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Is the Confederate flag a symbol of treason?

Is the Confederate flag a symbol of treason?

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Harry Guerrilla said:
The core principle behind the war was not "slavery is good," it was "the federal government has exceeded it's lawful authority."
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...by telling us what we can't do with black people.

The core principle behind the war was absolutely that slavery is good. If the South didn't think slavery was necessary to their economy and standard of living, the Civil War would never have happened.

Whether or not it was in relation to, slavery, etc, is immaterial.
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It is completely material. That is like saying it is ok to be proud of waving a Nazi flag because that just means you love Germany. What they did to the Jews is immaterial.

To be clear, I'm not comparing southerners to Nazis.
 
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kamikaze483 said:
People have the right to do and say and express themselves however they wish. We should not be banning anything as long as it doesn't infringe on the safety, property, or wellbeing of others.

If someone wishes to display the confederate flag, or pray to the east, or espouse communist politics- this is their privelege, whether it is connected to their cultural traditions and heritage, or because they are predjudiced, or for whatever reason they wish. It is their right. THat's what is good about America. That's what's patriotic.
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You would have had a heart attack if you saw that guy carrying a confederate flag protesting the ground zero mosque then.....lol
 
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whysoserious said:
Why does there need to be Southern Nationalism? Do we need US pride, Southern pride, state pride, city pride, and neighborhood pride too? And way to define the argument, by the way. Nice try in dancing the issue, but let's be clear, no matter how you try to paint their intentions, the intentions were to keep slavery. I love that debate tactic, though, it was impressive. "It's not like they liked slavery, I mean yes, a big reason they seceded was because they wanted to keep slavery, but it's not like they enjoyed it or anything."

That's good. Well played, sir.
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Because a super national government, like that of the U.S. can not possibly represent all the interests of it's citizens.
I've never been in favor of the U.S. government, as it is.

I didn't dance around anything, I addressed it directly.
The core principle was, the feds overstepped their authority.
 
Krhazy said:
...by telling us what we can't do with black people.

The core principle behind the war was absolutely that slavery is good. If the South didn't think slavery was necessary to their economy and standard of living, the Civil War would never have happened.

It is completely material. That is like saying it is ok to be proud of waving a Nazi flag because that just means you love Germany. What they did to the Jews is immaterial.

To be clear, I'm not comparing southerners to Nazis.
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Depends, what if someone liked the organization of other beliefs behind the Nazi's, but detested the killing of Jews.
What would be appropriate for them to wave?
 
whysoserious said:
Why does there need to be Southern Nationalism? Do we need US pride, Southern pride, state pride, city pride, and neighborhood pride too? And way to define the argument, by the way. Nice try in dancing the issue, but let's be clear, no matter how you try to paint their intentions, the intentions were to keep slavery. I love that debate tactic, though, it was impressive. "It's not like they liked slavery, I mean yes, a big reason they seceded was because they wanted to keep slavery, but it's not like they enjoyed it or anything."

That's good. Well played, sir.
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Hell yes we need pride in all of those. If more people took true pride in their cities, their neighborhoods, their schools, and even in their individual families, violent crime rates, child neglect/abuse, litter, etc. would probably be a helluva good deal lower. As far as pride in just being lumped into the "human" race......nah, not so much. So, my friend, talking membership-wise or heritage-wise, do you have any pride at all? If so, in what? If not, why not?
 
It's a particularly complex symbol with many different meanings. To some it is simply a symbol of southern pride. Kind of a reaction to the perception that people look down on them like gay pride flags or people flying the flag of their nation of origin. To others it communicates something about state's rights. But, ultimately it is the flag used by a group of states that started a war against their fellow Americans at least partly for the purpose of continuing the practice of enslaving black people.

While I do really believe that some people who fly it honestly are trying to communicate a wholly positive message that has nothing to do with racism at all, the south needs to find a new symbol of southern pride or for state's rights because this one is inextricably also a symbol of slavery. While the south has much it should be proud of, the civil war is not one of those things. They need to find a way to celebrate their pride in their region of the country that doesn't also involve praising crimes against humanity.
 
Harry Guerrilla said:
Because a super national government, like that of the U.S. can not possibly represent all the interests of it's citizens.
I've never been in favor of the U.S. government, as it is.

I didn't dance around anything, I addressed it directly.
The core principle was, the feds overstepped their authority.
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Well Southerners haven't changed much eh? It's just like today with this ObamaCare nonsense, which people claiming we might as well shred the Constitution. Of course, when it is a law they agree with, the US Government isn't overstepping its bounds. If Congress were able to institute a law banning abortion, I doubt there would be much outcry from conservatives about that. I don't see many conservatives crying about Defense of Marriage Act, either. Try as you might to deflect the issue, the "states rights" that were being infringed all came back to slavery. Whether it pertained to laws in new territories (The Missouri Compromise), the Fugitive Slave Laws, or even the election of Lincoln. That's why you are stopping at saying the "feds overstepped their authority" and not discussing that overstep.

I'll save the whole southern nationalism thing for an argument on another day.

FluffyNinja said:
Hell yes we need pride in all of those. If more people took true pride in their cities, their neighborhoods, their schools, and even in their individual families, violent crime rates, child neglect/abuse, litter, etc. would probably be a helluva good deal lower. As far as pride in just being lumped into the "human" race......nah, not so much. So, my friend, talking membership-wise or heritage-wise, do you have any pride at all? If so, in what? If not, why not?
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I thought I said that in my post. I have have pride in all of us as a race first - though talks on this board make that difficult sometimes. I personally do not hold my race, country, state, etc above anyone else. I do have pride in my country, as well, but we certainly have a long way to go to become this "beacon of liberty" that we aspire to be. I'd say I do even have a bit of Southern pride as well, but I lived up north for a bit, and I probably have a bit of Northern pride as well. I don't know that, in terms of regions, pride is the correct word - perhaps affection fits better. I love the South and the people in it.
 
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whysoserious said:
Well Southerners haven't changed much eh? It's just like today with this ObamaCare nonsense, which people claiming we might as well shred the Constitution. Of course, when it is a law they agree with, the US Government isn't overstepping its bounds. If Congress were able to institute a law banning abortion, I doubt there would be much outcry from conservatives about that. I don't see many conservatives crying about Defense of Marriage Act, either. Try as you might to deflect the issue, the "states rights" that were being infringed all came back to slavery. Whether it pertained to laws in new territories (The Missouri Compromise), the Fugitive Slave Laws, or even the election of Lincoln. That's why you are stopping at saying the "feds overstepped their authority" and not discussing that overstep.

I'll save the whole southern nationalism thing for an argument on another day.
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You are attempting to "deflect" the entire issue right now by creating a strawman argument. Why is it necessary to drag "the Defense of Marriage Act", abortion, or Obama Care into this discussion. Enjoy trolling and baiting much do we?
 
whysoserious said:
Well Southerners haven't changed much eh? It's just like today with this ObamaCare nonsense, which people claiming we might as well shred the Constitution. Of course, when it is a law they agree with, the US Government isn't overstepping its bounds. If Congress were able to institute a law banning abortion, I doubt there would be much outcry from conservatives about that. I don't see many conservatives crying about Defense of Marriage Act, either. Try as you might to deflect the issue, the "states rights" that were being infringed all came back to slavery. Whether it pertained to laws in new territories (The Missouri Compromise), the Fugitive Slave Laws, or even the election of Lincoln. That's why you are stopping at saying the "feds overstepped their authority" and not discussing that overstep.
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It's a different culture.
Southern cultural beliefs are different from others and you can't force people into agreeing by shoe horning them into one nation.

We can discuss the slavery issue, if you'd like, but it doesn't take away from the argument that, the feds over stepped their authority.
The facts are too, that the northern states didn't abolish slavery until after the end of the war.

So stating that the sole cause of the war was slavery, is dishonest.

Why is the American flag, not considered equally offensive, when slavery existed under it?
Sounds a lot like cherry picking to me.
 
FluffyNinja said:
You are attempting to "deflect" the entire issue right now by creating a strawman argument. Why is it necessary to drag "the Defense of Marriage Act", abortion, or Obama Care into this discussion. Enjoy trolling and baiting much do we?
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Because I have heard, literally in the past few minutes, talks of how this country is overstepping its bounds lately with ObamaCare. States have threatened to secede over ObamaCare, often saying it is socialism and that infringes upon their rights. I just think it's funny that people live in a democracy, they enjoy the benefits of said democracy, but the second anything is enacted that they do not agree with, all of the sudden the democracy is broken and they do not want to be a part of it. But these people have no issue with the other acts that infringe upon rights, as long as it doesn't affect them. Similarly, people want to cut entitlements, unless it's their entitlement, in which case it's not an entitlement it's a right.

But I digress with comparison to current times. Paint the picture any way you like, but the institution of slavery and the Civil War are not mutually exclusive, and nor is the Confederate flag.
 
theplaydrive said:
There are several threads on the Confederate flag that dance around this question.

Many people, usually, if not always, conservatives, argue in favor of the Confederate flag and the desire to fly it or place it within the public domain. Oftentimes, they refer to it as if it is merely an innocent symbol of United States history, a symbol of state's rights, a symbol of fighting against far reaching federal government and sometimes even a symbol of patriotism.

However, these arguments, to me, seem like revisionist nonsense. The Confederate flag represents treason. It was the flag of people whose actions were not based in love of their country, but in a decision to give up on their country and abandon it in order to form a new one. It was a flag flown by those who decided that they no longer wished to be a part of the United States and that they no longer wished to solve their problems while remaining Americans.

Consequently, it seems obvious to me that the Confederate flag is not one that would be flown proudly by Americans, but one that would be flown proudly by those who no longer wish to be Americans. For this reason, it seems ridiculous to allow such a flag to be present on anything belonging to or issued by the state as it represents those who want to disassociate themselves from the state. It also seems ridiculous for anyone who considers themselves a patriot to fly the flag of people who abandoned their patriotism. Am I right about all of this? If not, why not?
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I think that whether the confederate flag represents treason depends on whether you think that the secession of the southern states represented treason.

My opinion is that it did not. Prior to entering into their compact, the several states were independent sovereign states (as in nation states). There is nothing in the constitution that indicates that these states ever relinquished their sovereignty, nor is there any constitutional prohibition against secession. There was nothing about secession that damaged any of the other states that chose to remain in the union, nor did any of the seceding states initially take up arms against the union. The seceding states simply revoked their delegation of sovereignty to their agent, the federal government.
 
teamosil said:
It's a particularly complex symbol with many different meanings. To some it is simply a symbol of southern pride. Kind of a reaction to the perception that people look down on them like gay pride flags or people flying the flag of their nation of origin. To others it communicates something about state's rights. But, ultimately it is the flag used by a group of states that started a war against their fellow Americans at least partly for the purpose of continuing the practice of enslaving black people.
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It is a complex issue, but not because of the flag itself. I don't have a problem with people waving flags of their countries of origin under most circumstances, unless they are doing so in a protest to us as a host country ala LaRaza and some of the other extremist groups. Gay pride flags don't concern me at all, they make a statement about acceptance of their own lifestyle and an appeal to respect.....I get that and have no problem with it. The big problem with the Dixie argument is two groups of idiots, the southern racists who misrepresent the flag by flying it to decree rasist intent(KKK, etc.) and then there is the group of non-southerners who have decided that their opinion on our culture is the only one that counts. To the former I say "get a clue, you don't represent us and are making us look bad", to the latter I say "go **** yourselves you pretentious bunch of jackasses, you are not appointed to the cultural assignment committee, go to hell".

While I do really believe that some people who fly it honestly are trying to communicate a wholly positive message that has nothing to do with racism at all, the south needs to find a new symbol of southern pride or for state's rights because this one is inextricably also a symbol of slavery. While the south has much it should be proud of, the civil war is not one of those things. They need to find a way to celebrate their pride in their region of the country that doesn't also involve praising crimes against humanity.
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Believe this or not, we are still to this day fighting the Civil War. I'll explain, slavery is over and should be forever in the U.S. but the core issues of state's rights, and especially the duty of the U.S. under the commerce clause to protect and not hinder interstate trade, and the limitations of the governments powers are today more important than ever. The south saw the U.S. trying to federalize and took a shot at stopping the encroacment of centralized government, we lost, so now we constantly have to fight about where and when the federal oversteps it's authority, all of the modern chaos comes from that issue.

So yes.......it is quite complicated.
 
whysoserious said:
Well Southerners haven't changed much eh? It's just like today with this ObamaCare nonsense, which people claiming we might as well shred the Constitution. Of course, when it is a law they agree with, the US Government isn't overstepping its bounds. If Congress were able to institute a law banning abortion, I doubt there would be much outcry from conservatives about that. I don't see many conservatives crying about Defense of Marriage Act, either. Try as you might to deflect the issue, the "states rights" that were being infringed all came back to slavery. Whether it pertained to laws in new territories (The Missouri Compromise), the Fugitive Slave Laws, or even the election of Lincoln. That's why you are stopping at saying the "feds overstepped their authority" and not discussing that overstep.

I'll save the whole southern nationalism thing for an argument on another day.



I thought I said that in my post. I have have pride in all of us as a race first - though talks on this board make that difficult sometimes. I personally do not hold my race, country, state, etc above anyone else. I do have pride in my country, as well, but we certainly have a long way to go to become this "beacon of liberty" that we aspire to be. I'd say I do even have a bit of Southern pride as well, but I lived up north for a bit, and I probably have a bit of Northern pride as well. I don't know that, in terms of regions, pride is the correct word - perhaps affection fits better. I love the South and the people in it.
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You would have had a stronger argument if you had simply maintained that the southern states used the state's rights rhetoric only when it benefitted their interests most.

Injecting contemporary politics into a historical discussion is at best anachronistic, and at worst, intellectually insulting.
 
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from HG

Southern cultural beliefs are different from others and you can't force people into agreeing by shoe horning them into one nation.
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When it comes to certain things like treason - Oh yes we can. America - the USA - is one nation and one people with one set of national laws. Of course there are sub cultures below that. But no subculture in America has a right to treason and to take up arms against the USA.
 
Harry Guerrilla said:
It's a different culture.
Southern cultural beliefs are different from others and you can't force people into agreeing by shoe horning them into one nation.

We can discuss the slavery issue, if you'd like, but it doesn't take away from the argument that, the feds over stepped their authority.
The facts are too, that the northern states didn't abolish slavery until after the end of the war.

So stating that the sole cause of the war was slavery, is dishonest.

Why is the American flag, not considered equally offensive, when slavery existed under it?
Sounds a lot like cherry picking to me.
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Whoa, whoa. Let's slow this down a bit. Let's start with you backing up your assertions. How did the feds "step over their authority"? Also, as far as I am aware, every state above the Mason-Dixon line had abolished slavery sometime early in the 1800s. And while we are talking about cherry picking, I don't recall the American flag being created when the Founding Fathers decided to secede from European monarchs because the kings wanted us to abolish slavery. That's a horrible comparison.

I think you have a lot of explaining left to do, because I am lost as to what you are arguing here.
 
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Harry Guerrilla said:
So stating that the sole cause of the war was slavery, is dishonest.
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It is definitely true that the desire to prolong slavery wasn't the only motive for the war, but it certainly was a major one. Probably the primary one. And that's more than reason enough to want to dissociate yourself from the confederacy.

But anyways, when we're talking about what a symbol symbolizes, it's a question about what people think it represents today, not a historical question.
 
haymarket said:
from HG



When it comes to certain things like treason - Oh yes we can. America - the USA - is one nation and one people with one set of national laws. Of course there are sub cultures below that. But no subculture in America has a right to treason and to take up arms against the USA.
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If they win, they have all the right in the world.
And that's how stuff really works.

The South lost, we got over it, but a lot of others still seem to have a problem with us, especially our iconography.
Even though they don't fret one iota about northern states, who flew their same/similar flags, while retaining slavery.

It's just beating a dead horse, to make yourselves feel better.
 
Fiddytree said:
You would have had a stronger argument if you had simply maintained that the southern states used the state's rights rhetoric only when it benefitted their interests most.
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Well that is what I was trying to say, you just summed it up (probably better than I wrote it). Democracy has the downside of not always getting your way, but people don't ever seem to mind it until they don't get their way. Then people are infringing on their rights or whatever lame excuse they want to come up with.
 
teamosil said:
It is definitely true that the desire to prolong slavery wasn't the only motive for the war, but it certainly was a major one. Probably the primary one. And that's more than reason enough to want to dissociate yourself from the confederacy.

But anyways, when we're talking about what a symbol symbolizes, it's a question about what people think it represents today, not a historical question.
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I've yet to see any of them name any other reason. They say unfair taxation, but it relates to slaves. They say infringement of state rights, but those rights are related to holding slaves. I am still waiting for even one good reason that does not in some way relate to the ability to own slaves (I am sure there is one actually but the fact remains that almost every reason is related to slavery).
 
So much wrong, so little time.........

whysoserious said:
Because I have heard, literally in the past few minutes, talks of how this country is overstepping its bounds lately with ObamaCare.
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The federal has, regardless of what the courts ultimately decide. And the worst part is that the same party that passed that steaming piece of horse **** is responsible directly for the original healthcare mess to start.
States have threatened to secede over ObamaCare, often saying it is socialism and that infringes upon their rights. I just think it's funny that people live in a democracy, they enjoy the benefits of said democracy, but the second anything is enacted that they do not agree with, all of the sudden the democracy is broken and they do not want to be a part of it.
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Socialism is a garbage ideology not in line with the intent of the constitution, but that is too complex of an argument for this thread as it would derail it, states fought under Dixie exactly because the right of self determination is THAT important. As well, we do not live in a democracy, we live in a democratic republic, unfortunately people elected a bunch of statist ****heads in 2006 and 2008 and gave power to a useless waste of DNA called Nancy Pelosi and as well put Harry Reid in charge in the Senate, they saw the polls stating that people did not want their brand of government power but pushed it through anyway, thus both the democracy and democratic republic models of representation fail for the purposes of argument here.
But these people have no issue with the other acts that infringe upon rights, as long as it doesn't affect them. Similarly, people want to cut entitlements, unless it's their entitlement, in which case it's not an entitlement it's a right.
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This is not true, many people disagree with things that do not concern them because they realize that it's only a matter of time before an issue that effects them will be on the table.
But I digress with comparison to current times. Paint the picture any way you like, but the institution of slavery and the Civil War are not mutually exclusive, and nor is the Confederate flag.
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Slavery was a part of the puzzle, nothing more, nothing less. As a matter of fact the economic issues pre-dated the abolitionist movement by decades, slavery was simply the last straw. Dixie was not about slavery, it was about the confederacy that finally had enough from the Union.
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LaMidRighter said:
Slavery was a part of the puzzle, nothing more, nothing less. As a matter of fact the economic issues pre-dated the abolitionist movement by decades, slavery was simply the last straw. Dixie was not about slavery, it was about the confederacy that finally had enough from the Union.
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Exhibit F: LaMidRighter. The 12th person to say "slavery was only a part of the puzzle" but then named nothing else.
 
whysoserious said:
Exhibit F: LaMidRighter. The 12th person to say "slavery was only a part of the puzzle" but then named nothing else.
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You must have missed the backlog in the thread that included but was not limited to tariffs, occupation, and the attempt to force industrialization in the south, then there was the positioning of the railroads which the south was not on board with, the naval blockade of southern ports.........
 
Harry Guerrilla said:
Depends on who's legal definition of treason that we're using.
Under some definitions no, under others yes.

Your reasoning seems to be somewhat of a cop out too.
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How is it a cop out?
 
whysoserious said:
Whoa, whoa. Let's slow this down a bit. Let's start with you backing up your assertions. How did the feds "step over their authority"? Also, as far as I am aware, every state above the Mason-Dixon line had abolished slavery sometime early in the 1800s. And while we are talking about cherry picking, I don't recall the American flag being created when decided to secede from European monarchs because they wanted us to abolish slavery. That's a horrible comparison.
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Slavery was an issue, not because of the morality of the politicians (ha! anyone really think politicians have such high moral standards), because those northern politicians wanted to contain southern political influence.
The northern politicians didn't want slavery to expand to the new territories, so they could limit their opponents political power, using the federal government.
It was an internal power grab.

You're operating on the presumption that the U.S. government wanted to abolish slavery, which it didn't.
So no it's quite an accurate comparison.
 
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