What do you suppose will be next?
I have no affection for the Confederate battle flag and I understand that it means different things to different people. I also do not think it is a good idea for it fly over the grounds of a state government, but I also firmly believe if it does, it is the state’s business. Not mine and most certainly not the business of the federal government. Like it or not, that emblem is part of the history of this nation. Do we want to wipe away our history, most especially the ugly parts of it? Wipe away a time that split not only our country, but families too? Bury the history of the time that divided us to the point that we took up arms and started killing one another? Should not an informed citizenry want to understand all of the events that led up to that conflict so as to not repeat it? All of the reasons and events that led up to that deadly split? Certainly we would not want to bury or mischaracterize any history surrounding an important event in the life of our nation. Would we?
So let us not stop with a flag. Let us dig up long buried remains and move them somewhere – anywhere. A landfill maybe? We must tear down statues, rename schools, rename roads, rename all of those U.S. Army Bases now named for Confederate Generals…. And, if we pursue this logic to the very end, what else can we expunge from our history?
“History can be well written only in a free country.” Voltaire, May 27, 1773
From the blizzard of 1977 until July 1980, I was assigned to the ROTC Instructor Group, Gannon University, Erie, Pennsylvania. The local expression is that there are only two seasons in Erie. Winter and the 4th of July. That is fairly accurate. Considering on the July day my family and I got in the car and headed south, the temperature barely broke 50 degrees. Not to worry, it was 104 the day we arrived at Fort McClellan, Alabama. It was my first encounter with a heat mirage rising from the asphalt. But, back to Gannon. At one time in its history, ROTC was compulsory for all freshmen attending Gannon. A story was related to me by some of the long time staff concerning the Vietnam years when there was a push to ban the ROTC from Gannon the same was there was at other schools. Its proper name was the Department of Military Science. As the story was told to me, it actually came to a heated meeting of faculty and was prepared for a vote. The Monsignor, I was told, made his speech and ended it with a question. After we remove the Department of Military Science, which department do we remove next?
After we have wiped any reminders of the Confederacy from our history, what do you suppose will be next? What other disagreeable and offensive symbols must be removed from our sight along with their history.
I do not know if we are already traveling down the road of forgotten history or worse yet we are remembering a history that is racked with inaccuracies and exclusions. We must return to our beginning and revisit the missteps, otherwise we will repeat them. That is what we do.
©2015 J. D. Pendry American Journal All Rights Reserved
Category: Politics
What greater evidence of pro-slavery is there than to have owned slaves? When it comes to the Civil War, southern men fought for various reasons, although all such men are assumed, quite wrongly, by many people nowadays to have been pro-slavery. So, now that the Confederate battle flag is on par with the swastika, and monuments to great military men who fought for the South are being removed, and the remains of at least one of them—as well as his wife—are in the disinterment process, what now? Well, it’s time we moved to actual slaveholders. Washington and Jefferson are tops on the list. Their apologists claim that they found slavery distasteful but that didn’t stop them from owning hundreds. So, let’s start with the Washington Monument. The Thomas Jefferson Memorial has to go, too. How can it not? No matter what else either of them did in their lives, they were slave owners. So, too, were Madison, Monroe, A. Jackson, Tyler, Polk, and Taylor. Oh, I nearly forgot Grant. He freed his slave in 1859. That was good timing but it changes nothing for he was a slave holder. So, let’s get crackin.’ There are a great many monuments to tear down.
Thanks to some diligent sleuthing, the Confederate battle flag has been discovered in—horror of horrors—Vermont. That’s right. South Burlington, VT has a high school. It’s mascot was a Confederate colonel but that was dropped 20 years ago. It retained its sports teams’ nickname–the Rebels. Ouch.
“In the school’s first yearbook from 1962, sketches of Civil War era soldiers with their swords and muskets can be found placed among the student photos. The inside cover of the yearbook from 1964 is the image of a fall mountain scene and a Confederate solider holding the southern-rooted flag. Numerous pages throughout the 1960s show the flag hanging behind the basketball team or behind two Key Club members shaking hands. Cheerleaders pose with the banner on the football field.” Source: Burlington Free Press 9-27-15
So, now, the Vermont yankee community is in the process of determining just what to do. Do they change the name from Rebels? Do they pull the old yearbooks from the library shelves? Do they remove the old pics and “Rebel” name plates from the school trophy case? This is truly a community in pc crisis: South Burlington, Vermont.
Roger B. Taney was a Maryland legislator, US Attorney, and the fifth Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court. He was also the author of the infamous Dred Scott decision which held that since slaves were not regarded as citizens by the US Constitution originally, the court could not make them citizens. That was 1857 and it took a great war and a Constitutional amendment for slaves to become citizens. Today, what with the Supreme Court just making new law w/o root in the Constitution, I suppose Taney’s decision seems ridiculous, but that’s not my point. It is this: In Frederick county, Maryland, on the grounds of city hall, stands a bust of Taney. Someone dumped a can of red paint over it this weekend. I guess the person thinks he struck a blow for something or other. What he actually did was vandalize public property and force 2015 taxpayers to pay to have a workman or two spend their Sunday cleaning the bust, which they did. Nice.
By the way, Taney was married to Anne and Anne’s maiden name was Key. She had a famous brother who was also a lawyer. You’ve heard of him: Francis Scott Key. He’s buried in Frederick county, which is probably something that you didn’t know.
You ask, “What’s next?”. In MHO, anything that shows accomplishments by any and all white persons; with no exclusions. Not too long before they start declaring a holiday for the birth of J. Jackson as well as A. Sharpton. All while we sit back and complain, but do nothing about this.
15 people have been charged with TERRORISM in Georgia after their Respect the Flag group allegedly did or said something or other to somebody or other—or to no one and it was overheard by someone. Facts supporting the charges are missing. A grand jury (That’s a group led around by the nose by a prosecutor who is unconstrained by the rules of evidence that control a trial. The subject has no say,is not present unless called as a witness, and there is no opposing counsel to say, “On the other hand….”) returned an indictment and the 15 will be charged with some terrorist threat or something. Great. Just great. Oh the flag group waved a Confederate battle flag and Old Glory around, in case you are wondering what the connection is to this thread.
This is how it works when a government is displeased with you.
New York’s mayoral home is called Gracie Mansion. It was built by Archibald Gracie in 1799, not 20 years after the last British troops departed the United States and a fellow named George Washington gave his farewell address to the new nation. In 1801, the NY Federalists used the mansion for a meeting called by Alexander Hamilton . Inside the mansion is a parlor, called the Yellow Parlor, where guests are received. It has paintings on its walls. The paintings have been there a long time and depict Washington and other Founding Fathers. No longer. The mayor or the mayor’s wife has decided that the pictures lack DIVERSITY so they are down now, replaced by other pictures that reflect DIVERSITY. Cripes.
Maryland and Virginia issued recalls of previously issued license plates that bare the Confederate battle flag. Above, Ex-PH2 asked how that would be enforced. The answer is that drivers who do not surrender the plates have been criminalized. In Virginia, of the 1600 Sons of Confederate Veterans plates issued, 187 have been surrendered. That’s 1413 newly created criminals to be prosecuted by the state. There were no numbers for Maryland reported in the 19 October Fox News story.
The University of Mississippi is, as you might infer, a state school. As such, the state flag flies on its campus. But there’s a problem. The Mississippi state flag is red, white, and blue. That’s not the problem. The problem is that some of the flag’s red, white, and blue forms the Confederate battle flag, which covers the banner’s upper left quadrant. The flag dates to 1894 and, in 2001, the citizens of Mississippi voted to retain it w/o change. Well, some students, led by the campus NAACP, want it removed from campus, in the name of humanity. (I suppose that if I worked on that one, I’d figure it out.) There was no word on whether the school’s sports-teams name (The Rebels) is also headed for the dumpster.
“The legacy of slavery, Jim Crow, discrimination in almost every institution of our lives, you know, that casts a long shadow, and that’s still part of our DNA that’s passed on. We’re not cured of it.” B. Hussein Obama
That statement was made by THE ONE in comedian Marc Maron’s garage during a podcast recording four months ago, the month before this thread was published. So, racism is in your DNA. It’s in mine. It doesn’t matter whether our forefathers were in Russia, Ireland, Austria, England or anywhere else in the world during America’s slavery or Jim Crow years. It’s in our DNA. It doesn’t matter whether your ancestors opposed slavery and racial segregation either. Racism was in their blood. And it doesn’t matter whether the racism gene was sexually transmitted between Blacks and Whites over the past 200+ years, necessarily rendering some Blacks racist Black haters. A gene is a gene is a gene. Whew. That’s a relief. Until June 2015 I had thought that racism was an attitude, a viewpoint, manifest in certain behaviors which prompt one to treat and to regard others one way or another based solely upon their race. Thanks to oBaMa, I see now that there really is nothing any of us can do about racism. It’s an immutable characteristic, the same as skin color, dictated by our genetic makeup. So, let’s hear no more about Confederate battle flags and Confederate monuments, and slave-owning presidents, proponents of Jim Crow practices and the like. There was nothing they (or anyone) could have done about their attitude: it’s in our genes.
Ah. Finally. Not everyone is willing to kneel or bow and scrape before the Altar of State Coercion and Political Correctness. In Virginia, the recall of license plates bearing the Confederate battle flag is being challenged. The governor of that commonwealth, Carpetbagger T. McAuliffe, ordered the DMV not to issue such plates. A court upheld the order. The state invalidated the plates and ordered possessors of them to surrender the plates to the DMV. Few complied. The Sons of Confederate Veterans has now lodged a legal challenge. And it has legal legs, in my view. First, the earlier court spoke to the issuance of the plates, not their recall. Second, states—even tyrannical chief executives– have to follow the law, and the law limits the authority of state agencies to those powers expressly given it by statute and regulation. Demanding the surrender of legally issued license plates isn’t covered by either, as I understand it. Thus, the DMV is acting outside the scope of its authority. Of course, a judge can take his lead from our nation’s Supreme Court and merely dictate the outcome, perhaps “reading-in” what Virginia law doesn’t provide. We’ll see. But at least some folks have some fight in them.
Yumpin Yimminie! Vermont’s South Burlington School Board voted unanimously two weeks ago to retain the Rebel name for the South Burlington High School sports teams! This despite the fact that one student threatened to vomit and the NAACP representative at the board meeting called said of the Rebel name, “It’s nothing but hate, that’s all it is.” So, it’s now on to Plan B. The NAACP representative said that the organization will now reach out to donors and sponsors of the high school sports teams.
So, those of you who are inclined to use the broad brush of racism and bigotry to paint the South, please add this: “and South Burlington, Vermont.”
You know, Air Cav, I’m inclined to believe that this butthurt look-at-me stuff coming from the race baiters like the NAACP is losing its audience.
There does come a point at which people with some common sense start pointing and laughing at these loud-mouth, whining, self-centered pricks who find (whatever) where there is none.
I’m starting to think I should demand that my state issue me a personalized license plate with something I WANT on it, not the limited stuff that they offer. Freedom of speech, you know.
Over the weekend, two white males drove into Salt Lake City in a pickup truck for a Garth Brooks concert. A half dozen or more black males surrounded the truck in a motel parking lot and beat the shit out of the two whites. Why? Because the truck had a small decal of the Confederate battle flag affixed to it. Police say the assault will likely NOT be treated as a hate crime. One of the victims pointed out that if six whites had beaten up two blacks b/c there was a “BlackLivesMatter” decal on a vehicle, he’s pretty sure that it would be regarded as a hate crime. Ya think?
So, to recap, the Confederate battle flag brouhaha was prompted by the murders of nine people by a maniac who was photographed with a US and Confederate battle flag. I guess this Utah incident is proof positive that the latter does, indeed, represent hate and violence, just not in the direction assumed by most people.
Maryland has a song problem. It’s not a new problem. The problem is the state has an official state song called, oddly enough, “Maryland, My Maryland.” You heard it if you ever watched the post parade to a Preakness Stakes, the middle jewel of horse racing’s Triple Crown. Twenty years ago, Kentucky had a state-song problem too. “My Old Kentucky Home” contained the line, “Tis summer, the darkies are gay.” By legislative resolution, that became, “Tis summer, the children are gay.” Evidently, each summer in Kentucky, all the kids turn gay. I’m not sure how that works, but I really don’t want to know, thanks. But back to Maryland, which had a foot in both camps during the Civil War. The state song doesn’t. It refers to Lincoln as a tyrant and a despot, and it refers to Northern troops as scum. Doh. So, as you might guess, there is renewed effort to strike the offensive lyrics.
This is the topic that just keeps giving. My weekly visit to the news revealed that a special committee of 12 at Harvard University has spent months examining an issue that has caused great angst, gnashing of teeth, not to mention hand wringing, at Harvard Law. The school has a crest, a shield. It contains a single word–veritas– and three identical images of bundled wheat. Here’s the rub, and you may need to get the graph paper and a pencil out now to follow this. Harvard Law’s first professorship was established through a donation made by a fellow named Royall. It looks like he bequeathed his estate to create the position, though the article I read isn’t clear on this point. Royall was not a slave owner. Nor was he a slave trader. However, he came by his money the old-fashioned way: he inherited it. Daddy Royall did engage slaves. He used them on his sugar plantations in the Caribbean. And the Royall Family had a crest on which was depicted bundled wheat. In honor of the generous son’s donation to Harvard Law School, the school adopted a shield and gratefully memorialized him by including the wheat on that shield. You see the problem now. There is some connection between Harvard Law School and slavery. Remember that other thing on the school’s shield? Right. The Latin word for truth. The irony is delicious, is it not? Oh, I should point out that the special committee voted 10-2 to erase the wheat bundles.