Thanks for taking the time to tell us when it is appropriate to be offended.

The Confederate Flag is a symbol, to those who do a bot of research or know better, of states rights and over reach of Federal Government and tyranny, very similar to whats going on today.

AFA the slavery issue, google the Horace Greely letter from Abe Lincoln and see his stance on slavery and end the debate that the war was all about slavery

There is no law (and never will be a law) prohibiting you from flying a confederate flag on your property or in the public sphere as you wish. Under the First Amendment, “political speech” is protected almost absolutely. It would take a much more compelling reason to than mere nuisance to prohibit an individual from flying the confederate flag in public (particularly b/c such a narrow law would be viewpoint specific). There’s a famous case in which the Supreme Court upheld the right of neo-Nazis to hold a public rally in Skokie, Ill., a town with a high population of Holocaust survivors. (You can thank the ACLU–a Jewish ACLU lawyer argued and won the case on behalf of the neo-Nazi group.) (By the way, I am not at all comparing the confederate battle flag to the swastika. I use this case as an example to show that our First Amendment protects pure political speech in even the most extreme cases.) So you really don’t need to worry about that.

Whether the state should fly the confederate battle flag on public property is another matter entirely. That’s an issue of policy. There is no question that Southern states began officially incorporating confederate iconography, including the battle flag, during the mid-1950s to protest federally-mandated desegregation. There is no question that the flag was co-opted by groups that wanted to maintain the racist apartheid Jim Crow system. And there is no question that the flag continues to be co-opted today by white supremecist groups. I’ll assume that you are correct that the Confederacy and the battle flag that Southern soldiers carried and died under on the battlefield was not simply “about” defending the system of slavery. But given the more recent history of the use of the flag, with one of its meanings unambiguously signifying official, legislative resistence to racial integration, what signal does the state send by flying the flag above its capital bldg? What does the legislative bldg have to do with civil war remembrance? I hope you agree that the context in which the symbol is used is crucial to its meaning.

Black slavery was the MO in the beginning of this country. A movement was begun to abolish it, but the south wanted to perpetuate it and left the Union and formed its own separate country to do so, the Confederate States of America. The Union converged on the CSA charging them with treason and to continue there “black people should be free” initiative. A war began, the north fighting to free blacks, the south fighting to keep blacks enslaved. During this time the CSA created (what is widely known today as the Confederate Flag) the Confederate Battle Flag to represent them in battle. They lost, the north won, slavery was abolished. Now, there are people who will tell you that the Confederate Flag is “Heritage Not Hate” but as I outlined above, the flag was only created to represent the war spirit of the white south fighting in the Civil War, a spirit that had them kill and be killed to keep blacks in bondage. So there is no way the flag can be anything other than a heritage of hate. This is the lesson of Jesus Christ in hate. Those that died for the south in the Civil War would rather be shot to death than to see a black person treated with the respect the equal love of GOD grants them. The figures on Stone Mountain are synonymous with the points I’ve outlined. The leaders of the CSA even mocked GOD through their coining of phrases that claimed GOD blessed the beliefs and practices of the Confederacy that were in direct contradiction to what The Father is. GOD is good and GOD IS good, where then does the courage come from to say he smiles on your actions when you do anything otherwise. If a person dies in a war, and it turns out you’re related to them, it doesn’t automatically make them a hero, but this seems to be the logic behind the Stone Mountain carvings. This carving on Stone Mountain has helped me though, without it, I would have lived to imagine everyone saints… but instead I see the not so bright truth outlined in the bible, man is evil. The bible says GOD looked and saw that every imagination of the thoughts of man was only evil continually and it repented the LORD that he had made us. Sad… isn’t it? GOD sees everything and so when we sin, we sin in his face. And so I hold tight to Jesus Christ for peace, and expect nothing less from man than what we’ve been doing. The KKK and The Sisters of The Confederacy prove GOD’s disappointment in us by building a monument to hate. True, those are pieces of history, but they are the pieces that keep record of the worst in man. Even sadder is when parents, knowing all that I have said, condemn their own children to hate by telling half truths about how those men flew that flag while “simply fighting off the attacking north”. Children of those parents I ask you this; if that truly be the case, how then can you be here? How was your lineage allowed to progress? The north wasn’t “after” southerners, the south lost the war… if that were the case all southerners would be either dead or exiled. The Union was after freedom of black people, and HAD to shoot and kill to realize this goal because as I stated above, the hateful south at that time preferred to be killed than to treat a black person like GOD loved them just as much. (Please forgive all typos) What are your thoughts?

This is the one I fly. My humble suggestion is for those of us who do believe in the Confederate cause, states rights, individualism, and the like, and are proud of our heritage but do not hate any man, to adopt this flag as our symbol.

Dave Tatum

This is getting a bit too silly for my taste. I reported a story that used the word redneck. Are you seriously going to hold me responsible for this? By all means if you want to waste your time and categorize me based on one post than go ahead. But is this really the level at which you want to interact with me? You can have the last word as I see nothing serious to discuss further given the content of this post.

May 3o 2009
Post by Kevin Levin
“Sorry, but interviewing the commander of the Sons of Confederate Veterans concerning plans to spread Confederate culture to every municipality in the country and including an image of some dude wearing a Confederate flag jacket as part of the 2006 Redneck Games doesn’t cut it.”

NEVER say NEVER !

Dave Tatum