“The South is the last bastion of liberty and independence. I know we’re going to lose eventually.”

[kpete]

"we’re going to lose eventually.”

............


It has been quite a few years since the lost cause has appeared quite as lost as it did Tuesday. As the afternoon drew on and their retreat turned into a rout, the lingering upholders of the Confederacy watched as license plates, statues and prominently placed Confederate battle flags slipped from their reach.

“This is the beginning of communism,” said Robert Lampley, who was standing in the blazing sun in front of the South Carolina State House shortly after the legislature voted overwhelmingly to debate the current placement of the Confederate battle flag. “The South is the last bastion of liberty and independence. I know we’re going to lose eventually.”

“Our people are dying off,” he went on, before encouraging a white reporter to “keep reproducing.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/24/us/politics/supporters-of-confederate-battle-flag-watch-as-symbol-is-stripped-from-public-eye.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=first-column-region%C2%AEion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=1

[demwing]

1. News flash - you've already lost

reality just hasn't replaced your illusion...yet

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

2. It's embarrassing to see people who still think that way.

To realize there are people who've been told that sort of nonsense since birth, and are still doing their best to continue to spread that sort of thinking like a virus.

What makes a 'people'? Does skin colour actually matter squat? Shared life experience? Religious indoctrination? Geography or Nationalism?

Should I proclaim that people who have genes that express with darker pigmented skins are not part of 'my people'? Should I deny those who didn't grow up in the same culture as me, who might have been born in Toronto or Mexico City or even Moscow? Consider those who believe in a God as unworthy of being 'our people'?

'My people' are living, thinking, reasoning beings. Even those who have been horribly misled and miseducated.

It doesn't matter what percentage have darker or lighter skins, how many are born within one arbitrary geographic boundary or another.

They're still 'our people', and we're all our brother's keepers.

[kpete]

7. I really respect what you say in your post about skin pigments

Melanin as a reason to hate someone is pretty ridiculous:

Melanin: The pigment that gives human skin, hair, and eyes their color.
Dark-skinned people have more melanin in their skin than light-skinned people have.


peace & tolerance,
kp

[DamnYankeeInHouston]

10. Sometimes I wonder if some Whites are so vehemently racist because

genes for light skin, light hair and light eyes are all recessive.

[Paladin]

3. Absolutely pathetic. (nt)

[malaise]

4. Liberty and independence for whom exactly?

These racists are sick

[underpants]

5. "Confederate sympathizers"

[malaise]

17. These people are sick

They cannot be cured

[Atman]

6. "Our people are dying off."

Good.

[Atman]

8. Of course, it isn't just "The South."

Sure, the Confederate flag represents the racism and hatred of The South, but The North was not immune. I spent my early years growing up in a rural New England town. My dad was a civil rights worker and he sported a sticker on his car which showed a black hand and a white hand together across an American flag. We used to get yelled at for having that sticker on the car. Larry Garron, a Boston Patriots (remember when?) star player, was one of our neighbors. I remember a couple of times when he came to our house for "cocktail hour," and the buzz it would create in the neighborhood because we had a black man over to our house! My parents' best friends were a mixed-race couple, unheard of in the early sixties. The guy was/is still pretty well known, at least in certain circles...he lives in Jamaica and played one of the baddies in the James Bond flick, "Live and Let Die." Still, fame and notoriety didn't matter. We were those people who associated with the black folks.

It was quite a different time. Or was it?

[onehandle]

11. I see Confederate flags in central Pennsylvania from time to time.

Not concededly, that area is known up here as Pennsytucky.

[onehandle]

9. Socialism keeps the 'last bastion of liberty and independence' alive.

Stop taking federal welfare, infrastructure, and defense money from non-Confederacy states and see how fast you fold.

[underpants]

14. Spit on. The south sucks at the teat of Uncle Sucker

The Republicans in the South does just thump their chests for the war machine to appear to be stronger on defense they do it because of how reliant their economies are on Fed money. Hell here in Va from Fed related jobs in NoVa to Tidewater (which is a DoD welfare state) even out into the Valley this state needs Fed money like California needs water. The sequester almost blew the whole state bus get over the cliff.

[GeorgeGist]

12. I would like to visit the universe is which ...

Lincoln let them secede.

[Arkana]

13. It's time their fucking flag got relegated to the same Shameful History bin

as the Germans put all their Nazi paraphernalia.

No, removing the Confederate flag from public life isn't solving the racism problem. But it is a societal course correction that should have happened the day Lee surrendered to Grant.

[underpants]

15. Shut up CSV - as stewards of the battle flag you took forever to denounce its use by the Klan

I have been able to find two resolutions from CSV state chapters that denounce the use of the battle flag either specifically by the KKK or "political extremist groups". One was by the Tennessee chapter (no date on the PDF) and one by the Arkansas chapter in 2009. 2009.


The Virginia chapter BARELY survived a take over by openly racist Neo-Confederates about 10 years ago if memory serves. I am not making a direct connection across all of the CSV but their silence on the use of the battle flag in Klan marches was deafening.

[Brickbat]

16. LOL those guys in the background.

"Can you believe this bullshit?"

[DashOneBravo]

18. Good

Maybe we can start pushing to rename all the U.S. Army posts that are named after Confedate Army generals.

[Jamaal510]

19. Freddie Rich (the owner of Rebel Store)

claimed that he doesn't believe in slavery, even though he thought the South was right. Also Craig Gagnon wanted to put up a so-called "compromise" flag from the Confederacy that hasn't become associated with racism, but that's impossible. I might be wrong, but wasn't one of the main reasons why Confederates fought against the North to maintain slavery and to break off from the rest of the country? Their movement was virtually all about racism, along with treason. If they really want to put up a new and less controversial flag, why not go for one that has more of a unifying symbol instead of one that has a hostile history towards a certain group of people? A state flag is supposed to unite and represent all of the residents.

[alarimer]

20. You keep using those words. They don't mean what you think they mean.

In fact, the south is pretty much the most repressive part of this country, what with the enormous pressure to conform religiously, socially and politically, especially in small towns. I've felt like I had to hide my atheism and liberalism while I lived in rural NC. I don't feel the same pressure now that I live in a blue state.

[LWolf]

21. What an orgy of ignorance

and xenophobia.