By Elaine Magliaro
Last week on The Nightly Show, comedian Larry Wilmore did a segment on South Carolina and the Confederate flag. Included in the segment was a bit he called “For the Record”—during “which he tore down the widely held notion that the Confederate flag is a symbol of heritage, not one of fear and intimidation.” Wilmore brought up Alexander H. Stephens’ 1861 “Cornerstone Speech”—in which the Vice President of the Confederacy said “the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man.” Wilmore also noted that South Carolina hadn’t been flying the Confederate flag since the South seceded in 1861. He said “it went up in 1961 to commemorate the one hundredth anniversary of the Civil War.” Wilmore added, “And coincidentally, right around when the black people started with the wanting of the civil rights.”
In closing his argument on why the flag should be taken down from the flagpole on the grounds of the statehouse, Wilmore said that “the Confederate flag is such a strong symbol of hatred and oppression that it has been adopted by skinheads and neo-Nazis across Europe, where in many places it is illegal to display a swastika.” He exclaimed, “It’s such a racist symbol, that it does double duty as the backup racist symbol for another racist symbol!”
Wilmore continued, “So for the record. I get it that plenty of honorable people have fuzzy feelings about the Confederate flag, but that’s irrelevant. Their nostalgia will never trump the people who see it as a symbol of hate.”
The Nightly Show – Enough Already – Confederate Flag in South Carolina
SOURCE
Larry Wilmore: ‘Take the Damn Confederate Flag Down Right Now’ (Rolling Stone)
Nicole Plyler Fisk
Gene Howington
FFS Guest Blogger
Joy of Fishes
Chuck Stanley
shortfinals
Terry Welshans
ann li-summers
wordcloud9
Flowers For Socrates 
“Wilmore continued, “So for the record. I get it that plenty of honorable people have fuzzy feelings about the Confederate flag, but that’s irrelevant. Their nostalgia will never trump the people who see it as a symbol of hate.”
************************
“Honorable people” have no say in the matter? And what is that argument if not an appeal to emotion and to favoritism? Do we have the right not to be offended? If so, why are the rights of some not to be offended better that rights of others to engage in “nostalgia”? It’s a slippery slope to fight free speech.
Apparently the votes are there in SC to take it down but it will be close. To those that want to keep the confederate flags fly them at hour homes. I remember the first time I saw one in my neighborhood in Texas I felt physically ill.
mespo,
Isn’t flying the flag on the grounds of South Carolina’s statehouse about appealing to the emotions of some white Southerners and about favoring those who honor their Civil War heritage? One can engage in nostalgia of the Civil War by flying the damn flag on one’s own property.
Strange that the other states who fly the same flag seem to be keeping quiet on this. I think they want to stay under the radar so they don’t have to deal with the question.
EM:
It’s not emotion to display symbols that evoke one’s history. That’s human nature. The decision to fly the flag on the capitol grounds rests with the South Carolina legislature not us. We might disagree with their decision but it should not bring down recrimination on them as racists when other less blameworthy reasons are equally plausible.
Scapegoating
Just as primitive today as it was back then.
Other less blameworthy reasons are not plausible, at all.
Worship racism in the privacy of your home, if you must.
That disgusting piece of cloth is the symbol, and encouragement of, treason and oppression.
mespo,
You’re telling me that the folks who are fighting to keep that flag flying on the grounds of South Carolina’s statehouse aren’t emotional about the issue. Sure…and bears don’t sh*t in the woods!
If, as is apparent, some readers of this blog have difficulty in comprehending the Larry Wilmore video, there may be a large-block text version available.
Or, alternatively, ask the nearest adult for help in determining whether that flag should come down.
No, SC doesn’t get to determine how to oppress its citizens. SC is not sovereign, and those people are citizens of the United States of America.
Subject to federal law and its protections.
Get used to it.
It’s been 150 years.
You lost.
Time to figure it out, yet?
I think the Pope shits in the woods, though.
Glad it’s not an emotional issue for you, Bob.
EM:
Composition fallacy.
“These outbursts of public frenzy at supposed enemies may reflect grassroots furor, but they are also orchestrated by progressive grandees who are inconsistent in their targeting of history’s villains — offering context and exemption for liberal fascist and racist thought, speech, and iconography, while connecting their present-day political rivals to the supposed sins of the country’s collective past. Manipulating the past, in other words, becomes a useful tool by which one can change the present.” — Victor Davis Hanson
That’s your best response to my last comment? Are you saying that only the people who believe that the flag should come down are emotional–while the flag lovers who want to keep that flag flying above their statehouse are unemotional? Try again.
EM:
“That’s your best response to my last comment? ”
******************************
That’s all that one deserved. As to your new one, the fact is that you are implying that the folks who want it up there are merely emotional. I simply said you’ve don’t have the facts to deduce that about the group as a whole regardless of where the bear defecates. I made no assertion about the folks who want it down. I did say that Larry (who I think is hilarious) was making an emotional appeal. Compare that to Gene who also wants it down but not on some emotional basis. Gene’s is the position you take seriously.
Tell you what, Bob, “grandees” is going into my lexicon effective today. Also Professor Hanson makes a valid point. Where is the polling from South Carolina about the issue?
Elaine:
I think what Bob is saying is that those who control the past, control the present. Slavery is wrong, our founding was not. I am worried that the left, and it already has gone a long way, will use this to put a stake in the heart of our founding through the back door of slavery. God knows they have been trying for over 100 years to overturn America’s founding principles.
it is really sad too, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness [and property] are good principles upon which to form a civil society. Social justice and egalitarianism are intellectual castles of sand used by tyrants for the purpose of obtaining power.
mespo,
I see. It’s the masters of logic who have the right response on this issue, once again. Only Gene has the position that should be taken seriously.
Do you know why I think that the flag should be taken down? Am I overly emotional?
Are you saying that none of the people who are fighting to keep the flag flying above their state house in South Carolina are emotional about the issue? Are, perhaps, some of those people emotional? Are most of those people emotional?
Bron,
I didn’t respond to anything that Bob wrote. I was responding to mespo.
http://www.occupydemocrats.com/kkk-vows-to-terrorize-blacks-with-cross-burning-at-sc-pro-confederate-flag-rally/
KKK will be burning crosses at their upcoming SC rally. Nice, huh?
From the link I Annie posted:
The fight for the removal of the Confederate flag from Statehouse grounds, which the Klan calls “cultural genocide” (but a more fun name is the “Honkeycaust“) …
Comedians are having a ball with this
blouise,
“Comedians are having a ball with this”
They most certainly are!
Elaine,
Referring to Jon’s upper-left graphic, who says treason and racism can’t be sexy?
Referring to Jon’s lower-left graphic, “Does this ass-symbol make my pickup look big?”
Elaine, blouise, Annie,
“You go, girls!” could be interpreted as demeaning, so
“Proceed, ladies!”
How people convince themselves that the Confederate flag represents freedom, not slavery
Historian John M. Coski examines the fights over the symbol’s meaning in “The Confederate Battle Flag: America’s Most Embattled Emblem.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/book-party/wp/2015/06/19/how-people-convince-themselves-that-the-confederate-flag-represents-freedom-not-slavery/
Excerpt:
John M. Coski, the historian at the Museum of the Confederacy in Richmond, authored a 2006 book titled “The Confederate Battle Flag: America’s Most Embattled Emblem,” as dispassionate a history as one might find on such a subject. (In its review, the New York Times said the book “brings some needed rationality to a debate driven by the raw emotion of soul injury.”) In his opening chapter, Coski examines the debates within the South — then and now — over the the flag, what it represents, and the origins of the argument that it embodies freedom rather than oppression. Excerpts:
Defenders of the flag have insisted vehemently that the Confederacy did not exist to defend or preserve slavery, and they impugn the motives and intelligence of those who argue that it did. . . . [Historian] James McPherson’s study of soldier motivations suggested that most Confederate soldiers did not fight consciously for the preservation of slave property. Confederate soldiers believed they were fighting, above all, to defend their states, their country, and their homes from invasion and to preserve the individual and constitutional liberty that Americans won in 1776. . . .
Historians and partisans in the flag debate can disagree legitimately with the logic of their argument, but they cannot deny the reality of the perception of those who suffered the consequences of invasion. If we wish to understand why many people perceive the Confederate flag as a symbol not of slavery but of liberty, we must understand that a war which “somehow” was caused by slavery (as Lincoln said in his second inaugural address) also necessarily entailed the destruction of an exercise in self-determination. . . .
Modern neo-Confederate orthodoxy not only denies that slavery was the cause of the war but posits that the Confederacy’s reason for being was the defense of constitutional liberty against Big Government. Furthermore, according to this reasoning, the growth of an intrusive federal government in modern times can be traced directly to the defeat of the Confederacy. Anti-government ideology has combined with historical analysis and ancestor veneration to give the Confederacy and its symbols exalted status as icons of freedom.
While generations since 1865 have embellished this orthodoxy, it originated in the rhetoric of Confederate leaders seeking to justify secession and win support for their new nation. . . . This “Confederately correct” orthodoxy that the South fought for independence, not slavery, rankled a few southern realists, including the editors of the Richmond-based Southern Punch in 1864:
” ‘The people of the South,’ says a contemporary, ‘are not fighting for slavery but for independence.’ Let us look into this matter. It is an easy task, we think, to show up this new-fangled heresy — a heresy calculated to do us no good, for it cannot deceive foreign statesmen nor peoples, nor mislead any one here nor in Yankeeland. . . Our doctrine is this: WE ARE FIGHTING FOR INDEPENDENCE THAT OUR GREAT AND NECESSARY DOMESTIC INSTITUTION OF SLAVERY SHALL BE PRESERVED, and for the preservation of other institutions of which slavery is the groundwork.”…
Modern Americans looking for this kind of definitive judgment go wrong, however, in concluding further that the St. Andrew’s cross was only a symbol of slavery. Historians emphasize that defense of African-American slavery was inextricably intertwined with white southerners’ defense of their own constitutional liberties and with nearly every other facet of southern life. Descendants of Confederates are not wrong to believe that the flag symbolized defense of constitutional liberties and resistance to invasion by military forces determined to crush an experiment in nationhood. But they are wrong to believe that this interpretation of the flag’s meaning can be separated from the defense of slavery. They need only read the words of their Confederate ancestors to find abundant and irrefutable evidence.
The Nightly Show – South Carolina Legislators Discuss Taking Down the Confederate Flag
Elaine M:
“Are you saying that none of the people who are fighting to keep the flag flying above their state house in South Carolina are emotional about the issue? Are, perhaps, some of those people emotional? Are most of those people emotional?”
******************************
I said we don’t know the motivations of all the people who want it up or even the range of reasons except what has been said by those asked –hardly a representative sample. There is no polling that I’m aware of at this time. The odds are some are emotional while others are rational. But that distracts from my point that you are implying that the flag flyers all are emotional which no one has the information to suggest.
I base this inference –admittedly of mine but based on a fair reading of your statement that was made without qualifiers — of the following assertion:
You’re telling me that the folks who are fighting to keep that flag flying on the grounds of South Carolina’s statehouse aren’t emotional about the issue. Sure…and bears don’t sh*t in the woods!
If that’s not what you meant, fine. But on its face, that suggests to me that you are lumping all the flag flyers into some mad, emotional group. There’s no data to reach that conclusion except for a rowdy band of about ten souls who started a fight on the capitol grounds to keep the flag up there. Hence the comment about Composition Fallacy.
EM:
That last paragraph you cited by John Coski is a nice summary of what I’ve been saying all along. Slavery was a component of the Southern way of life (and likely the precipitating cause of the War) and but not the only one. It’s not the only one symbolized by that flag either as some here seem to suggest.
mespo,
When did flying that flag–the one that most people now refer to as the Confederate flag–over government buildings/on government property in the South come into vogue? During the Civil War? A few years after the war?
Are you suggesting that it is incorrect to say that the flag symbolizes racism and slavery?
Would there have been a Civil War if it weren’t for slavery?
EM:
“When did flying that flag–the one that most people now refer to as the Confederate flag–over government buildings/on government property in the South come into vogue? During the Civil War? A few years after the war?”
*************************
My understanding is that it was used originally used by southern widows in Virginia (made sense since it was the battle flag carried by the Army of Northern Virginia) and elsewhere immediately after the Civil War and up to the turn of the century to commemorate the fallen or those who died later. The flag was also displayed at veteran conventions by soldiers on both sides.It was really no big deal then. It came back into vogue around the time of massive resistance in Virginia (1950s) to signify states’ rights to defy the government-sponsored school desegregation. It was the adopted by some hate groups to symbolize southern resistance to the Civil Rights Movement. Virginia’s Air National Guard (Southern Air Force) used the symbol until it was banned by the nation’s first African-American governor since Reconstruction, L. Douglas Wilder.
The flag symbolizes different things to different people just like our American flag. And, no, I’m not suggesting that slavery wasn’t a precipitating cause of the Civil War as I’ve said about three times now.
Elaine:
lets take a national vote on it, democracy in action. if 51% want it, it can stay.
Elaine:
I found that picture on-line.
Sad White Men Throw Confederate Flag Tantrum By Lying Face Down
http://jezebel.com/sad-white-men-throw-confederate-flag-tantrum-by-lying-f-1715149446
Excerpt:
For the non-ironic Confederate flag-humper, there were the protests last week outside in the statehouse in Columbia, South Carolina, where literally dozens of people celebrated coming in second during the Civil War. And for the semi-ironic Confederate flag-humper, there’s #TakeUsDown, a hashtag organized by Fox News’ cool friend.
#TakeUsDown is a response to #TakeDownThatFlag; it was organized by a man perpetually working on his hipster bigot Colonel Sanders Halloween costume. As blog site Gawker points out, #TakeUsDown looks like planking, kind of, in that it involves a large number of humor-challenged people lying on the floor. But they have one over on planking, because instead of looking stupid for no reason, these people are looking stupid for the important cause of doing their best impression of what they imagine your average white-guilt bleeding-heart libtard to do when he gets home.
mespo,
I didn’t ask you if slavery was a precipitating cause of the the war. Here’s the question that I asked: “Would there have been a Civil War if it weren’t for slavery?”
Elaine:
you cant answer that question. There could have been a civil war at a later time, such as the passage of the income tax. Or during the Great Depression. So you cannot really answer that question. I know people who think we are headed for another civil war in this country, they aren’t even right wing nuts, in fact they aren’t even republicans.
bron,
I was asking mespo if he thought there would have been a Civil War if not for the institution of slavery. Was there a civil war during the Great Depression? No. After the passage of the income tax? No. Was there a Civil War because of slavery?
What hysteria we had last week! What mindless reactionary behavior! I never actually flew a rebel flag-until this weekend, when I bought two up at Gettysburg and stuck them in the yard. My little protest against idiocy and PC run completely amok.
ct
And, yes I will do more than suggest that the flag does not represent slavery in racism in its original context. That hate groups and fanatics took it over back in the fifties for their own purposes does not mean, for example, Armistead’s regiments charging up Cemetery Ridge were a bunch of rabid racists.
If my generation wasn’t so obsessed with race we’d have an easier time making these distinctions
Charles Thornton
Yes, such hysteria over the thought that a flag might be removed from the grounds of the state house in South Carolina. Oh,the humanity!
BTW, did someone claim that Armistead’s regiments charging up Cemetery Ridge were a bunch of rabid racists?
Elaine:
in my opinion the civil war was fought because of the opposition to slavery.
Elaine@2:07pm
From the picture it looks more like they’re trying to give their buddies a place to put the flag pole.
Charles Thornton,
What exactly was your message, planting that shit in the yard?
“Look at me, I’m a jackass!” ?
That’s the message I got.
Elaine,
If it will help the flow of conversation, I’m willing to claim that Armistead’s regiments charging up Cemetery Ridge were a bunch of rabid racists.
But, to know what I’m referring to, I’ll need to find out who TF Armistead was, and where TF Cemetery Ridge, is.
After gleaning that info, I’ll need to determine why I care about it, at all.
Regiments in some fictitious army, working for slaveholders? When? Last year?
150 years or so, ago? If so, everyone in this evil clown regiment is dead, right?
Did they all die of rabies? That, at least, would be moderately interesting.
I’ll get back to you on this.
“What mindless reactionary behavior! I never actually flew a rebel flag-until this weekend, when I bought two up at Gettysburg and stuck them in the yard. My little protest against idiocy and PC run completely amok.”
Charles Thornton,
Because I believe in freedom of speech I would defend you’re right to festoon the rebel flag all over your house, your car, your dog, or even your private parts. Yet I would also assert that the Virginia Battle flag stands for treason against the United States of America. If you want to celebrate the treason of such as Robert E. Lee for instance, be my guest. I believe he should have been hung for his treason. He and Benedict Arnold were cut from the same cloth, but Arnold escaped to England, Lee wound up lionized by a pack of people who would deny historical fact as they deny their true heritage.
I interrupt the sagacious words for a public service announcement. I just purchased Dragon software speech recognition, it is outstanding I recommend it highly. Quite simply, it is amazing. You can do just about anything with it. Once I get a handle on it I think it’s going to be faster than typing and with less mistakes which seem to be easily correctable.
$150.00 is all it costs which seems like a deal to me. My nose is even stuffed up and still recognizes the damn words, it’s tremendous 🙂
B.,
Glad to hear you made that jump and are happy with the results. Does it work with your CAD software?
The Confederate flag’s big lie: How racists and segregationists made it their own
Once and for all: Anyone who talks about the flag as a symbol of heritage is flat-out wrong
http://www.salon.com/2015/07/02/the_confederate_flags_big_lie_how_racists_and_segregationists_made_it_their_own/
Excerpt;
I am a Southerner by both birth and heritage. I come from a long line of poor white cotton farmers on both sides of my family. Three of my four great-grandfathers fought in the Confederate Army. The fourth had been told by his parents that he could join the army when he turned 13; he was on his way from Texas to Virginia to do so when he met his brothers coming home on the road. They told him that Lee had surrendered and the war was over. My grandmother was a member of the United Daughters of the Confederacy and I was enrolled at the age of 6 in the Children of the Confederacy. I mention these credentials because of what I am about to say about the Confederate battle flag.
The flag that is causing such a furor was not “the Confederate flag,” as so many news reports have described it. It was a military flag, originally square in form, designed by William Porcher Miles, an aide to General P.G.T. Beauregard, after the first Battle of Manassas, because Beauregard thought that the Confederate national flag, which had a circle of white stars in a blue canton and three broad stripes, red, white, and red, was too easily confused with the Union flag in the smoke of battle. Miles’s battle flag was never approved by the Confederate Congress and never adopted as a national flag. It never flew over Confederate government offices, or over the Capitol at Richmond.
It was not even prominent among the symbols of the Lost Cause that helped create the myth of the noble suffering South during the years after the Civil War, nor was it celebrated during those years as a hallowed symbol of the Southern past, as apologists for it claim. According to University of Mississippi historian Allen Cabaniss, writing in The Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, it was seldom displayed at Confederate reunions or used by any of the societies of descendants of Confederate veterans. My grandmother’s United Daughters of the Confederacy chapter used the first national flag, the one that Beauregard thought could be confused with the Union flag, at their meetings, and she made me a small one out of silk to hang in my bedroom.
Cabaniss describes how the Confederate battle flag emerged “out of limbo” as a symbol of white supremacy and segregation during the Dixiecrat political campaign of 1948, when Strom Thurmond of South Carolina ran for president on a platform of states’ rights and segregation. Newspaper accounts of the States Rights Democratic Party convention in Birmingham, Alabama, describe delegates marching into the auditorium under Confederate battle flags as bands played “Dixie.” This set the stage for the adoption of the battle flag by the Ku Klux Klan and the White Citizens Councils across the South as a symbol of their racist opposition to integration. The first time I can remember seeing a picture of the battle flag carried in public was during the Clinton, Tennessee, race riot in 1956, when hooded Klansmen descended on the town and paraded down the main street under the flag.
G.
Not yet, I’m still playing around with it to see how it works and figure out its peculiarities.
“Army spokesperson Col. Steve Warren announced that today, Forts Hood, Bragg, Lee, Gordon, Pickett, Rucker, and A.P. Hill would be known as Forts Loyalty, Duty, Respect, Selfless Service, Honor, Integrity, and Personal Courage, respectively. Each fort’s namesake was a leader who led rebellion against the US Government in a failed attempt to keep African-Americans as property.”
http://www.duffelblog.com/2015/07/pentagon-rename-confederate-bases-army-values/#ixzz3ekBLbQJf
THE PENTAGON — A new gender integration study set to be released this week found that nearly 96 percent of infantrymen in the Army and Marine Corps would be “very excited” to have women integrated into their units, especially during combat deployments, Duffel Blog has learned.
“Naturally there were some patterns we saw after issuing the surveys,” Maj. Rodrick Hamill, a spokesman for the Pentagon, told reporters. “Almost all soldiers who described themselves as ‘pro female’ insisted that the women inducted be in top physical condition, and disease-free.”
While Hamill noted the disease-free requirement seemed strange, he indicated it had been included in almost every survey’s additional comments section.
“I mean everyone is screened before deployment, so it’s really a no-brainer,” he said. “Many soldiers also had a strange preference as to the hair color of the infantrywomen, indicating that they would prefer blondes, brunettes, and then redheads, in that order. I’m not sure what that had to do with the rigors of combat, but the results don’t lie.”
The survey also found nearly 78 percent of men deployed in combat who had been in close proximity with female troops reported having ‘satisfying’ or ‘extremely satisfying’ interactions with members of the opposite sex, a finding Pentagon leaders believe goes against contemporary arguments against integration.
“Most respondents also suggested that prospective infantrywomen submit head and full-body photos to a potential unit so they can ensure the soldier is physically capable of meeting the demands of combat,” Hamill added.
At press time, a Pentagon spokesman told reporters that, although a majority of the responses were well thought out and professional, 41,234 surveys had to be discarded when the final question was answered with ‘I like big boobz’ or similarly-worded phrases.
Read more: http://www.duffelblog.com/2015/01/infantry-women-study/#ixzz3eraJrA2f
Everything I know, I learned on Duffel Blog.
Bob:
did you make that and that knife? A friend of mine does that for a hobby, looks like it’s a lot of fun. He just buys the blanks that had cut some up and sharpens them up and puts a handle on. Do you actually forge the steel or whatever the proper term is for doing so?