unprotected by the barrier of the Constitution to give an ineffectual negative vote in the Halls of Congress, we shall then bear to the federal government the relation our colonial fathers did to the British crown, and if we are worthy of our lineage we will in that event redeem our rights even if it be through the process of revolution.” -Jefferson Davis

“The new Constitution has put at rest forever all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institutions—African slavery as it exists among us—the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution… Our new Government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition.” -Vice President Alexander Stephens

@Jeff: 35

Redteam,

So the North was discriminating against slave-owning states without slavery being the reason for the discrimination?

Nope, that was a way of describing who they were aligning with. They could have said all the states from Va down through Florida and over to texas, or they could just say the slave owning states south of us. It was a way of describing which states and had nothing to do with ‘who owned slaves’. But at no point in their secession letter did they say they were seceding for the right to own slaves.

@Jeff:

but was quickly settled when Obama and Mrs. Clinton co-sponsored a bill settling the question instead of turning it into a wedge issue

Sorry but a bill by two senators can not change the Constitution without proper ratification. It was clear that McCain was born of two citizen parents. Where he was born is not important. It happened that he was born in a country that was governed by the US at the time.

Basically, ‘natural born’ means that you are born in a situation that it is clear that you are a citizen and that no additional law has to be applied to make you eligible. For example, a law says that if you are born in the US, you are a citizen. If your parents are not citizens, the law says you are one any how. but note, that provision means ‘because of this law,, you are a citizen’. That means you are ‘naturalized’ and not ‘natural born’. quite a difference. That’s why Cruz, Jindal and Rubio are citizens, they are all naturalized but not ‘natural born’. The constitution has to be amended to change that requirement.

@Jeff:

Dr. Neil Krawetz, Jean-Claude Tremblay, Tea Party member John Woodman, and WorldNetDaily technology consultant Ivan Zatkovich are four experts who have validated the birth certificate.

I could stack up an equally qualified group of experts to prove it’s fake. In fact, that’s been done, so no need to do it over. If you can’t look at that for two minutes and be convinced that it’s fake, then you just aren’t paying attention. That’s old stuff. I guess nobody cares.

Ted Cruz has been running for president for three months without any complaint from Republicans.

Then you just haven’t read my comments. I’ve been consistent.

Africans who sold captured enemies to slavers were not racist. They were tribalist.

That doesn’t pass the laugh test. But if a white person sold that same black person, it would be because of ‘racism’?

Slavery in the South was based on a racist philosophy of white supremacy, so that whites could not be sold as slaves

You clearly have not looked into that situation. You don’t think any whites were ever slaves in the US? Or anywhere else? If slavery was a ‘southern invention’ why did all the slavers come from New England (primarily, especially Rhode Island),
Also you said ‘slavery in the South was based on a racist philosophy of white supremacy”, What would you say slavery in the North was based on? Would it be that same ‘white supremacy’?

What would you base the current slavery in the US on? Would that be white supremacy also? And why does no one care?

@Jeff:

Scientifically, new life does not “begin”. It gradually individualizes itself from old life.

Sooooo… when is the exact date up to which you are still allowed to kill it? Don’t you worry that you may be going beyond the limit you yourself set? Or, not?

Our humanity comes from our consciousness, which like life, only forms into an individuality gradually over a long period of time.

So, individuals WITHOUT this amorphous “consciousness” can be killed, at will? Do infants have this consciousness? Are they fully aware of what is transpiring around them? At what age does this consciousness develop, so we don’t kill anything that actually has it?

Tell us, oh knowledgeable Jeff, when is it OK to kill the children?

Modern Americans are pretty much unanimous in society respecting the protection of infants rather than them being owned by their parents

So, instead of the parents (those who went ahead and had children instead of killing the little inconveniences) don’t have the final say in their rearing or health? I suppose this is relegated to the Collective and it’s wise leaders, as the left prescribes. Such as, allowing 15 year olds (I’m sure THEY have reached full consciousness and decision making capabilities) begin “gender reassignment” treatments? Or get an abortion which may have been the result of a sexual assault or rape without the knowledge or consent of parents (parents that can be prosecuted if the child does not go to school or commits a crime, by the way)?

I’m guessing you have never had children.

Bill,

>Sooooo… when is the exact date up to which you are still allowed to kill it? Don’t you worry that you may be going beyond the limit you yourself set? Or, not?

I don’t have a magic date. That’s my point. If I “went beyond the limit”, who would be the judge of that? The fetus that has no knowledge of its own existence? The modern God who invented an evolutionary system that adapted the human body so that it “murders” half the “souls” that inhabits every fertilized egg but judges individuals who support laws that slightly increases the number? The pro-Life protesters who become imaginary friends with the potential humans of the future?

>So, individuals WITHOUT this amorphous “consciousness” can be killed, at will? Do infants have this consciousness? Are they fully aware of what is transpiring around them? At what age does this consciousness develop, so we don’t kill anything that actually has it?
>Tell us, oh knowledgeable Jeff, when is it OK to kill the children?

I understand you love using the concept to make yourself morally superior to the left, but the fact is that both parties want to minimize the number of abortions. Blue states are just much better at it than red states. Democrats use sex education instead of ineffective laws that just drives the practice underground and increases the likelihood of death of the woman.

Of course, if Conservatives really cared about stopping abortions, they could demand sanctions on China to stop their forced abortion practices. But you could probably save more lives increasing foreign aid to stop starvation or buy mosquito nets for Africa. Or if you only feel responsible for lives inside the United States, a study says ObamaCare has saved some 50,000 lives, as opposed to the 100,000+ lives ended because of the Iraq War.

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/mar/31/barack-obama/barack-obama-says-health-care-law-has-led-50000-/

Redteam,

>I could stack up an equally qualified group of experts to prove it’s fake. In fact, that’s been done, so no need to do it over. If you can’t look at that for two minutes and be convinced that it’s fake, then you just aren’t paying attention. That’s old stuff. I guess nobody cares.

So you went from saying there’s no experts to saying you *could* provide an equal number of experts if you really wanted to. That isn’t even moving the goal post; it’s picking it up and walking off with it. If you can give me four experts who examined it in person, including two from the left, then do it.

>Then you just haven’t read my comments. I’ve been consistent.

I understand that you feel the need to defend Republicans, but if you are the one at the forefront of the “Ted Cruz isn’t native-born”, then you are basically agreeing with me, unless you have a show on Fox News that I am unaware of.

>That doesn’t pass the laugh test. But if a white person sold that same black person, it would be because of ‘racism’?

If a white person in Africa captured a black person in Africa and sold him to another white person? Probably. He could just be looking for profit, but he is definitely relying on a racist institution to do it.

>You clearly have not looked into that situation. You don’t think any whites were ever slaves in the US? Or anywhere else? If slavery was a ‘southern invention’ why did all the slavers come from New England (primarily, especially Rhode Island),

Of course there was slavery in other places and racism, nationalism and religious bigotry certainly helped that. There have been increased instances of white supremacists using Irish nationalist literature conflating unjust indentured servitude with slavery but indentured servants had some rights and were usually reintegrated into society.

>Also you said ‘slavery in the South was based on a racist philosophy of white supremacy”, What would you say slavery in the North was based on? Would it be that same ‘white supremacy’?

During and after the American Revolutionary War, between 1777 and 1804, anti-slavery laws or constitutions were passed in every state north of the Ohio River and the Mason–Dixon line. By 1840, virtually all African Americans in the North were free.

And if you still feel like arguing that slavery wasn’t racist, I think you should stop trying to convince me and start trying to convince these guys:

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/122216/confederate-flag-still-flying-today-because-kkk

@Jeff: if you do not know the date that embryonic life becomes “aware” (or even bothered to give it a thought), then how do you know what you are killing? How can you be certain that, at 12 weeks, you are NOT killing a person? How about the victims that, as Gosnell quipped, “could walk to the bus station”? You think something living and viable may have been violated there?

Hey, make no mistake… I AM morally superior to the left. Because I wonder about these issues… not excuse them away for a political expediency. I am not “anti-abortion”, though I find its use as birth control abhorrent. However, the argument over partial-birth abortion is a non-argument, as there is, aside from health issues, NO argument in favor of it. Yet liberals are too cowardly to examine when even THEY would define the moment life starts.

And it takes someone with no morals at all to defend human parts peddling.

@Jeff: 40

So you went from saying there’s no experts to saying you *could* provide an equal number of experts if you really wanted to. That isn’t even moving the goal post; it’s picking it up and walking off with it. If you can give me four experts who examined it in person, including two from the left, then do it.

I’ve never said there are “no experts” saying Obama’s BC is fake. I’ve been aware of them from day 1. I know of no experts that label themselves as ‘left or right’. In fact if that is a qualification, then it’s also a ‘disqualifier’.

I understand that you feel the need to defend Republicans,

No I don’t suffer from that malady. Cruz, Rubio, Jindal are all ‘not natural born citizens’.

If a white person in Africa captured a black person in Africa and sold him to another white person? Probably. He could just be looking for profit,

I’ll try to get my point across, but I realize I’m saying that to a liberal. If a black person is/was captured and sold in Africa, it was by a black person and I don’t think they were doing it for racsim. I’d guess for profit. My point was that liberals would say that if it had been a white person that captured and sold the black person, they would say it was because of racism. I’d say it was done for profit. That’s why white men sell white men, as in the Irish that have been sold.

By 1840, virtually all African Americans in the North were free.

A simple Google search would enlighten you. The Dred Scott decision was in the 1850s, New territories were admitted with slavery legal in the 1850’s. The last states where slavery were legal was in the North, ending in December 1865, eight months after the Civil War ended.

I asked this question:

What would you say slavery in the North was based on? Would it be that same ‘white supremacy’?

And you ducked it? If slavery in the South was based on ‘white supremacy’ what was slavery in the North based on? White supremacy?

And if you still feel like arguing that slavery wasn’t racist, I think you should stop trying to convince me and start trying to convince these guys:

That’s a rather silly statement. You do realize that a very small percentage of slavery was of the ‘white owned blacks’ variety, right?

total to approximately 450,000 Africans who arrived in the United States

It has been estimated that as many as 100 million blacks have been moved out of Africa as slaves, or made slaves by the Muslims in North Africa over the centuries. The total count brought into the US is estimated to be about 450,000, and not all of those were owned by ‘white people’
So it would seem, to a logical thinking person that the ‘racist’ portion of slave owners is statistically insignificant. Less than 1/2 of 1 percent of African slaves.

Just curious, would you also say that the many sex slaves owned in the US today is owned for racial reasons, or would it most likely be for profit?

Some people want to see racism where there is none.

It “became racist” when the democrats formed the dixiecrat party in 48 in support of segregation and used the rebel flag as their symbol to try and get southerners to vote for them. It never really became racist because it’s a symbol, and symbols mean different things to different people.

@Jeff:
Did you not read Bob’s message? “NO INHERENT MEANING” ONLY WHAT IS ASSIGNED TO THEM. Duh, do you understand the meaning of words in the English language?