RE: The Confederate Flag

RE: The Confederate Flag (Full Version)

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Marc2b -> RE: The Confederate Flag (9/15/2006 10:20:39 PM)
I may regret jumping into the middle of this pissing contest but I just can’t resist putting my two cents in. Please try to hold it for a few minutes. The history of the human race is a catalogue of who is conquering who. Who is oppressing who. Who is fucking over who. All our ideologies, philosophies, etc. is merely a thin veneer that covers up the real reasons for our actions. Because it benefits our self and our tribe (in modern terms read: family, culture, country, religion, etc.) and because we can. If the human race is to ever achieve a semblance of global peace we must start to look upon ourselves – all of us! – as one tribe. Before we can do that, we must stop this whinny "my people are/were more oppressed than your people." Oppression is oppression. Persecution is persecution. Suffering is suffering. I am not a believer in the Bible but I do believe it has some nuggets of wisdom and truth and one of them is: ALL HAVE SINNED. If not against God, then against each other. I firmly believe that if each and everyone of us could trace their ancestry back far enough, we will find both oppressor and oppressed amongst our ancestors. I firmly believe that every culture, every race, has played both roles in their history. I’m as Anglo-Saxon as you can get. How do you think we got to be one people. Hint: one group was sitting around minding it’s own business, the other group came along and – literally! – fucked them over. Throughout our evolution and our history we have been ruled by our animal nature, and make no mistake about it – we are animals (everybody should buy and read the book "The Human Animal," by Desmond Morris). Like animals, we are instinctually driven to look out for number one, first. What truly separates us from the other animals is an intellect that allows us to override our instincts. An animal may lay down it’s life to protect it’s young, but that is instinct. No animal, other than us, ever willingly laid down it’s life to uphold an ideology. Our intellect can be used for ill or good. Unfortunately, it is usually used for ill. If that is to change, we – each and every single one of us – must choose the good. For the first time in our history, the Human race has the ability to look at itself in it’s totality, and to talk to each other (consider the internet, in theory, every person has the ability to communicate with any one other person on the planet; I believe the internet revolution’s impact on Human history will rival the agricultural revolution of ten thousand years ago). The first thing we must do is give up this "we are more victimized than you" mentality. We must give up the desire to avenge past wrongs and must limit our indignation (and our punishments!), to those who commit evil acts today, not to those who are decedents of past perpetrators – because we are all decedents of past perpetrators. And we are all oppressed minorities in one way or another. Some might look at me and say, "you’re a heterosexual white male, what do you know about oppression? What do you know about discrimination?" I can answer that. I am left handed and the Western world has discriminated against us, savagely at times, for recorded history (many parts of the rest of the world still do). Only very recently, about forty years ago, has Western civilization given up it’s active discrimination against us. I was lucky in my timing. When I went to school, I did not have my left hand tied behind my back in order to force me to be right handed (I did have to put up with those God damned right handed desks, though). But it is still a right handed world designed for the right handed as I am reminded every time I operate my i-pod or open a grocery store freezer door or do any of another thousand things (at least the banks are starting to catch on and are making the chains longer on those stupid chained pens.) I am not whining about it. I am not being a hypocrite. I am making a point and the point is this: it is irrelevant. I get along fine in the world (it’s not like my right hand is debilitated after all) and the past is the past. We can learn from the past but nothing can be gained from harping on it. We must concentrate on the present and the future. Wow, I really went off on a tangent there, didn’t I? Looks like some train of thought writing too. I am prone to that, especially late at night. I hope I didn’t come across as condescending or preachy, for such is not my intent. I just like to think about these things. One last thing. The world is slowly but surely coming together. Last month my niece gave birth to a baby boy. He is 25% Native American, 25% African American and 12.5 percent of Irish, Italian, German, and English. He is 100% Human and we all love him very much. Health and happiness to everyone.

Marc2b -> RE: The Confederate Flag (9/15/2006 10:23:16 PM)
To try and get back on topic here (or at least head in that general direction) I would like to repeat a story I once heard. This story falls under the category of "if it ain’t true, it ought to be." During the civil war, after a battle, a young Union officer was looking at a recently captured Southern soldier. The captured Confederate was a pathetic sight: no shoes, torn thread bare uniform, obviously unwashed for days on end and painfully thin from dysentery and malnutrition. The young Union officer was very idealistic (as the young tend to be) and couldn’t understand why this other man would endure such hardship, and risk death, for such unworthy causes. So he asked. "Is it worth it? To endure this hardship and end up a prisoner of war, just so rich men can own other men?" "Slavery never did seem right to me," replied the prisoner. "Nope, I don’t think a man should be able to own another man." The Union officer was confused. "So do you support secession then?" "Naw, I don’t. I think we are better off together than apart." "I don’t understand," said the Union officer, "you’re against slavery, you’re against secession. Why then are you wearing that uniform? Why are you fighting us?" "Because Ya’ll down here."

IslandHeat -> RE: The Confederate Flag (9/16/2006 2:07:03 AM)
quote: ORIGINAL: puella The confederate flag was flown over the troops and homes of those who seceded from the United States to promote the cause of non-consensual slavery, and all the profits and benefits that promoted for those not enslaved. The brutality and inhumanity of for which that institution is well documented. Not only were men and women ripped from their families, sent on atrocious oceanic voyages, dehumanized, and used as a pieces of equipment for the betterment of another, they were also often bred, and their offspring sold into that same institution, often times very far from their parents and family, further enforcing the process of dehumanization. Do you really need to have a history lecture on why the Confederate Union was a machination of hate and the darkest part of human civilization? The flag is the symbol of the ideal. Ok, from a purely historical point of view..... If Secession, and the resultant Civil War was all over slavery, why was it half over, before the President signed the Emancipation Proclamation? Why, since slavery was in effect, and had been for over a hundred years, did the SOUTH fire the first shot that supposedly began the war to end slavery? Is it too much of a reach to understand, that the North was imposing protectionist tarriffs against the South, and AFTER the South said "screw you, we quit, and are starting our own country" that the North seeing that many in the South were anti slavery, and many in the North were sympathetic to the South, but ALSO anti-slavery, enacted the Emacipation Proclamation to solidify Northern support, and create dissention in the South. It was a matter of Ppolitical expediency, as good as it was, it was NOT some altruistic act of sacrifice on the part of the North to "Free the black man". And Yes, the KKK has used the Confederate Flag as a symbol of hate, but there are those of us that think it's a reminder that sometimes, the guys standing up against 'Big Brother' lose. But you still gotta stand up to him sometimes!

meatcleaver -> RE: The Confederate Flag (9/16/2006 2:32:03 AM)
Good point. Men will fight for any dubious cause when they feel they are subject to a foreign invasion, no matter how enlightened the enemy is. One just has to look at the middle east.

Emperor1956 -> RE: The Confederate Flag (9/16/2006 6:19:24 AM)
LaM: I agree. Substitute "economically important practice 'enjoyed' by the very few" for "aberration". The key point, which I think you and I agree upon, but many of the "oh the South was just a way of life" or "Its about being a MAN and standing up to the Gov't" apologists on here, refuse to admit is that slavery was a horrific, morally corrupting behavior that served as the basis for that "good old" way of life. To fly the Confederate Flag 100 years after the end of the Civil War is to admire the racism of the practice, and no amount of Suwanee River romance will change that. (There, did I get that one right SMILE?) A brief Hijack: Marc2b said quote: Throughout our evolution and our history we have been ruled by our animal nature, and make no mistake about it – we are animals (everybody should buy and read the book "The Human Animal," by Desmond Morris). You might rethink your sources. Morris is pretty much discredited by current anthropologists, who note that his zoological approach to human behavior attributes a lot of male-centered skewed observational thinking to observed interactions between members of a species (i.e. he saw what he wanted to see, not what was there). He is still a great educator, popularizer of science, and coincidentally an important abstract artist -- but as much as his male-centered writings make us feel all Manly and Domly and fit right into a comic-book view of the relations between Men and Women, he's a pretty lousy anthropologist. E

juliaoceania -> RE: The Confederate Flag (9/16/2006 6:56:36 AM)
I did enjoy his series called Connections though....smiles

Lordandmaster -> RE: The Confederate Flag (9/16/2006 9:35:15 AM)
Yup, we agree. quote: ORIGINAL: Emperor1956 LaM: I agree. Substitute "economically important practice 'enjoyed' by the very few" for "aberration". The key point, which I think you and I agree upon, but many of the "oh the South was just a way of life" or "Its about being a MAN and standing up to the Gov't" apologists on here, refuse to admit is that slavery was a horrific, morally corrupting behavior that served as the basis for that "good old" way of life. To fly the Confederate Flag 100 years after the end of the Civil War is to admire the racism of the practice, and no amount of Suwanee River romance will change that. (There, did I get that one right SMILE?)

Arpig -> RE: The Confederate Flag (9/16/2006 1:04:44 PM)
The confederate flag really doesn't mean a damned thing to me, except that I tend to suspect those who display it of being rednecks, and question their level of intelligence and education.

JohnSteed1967 -> RE: The Confederate Flag (9/16/2006 6:51:25 PM)
Again, I will give yout that most people that display it today are dumb ignorant poor inbred rednecks, Who have no sense of the "History" that they claim to represent. Then again there are also the Rich Rednecks Like Maurice Bessinger here in South Carolina http://www.mauricesbbq.com/index.html . Although you would never know it from his website, used to be the Grand Dragon of the Klan here in SC. Old Maurice flys a Confedrate flag outside his store about the size of those giant Car Dealer ship ones. Inside the store he has books for sale that basiclly teach that the south was picked on by the north and that blacks were better off during slavery, because the white man could take care of them and keep them from getting into drugs and violence. The of course the Creme da la Creme there is the story of how he recieved his BBQ recipie at the foot of his Grandmother during a Bible study. Not the true story of he developed it during all those years of hosting BBQ's for his Klan Breathren

outlier -> RE: The Confederate Flag (9/16/2006 7:25:42 PM)
Julia The series Connections on PBS was done by James Burke he now has this interesting project going. http://www.k-web.org/ Hijack over, sorry Outlier

sissifytoserve -> RE: The Confederate Flag (9/16/2006 7:27:41 PM)
I see it as a historical US flag...but i certainly see why people see it as a symbol of repression and pro-slavery. I believe one OTHER reason for the civil war was in the interest of European Royals who wanted to splinter America and hence invade after both sides had exhausted both resources and fighting men. Theses more to it than what the history books in public schools taught us. Lincoln probably would have kept slavery if he was able to get the states back together pre-war. Then again...I have problems with the present US flag. It has a gold fringe around it....hence we are under MARITIME/Military law. Its not an official Tiltle 4. Get that gold fringe off my flag!!! http://www.apfn.org/apfn/flag.htm

RepublicanBDSM -> RE: The Confederate Flag (9/16/2006 9:31:42 PM)
Actually the North fired first, but who is counting, right? [/quote] Actually the southern attack on Fort Sumter started the war...

dcnovice -> RE: The Confederate Flag (9/16/2006 9:54:51 PM)
quote: It was the symbol of a groupe of states that tried to start their own country because of a difference of opinion with the northern states. Yes slavery was one of those, howere it was not the only one and was in no way the main reason for them to attempt to leave the union. Do you really think any issue but slavery would have driven the South to secede?

Marc2b -> RE: The Confederate Flag (9/16/2006 10:00:15 PM)
quote: You might rethink your sources. Morris is pretty much discredited by current anthropologists, who note that his zoological approach to human behavior attributes a lot of male-centered skewed observational thinking to observed interactions between members of a species (i.e. he saw what he wanted to see, not what was there). He is still a great educator, popularizer of science, and coincidentally an important abstract artist -- but as much as his male-centered writings make us feel all Manly and Domly and fit right into a comic-book view of the relations between Men and Women, he's a pretty lousy anthropologist. I'm always rethinking my sources, looking for new ones and re-visiting old ones. I've pretty much stuck by Morris for some time now. I don't agree with him on everything, more like eighty percent. I like his no nonscense approach. I've never read him and felt more Manly or Domly (is Domly a real word? Well, I guess it is now). Morris upsets some people because he uses phrases like, "the stronger shoulders of the male allow it to carry heavier burdens." Granted there are individual exceptions (there are exceptions to everything, that's why ideologies always fail in the long run) but for the species, taken as a whole, this is a true statement. Anthropologists have been jumping on top of Morris since he wrote "The Naked Ape" in the 1960's. As far as they are concerned, he was outsider invading their turf. They considered him an outsider because Morris, as you noted, is not an anthropologist -- he is a zoologist. This "animal scientist" pontificating on their field, did not sit well with them. The paleoanthropologists aren't very fond of him either because he questions the "from the tress to the savanah" conception of Human evolution and is a supporter of the Aquatic Theory. Oh, one more thing. I do not have a comic book view of male/female relations, despite having my fragil little mind (to quote Cartman) corrupted by the Gor books when I was thirteen. I eventually recovered... largely. I may whack off now and then to a comic book view of male/female relations, but when I'm done, I come back to reality. At least for a little while.

Marc2b -> RE: The Confederate Flag (9/16/2006 11:08:25 PM)
quote: Lincoln probably would have kept slavery if he was able to get the states back together pre-war. In fact Lincoln made it clear that his number one prioirty was the preservation of the Union. He stated outright that if he had to allow the continuation of slavery in order to do so, then he would. This, by the way, explains that masterpiece of political expediency, the Emanicpation Proclimation. It gave the pretence of a moral high ground to those who wanted it (the abolitionists) while soothing over those (slave states still in the Union) who needed to be soothed over. Some people criticize Lincoln for this but I think they are being unfair. Preservation of the Union was a necessary first step to ending slavery. After all, if the South won the civil war then the Union government would no longer have the authority to end slavery. I do believe, however, that if the South had won, they would have ended slavery on their own (at least on paper) in time anyway. Emanicpation was the wave of the 19th century and the Confederacy, if it wanted commerce with other nations, would have had to give in eventually. Yeah, I made an edit. Somebody wanna make something of it? [;)]

Lordandmaster -> RE: The Confederate Flag (9/16/2006 11:10:10 PM)
If you mean that we wouldn't have slavery in places like Alabama in 2006 even if the South had won the Civil War, then sure, I agree with you. But I don't think they would have abolished slavery very soon after 1865. quote: ORIGINAL: Marc2b I do believe, however, that if the South had won, they would have ended slavery on their own (at least on paper[;)]) in time anyway.

Marc2b -> RE: The Confederate Flag (9/16/2006 11:21:38 PM)
quote: If you mean that we wouldn't have slavery in places like Alabama in 2006 even if the South had won the Civil War, then sure, I agree with you. But I don't think they would have abolished slavery very soon after 1865. quote: No, not very soon. Most historians who hazzard a guess to this "what if?" scenario think it would have been at least twenty years. More like thirty to forty. What point? I'm tired and I'm going to bed. [sm=goodnight.gif]

Emperor1956 -> RE: The Confederate Flag (9/17/2006 8:35:54 AM)
Ah grasshopper, once again you assume too much. Perhaps my erased note WAS a comment on your note, or perhaps it was a comment on other statements in this thread. One never knows, do one? E.

Lordandmaster -> RE: The Confederate Flag (9/17/2006 9:41:47 AM)
When it says "in reply to Lordandmaster," and it's not obvious whom you're replying to if not to me, I assume it's addressed to me. Who pissed in everyone's Wheaties this morning?

juliaoceania -> RE: The Confederate Flag (9/17/2006 10:35:03 AM)
quote: ORIGINAL: Lordandmaster When it says "in reply to Lordandmaster," and it's not obvious whom you're replying to if not to me, I assume it's addressed to me. Who pissed in everyone's Wheaties this morning? Me (and it is posts like this that give me uber high posts counts that people regularly try to humiliate me over ..WEG)

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