This Is Hot!!!!

[punkncat]

or rasism... thats what we in the north call it and they think they can raise again! you never rose in the last TRY was in a war that was lost LONG ago and im going by what i learned in SCHOOL i know its a big word but dont tell me im not informed on any matter unless you can back it up

You are actually accusing my information of being false and unable to be backed up? Its just racism and your opinion invalidates the truth of history?

It would be nice that you actually look into this and found out for yourself the truth of the summary I posted. I am not lying. I am not making it up. This stuff is so much better than the fiction that you would like to push on "us" and anyone else who has a sense of pride about the true heritage of the South and what our forefathers stood for.
I suggest you check out a website. Search under Sons of the Confederacy. It is not a racist site. It is full of factual information backed up and confirmed by many historians and filled with members of many different ethnic, economic, and regional backgrounds. It tells a story much different than the crap you have evidently been fed.
I am sorry man, but simply spouting this bunch of mess is so...well I really don't want to flame. Try to find some truth man. Don't belive everything you hear just because some government school told you so.

[Sumthinwicked]

You are actually accusing my information of being false and unable to be backed up? Its just racism and your opinion invalidates the truth of history?

It would be nice that you actually look into this and found out for yourself the truth of the summary I posted. I am not lying. I am not making it up. This stuff is so much better than the fiction that you would like to push on "us" and anyone else who has a sense of pride about the true heritage of the South and what our forefathers stood for.
I suggest you check out a website. Search under Sons of the Confederacy. It is not a racist site. It is full of factual information backed up and confirmed by many historians and filled with members of many different ethnic, economic, and regional backgrounds. It tells a story much different than the crap you have evidently been fed.
I am sorry man, but simply spouting this bunch of mess is so...well I really don't want to flame. Try to find some truth man. Don't belive everything you hear just because some government school told you so.

read the next statement of mine :P

[pk5]

o my goodness...can we just post about marker and not politic :-P

beside, it is not the flag that is offensive, it is an image and just a flag.....it is the people who are waving the flag that cause the bad image that goes with it....i.e. white supremacy group who keep waving the flag and use it for their cause....it was painted on the general lee car and no one call that offensive.

[punkncat]

I am not going to argue with you sumthinwicked. It is fairly obvious that in many things you have a strong opinion that no amount of fact or reasoning will change.
I have no doubt that you really don't care, and that is ok.

Good luck with that.

[Sumthinwicked]

watch the movie actaully they flicked him of fin the new one and a bunch of other things in town either way ur right its a pretty gun ...

[Sumthinwicked]

its not an argument first off it was an explaination theyre are many historians to back me up in htis instance the other one was just stupity on everyones part SLAVERY WAS A MAJOR part of that war and that is why that flag is looked down upon dont like it rewrite it gl on that note ....

[Danterwhoo]

NO NO NO NO!!!!!

This is so incorrect as to be offensive to me.

Allow me to attempt to set a few things straight. I apologize if this has already been addressed, I didn't make it past this post.

Before the civil war happened the southern states were loosing power and influence in the government that was centralizing. These states wanted more direct control over the laws, taxes, etc. and to be more self governing than to have a centralized government making rules for all rather than to benifit specific areas. This belief in states rights and the loss thereof was going to severly hurt the south as most of the other states were much more industrial than agricultural. These states rather than have their rights, taxes and laws changed by a majority of industial states who would change things to their benifit secceeded from that union in order to form their own government.

Now as to slavery, it was already on the table, even within the south to be dissolved. Mind you there was a great deal of resistance by some who had a lot of money tied up in property. But even they realized that in reality it was uneconomically feasible. Think of it like this. Slaves were a serious investment. As such it was of the intrest of slave owners to take care of and keep this property healty and productive. On the other hand, low payed labor in the north was much more cost effective. There was a readily available and abundant source of workers coming in from the UK and other places abroad as a result of famine, unrest and many other factors. All that had to be done for them was to provide a wage, which was very low, and they had to worry about their own food, clothing, health etc. Slaves on the other hand being a large investment in addition to having to pay the cost to house, feed, clothe, and keep healty and productive.
At the time there was a strong abolotionist movement in place and it was centered in the north, although it was supported by many in the south as well. When the war broke out, dealing with becoming a new country, starting its own economy, money, fighting a war, etc. the south had to shelve moving forward with this change. The abolishionists as well as the north used this to thier advantage in many ways. In stead of fighting to force the people that wanted out of the union due to being treated politically unfairly, it became a higher and more noble cause. They were fighting to free a people.
Well since history is written by the victors, the south became the evil oppressors. Never mind that slavery was legal all over the country for a long time and just very recently before made unpopular in unagricultural areas where cheaper more affordable labor was available in the form of immigrants.
So after the war, does anyone actually discuss what Lincoln wanted to do with all the freed slaves? Anyone? He wanted them all shipped back to Africa. No one ever discusses that do they?

(There was really much more involved but I cannot type all that....this is highly summarized.)

So what was really the death blow is that the highly racist organization of people known as the Ku Klux Klan used the Confederate battle flag as a rally flag and misrepresented it. Lets not mention that the KKK was one of the biggest organizations in the nation at one point, not just the south.
After that, anti segregation causes once again misrepresented the flag by placing it in several southern states official status as a symbol of thier displeasure with that program.

So to people who know the real history and meaning of that great and beautiful flag, it does represent a proud heritage. To the uninformed it represents what they have been told to feel about it.

It's nice to know someone knows a little history around here. People think I'm crazy when I tell them that the bars and stars doesn't stand for slavery. But the pursuit of the southern ideas, ideals, dreams etc. And when the war started it was never about slavery but uniting the nation again, but history has made slavery the big issue.

[Sumthinwicked]

but history has made slavery the big issue.



thats what im saying

[zaqwert6]

A) Very nice looking marker.

2) What matters is the majority of the rest of the country/world associate that flag with Rednecks ,Slavery and Racism ,true or not. As stated , the swastika predates Nazi germany by over a thousand years but even the cultures who embraced it and have direct rights to it all that time have set it aside due to the negative connotation the rest of the world now associates with it. There's a difference between being right and being wise.

[mag79]

I am hispanic, born and raised in the ghettos of Brooklyn NY. (PROUD YANKEE), I currently live in the beautiful state of GA. Punkncat live about 2 minutes from me.

I would like to add (so this is coming from a yankee that is not white). Martin is right, the Civil war was never about slavery, hate or racism. Basically it was about the 13 southern states wanting to be independent from the Union, and the northern states trying to stop them.

Dont forget that many people up north owned slaved as well and they also like the south didn't want to give up their slaves

The 13 stars on the Confederate flag represent the 13 state that wanted to leave the union.

YES it is a symbol of southern pride. But I have witness living here in GA, many people not all, using the flag the wrong way. Using it as a sign of hate.

Daughter's and Son's of Confederate Soldiers should have stopped those hate groups from using their flag as a symbol of hate. This is something that they are trying to do now, but it look like its too late. Too many people relate the battle cross with hate.

Learn your history guys... Its Pride not Hate...It Never Was

[Indignant]

but history has made slavery the big issue.



thats what im saying

you must be a pretty blissful guy

[drg]

There's a difference between being right and being wise.

AMEN.

[Sumthinwicked]

amen! and i am blissfull for everyones info

[punkncat]

A) Very nice looking marker.

2) What matters is the majority of the rest of the country/world associate that flag with Rednecks ,Slavery and Racism ,true or not. As stated , the swastika predates Nazi germany by over a thousand years but even the cultures who embraced it and have direct rights to it all that time have set it aside due to the negative connotation the rest of the world now associates with it. There's a difference between being right and being wise.

There is a serious difference in the comparison that you make. The swastica was used by a nation that was based in hate and racial intolerance. Nazi Germany was in large part founded on the basis of that hate, and its political views and policies reflected it. The whole predication that the Nazi party used for the situation many Germans found themselves in in the times after WW1, was to blame this on groups of people that the party told people were "less than German, less than pure, etc"

The southern states were not founded on hate, but for freedom from big government, for the ability to be self governing.
Organizations and self serving people later took the flag, and misrepresented it causing this perception to be formed. Not by a nation, but by the later organizations.

I tell you, some of the worst and most inhumane things ever done to other humans in the modern history of man were done under the American flag. That may not be popular, but its true. SLavery was legal under an American flag for much longer than it was under a Confederate flag. How about the Indian Nations? Were they treated fairly, and humanly by those that used the American flag as a symbol?
Even more recently, and something that pertains to civil war history. Have you actually ever read anything about Sherman's march to the sea? This man was a terrorist. He essentially raped, maimed, destroyed, lied, performed the most awful acts upon the region here in Ga as he marched to the sea. He did this under the American flag. His armies stole food and burned homes from a 50 mile wide and sometimes more area on his path through and left behind destruction, famine, and injury to a region who was already defeated and decimated by the war. This was done out of nothing more than spite, revenge and hatefulness. As a wholesale act and on the scale that is was performed by him and his army was never duplicated by any southern army, even the extremists never reached such a level.

SO, if you really want to talk flags as symbols of hate...well suffice it to say that many qualify.

[mpsd]

OK guys, I'm sorry to change this threads main point (the Ego of the first post) into a political/historic discussion.

After reading all of your posts and crossing it with my previous history knowledge, including what zaqwert6 said (and I'm jewish so I got his point) I can take some conclusions:

- I understand what punkcat explained and it makes sense
- I understand what sumthinwicked said and that makes sense too
- Point is: the south went into war not only for their slavery support (economically speaking as punkcat explained - but also some racism too) but also for other ideals of freedom and politics.
- After the war, racist groups as the famous KKK rose and kept using the confederate flag to represent their "ideals". Those groups became larger and spread all over the country spreading hate and racism, mostly against the black people but also against jews and other minorities and, because of that, the flag is associated with hate and racism

Being so, my main conclusion is:

- Don't use that flag. As we are in 2008 now, this flag was used more time for spreading hate then to represent the southern good ideals and, because of that, the flag DOES make a bad point. Again, as zaqwert6 said, as being jewish, if I see someone with a swastika, I don't give a **** if this person is using it because it represents an indian cultural icon. For me, that simbol represents hate and offends me so bad that I would kick him first and MAYBE ask him latter. So, if I were a black southern guy, whose father or grandfather suffered in the hands of a groups that was using that confederate flag, I would hate that flag in the same way. And I wound't give a **** if, in truth, it represented a group of people that didn't want to be rulled by a northern state that had different values and issues.

Now, please, as I started all that with my silly question, let me close that discussion here. If you guys want to keep talking about it, lets just open a new thread on the Off Topic section of the forum and get back to the Ego on the first post, ok?