damn right you can't, yankee boy. Slavery is history, so it's ok if we support it. The inquisition: history. So it's ok if I advocate flaying and the like. Jack the Ripper: history. Where can I find me a prostitute?
as always, can't get me enough of that low hanging fruit. Any other obviously ridiculous positions you would like me to retort?
Can I just ask, what does "heritage" mean in this usage?
Nevermind, I see lots of people already asked this question in the other thread.
stickin it to the man (who freed the slaves)
The most maddening thing about the whole heritage thing is that for plenty of people it's probably sincerely innocent. E.g., the writers of the Dukes of Hazzard probably weren't in any sense trying to express sincere affiliation with neo-confederate racism by painting the confederate battle flag on their car, just trying to put in local southern color. On the other hand, for lots of people it does relate to racism.
You just wish there were some way to convince the innocently dense that no, really, this is precisely as creepy as decorating with Nazi memorabilia, don't do it unless you're trying to convey that I'm a big racist and I'm proud.
"Abandon your animosities and make your sons Americans." - Robert E. Lee
To be fair, he didn't specifically say anything one way or the other about how you should decorate your pickup truck.
"Fritz's Sausage Restaurant is displaying Gernab Heritage not racism with their Nazi flag. You can't just slander a business like that. I think their bbq sucks, but still you can't just call someone a racist because of Nazi flags. It's history."
You don't hear this identical argument so much. I don't, anyway.
Ah, LB hit the same note. Well, I defiantly refuse to not post this comment; I won't let you repress me that way!
I knew a guy in college who had a confederate flag in his dorm room (he wasn't dumb enough to let it show on the street) with an image of Elvis superimposed on it.
Um, "German," not "Gernab," whom I am actually unfamiliar with.
LB, that's a really good point. The argument isn't quite as simple as anti-confederate flag people make out. I think it comes down to this: Yes, I see that your ancestors fought bravely, because they felt honor and duty bound to side with their native state, and I understand that you fly the flag to honor their memory. Your intent isn't necessarily racist. But, your intent isn't the only thing that that matters: the meaning of the flag in the history of the entire U.S., and its meaning for african-americans in particular, is inextricably bound up with racism. We, as a society, make this judgement: in this case, it's more important to respect the feelings and memories of african-americans than the feelings and memories of the descendants of confederate soldiers.
--
I think it's important to remember that we're telling people who don't think of themselves as racist, and may not be racist, that they aren't allowed to honor their ancestors in a particular way. No matter how reasonable that request is in this case, it's pretty tough to swallow if you're on the other side.
All that said, usually when someone displays the confederate flag, he's a fucking racist.
That flag didn't even come into wide usage until the KKK adopted it.
The Stars and Bars was the far more common one. Nobody flies that, though.
Yeah, I think the way to go is to not let the possible innocence of the confederate flag waver get in the way of condemning the creepiness of the symbols: "You, yourself, may not be a racist, but everyone who looks at that is going to think that you're announcing that you are. Do you really want to confuse people like that?" (With, if necessary, a digression into how the battle flag didn't become a primary symbol of Southern Heritage until the Civil Rights era, at which point the heritage being celebrated was unquestionably about racism.)
my above comments nothwithstanding, I would like to second ogged: a lot of the southern heritage bit isn't so much attributable to racist intent, but instead, a kind of wistful historical perspective designed specifically to deny one's ancestors' participation in slavery. The civil war is one of the few wars in which there really was a moral imperative, and it wasn't with the south. This is hard for people to take -- unless there is no way around it, as with Germans -- and so they concoct this secondary "heritage."
The bottom line is: all confederate soldiers were as complicit in the society they were defending as nazi soldiers were complicit in nazi society. The reason the south can't support its ancestral dead any way one wants is that its ancestral dead fought for an evil cause. You don't have to be ashamed of your ancestors if you don't want to be, but you can't be proud of them for that. This from the descendant of several confederate soldiers.
I thought the confederate flag -- as we know it -- was the "stars and bars." The one Joe linked to has stripes, like old glory.
Which entails that yes, there is a cognizable distinction between stripes and bars, only I decline to describe it.
who don't think of themselves as racist, and may not be racist, that they aren't allowed to honor their ancestors
"I'm honoring my ancestors" is an Eddie Haskell line if ever there were one. There's a transgressive thrill to flying the flag, just as there is with wearing the Club G'itmo shirt. You know it's wrong, but you're doing it anyway because you're sticking it to the man, because he's got a contemptible weakness for minorities who aren't really oppressed, they just complain too much, look at the nice lemon chicken lunch! And slaves had it okay, really, not nearly as bad as industrial workers.... You know the drill.
14: that is, if one is to be proud of that, one is a racist. There is no in between -- you can't be proud of them despite the fact that they were fighting to preserve a slave state.
I think the southern heritage bit stems from a cognitive dissonance over shame for the past. Nobody wants to feel bad for what they didn't do, so the response is: I don't feel bad -- so there -- in fact I'm proud.
So I'll stick it to the man by putting a confederate flag in my room.
Not so much different from wearing one of those gitmo shirts. And equally hideous.
I should have read 16 before posting.
I have no thoughts of my own.
The complete selection of Confederate flags, thanks of course to the hive mind. The one we usually see is the Navy flag, and Wikipedia rather sniffily says "This flag is often erroneously called "the Confederate Flag", frequently by its detractors." Yeah? I think the flag is more commonly used in this erroneous manner by such as the Dukes and the South Carolina legislature.
Well, there is a common heritage among Southerners.
I am white and from Houston, and now live in Manhattan. Many characteristics that I thought were "southern" are considered "black" here. My father's name is Earl and he has a brother named Reggie. My mother makes the best fried chicken and collard greens, and no "soul food" restaurant in Harlem even comes close. And that accent creeps back when I'm around my family. I can even understand Bush without subtitles--the words if not the meaning.
Frankly, when I thought of "us" against the Yankees as a kid, it was Southern whites and blacks making fun of newcomers who talked too fast and never said good morning.
The biggest conflict I can recall was in the late 70's when many of our new classmates and schoolteachers, refugees from auto company layoffs in Michigan, spoke so fast that we couldn't understand them. They also insisted on trying to give everyone nicknames, as if they'd never met a Richard who wasn't Dick or a Robert who wasn't Bob or an Elizabeth who wasn't Betsy. Wasn't racial at all, in our eyes.
Yes, Shamhat, but does the Confederate flag Navy Jack symbolize collard greens, slow talking, and the ubiquitous middle name of Earl?
Oh, sure, there's nothing necessarily wrong with having or being attached to and proud of a southern regional identity -- it's just creepy to express it through waving the confederate flag or confederate nostalgia generally.
No one who commented in this thread denied the existence of a common heritage among southerners, they denied that a good way to represent that heritage is by flying the confederate flag.
Ooh, the unfogged group mind at work (my group mind is a minute slow).
And the Unfogged collective attacks!! Sorry to pile on, shamhat -- I think everyone posted in response to your comment simultaneously.
That's just the thing: Confederate heritage and Southern heritage are not the same. There were plenty, but not enough, Unionists in the Confederacy. And some southern states went with the Union, like Kentucky.
(Lincoln supposedly had this line: "I'd like to have God on my side, but I must have Kentucky!"
I appear to have been slower than all of you. Sorry for the redudancy, repetition, and restatment of the same arguments over and over for additional times. Again.
Besides that, lots of present southerners are actually descendants of carbet-bagging yankees, who profited from the war.
I do not apologize for my piling-on.
that is, if one is to be proud of that, one is a racist. There is no in between -- you can't be proud of [confederate ancestors] despite the fact that they were fighting to preserve a slave state.
As a white guy from Virginia with the last name Lee, I have to strongly disagree. I have no doubt that confederate soldiers, if asked, would say they wanted to preserve the institution of slavery. But I don't think it's why individuals went to fight and die. This isn't to deny the moral relevance of soldiers' complicity in the larger southern cause, but to point out that for many people participation in the war wasn't prompted by a conscious judgment about slavery, but came as a natural consequence of loyalty to their neighbors and state.
This doesn't excuse confederate nostalgia -- I think the loudest elements of it are sufficiently noxious to invalidate even guarded expressions of southern pride. But if we can be proud of our nation's slaveholding founders, then I don't see why folks can't be proud of confederate ancestors who honorably prosecuted a war in which they felt obligated to participate.
To reiterate: the confederate flag stuff really grates with me. I don't like historical reenactments. I'm all for paving over the battlefields. But equally grating is pretending that the Union just had some sort of collective moral epiphany, and the Confederacy snickered, rubbed its hands together and chose the dark side. Suitable economics are a precondition for moral clarity.
Hey, I know a Chinese guy from Illinois named Tom Lee. I do agree with Tom here. I was trying to be careful in 11 to preserve the distinction between honoring an ancestor's memory and honoring the thing for which they fought. I think that's a distinction that holds up, and in fact, many liberals make it in saying that they "support the troops" despite the fact that they think the war in Iraq is unconscionable.
the Confederacy snickered, rubbed its hands together and chose the dark side
I have never doubted what Virginia would do when the alternatives present themselves ... to choose between an association with her Southern sisters, and the dominion of a people who have chosen their leader upon the single idea that the African is equal to the Anglo-Saxon....
That's Congressman John McQueen, of South Carolina, on why Virginia would secede.
What was the reason that induced Georgia to take the step of secession?... a separation from the North was the only thing that could prevent the abolition of her slavery.
That's state Justice Henry Benning, of Georgia, explaining why his state seceded.
The South cannot exist without African slavery.
That's John Smith Preston, commissioner to the secession convention of Virginia, explaining why secession was necessary.
There's a lot more where they came from.
The nation's slaveholding founders neither gave up on the union nor did they give up on the processes and institutions they designed for the purpose of mediating conflicts like the one over slavery. They did not respond to an election by leaving the country. They did not refuse to accept the possibility that Congress, or even their state legislatures, might one day abolish slavery.
Other things they didn't do: argue that slavery was a positive good. Until the 1830s or so, the main argument against abolition was that yes, slavery is cruel and in an ideal world it wouldn't exist, but since it does exist we can't get rid of it because the results of abolition would be much worse: a war between the races. By the 1850s a number of pro-slavery advocates had moved beyond seeing slavery as a "necessary evil" to seeing it as a benefit. There was even some agitation to re-open the slave trade. It became increasingly difficult to be both free and black in many southern states.
Something none of the founding fathers said as Vice President of the Confederacy:
But not to be tedious in enumerating the numerous changes for the better, allow me to allude to one other —though last, not least. The new constitution has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution—African slavery as it exists amongst us—the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the "rock upon which the old Union would split." He was right. What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact. But whether he fully comprehended the great truth upon which that rock stood and stands, may be doubted. The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old constitution, were that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with, but the general opinion of the men of that day was that, somehow or other in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away. This idea, though not incorporated in the constitution, was the prevailing idea at that time. The constitution, it is true, secured every essential guarantee to the institution while it should last, and hence no argument can be justly urged against the constitutional guarantees thus secured, because of the common sentiment of the day. Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the government built upon it fell when the "storm came and the wind blew."
Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner- stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery—subordination to the superior race—is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth. This truth has been slow in the process of its development, like all other truths in the various departments of science. It has been so even amongst us. Many who hear me, perhaps, can recollect well, that this truth was not generally admitted, even within their day. The errors of the past generation still clung to many as late as twenty years ago. Those at the North, who still cling to these errors, with a zeal above knowledge, we justly denominate fanatics. All fanaticism springs from an aberration of the mind—from a defect in reasoning. It is a species of insanity. One of the most striking characteristics of insanity, in many instances, is forming correct conclusions from fancied or erroneous premises; so with the anti-slavery fanatics. Their conclusions are right if their premises were. They assume that the negro is equal, and hence conclude that he is entitled to equal privileges and rights with the white man. If their premises were correct, their conclusions would be logical and just—but their premise being wrong, their whole argument fails.
There's just one point at issue here, right? Can someone be proud of ancestors who served on the Confederate side in the Civil War? Right? No one denies the depravity of the Confederacy's position; but there's a real question as to how much we hold each soldier responsible for it. Or are y'all having a different argument?
Or are y'all
Are you doing that on purpose? Because, you know, you might as well fly the Confederate flag Navy Jack.
Can someone be proud of ancestors who served on the Confederate side in the Civil War?
If that is the question, then the answer is "yes," because you can be proud of your ancestors irrespective of what they did.
If the question is, "Can someone be proud of ancestors for fighting on the Confederate side" etc. then it's harder to say "yes," because that amounts to saying you're proud of them for fighting to preserve slavery.
If the question is, "Can someone be proud of ancestors for particular feats of derring-do, or fine qualities exhibited, while fighting to preserve slavery," maybe a slightly less-measured, but still pretty qualified, "yes."
I mean, obviously people can do whatever they want. I guess I'm answering these questions as if they were "should."
But if we can be proud of our nation's slaveholding founders, then I don't see why folks can't be proud of confederate ancestors who honorably prosecuted a war in which they felt obligated to participate.
This is what I'm arguing with against: the shading of one type of slave-owner with another. I don't see that then following from that if.
If - and it seems like a big if because few seem to restrict themselves like this - the argument is simply that you can honor those who served on the Confederate side because they carried out their duties with dignity, then I can deal with that. It's when the founders start getting brought in to defend the Confederacy solely because they owned slaves too, that I have a problem.
The confederacy was:
1) evil
2) traitorous
You can argue that confederate soldiers, while fighting for an evil cause, were not necessarily personally evil. But, they were necessarily traitors. That is nothing to be proud of.
Well, and the framers did what they did -- declared independence in the name of human equality, fought a war, framed a more perfect union -- in spite of being slaveowners, whereas the Confederates did what they did because they were slaveowners.
Also:
No one denies the depravity of the Confederacy's position; but there's a real question as to how much we hold each soldier responsible for it.
"Honoring" and "not holding responsible" are different things.
Weren't the founders traitors too?
No, the Loyalists were traitors.
Seriously. There's an important distinction: the British should not, and do not, valorize George Washington, a traitor to the crown. But Americans are routinely expected to valorize Robert E. Lee.
No way you're getting me to fall for that, eb.
Weren't the founders traitors too?
No. To be a traitor you have to rebel and fail. If you rebel and succeed you are a founding father.
This is America, dammit, it is ALL about winning. Don't you guys know anything?
This whole argument frustrates me.
1. The majority of Democratic heroes of the last 50 years, particularly on race matters, are Southern: MLK, LBJ, Clinton, etc.
2. There are distinct parts of the South that are wildly blue. Of the top of my head, Austin and RTP spring to mind.
3. I have never been anywhere that people felt more free to casually use the N-word than Texas. This was Dallas; maybe Houston's different.
4. I'm with Joe: even if they weren't pro-slavery, they were traitors. Southerners can feel all the pride they want; my acceptance of it is purely a pragmatic attempt to get their votes. WTF is wrong with us if we can't feel a little Northern pride/ anti-Southern hostility?
"I think it's important to remember that we're telling people who don't think of themselves as racist, and may not be racist, that they aren't allowed to honor their ancestors in a particular way."
I feel precisely as sorry as I do for Germans who aren't allowed to honor their parents or grandparents or great-grand-parents, or in some cases still, themselves, with the Nazi flag.
Every single argument re the Stars and Bars is applicable. Even I would not maintain that every single German who fought in the war was a Nazi, or without personal honor.
I'd also find it more convincing, if still unpersuasive, if anyone actually displayed an actual Confederate flag. This is not a nit-pick.
This is not a nit-pick.
I'm pretty sure the rules don't allow you to declare your own comment a not-nit-pick.
Well, we may see how honorable their intentions are soon enough. Assuming that Iraq does form a stable government that includes Sunni Ba'athists, I eagerly await principled Southern Republican arguments about why those Sunni Ba'athists should feel no shame about flying a flag with Hussein's image on it.
Can someone be proud of ancestors who served on the Confederate side in the Civil War?On the contrary, the answer is "yes," if they did so for motives other than for maintaining slavery (and I agree that that was not the primary motivation of every Confederate soldier).If that is the question, then the answer is "yes," because you can be proud of your ancestors irrespective of what they did.
That you can be proud of your answers "irrespective of what they did" is a proposition I utterly disagree with, unless I'm misunderstanding what that means.
If John Wayne Gacy had kids; should they be proud of him? How about Himmler's kids? Etc. Isn't this a difficult proposition to defend? Or am I missing a meaning?
Re 51, LBJ isn't one of my heros, bub.
"I'm pretty sure the rules don't allow you to declare your own comment a not-nit-pick."
Which number rule? And do they really prevent me from making a declaration, rather than merely preventing, perhaps, automatic acceptance of it?
"I eagerly await principled Southern Republican arguments about why those Sunni Ba'athists should feel no shame about flying a flag with Hussein's image on it."
You do recall the flap about the evil it's-blue-like-Israel's! new-Iraqi-flag thing, right?
LBJ certainly is one of my heroes. Vietnam was terrible, yes. But the stands he took on social welfare and racial issues are virtually unparalleled in their scope and audacity (not to mention their humanity). I mean, the man did more for racial equality than every other American president besides Lincoln.
A plea for honesty: don't call it the Confederate flag; it's the Traitor-Terrorist flag.
As in ...
I could support a constitutional amendment against the desecration of the American flag -- if it included a ban on the display of the Traitor-Terrorist flag.
58: "Honesty" entails engaging in newspeak shenanigans? C'mon now. Confederate is a perfectly descriptive and widely used term. Apply connotations as you see fit, but don't insult our intelligence.
Let's quit beating around the bush. In our culture winning is more important that anything except money. So what do you do if your heritage includes losing? What if you are born a loser?
Understand that and you understand the South, race relations, the middle east, terrorists, and why Bush is President.
Joe, have you read Caro's biography of LBJ? If not, I a) couldn't recommend it more highly, and b) wonder if you'd still feel the same way afterwards. (Although I think Caro is utterly fair to Johnson.)
Yes, passing the Voting Rights Act, and a number of other civil rights and social welfare acts were immensely important and good things. Of course. But the man himself? Slime, in my view. Also, I find it more than a little difficult to put Vietnam aside as a minor matter.
But heroes, for me, at least, have to be at least vaguely personally admirable, not just have done some great things and some horrific things.
MLK was no more a perfect human being than anyone else (the plagiarism, the infidelity), but I don't see that as rising to the level of interfering with him being a hero. He was basically a good man who did great things.
Personally being a horrible person, personally being incapable of speaking without lying, personally being a vile bully, personally having a history of vile racism, personally being Edgar Hoover's best bud, personally destroying countless political lives, and actually commanding the pointless, and foolish slaughter of hundreds of thousands of people, against the advice of innumerable advisors, though, does, for me. I'm funny that way.
LBJ was a monster. Who did some good things. He deserves praise for the good things. In context. As a slaughtering, racist, vile, monster of a human being.
Who did some good things.
Terrorist and traitor are not only descriptive, they are more fully descriptive than "confederate."
By the way: labeling a term Newspeak instead of actually arguing against it -- doesn't that smack of Newspeak?
34: slolernr, I think you've got those quotes in reverse order. Yeah, the people who said them were bigots. But they were bigots because job 1 was preserving a way of life that relied upon the institution of African slavery. If you're going to accomplish that feat, you're naturally going to adopt some racist rationalizations.
Slavery didn't exist because plantation owners really really hated the idea of black people being free. It existed because slaves represented a source of wealth that was much cheaper than it should have been. When others who were not dependent on that source of wealth sought to take it away, Southerners reacted violently. Slavery was a monstrous institution, but I don't think the Southerners of the time were monsters themselves.
To draw an analogy that I hope no one will mistake as implying moral equivalence, most of us are probably pretty upset with the US's policy in the Middle East right now, but very few of us are prepared to sell our car, buy a bike and move to Amsterdam.
As I stated before, I don't have a problem with arguments against the concept of "southern pride". What really irks me, though, is the implied northern pride that accompanies the argument. The idea that almost everyone below an approximate lattitude possessed an innate deficit of moral judgment relative to those north of that line seems completely laughable to me. You would think the lesson we should take away from all this is that it's a pretty bad idea to decide you and your peers are superior to another group of people in some innate but vaguely justified way. You and I may not be morally better than the average antebellum southerner -- just luckier.
Again, this is not to excuse anyone for participating in what was clearly a misguided defense of an evil institution. But I think the case for assigning moral responsibility on an individual basis is pretty weak.
Traitor-terrorist flag is actually less illuminating than Confederate flag, if you were to use the phrase traitor-terrorist flag in every day speech people might think you are referring to any one of a number of flags, including perhaps the one under discussion. Everyone knows what is meant by Confederate flag, despite it not being the most frequently used flag by the seceding states.
By the way: labeling a term Newspeak instead of actually arguing against it -- doesn't that smack of Newspeak?
Hey, I'm not the one who started this argument-by-terminology-fiat trend.
I haven't read the Caro biography, though I've always wanted to. I need to make sure I have a good seven- or eight-month stretch on a desert island before I do, though. It's a damn tome.
Obviously, his flaws are gigantic. But I don't think that everyone who knew him, or even who read that biography, would call him a monster. From what I gather, Caro himself admires him a great deal.
Anyway, as liberal heroes go, I'm an FDR man first and foremost, so we can agree to disagree on Johnson.
tom,
implied northern pride
I don't have much time to beat around the bush.
Do you feel like a loser?
Tripp, you'd already know the answer to that question if you googled by blog for the word "xbox"
Confederate is certainly better recognized, but really less illuminating. It's a bland euphemism whose use permits many folks who flaunt the flag to remain ignorant of its historical associations.
tom,
Oh. Okay. Well quit whining about it. Nobody likes a whiner. Everybody loves a winner.
Now, FDR is definitely one of my heros. Truman doesn't quite make it that far, but I generally admire him more than not.
All Caro works are doorstops; but they're they best biographies I've ever read in my life, and I've read an awful lot of biography. (The Moses book may mean more to someone who grew up in NYC, to be sure.)
The other thing about Vietnam I left unmentioned is that in addition to the sheer number of dead, LBJ's policy choices led to this country being more torn apart than any time since the Civil War. The Bush era ain't nuthin' in comparison; we're in a decorous tea party of civility these days, since people are not, you know, actually assassinating politicians, burning down inner cities left and right, engaging in Weatherman-type bombings, rounding up tens of thousands of protesters at a time and imprisoning them in RFK Stadium, putting tanks on the streets of DC, and so on.
A lot of people -- rather foolish people to be sure -- on both sides of the political divide believed with absolute sincerity that Revolution was relatively imminent; many were for it, to some, if completely vague, degree, while others took many steps, such as COINTELPRO to, in their view, prevent it.
I certainly don't let Nixon off the hook for his part, but he couldn't have done any of it without LBJ. Without LBJ, we wouldn't have had Watergate, and probably wouldn't have had Nixon, as well.
That's on policy, not LBJ's horrific personal qualities.
If we could have made him only President-For-Domestic-Affairs, he would have done a good job, and still have been one of the most awful human beings short of a Hannibal Lector I've ever read about. But I've made my points.
I feel very unkindly towards Andrew Jackson, as well, for what it's worth. He also did important things as President.
Hah! w-lfs-n doesn't know that google doesn't index subdomains! Now who's the loser?
I don't think that it's fair to blame LBJ's policies for the general insanity of the mid- to late-60s. It was a social phenomenon so much larger than any American politician or public figure.
I mean, among other things, the success of the JFK assassination surely must have been far more of an inspiration to the late 60s assassins than Vietnam. And the angry pro-segregationists weren't exactly helping matters. If you want to blame LBJ for white supremicist anger, fine, but I don't think that's what you're getting at.
Some historical points:
Slavery was not seriously threatened in any slave state until the war began. Lincoln and the Republican Party were expressly against the expansion of slavery into the territories, but were willing to let the already-existing states decide for themselves. The abolitionists, who were always a minority and often considered a crazy radical fringe group by even anti-slavery northerners, were the only ones who went further and advocated the immediate abolition of slavery in the slave states and everywhere else.
On the flip side, there were attempts to take over areas in Central America and the Caribbean in order to expand slavery without crossing the various compromise lines set up in the continental US. (See William Walker and other attempts at filibustering in Nicaragua, attempts to purchase Cuba, etc.) It's difficult to see the pro-slavery activists acting defensively here. One of Lincoln's stated reasons for not agreeing to a compromise with the seceding states was that he was worried they may take him for a pushover and come back in a year or so and demand that the US take Cuba.
This is a contrast to the decades after the revolution when debates were held in some slave states over the possibility of emancipation. Virginia discussed this as late as the 1830s. Economics were certainly a big factor behind defenses of slavery, but they do not alone explain the nature of those defenses and how they changed over time.
Human agency was involved and with agency comes a measure of responsibility. I agree that we can argue about how we measure out the responsibility but I can't accept the idea that there wasn't any, or that it was all a matter of luck and economics. After all, Northern manufacturers benefited from slave labor, as did the English textile industry. Yet England abolished slavery before the US did.
That said, the Northern states for the most part were fine with slavery existing elsewhere, often did what they could to discriminate against blacks and in some cases even tried to prohibit the in-migration of blacks altogether. So of course a lot of the northern pride that portrays the Union as morally perfect is inaccurate. I have no problem with getting irritated about such displays of arrogance.
And really, I have no problem with southern pride, not least because there was quite a lot of diversity in the south and there were indeed a lot of people conflicted over the war who served honorably on the side I don't personally sympathize with - it's Confederate pride that bothers me.
"I don't think that it's fair to blame LBJ's policies for the general insanity of the mid- to late-60s. It was a social phenomenon so much larger than any American politician or public figure.
I mean, among other things, the success of the JFK assassination surely must have been far more of an inspiration to the late 60s assassins than Vietnam."
I'm afraid I don't believe that. I wouldn't directly link James Earl Ray (or his alleged accomplice) to Vietnam, nor Sirhan Sirhan, to be sure. But it seems very clear to me that, while various social changes would have taken place to various degrees during the Sixties absent Vietnam (the Pill still would have changed sexual mores, and so on), that the general ripping apart of society was due more to Vietnam than even to the civil rights/racism issue, although the latter was absolutely crucial to the civil unrest, of course, as well, and a close second-runner.
But the mass alienation of so many "white" people and "white" college students, would hardly have taken place to the level it did absent the draft, and the coffins.
We'd still have had race riots; we wouldn't have had the state of siege the federal government felt itself in (to some degree accurately) by the time of Nixon (as I said, it seems unlikely to me we'd have had Nixon at all); we wouldn't have had Kent State and Jackson State; we would have that widespread (though certainly not universal, nor even necessarily majoritarian) sense of impending "come the Revolution," solely on the racial issues. In my view, and memory.
"So of course a lot of the northern pride that portrays the Union as morally perfect is inaccurate."
Sure, but only an ignoramus would make that argument.
Gary:
1. I used the word heroes when I should have said o-heroes (i.e., probably not the proper word). I assume the majority of people who climb to the very pinnacle are fairly sketchy. But things we are proud of as a nation, where Dems can claim pride of place, and where we use a single person as totemic of larger social movements - yeah, LBJ meets my criteria.
2. I'd think that early FDR's USA was a place closer to "being more torn apart than any time since the Civil War" than the 60s. My std. understanding of why we consider FDR great is that he saved the nation from falling apart during the Great Depression. Breaking the Ct., charting a course between incipient fascism and incipient socialism, the purported Business Plot, the creation of unions and the goon-related attempts to break strikes, Huey Long building a machine on the Left down South, etc.
o-heroes
That would be "t-heroes", Tim, unless you happen to know that ogged interprets "heroes" in just the same idiosyncratic way as you do.
"I assume the majority of people who climb to the very pinnacle are fairly sketchy."
Truman? Lincoln? Okay, "majority" is probably entirely reasonable.
"I'd think that early FDR's USA was a place closer to "being more torn apart than any time since the Civil War" than the 60s."
A fair argument. What with the Bonus Army, and all, even setting aside the alleged attempted coup.
A shame Hunter S. Thompson wasn't around for 1933-36.
I happen to have a large framed, pseudo-signed, photo of FDR on my wall, by the way. Really.
Going out on a limb, I'm guessing almost no other southerners on this thread besides me (though I'm smack in the middle of the bluer-than-blue RTP area).
It is always entertaining to watch a bunch of people who have only visited here, if that, explain what Southerners believe or "mean." Just sayin'.
All that said, usually when someone displays the confederate flag, he's a fucking racist.
Completely true.
it's the Traitor-Terrorist flag
Oh, kiss my ass already. Look, the percentage of Southerners who owned slaves was tiny, and I say this as someone whose family has lived down here since 1700. You had to be really goddamned rich to own people. If your ancestors fought for the Confederate army, it's because that's where they lived when the territory was attacked. The number of soldiers in the Confederate Army outnumbered the slaveowners by a number that can barely be expressed without superscripts. You gonna stand there and argue that everybody in the US military today is in favor of bombing and torturing Muslims?
Tom:
Slavery was a monstrous institution, but I don't think the Southerners of the time were monsters themselves.
This is the part I don't quite buy. I want to say something like "monstrous is as monstrous does." Flip your example around a bit. You are a young Sunni in Hussein's Iraq. You want to be, say, a doctor. But you know, as the price of being a doctor under a brutal regime, you will be required to do some horrific things to please Hussein. And so you do them. Are you a monster? I don't quite know, but I'm not sure I want to say, "No."
I think the problem is that when we label antebellum Southerners as "monsters," we seem to be saying that the monstrousness is somehow intrinsic to them. When what we really mean (as good Dems) is that their monstrous actions were artifacts of the social system within which they grew. Which is to say, Northerners in similar situations might well have been and done the same things. And, also, the North was hardly a paragon itself.
(The problem this leaves me with is that I actually believe in culture surviving and its influence extending down through the years. So if we worry about peculiar problems being "Southern" problems, are we simply being irrational? Again, I'm not sure.)
None of this is to do deny, that on an individual level, many (if not most) Southerners are substantially better people than I am. And just to situate myself a bit on this, prior to this Administration, I have always been more comfortable with Southern Dems and Northern Republicans as leaders than Northern Dems.
SB: You are, as always, correct.
you will be required to do some horrific things to please Hussein.
Like, say, being conscripted into the army during the war with Iran?
Apo:
I was actually thinking of being forced to determine the efficacy of chem weapons on live test subjects. Also, I was going to list Dean Smith as a Southern Dem hero, but I didn't want to have to explain my reasons.
I was with you right up until this Bad Analogy: "You gonna stand there and argue that everybody in the US military today is in favor of bombing and torturing Muslims?"
Which would work if, in fact, the primary reason we were at war is our leaders' desire to defend our right to bomb and torture Muslims.
I'm absolutely willing to stipulate that a huge, though probably unknowable, percentage, perhaps a majority, of the soldiers in the various Confederate armies, were not primarily motivated by either racism (though most were casually racist, as were most Northerners) or personal direct benefit of slavery or because of a conscious belief in an indirect benefit of slavery, but rather, indeed, mostly by local loyalty, loyalty to one's neighbors who signed up, eagerness to defend one's State, and so on.
None of which is directly connected to the other issue under discussion, the reason the War happened, and the intent of the overwhelming majority of its leaders on the South.
The Cause , and the motivation of the followers, are not identical.
You and I may not be morally better than the average antebellum southerner -- just luckier.
This is no doubt quite true, up to a point. Apparently anti-slavery/pro-slavery sentiment at the time of the drafting of the Constitution was directly correlated to the existence and scale of slavery in the state. Representatives from South Carolina were always the most the most vocal supporters, and happened to have the largest slave population; representatives from Massachusetts where the institution was nonexistent were consistently against. But New York had a fair number of slaveowners at the time, and representatives from there sometimes sided with Southerners on slavery questions.
In South Carolina, particularly, there was a fear of what would happen if the large black population became free--since they almost outnumbered whites. So this ran alongside economic considerations and becomes more reasonable when you think about the fact that the leading abolitionists at the time, like Greville Sharp, couldn't imagine the black population staying where it was; he advocated sending them back to Africa.
The trouble with the Civil War era is that most of the disputes leading up to it were not about the existence of slavery, so much as its expansion. If it were merely a question of preserving the status quo, that would be one thing, but Southern ideology at the time was aggressive, expansionist, seeking to take away rights even from free blacks who had escaped to the north. It may have been a best-defense-is-a-good-offense strategy, but still, not mild or purely self-protective.
Have any of you read "A Diary from Dixie" edited from the diaries of Mary Boykin Chesnut by Ben Ames Williams? You might want to read the thoughts of an educated, erudite, Southerner who lived through those times.
The moral superiority of the North did not extend so far as to welcome the freed slaves and integrate them into society as equals. Luckily, moral superiority is completely subjective so some still feel free to vilify the South despite the current condition of many of the descendants of those freed slaves.
The big winner in the Civil War was the Federal Government. The rights of the individual states to do anything, whether noble and affirming or silly and stupid, became conditional.
apos:
I'm a southerner, by birth and ancestry, but I live in Chicago now and doubt I fully understand my native patch of Georgia.
Nevertheless, I think people ought to be taken to task for using "southern heritage" as justification for any kind of civil war/ antebellum nostalgia. It isn't so much that those people are racists, as that they are overcompensating for something, and in so doing, are led to do terrible things. That and it offends black people, rightly so.
And the fact that confederate soldiers were, mostly, too poor to afford slaves doesn't do much for me. The poor whites were often the most virulent racists.
I really don't see it as any different from the kindly, country German who joined the S.S.
What is there to be proud of in that? I don't argue that you have to be ashamed -- but what are you saying when you are proud of that history?
also -- and I swear after this I will stop beating a dead thread -- the general morality of the North at the time is completely irrelevant to this discussion.
Sure, the North was not a compilation of erudite Ghandis with muttonchops and moustaches. They were -- as is the general human condition -- a lot of bastards, some better, some worse.
But the South was fighting to preserve slavery. That is not something to be proud of. Even if the North were a lot of greedy bastards, and even if the south was more greedy than motivated by pure-gut-rotting hate, that doesn't change the argument.
And sure, any one of us born into the antebellum south would likely have gone along with it. But that should be cause for great personal angst, self doubt, not a justification for Heritage Pride or whatever the term.
text, we don't disagree about the whole Confederate/heritage thing. I don't get the appeal of it either. The folks who fly the Confederate flag today are, as I agreed above, almost always racists who feel some bizarre need to broadcast their bigotry. But there's often a weird conflation of the motivations of Jefferson Davis, on the one hand, and the soldiers who were defending their homes against an invading army or conscripts.
[In the spirit of full disclosure, my grandmother's maiden name is Stephens and she is a direct patrilineal descendant of Alexander Stephens. I'm neither proud nor ashamed of this, as it means nothing to me beyond being a historical curiosity.]
The poor whites were often the most virulent racists.
But racism wasn't the issue. Slavery was. Racism was endemic to pretty much the entire nation, whether pro- or anti-slavery, and its object was hardly limited to African-Americans. The Civil War didn't manage to put a dent in that unfortunate state of affairs.
All that said, I apologize for responding more harshly than the comments warranted.
"...he North was not a compilation of erudite Ghandis...."
Good thing, too, or Gandhi might have beaten them up.
Apo:
I didn't think you were particularly harsh. Which is to say, if my comments offended you in some way, I didn't realize it (and didn't realize you were being harsh in response) and I apologize.
No, I was referring to my "kiss my ass already" remark.
Apo: let's just have it that we don't disagree at all on anything here, and I will get on with kissing your ass already.
Jeebus. I didn't think that was harsh, Apo. I thought that was a come on.
And sure, any one of us born into the antebellum south would likely have gone along with it. But that should be cause for great personal angst, self doubt, not a justification for Heritage Pride or whatever the term.
Well, yes. I'd rather not hear about how great the south is, but I'm even less interested in hearing about how bad it was (assuming an equally unscholarly context, of course). People have not changed in any important way in the last a century and a half, and we're all still perfectly capable of doing really terrible things (well, those of us without philosophy degrees, anyway). It seems a lot more important to me to be clear on that point than on just how evil a bunch of dead white guys were.
well I'm glad somebody's keeping that up.
Wow, earnestness has broken out all over unfogged for... the confederate flag?
I still like Maurice's bbq, though lately I'm partial to Blue Mist in Asheboro NC.
I'm wondering under which flag the Indians were massacred? Obviously that flag represents genocide. After all, Manifest Destiny was the systematic annihalation of the indigenous people of America. Is genocide more evil than slavery? How dare anyone with ancestors from the midwest or west fly the Stars and Stripes! Aren't they flaunting the fact that their ancestors were mass murderers? They might as well fly a Nazi flag. Shouldn't we ask ourselves how it makes the Indians feel that the football team in the nation's capital is still called the Redskins. No racism there? You might see a confederate flag in the south, but you don't watch the Carolina Niggers play on Sunday.
Hypocrites
PS Fuck the Bessingers. They are racist no matter what flag they fly. Sticky Fingers is better BBQ anyway.
To expand on 103's brilliant point, every nation on earth has done something evil. Therefore, it is impossible for the flying of any flag to be morally problematic.
The bad treatment of the Indians, the concentration of Japanese Americans in camps, and every other terrible thing you care to name can legitimately be seen as having been done against what America stands for.
Whereas the raison d'etre of the Confederacy was the preservation of a race-based system of forced labor -- or slavery, for short. There was no need for secession, and no need for the Confederacy, otherwise. You could defend states' rights -- and note that many Republicans did, and do -- without defending slavery.
And apostropher, note, please, that it is described in secession conventions as "African slavery" -- i.e., that it's not just economic relations, but racial ones as well, that define the Old South, out of the mouths of Old Southerners themselves. You cannot separate the two things by the time there's a Confederate flag, of any kind, to fly.
And the fact that confederate soldiers were, mostly, too poor to afford slaves doesn't do much for me. The poor whites were often the most virulent racists.
I really don't see it as any different from the kindly, country German who joined the S.S.
I'd just like to follow on from this. The S.S. were a small part of the German military establishment who presumably pledged allegience to Nazism. The Nazi flag is accordingly banned in Germany today. The Iron Cross was the flag of the entire German military. It is not banned (it is still in service today of course).
Which of these is analogous to the Confederate Flag?
So here's some anecdotal evidence; on the way home (I'm still in Milwaukee) I saw a van adorned with bumper stickers saying "Integration has failed--get over it," "In 1969, the only 'Woodstock' I knew was this one [picture of a rifle],"* and "Racial profiling prevents crime." Hanging from the rear-view window was a fringed Confederate battle flag emblem.
*Not that there's anything intrinsically wrong with this--I'm no hippie--but I prefer that people who are loud and pround about their racism not also be loud and pround about how well armed they are.
I wanted to make a snarky comment along the lines of, "I guess he wasn't a Peanuts fan." However, it turns out that the Peanuts character Woodstock wasn't named until 1970.
You know, I was just clearing out my back issues of the New Yorker (I'm moving), and I ran across Jonathan Franzen's article on Peanuts, which is excellent except that it refers to "the unhilarious bird Woodstock." That part made the Baby Jesus cry. (I agree with his claim that Spike is unfunny.)
Here's the interesting thing about the poor white southerners who joined. Of course they were more virulently for slavery and racist. This is necessarily true when you think that even a poor white man was socially higher up the ladder than a slave. You get rid of all the slaves, and suddenly the poor white folk get all scared of the blacks who are no longer slaves. The poor whites were accustomed to not having to be at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder.
Interestingly, people in the north were pretty frightened about the end of slavery as well, because it meant a flood of cheap labor. It's a theme that repeats itself even today with the minutemen, under the guise of "but they could be terrorists."
The same thing happened to a lesser extent in New York City with the Irish. Those people already living in the city when the Potato famine occurred suddenly became very afraid that these irish people fresh off the boat would do better work for cheaper, so there was tremendous backlash.
Of course, there is also the "no duh" reply to why the confederate army was made up mostly of poor people. Simply, the confederate south was made up mostly of poor white people, just as the union north was.
As for heritage in the form of a flag, that's a pretty weird thing, and it's something that we don't see very often. Much like history, to the victors go the spoils. If the South hadn't lost (not necessarily won though, mind you), or if Nazi Germany hadn't been defeated, we still might see those symbols as hateful and disrespectful, but it is questionable that anyone would say it is disrespectful to show the flags. Having said that, I think it's disrespectful (more so than a communist flag, but less so than a swastika [as I'm Jewish, and wasn't a slave]), but it's a tricky question.
Having said that, I think it's disrespectful (more so than a communist flag, but less so than a swastika [as I'm Jewish, and wasn't a slave]), but it's a tricky question.
1. Misery poker is always miserable. I'm not sure of the point of it, though I'm sure I do it (on a smaller, individual level) all the time.
2. Unless you're a lot older than I think you are, I would imagine the appropriate pair is "I'm Jewish, and not black".
3. If I were Jewish, I'd be a lot more creeped out by a swastika flying over a German capitol than on some moron's wall in the US, though both are creepy. Similarly, if I were black, I'd be a lot more creeped out about a Confederate flag flying over a Southern capitol than on some moron's wall in Germany. AFAIK, only the latter has happened recently. It's not worse than the swastika, but it's awfully bad.
SCMT, #2 is a good point. Never heard of misery poker. I think one reason that the swastika is viscerally worse (at least for me) is because it is a symbol of planned extermination, while the confederate flag is a symbol of slavery (and sometime working people to death). I'm not saying slavery is bad, but the goal of slavery wasn't to kill a race off the face of the earth. They both sucked horribly, but it is human nature to rank things, even rank things.
