Flying the Confederate and Nazi Flags at War Memorial Sites

[paineinthearse]

Poll question: Flying the Confederate and Nazi Flags at War Memorial Sites

Both are symbols for nationalism and race supremacy. Governor Blunt of Missouri granted permission to fly the confederate flag at a civil war memorial site.

"Officials with the Confederate Memorial State Historic Site in Higginsville said the turnout there - four times larger than expected - could be attributed to the return of the Confederate flag. Republican Gov. Matt Blunt ordered a one-day flying of the flag at the historic site to coincide with the memorial service, saying he was acting on the request of a state lawmaker who represents the Higginsville area."

See http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=post&forum=102&topic_id=1525418&mesg_id=1525418

Is the flying of the confederate flag at a civil war memorial site equivalent to flying a nazi flag at a WW2 memorial site?

(As with any poll, just don't vote, add a comment).

[expatriot]

1. I selected "maybe"

I agree with you in that Confederate flag stands for racial supremacy and regionalism (rather than natinalism)... but your analogy would be more accurate if were to say "Nazi flags at German World War II memorials) since the South WAS the Confederacy but the United States was not Nazi Germany.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

2. Depends on which flag

If Blount allowed the Battle Flag of Northern Virginia to be flown, it is wrong and historically inaccurate, as it never flew in Missouri and was never the official flag of the Confederacy. If they flew the Stars and Bars, that would be historically accurate and not offensive. What makes the Battle Flag offensive is its use by the KKK after the War.

[ohio_liberal]

3. I hope some southern DUers jump in

I don't know that I'm qualified to have an opinion. Why can't some southerners just let the Confederate flag go? What does it stand for in this day and age?

[Ken Burch]

4. "It stands for

red necks, white socks, and Blue Ribbon Beer."

as the song says.

[Retired AF Dem]

6. Blue Ribbon Beer?

You don't know shit about the south. It's natural lite or nothing. :)

[Ken Burch]

7. It was in the original lyric.

From the song of the same name by Johnny Russell

There's no place that I'd rather be than right here
With my red necks, white socks and blue ribbon beer
The bar-maid is mad 'cause some guy made a pass
The juke box is play-in' there stands the glass
And the cigarette smoke kind-a hangs in the air
Rednecks, white socks and blue ribbon beer

From the song of the same name by Johnny Russell.
A cowboy is cusin' the pinball machine
A drunk at the bar is get-tin' nois-y and mean
And, some guy on the phone says ill be home soon dear
Red-necks white socks and blue ribbion beer

CHORUS:
No we don't fit in with that white collar crowd
We're a little too row-dy and a little too loud
There's no place that I'd rather be than right here
With my red-necks white socks and blue ribbon beer

The sem-is are pass-ing on the high-way out-side
The four thir-ty crowd is a-bout to ar-rive
The sun's go-in' down and we'll all soon be here
Red-necks, white socks and blue rib-bon beer

REPEAT CHORUS:
TAGG:
There's no place that I'd rather be than right here
With my red-necks, white socks and blue rib-bon beer

[Jack_DeLeon]

10. Because all the rest of the Southern Flags are lame...

Not as many Texans fly the confederate flag because the Texas Flag is way cooler than the confederate flag.

However the rest of the south has crappy flags that people arent proud to fly so they use the confederate flag instead.

[pnorman]

5. As much as I LOATHE what that Rebel-Rag means

to many of those people, I voted NO. They represent the Dark Side of this country, but they're still our fellow Americans. The Nazi flag being officially sanctioned at ANY American event, is another matter.

pnorman

[VPStoltz]

8. I am no expert

but my understanding is that when a country loses a war - as did the Confederacy - its flag becomes part of the war prize. Both Germany and Japan had to change their flags after WWII, the imperial flag of Russia was abandoned by the Bolsheviks (and not revived when the government fell in the 1980s). The South LOST, and they should lose that frickin' reminder of just how much they, now loyal to the whim of the Repukes, used to HATE America. Funny how the table turns.

[Jack_DeLeon]

11. The Japanese still have thier flag...

Its thier Naval Ensign on thier ships.

Also yes other more authoritarian nations can ban certain flags and symbols, but that is not the way it is "supposed" to be in the US. We are supposed to have freedom of speech and expression.

[UdoKier]

14. The Japanese were ruthless imperialists, a more brutal version

of the US today. Even considering the Rape of Nanking and their atrocious treatment of US prisoners, they cannot be held in the same league as the people who loaded 12 million or more people into gas chambers.

The flag of the rising sun was used from 1870 onward. It flew over Japan during peacetime, as well as its expansionist period. The Swastika, however, was SPECIFICALLY representative of the Republica- oops, Fascist, racist and militaristic Nazi Party and the Third Reich. It did not stand for "Germany", as the Rising Sun stands for Japan.

The Army and Navy flag:



no longer flies because the Japanese Army and Navy no longer exist - replaced by the "Self-Defense Force", which Bush has bastardized by dragging into Iraq, against Japan's pacifist constitution...

[One_Life_To_Give]

27. The south did lose it's flag

It's Illegal to fly the Flag of the Confederacy. Which is why you never see it. Saint Andrews Cross or the Stars and Bars was a battle flag. Used to identify troops in battle.

The real shame is that a bunch of racists have been allowed to take over this symbol.

[HereSince1628]

30. I was wondering about that the other day

could you provide a link that has information on the legality of flying a Confederate flag?

[Kellanved]

28. not quite

In case of Germany the reason was pretty clear: the Nazis had established their party flag as a national flag. The removal of all symbols nazi was a very understandable one; both Germanies returned to the black-red-gold of the Weimar republic.

Should there be a need to fly a historic flag (I can't think of any), the flag to fly would be a red-white-black tricolore. But really: why? The world is a better place because the people fighting under the Nazi flag did not win. Fly the Aliies' flags! And remember : the Soviet flag belongs into that row as well.

[Jack_DeLeon]

9. Yes and I dont think there is anything wrong with that...

Why shouldnt war memorials fly the flags that those people died fighting for.

[Dirk39]

16. No.

Hello from Germany.

"Why shouldnt war memorials fly the flags that those people died fighting for?"

Those people didn't die for flags, they died fighting for the wiping out of all jews from this planet in the case of Germany, and to preserve racism and slavery in the case of the USA.

"War memorials flying these flags" can only have three meanings:

1. Be happy that these bastards are dead and that they didn't win.

2. What they were fighting for: slavery and the holocaust were justified. They just didn't win in the fight for these honorable goals.

3. people, who kill, murder and rape for whatever country they are living in, are heroes and justified in what they are doing. It's always honorable to die for your country or even more abstract, for a "flag". Kill millions of jews, erase these "brown people" from our planet, kill more Iraqis. Everything is justified in the name of a stupid flag.

Dirk

[Yupster]

20. Grussgott from Texas Dirk

When the American Civil War started, President Lincoln assured the people of the south that they had nothing to fear from him, that he had no intention of taking anyone's slaves away, or making slavery illegal.

His issue was with not having slavery extended into the western territories which were not yet organized as states if the people didn't want it.

Lincoln ran for office as a completely regional candidate completely ignoring the south and not even getting on the ballot in most southern states.

So, when he won, seven of the southern states decided by votes of their legislatures to leave the union and form their own country.

Within a year the Confederacy had a draft and 750,000 of the south's approx. 1 million able bodied white men were to serve in the armed forces of the Confederacy.

Anyway I think there's a lot more to the issue than saying that the men in that cemetary who died in butternut died to preserve slavery.

There's a famous case of a federal officer speaking to some Confederate prisonrs. He was surprised to larn that none of them had any money, any slaves or any interest in politics. Then why were you fighting he asked them? "Because you are here," they answered.

The way many of the people of the Confederacy saw it, they had set up a perfectly legal government, elected their leaders and joined a national army which was defending its land from a huge invader which was burning the fields and buildings, killing the livestock, ripping up the railroads, stealing the horses, and blockading the ports.

So they were fighting to defend their homes, towns, counties, states, etc, and their neighbors were all right there with them because the way the Confederate army was set up, the regiments were formed by counties. Pretty much the entire adult white male population of the county went marching off to war together with an elected leader, usually the mayor or the preacher.

In this situation, I just think it's a stretch to say these buried men were fighting to preserve slavery. There was much more to it than that.

[misanthrope]

22. You might want to...

...read the articles of secession from the various state legislatures of the confederacy. Most of them are pretty unambiguous about white supremacy.

[Yupster]

24. Absolutely they were

but so were the northerners and President Lincoln too.

White supremacy was not a southern trait in 1860, it was well within the zeitgheist of America.

[misanthrope]

25. Just in case...

...you're interested.

various states

Morris Dees and friends

some fella' from Princeton

[dansolo]

26. Gee, that sounds an awful lot like what the Iraqis are doing

You'd think that the Southerners would be supportive of the attempts by the Iraqi people to repel the Yankee invaders.

[UdoKier]

12. No. It's racist and traitorous, but the Nazi flag stands for genocide

and cold-blooded genocide at that.

The Confederacy was arguably LESS genocidal than the Union which slaughtered so many Indians as it gobbled a swath across the continent.

I dislike the traitorous Confederate flag because those who display it now ARE consciously displaying their callousness to people of color, regardless of how they protest that it's "just heritage".

But the US flag, because of the wisdom and insight of our founding fathers, and the idealism of so may who later fought to make the union better, still is imbued with a great deal of potential and idealism, despite the blood the imperialists have repeatedly splattered on it.

The nazi flag is just plain evil beyond redemption, whether flown by people 60 years ago or today. It represents all the worst of humanity. Much worse that the Dixie rag.

[Yupster]

13. The word treason

is sure being thrown around an awful lot.

I don't see it.

[Merope215]

15. It doesn't really bother me.

That said, I don't think it should be done, and here's why.

The Nazis were, at least in my opinion, much more evil than most Southerners in the 1860s, which is not to deny that slavery was a fully brutal and dehumanizing system, but I'm not sure that the Nazis and slaveowners were morally equivalent. It's always seemed to me that Nazis really worked at being evil, and while Southern slaveowners aren't tops in my book either, calculated cruelty and basic evil intent don't seem to me to have motivated them to the same extent. I know that other people have strong opposing opinions on this, but that's always the way it's seemed to me.

I grew up in Georgia, though my extended family is all from New York, so I don't really have any vested interest in the Civil War, and I've been to a couple of Civil War cemeteries. One is five minutes from my house, and it has a subdivision built over it. (Really.) The other is from the Battle of Jonesboro, outside Atlanta, and it's actually laid out so that the headstones form a Stars and Bars. It also flies a Confederate flag, if I'm remembering correctly.

One time I saw a bumper sticker on a big rig that had a Confederate flag on it and said "Heritage, not hate." If that were really the case, flying the Confederate flag at Confederate cemeteries wouldn't bother me in the slightest. But the KKK turned that flag into a symbol of murder and brutality and hatred and oppression of the worst and most deliberate kind (I think the KKK can be more accurately likened to the Nazis than the average Southern slaveowner of the mid-nineteenth century), and so I do not think it has any place today. People who had ancestors who fought in the Civil War feel, for the most part, indifferently toward the Confederate flag. People who had ancestors who were fought over in the Civil War are, often and for very good reason, highly offended by it. With odds like that, why use it? It's time to let it die and focus on building a better and more just future. Unfortunately, many people don't seem to be able to let the past go.

Also, as someone else said, I don't think many people take time to reflect on the full absurdity of fighting, 150 years later, about whether to let a roundly defeated separatist movement continue to fly its flag. It's insane. The people who keep trying to fly it don't spend much time thinking, obviously, about how damn lucky they are that the rest of us don't start shooting them. And, oh irony of ironies, they tend to be the ones calling Iraqi insurgents "terrorists."

Sometimes the absurdity of these people makes my head spin.

[Fridays Child]

17. I'm against flying the Confederate flag but the Higginsville site

is a Confederate memorial. The Missouri Home for Confederate Soldiers was there until the last resident died in the 1950s. So, although I won't defend the flying of the Confederate flag there, flying a Nazi flag at a WWII memorial doesn't really work as a comparison.

[Devlzown]

18. I think it's okay to display the Confederate flag at

cemetaries, monuments, or museums. I don't think it should be flying in front of a courthouse or any other government building.

[funflower]

19. Other than from purely historic interest, is there a legitimate reason

ANY decent person would want to fly the stars & bars? Please educate me. Are any of those guys with the confederate flag on their truck anything but racist, sexist and evil?

[Cicero]

21. There is absolutely no comparison between the Nazi and Confederate flags

The Nazi flag was adopted by a group of people that had hatred and genocide as their most distinguishing features. The Confederate flags (both the various national flags and the battle flag) are nothing like the Nazi flag.

I'd like to say I'm surprised that someone here on DU would make such an asinine comparison, but sadly, bigotry against southerners is one of the few remaining "politically correct" forms of discrimination allowed in this country.

Later, :mad:

[Chauga]

23. At least we can see these hatemongers for what they really are

[WI Independent]

29. I voted no, but...

maybe would probably been a better choice. It depends on the intent. I would agree the meaning the KKK has associated with that flag since the war is the moral equivalent of a Nazi flag.

Now as to the original meaning of the flag, I think there is a lot of over-simplification of exactly what the war was about. Yes, slavery was the major issue. But I don't think it was an issue in the way the average American today understands it. The main problem the north had with slavery was the northern industrialist were afraid the south would begin to industrialize using slave labor and put them at a competitive disadvantage. It was not some great moral purpose on the part of the federal government to "free the slaves". Remember this is the same government that continued to slaughter and imprison (relocate to a "reservation") "savages" for MANY years after 1860. There was NOT a HUGE difference of views on the basic human rights of non-white's in 1860.

Viewed from a different perspective... The catalyst for southern secession was Lincoln's election. Lincoln was not even on the ballot in many southern states... does "not my President" resonate with anyone here? To some people that flag represents standing up to a central government that doesn't represent them... I can respect that.

[Tippy]

31. I voted no but liked you maybe might have been a better choice

"To some people that flag represents standing up to a central government that doesn't represent them... I can respect that"
Me Too..........

I have a very dear friend who is in her 90's and is still active in the Daughters of the Confedercy, she is a proud woman and if she enjoys flying the flag on days such as the one in MO..I see no problem...The flag is repulsive to me so I would not have attended..

[MadHound]

32. I'm from Missouri, and I'm not bothered by this

:It is a one day deal(the Stars and Bars used to fly all the time, up until two years ago), done on Confederate Memorial Day, in a Confederate cemetary. It is done as a matter of heritage, not hate. I have no problem with this, since unlike the Nazi flag, the Stars and Bars is the flag of a historic country, not a political party.

That said, I find it repugnant when I see the flag flown elsewhere, private home, on vehicles, etc. To me, in that context, it is a symbol of hate, racism and treason. Having it flying on or over statehouse ground, as is done in the Deep South, is thankfully disappearing. I find that to represent state sponsored bigotry and hate, and I'm glad that slowly but surely such practices are disappearing.

But one day a year, at a Confederate cemetary, on Confederate Memorial Day I think is appropriate, given the context. Those who died are and were our fellow Americans, our brothers, fathers, friends and family. To memorialize them, in the way that they would wish, is a legitamite use of the flag. Anything else however simply shows a person up as the treasonous, bigotted hatemonger that they are.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

33. The Germans have enough sense not to fly Nazi flags.

The southerners don't have the sense or the ethics.

[One_Life_To_Give]

34. Confederate Flag

CONFEDERATE STATES OF AMERICA


ARTICLE FOUR-A: GENERAL PROVISIONS
SECTION 4A.1.

1. The National Flag of the Confederate States shall be the March 4, 1865 third Confederate National Flag