The Confederate Flag Will Not Come Down: Deal With It

As a Confederate descendant who is well read on the history of the War for Southern Independence, I revere the Confederate flag.  It is the flag of my country and my ancestors.  In light of the Charleston murders, we are now seeing a lot of liberals and mainstream Republicans calling for the removal of the flag from public display.

Mitt Romeny tweeted that the flag should come down.  He tweets

Take down the #ConfederateFlag at the SC Capitol. To many, it is a symbol of racial hatred. Remove it now to honor #Charleston victims.

I answered him with this:

Saber Point ‏@Stogie2  20m20 minutes ago

@MittRomney I regret voting for you Mitt. The flag stays. Take down the flag of Utah, it's a symbol of a false prophet and polygamy.

And of course, there's "Old Gorey" that many associate with invasion of the South, war on women and children, the genocide of the American Indian, the theft of Hawaii from its Queen and its people, and the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. Oh yes, and it flew over Northern slave ships who brought the slaves to America in the first place.

The point is, a flag means different things to different people. We Confederate descendants do not accept Mitt Romney's definition or our flag, nor that of the Daily Kos, Karl Rove, Jeb Bush or any other cultural bigot who wishes to bully us into accepting their skewed view of history.

Here are the motivations of the flag haters:

1. Moral vanity. Nothing pleases a liberal more than asserting his alleged moral superiority over someone else. What is an easier way than by attacking the South?

2. To legitimize the Northern Myth, the huge lie that the North invaded the South to free the slaves because they were just so morally righteous and broad minded and enlightened. The truth is that the North hated blacks, wanted them kept out of the new territories, made laws prohibiting their presence, and planned to deport them all back to Africa or elsewhere. They went to war to force the Southern states back into the Union for economic reasons; slavery had nothing or very little to do with it. An independent South would have free trade, open ports, thus ending the Northern tariff on imported goods. A massive relocation of jobs and revenues would quickly flow from the North to the South. This would have created an economic boom in the South, but would have impoverished the North, who depended on the South continuing to pay 80% of the taxes collected by the federal government, and whose dock workers, shipping companies, railroads, textile mills and warehouses would soon find themselves out of work. Yes, this is all well documented in the newspapers of the time. When asked why he would not simply let the South go, Lincoln exclaimed "Let the South go? Who will pay my tariff?"

3. To legitimize the consolidation of the once sovereign states into subordinate entities inferior to and controlled by the federal government. Today this is effectively being accomplished through federal courts, who overturn state laws and legislate from the bench.

4. To legitimize the federal government's "right" to invade the individual states and make war on their citizens, using force to impose its will. We are continually moving in that direction today.  A nationalized police force is in the works.  Once accomplished, all American states will be effectively occupied by the federal government.

Here's why we will never agree:

Taking down the flag would mean acquiescing to bullies who wish to force their viewpoint on us, a viewpoint that is erroneous, insulting, self-serving and false. It would mean replacing our superior knowledge of history with the superficial myths the flag-haters learned from popular media, Hollywood and Northern-biased textbooks. We will not allow knowledge to be replaced with ignorance, or truth with falsehood.

History, or what is alleged to be history, is a major political weapon. The fight over history will largely influence how current and future generations see the Republic: as a collection of sovereign states with the right to self-govern and even secede, or as consolidation of those states into an increasingly oppressive federal tyranny from which there is no refuge, remedy or escape.

Leave our flag alone.

Mark Levin: A Flaming Ignoramus on the Civil War

I originally posted the article belon on February 6, 2010. Today, September 2, 2014, Mark Levin again displayed his ignorance on his radio show by praising Abraham Lincoln.  Mark no doubts thinks the Russians are terrible aggressors for invading the Ukraine this week -- and he'd be right.  For some reason, when Lincoln did the same thing, even more ruthlessly, in 1861, that was just fine.  Because American tyranny is good, because Old Glory, Stars and Stripes Forever.  Or something.

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Mark Levin is an excellent writer and has given a lot to the conservative movement.  However, his increasingly asinine remarks on the radio about the American Civil War and the Confederate States of America compel me to finally call him out.

Yesterday the Irate One stated that the Confederacy represented an "illegitimate form of government" based on "dangerous rebellion."  What a load of happy horse sh*t.  If that is true of the Confederacy, it is also true of the United States, who came into being in the same way:  through secession and a declaration of independence.  Furthermore, the Confederate States were not in "rebellion" to the Constitution or anything else.  They were merely exercising their right to self-government under the very American concept of "the consent of the governed."  They were merely following the legal means of seceding as outlined in textbooks at West Point, as commonly understood since the beginning of the American republic:  sovereign bodies that accede to a union of political states may also secede from the same union when it suits their needs and purposes to do so.  Abraham Lincoln himself stated as much in a speech to Congress while he himself was but a congressman:

Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable - a most sacred right - a right, which we hope and believe, is to liberate the world. 

Any government that forces a population into its fold through force is tyranny.  The Northern states were on the side of tyranny during the Civil War.  They did not fight to "free the slaves" as is commonly and erroneously taught to every third-grader; they fought to force the South back into a union it no longer wanted; the slaves were totally negotiable.  The Civil War was like most wars, fought over territorial control, the right to govern and the right to tax.  Similar situations today:  China's invasion of Tibet and its desire to annex Taiwan; Russia's desire to annex Georgia and its former colonies.

Abraham Lincoln was a flaming disaster to the United States, clearly the worst president in our history.  He started a war of tyranny and subjugation and killed 630,000 people in the process.  Yet, Lincoln is Mark Levin's hero.  It figures.

YOU'RE AN IDIOT, MARK.

Ken Burns, Creator of Yankee Propaganda Film "The Civil War," Endorses Obama

More than twenty years ago, Ken Burns produced the TV series "The Civil War."  It was a complete whitewash of the Lincoln's invasion of the South in 1861 - 1865.  Many Southerners and others were disgusted with the distorted views of that propaganda effort.

Now Burns is endorsing Barack Obama for president.  Apparently, his knowledge of current events is on a par with his knowledge of history.

Read his absurd endorsement here.