TAMPA FL. — Men driving pickups honked and flashed a thumbs-up sign. One yelled "Hell, yeah!" Another pumped his fist in the air. Others, though, weren't nearly as pleased at the sight of a Confederate flag the size of a semitrailer truck flying Tuesday high above the junction of Interstates 75 and 4. "It's huge and it's obnoxious," said Curtis Stokes, president of the Hillsborough County branch of the NAACP. Organizers building a Civil War monument at the site. said last week they hoped to fly the Confederate flag sometime next year. But they raised it shortly after sunrise Tuesday to mark the 200th anniversary of the birth of Jefferson Davis, the only president of the Confederate States of America. Full story: Huge Confederate flag is raised early along I-75 and I-4 - St. Petersburg Times What do you think? :usa:
As much as I liked the General Lee and the Dukes of Hazard. The Confederate flag should have been outlawed. Not as a symbol of slavery (it really isn't it is the symbol of a group of people that supported slavery no doubt) but because it is the symbol of a group that committed treason and tried to overthrow the United States, and lost.
A bunch of rednecks raising a confederate flag I have no problems with. The First Amendment works best when it's supporting expression you don't agree with. Now, if the Government (city, state, or federal) planted one somewhere, then I'd say no.
If the Confederate flag had just been used during the Civil War, it could be associated with the war, but its use after the Civil War is really its downfall. It was used by the Klan, putting down civil rights rallies, and in many White Only situations, so the association with slavery and attacks on blacks was its undoing. I'm in the south, have family members who fly the flag and think its great, I don't and think its pretty stupid though, I don't even think they know why they even fly it, other than they think its cool. Sad to think a flag with so many losing connotations and that stands for the destruction of the US is cool.
I'm surprised you feel it's necessary to ask this question again. Weren't you the poster asked years ago to remove a confederate flag from your PriusChat signature?
they still have confederate flags on specialized license plates down here... available to members of the sons of confederate veterans organization. might as well face it, it's never going away down here. but that big flag looks like an eyesore.
When I was in high school (a very long time ago) there were neo-nazis, not themselves from the south, who flew the Confederate flag as an intentional statement of racism. When told that the Confederacy lost the war, they denied it with a straight face, insisting that Lee's surrender was an act of treason and that the war never really ended. These kids advocated that all African Americans (they used the N word) should be re-enslaved, that all Jews should be either deported or killed, an that American Indians should be exterminated. There may be people for whom the Confederate flag is merely a symbol of regional pride. But there are also people for whom it is a statement of their violent hatred for anyone who they consider non-white. And I suspect that the truckers who whoop and holler and raise their fists in the air upon seeing the "stars and bars" would also cheer if they witnessed a Black man being beaten to death on the street. I do not know if Al Qaeda has a flag. But if they do, then flying the Confederate flag is the equivalent of flying the Al Qaeda flag. I think you would be offended (and rightly so!) if someone put up a 100-foot flagpole with a giant Al Qaeda flag on it. I am offended when I see a Confederate flag. It is a deliberate denial of every principle America is supposed to stand for.
Most people that fly the "Confederate" Flag don't know the history of the Confederacy or that the flag they fly is a collection of elements put together by the Klan in the early 20th century. For those that don't know this is the last of 3 National Confederate flags: This is the Confederate battle flag: (Note: This flag is square) This is the 2nd Confederate Navy Jack: (Notice the color of the bars) This is the flag typically flown by ignorant bigots: (Notice that it is either the battle flag that has been made rectangle instead of square, or the 2nd Navy Jack with the wrong color bars)
Eh, a flag is what, a piece of cloth? It's more about what a flag means. If a flag means freedom to you, great, if it means rebellion to others, great... To me the Confederate flag is a symbol of the Confederate States of America, a country that was defeated in a war, much like the English was once defeated by another country. History is full of flags of winners and losers. Some day, the USA flag will be a historical note, just like the Confederate flag.
The Confederate States were never a country. They were a loose association of states that rebelled against the Union because their preferred candidate lost the presidential election. Their lack of the central control that makes a collection of states a nation was a big factor in their losing the war. But a flag is a symbol. Ideally it's a symbol of the entity that adopts it, but sometimes it becomes by popular usage a symbol for an ideology. The ideology of the Confederate flag today is the most vicious sort of racism.
I can acknowledge both sides of the argument, and I'm glad we have the freedom to express ourselves in the U.S. The true essence of freedom is accepting someone else performing acts that you don't agree with ... whether that's flying a flag or trying to stop it from being flown.
Especially when you see it flown on the west coast. Growing up plenty of the "AG crowd" or rancher kids used to pin that flag up in their back windows or wear it around their shoulders to country music concerts. They were about as racist as you can get. Same goes for most of the older truckers I knew (I worked for a trucking company at 14yrs old washing rigs). Rarely do I see anyone waving the flag proudly for any other reason than one of ignorant hatred. That being said I see no reason to stop them, it is their right of course. Just like I wouldn't want anyone to take away my right to fly my flags. Republic of Cascadia (or Republic of the Pacific according to T. Jefferson) Or the Salmon Nation flag Us west coasters really care about our trees and wildlife.
There are acts that are not legal, such as beating people to death because you don't like the color of their skin. It is also illegal to advocate beating people to death on account of the color of their skin. Flying the Confederate flag is a "legal" way of advocating illegal actions. The racist kids I knew in high school, who flew that flag, were indeed West Coast. Not one of them was from the South. They admired the Confederacy for no other reason than its slavery, and their own racism. It was not a statement of regional pride. It was a "legal" way of advocating violence against anyone with dark skin. Outfits like the ACLU support their right to fly that flag, as an expression of "free speech." But people who fly it are intending by that action to promote racism and racial violence. They are within the law as it stands today, but their intention is to promote illegal acts, and promoting illegal acts is itself a crime. I must drop out of this conversation now. I'll see all you folks when I return. Have a nice summer.
The stupid part of the whole deal is, if the monument, and what they were doing, is honoring Jeff Davis, then they should have used either the Bars and Stars, or one of the versions of the National Flag of the Confederacy, SINCE thats what Jeff Davis represented.