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Nikki Haley: Confederate flag meant ‘service, sacrifice, heritage’ until Dylann Roof ‘hijacked’ it
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While I suspect this is useless screaming onto the void, if you are actually interested in how did that happen, the Confederates were well educated and literate men who left lots of records explaining exactly why they did what they did. You could start with The Cornerstone Speech, then the SC and TX declaration of independence. But yeah, it was entirely about keeping the right to own other human beings as livestock. Which is what pretty much everyone sees the battle flag as representing, only disagreeing about whether that was good or bad.
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ETA:
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They’d really benefit from drinking a quart of bleach.
The only tolerable nazi is a dead nazi.
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First:
Next:
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Fucking go read the articles of cessation before you claim to have any special knowledge.
You look like a fool.
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So let’s take a positive spin on this: the Confederate flag used to mean service and sacrifice, until Dylann Roof hijacked it to mean explicit racism and white supremacy, which it now does.
Similarly, the swastika used to mean the sun and spirituality, until Adolf Hitler hijacked it to mean explicit racism and white supremacy, which it now does.
We have it on record that the Confederate flag is now tainted to mean explicit racism and white supremacy. Time to get rid of the flag and remove all images or other media representations of a clear symbol of hatred and anti-American values.
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they’ll vote for whom they are told to vote.
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I think other have covered the reasons for the war with links to supporting documents, but there was one thing you said I wanted to pick up on.
This feels like an odd talking-point kind of argument that doesn’t make much sense to me. The soldiers in World War 1 mostly didn’t know or care who Franz Ferdinand was and probably didn’t understand the various international treaties that set off that conflict. Many of the Americans in the Korean war couldn’t have picked up Korea on a map before they were sent there, same for Vietnam. The Americans in the first Gulf War didn’t care about Kuwait’s sovereignty and had only heard about Saddam Hussein the week before they were shipped out.
Soldiers in the civil war were not fighting for slavery. Just like in nearly every war, the soldiers had more in common with the people they were killing than they did with the people commanding them. All the more reason to put away the symbols of that war. The confederate flag belongs in a museum dedicated to reminding us to never do such awful things again.
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See also: all Republican women.
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There are many great things to come out of the American South—NASA, Louis Armstrong, Mardi Gras, The Waffle House… so of all the things to base one’s cultural identity on why in the EVER LIVING FUCK would anyone choose “a traitor’s rebellion waged in the name of preserving the institution of slavery?”
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Because we still think we’re superior to black people, and we resent being told otherwise by outsiders/Yanks. Duh.
/s
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My great-great-grandfather was a poor delta farmer that fought with the Confederacy. An invading army came through his state killing and burning. He was 1 of only 2 in his unit to survive the war and he lost an arm. I have no problem with the idea that the confederate flag represented service and sacrifice to him.
Within my lifetime and long before that, IT IS PURELY A SYMBOL OF WHITE SUPREMACY. To me and everyone I have ever known (including those that fly it) it is an overt display of white supremacy that has nothing to do with anyone’s service, sacrifice or heritage (excepting the heritage of a country built on genocide).
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Can’t really give that a “like”, but certainly a “nailed it!”
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At the very least, during the civil rights era of the '60’s when it was used as a symbol of resistance to integration, the battle flag became an overtly racist symbol. There is an argument that it became one in the '20s as Reconstruction gave way to Jim Crow. Regardless, it unquestionably is one now. Period. end of subject.
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LOL…
"Once he did that." Jesus Christ. What planet does she live on? While one can argue there are other connotations to the symbol placed on it through history, from its inception and ever since it has been a symbol of white supremacy.
Though she is right, it does represent “service, sacrificial, and heritage” - to, for, and of white supremacy. Sort of like the Civil War was over state’s rights - to own slaves.
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A flag is just a flag. It’s kind of an art piece. But a flag has (nearly) always some meaning. And with this one it’s not service, sacrifice and heritage. This version is actually the Second Confederate Navy Jack but it’s the most known of the flags used by the Confederation. The 15 stars in the flag represents the number of the slave states. And the possibility to have slaves was the sole reason why the Confederation was born and civil war started.
But the attitude of the current supporters of the GOP has been a mystery to me. According to Wikipedia:
"The Republican Party emerged in 1854 to combat the Kansas–Nebraska Act and the expansion of slavery into American territories. The early Republican Party consisted of African-Americans, northern white Protestants, businessmen, professionals, factory workers, and farmers. The GOP was pro-business, and it supported banks, the gold standard, railroads and high tariffs; the party opposed the expansion of slavery. At its inception, Republican Party had almost no presence in the Southern United States.
…
“From its inception in 1854 to 1964, when Senate Republicans pushed hard for passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 against a filibuster by Senate Democrats, the GOP had a reputation for supporting blacks and minorities.
…
After the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the GOP’s core base shifted, with the Southern states becoming more reliably Republican in presidential politics and the Northeastern states becoming more reliably Democratic. White voters increasingly identified with the Republican Party after the 1960s.
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Blacks generally identified with the GOP until the 1930s. Every African American who served in the U.S. House of Representatives before 1935 and all of the African Americans who served in the Senate before 1979, were Republicans. Frederick Douglass after the Civil War and Booker T. Washington in the early 20th century were prominent Republican spokesmen. In 1966, Edward Brooke of Massachusetts became the first African American popularly elected to the United States Senate.”
So the slavery and the Confederation were the original enemies of the GOP. A couple turnover events in 1948 and 1964 started the shift and this has since turned the GOP to its current form. But they shouldn’t still start remembering their original enemies with such forgiveness.
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It was integration that brought out a renewed wave of enthusiasm for the confederate flag… But sure… not about racism at all… 
And we know that the war was about slavery and white supremacy, because of the confederates OWN words.
There is plenty to love about the south that doesn’t glorify slavery and racism. We got wonderful music, literature, and art, we have excellent food, good weather for around 3 seasons, lots of beautiful landscapes from mountains to our gorgeous coasts. We have some fantastic colleges and universities, some great cities with lots of fun things to do. And most of all is all the wonderful people who are not racists who wish to take us back at least 50 years if not 150 years or more. We don’t need to hold onto some false narrative of the gallant south ginned up by the daughters of the confederacy to uphold white supremacy during segregation.
People like YOU do not get to speak for all of us down here. We are frankly SICK of people like you doing so. Those of us who love it here, but reject racism and other ills that you’re promoting, can damn well speak for ourselves. And we say, fuck the confederacy and all it stood for.
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It is entirely a symbol of resistance to the civil rights movement - because that’s when the flag was invented. It’s a 1960s flag, not an 1860s one. What we call the “Confederate flag,” the rectangular “Southern Cross” flag, was no such thing. Historically, that wasn’t ever a design used to represent the Confederacy. It’s a modern invention which may have been based on a Confederate battle flag (which was square), which was also an element in some of the Confederate flags, but as a 2:1 aspect ratio flag, it’s entirely modern.
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