I'MMA LET YOU FINISH
I find it interesting that Lt. Gov Tuck spoke at the Neshoba County fair on this matter. Neshoba County is the country where Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner (Miss.Voting project) were killed, and where (coincidentally, I'm sure) Reagan started his 1980 Presidential campaign. The symbolism reeks.
Without their loyal neoconfederate voters, Republicans like Mickey Kaus (I know what he calls himself), Glenn Reynolds and our fave, David Brooks, would be on the outside looking in. One of the dirty secrets about "The Republican Majority" is that it owes its existence and its edge at the ballot box to a whole group of people who self-identify as separatists and traitors to the US nation. We're also talking here about people who get misty-eyed and nostalgic for life on the ol' plantation. You'll never talk to a conservative in the blogosphere who supports these jerks. But you'll also never talk to one who isn't glad about "The Republican Majority," and you'll never talk to one who will admit to looking upon the courting of these voters by the RNC as giving their 19th C. world-view a "moral free pass."
Republicans probably wish they could have a flag issue on every single ballot in the country.
I look forward to the frequent use of spell-checking....
(denunications???)
I meant to send you these links earlier, and I forgot.
Somebody has been vandalizing a Tennessee state road sign on a Nashville bridge recently named after Union and Confederate generals who fought an 1864 battle near the spot. The vandals have repeatedly removed the name of the Union general, whose command included two brigades of US Colored Troops. The Sons of Confederate Veterans, who have conducted a vigorous letter-writing campaign against the name, deny all knowledge, of course.
http://www.nashvillecitypaper.co...s&
news_id=26170
http://www.nashvillecitypaper.co...s&
news_id=26226
Makes me fantasize that Stanton and Cameron got their way at the end of the Rebellion, decorating trees with gently swinging corpses of defeated racist traitors.
That would have nipped the ole' flag debate right in the bud.
An evil thing, but yet it makes me smile.
Well, as it happens, that's more or less the fantasy these folks have in mind for "race traitors" as well ... (See the section regarding the "Day of the Rope.")
Should be noted that Lt. Gov. Tuck was a Democrat up until the last set of elections, then she jumped ship. She's also earned the disgust of a whooooole lot of people for being amazingly in the pocket of corporations.
Granted, these folks - such as my parents - still think ShrubCo. is pretty damn groovy. I grew up in Mississippi - near Tupelo, to be exact - and it's amazing how the flag issue has evolved. Fifteen years ago, it was hardly thought of; now it's a humongously big deal. I like to think it's mainly due not to (solely) racism, but a need for some sort of group identity for white Southerners. We don't have the Irish/Italian/Polish/etc. distinctions like in the North, but there's nevertheless the apparently universal need amongst folks down here to say "Here, I'm a part of something larger than myself." Like I said, I don't think it's solely due to racism - active or ingrained; but then again, as a white guy I could be blind to a degree to it.
A lot of the arguments for the Klan flag - as I've taken to calling it in the past year or so since the hullabaloo here in Georgia - is something like, "Well, blacks/Hispanics/Asians/whatnot can have student unions/beauty pagents/racial pride/etc., so why can't we?" They never quite grok the concept that minority pride comes a great deal from years as being part of a supressed minority. The flag - along with the ideal of the Grand Ole South - may be something for white Southerns to grasp onto as their cultural pride totem.
I'll admit, when I was a kid, I had one. Then, I thought it showed I was a rebel and my pride in being born in the South. Now, at 28, I see that the former was wrong, mainly because as an act of defiance, flying a Rebel flag in the South is pretty damn silly. Nevermind that was and is the symbol for a group of people that want to keep at best and kill at worse a whole bunch of folks for no goddamn good reason. That, of course, just came with age, education and maturity.
The former, well I'm just me. My nationality, skin color, gender and point of geographic origin are just incidentals. A part of the whole, yes, but no greater or more meaningful than the sum.
I also apologize for any and all spelling and/or grammatical errors.
I am stoned. If John Ashcroft wants to bust me, he's gonna have to wait till I sleep it off.
Bravo, Demetrios.
Backslider makes a good point. Though the Confederate battle flag is a racist symbol to some, black and white, there are many people who are attached to it for more innocuous reasons.
As a result, whether they keep it or get rid of it, a lot of people are going to be angry. This makes it a perfect issue for the right, since they can unite the white racists with the traditionalists.
Perhaps this should be attacked another way, with humor or with flag variants - reversing the red and the blue, or making the background black.
Without their loyal neoconfederate voters, Republicans
But they can't match the loyal real-Confederate votahs, I say. Yeee-hawww!!!
yuh Senatuh,
Bob
Whenever the Right brings up Byrd, you know you've scored a direct hit. Run away, little racist troll, and console yourself with a Billy-goat.
I don't get why they bother with this. How can the GOP there, or anywhere, do anything more than they already are to bring in the white nativists. The idea that they are going to "target" rebels is silly, by now.
This belongs in the annals of the Department of Redundancy Department.
I think, Jorma, that it's kind of a get-out-the-vote thing. That was in the text of the story: The GOP found that it had its highest turnout of voters when it waved the Rebel flag. So they're trying to tap into that element for the next election.
In Georgia, they waved the flag enough to elect the first Republican governor since Reconstruction - and they continued waving it long enough to split the state's Democratic Party along racial lines, at least temporarily. No doubt Mississippi Republicans have been taking notes.
These "flaggers" - it's a mistake to think they're "loyal Republican voters." They're Republican voters only if you give them a good reason. The flag is one of them, and the Republicans have picked up on that.
Drew,
It's amusing to me how the whole flag argument in Georgia went down. Roy Barnes was no peach - he pissed away the teacher's lobby and pissed off a whole lot of folks with the Northern Arc debacle - but Sonny Perdue's done the same thing. Yeah, the Arc is gone, but he told the teacher's they weren't getting any raise at all (while Barnes said the raise would just be smaller) and pissed the flaggers off when he didn't immediately reassert the Klan flag.
On top of that, his "ethics committee" is a sick joke.
Yet another vexillological fantasy:
the Confederate flag as a pirate flag, red and blue replaced with black, a white death's head at top center, the starry saltire serving as the crossbones. (Bonus: any laser printer or fax could reproduce it.)
What more could any rebel want?
When are we going to start having Confederate flag burnings? Well, probably never. Provocation isn't the liberal way and raising passions and probably violence goes againt the grain too. Still............
Some of these folks are real traitors to the constitution. They want nothing less than to revive the Confederacy and reinstitute their whites uber alles fantasy without the messy stictures of a bill of rights with equal protection. The Republicans are absolutely shameless in pandering to them. Why do they hate America?
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