Confederate symbols

It was about states' rights to maintain slavery.

Georgian here. This is the only correct answer. My family has lived in Georgia for at least 10 generations. I love it here and would never move out of the South, so bear that in mind while you read this.
Many southerners have a strange set of beliefs that I don't think theyve attempted to reconcile or even formed coherently. Ask any southern man if he loves his country, and the answer will invariably be "yes." American flags are flown everywhere in the South including churches and private residences. Yet, if you ask people if they think the South should have seceded the answer is typically "yes." I've never asked anyone why they think the South should have seceded if they love America, and I might try it with my friends, even though they're probably unionists like me.
My dad probably say "something something niggers," which I agree with the sentiment, but I don't think secession would have gone very well for us. I think my dad really gets at the heart of it. The "rebel flag" seemingly creates a paradox of conflicting allegiances for the white southerner, when in reality the flag symbolizes a sort of racism that the rest of the country looks down on, but they'll never understand. No one has to deal with the black creature on such an intimate basis as the southern man and thus no one understands his plight.
The flag is a symbol of mournful frustration. The southern man is forced to eek out a coexistence with society's greatest leeches, and his only recourse is to move away from his cities and fly an anachronistic flag. The Union has ultimately made the southern man a slave that supports the unwitting population it freed. Actually, maybe secessionists are right. I'm sure there's a better solution, but no solution will be implemented. These are not opinions that are safe to be expressed in daily life.

They are. The 'confederate flag' that is most used is General Lees battle-flag. Not any of the confederate government flags.

>The southern man is forced to eek out a coexistence with society's greatest leeches,

I'd be a lot more sympathetic to that plight if the South didn't spend every waking moment leading up to the war and after it for decades doing there best to create those leeches.

This
guy here and these Anons are correct. It was undeniably about slavery. Did the violation of states' rights have farther reaching implications? Sure. But slavery was unquestionably at the heart of the matter and my own state's declaration of secession confirms this.
I think slavery was wrong, but no effective measures have been taken to turn freed slaves into functioning members of society; or rather, no measure have proved effective. It truly is an exercise in frustration.

>That said its been around for so long most white southerners do not necessarily associate it with anything but regional pride, culture, history, etc.
The culture and history of what, exactly? You can have pride for the better parts of the south without exulting in its worst parts. Maybe some people really do want it to mean something else but in this day and age the confederate flag only has one sole meaning of slavery and racial hatred.
If those white southerners are sincerely prideful about their culture and history and aren't just closeted racists, then they should give up the ghost and fold it up and put it away.

No it isn't. The Army of Northern Virginia's flag under Lee's command was this:

upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/97/Flag_of_the_Army_of_Northern_Virginia.svg

Earlier, they had used a flag that looked like the standard "Conferderate flag," but it was square, not rectangular.

>trying to blame black people for your own peoples failings.

The south can never rise again when they never had the energy to pick their own cotton in the first place.

That's fair, but here we are still dealing with it. I genuinely don't know what to do. Imagine you live somewhere you love. Your ancestors lived there. Generations of labor have gone into the land and all to support a demographic who simply reproduces and commits crimes. I don't want to leave, but I don't know how we pull ourselves out without descending into absolute destitution.

>Generations of labor have gone into the land
Stolen labor done by slaves

>No one has to deal with the black creature on such an intimate basis as the southern man and thus no one understands his plight.
booo hooo owning slaves was soooo hard :(

dumb northerners don't even know the struggle of having to ride through the fields whipping lazy niggers, it's hard work you know! Grr! >:(

Remember when I said "reinventing confederate history as a mythology of liberation?"

Even assuming most white southerners accepted the civil war was about slavery, in there mind the meaning of the flag is totally removed from that moral conflict.

>Piss away billions of dollars from the north

>Continue to shit on blacks long after slavery

>Continue to take in more tax dollars than you pay out

>"It's da norf dats keepin us down"

Maybe you can petition the government to give your people some land as reservations?

Failings at what? Breeding like rabbits?
Most people here lead generally fulfilling lives, but our taxes go to keeping black people living scot free in cities that were predominately white until the 90s. Every other place in this country that's overrun with them has also gone to shit. Their destructive behavior is enabled by a government and a people afraid to be called racist. I believe a serious moral inventory is in order. Self reliance has become a bulgur term in this country for the reason that it forces an entire voter base to take a repugnant moral inventory.

>please pity us, we spent centuries breeding a race of chattel people and now we're being overrun by them

Not talking about slavery or the Civil War. The South was fully in the wrong on both counts. Jim Crowe kept the racist social order and did nothing to integrate blacks into society. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about right now. I'm talking about how a population's (justified) demands have been met in full and even exceeded, but we have seen social regression since the 1970s. Whatever we have tried has not worked and it is very frustrating for the modern southern man who provides for not only his family, but someone who plainly refuses to work.

hahahahahahahhahahaha

I didn't do it. No one living did it. In a generation or two there won't be anyone left who even oppressed a black person, but we'll still be the bad guys.

Still when you say generations of labor much of the generations the labor was done by slaves, not surprising that would breed resentment my fellow Americans. Hell even after the war they got fucked over so I don't see why they can't get a break now. Would you be any better if you were in their shoes

How many generations has it been since 1865? Come on now.

Man, now you know a slight bit about being in the Northeast and seeing your federal taxes get poured into the endless sinkhole of money that is the South.

What I see is the less poor begger shitting on the even poorer begger. Complaining that the negro is splitting his pity money instead of finding a decent job.

Less than the amount of generations from 1619 to 1865

1968, since that's when Jim Crow was De Jure ended.

I don't get this retarded shit about confederates being nazis.

Northerners hated and segregated blacks too. Hell, back then everyone was as racist as the confederates.

The confederates also did no genocide and weren't an authoritarian regime.

To be fair, probably not. I don't particularly blame them either. They generally aren't raised with values that promote success. However, acknowledging this does nothing to improve the situation. We've nearly passed the point of being able to vote in favor of programs that promote industriousness, and the federal government enables a great deal of the behavior.
My point isn't that niggers are evil. My point is that the flag represents an underlying frustration of having to support them. It's a mistake I think the South will probably pay for forever.

You can't consider yourself a patriot if you proudly fly the flag of a faction that lived and died an enemy to the United States of America. And don't give me that "muh heritage" shit. I had family in Nazi Germany. I don't fly a damned swastika.

Also, a bunch of fags marched to "defend" a statue of one of my state's famous generals. They carried confederate flags. The general took an "early retirement" to not be associated with the confederacy. So these chucklefucks don't really give a shit about history or heritage or whatever their buzzword is now. Pic related

>weren't an authoritarian regime
Davis was more of a tyrant than Lincoln

The whole shit about Lincoln being a tyrant was just southern autism.

Hitler was a tyrant, stalin was a tyrant. The confederates were nowhere near as "evil" and freedom hating as these 2.

Fair enough. My original point
had to do with the sentiment this produced, however. Maybe in a sense of historical justice that might seem fair, but for generations too young to have perpetuated any evil, it seems a bit unfair.
Now for boomers it probably represents inherited racism and so forth, but from gen x on, I think that narrative falls apart.

I agree. I'm proud of my heritage as a southerner, but to take pride treasonous and morally bankrupt institutions is disgusting.

Private citizens have every right to fly it for any reason and I think it is a legitimate symbol of heritage for some.
However, it is also fundamentslly a traitor flag and has no place whatsoever being flown by any government institution.

To put this very succinctly, I think the flag does not represent any sort of "heritage" for current southerners. Not really. Most southerners probably agree that slavery was a mistake and if they thought about it disinterestedly, they might admit that secession was a mistake. Instead, the flag represents a sort of frustration fueled racism. A racism that, under better circumstances, might not exist. Current circumstances in the South promote it and the activity of southern blacks lends it credibility to white southerners.

What are you talking about new York is doing great t.new Yorker

Oh right, I forgot. Bleeding Kansas was about taxation. Uncle Tom's Cabin was about taxation. Frederick Douglass wrote all those essays and speeches about... taxation.

New York City has a wonderful public transit system by American standards (not so great by Japanese standards, though), so poor people can get jobs on the other side of the city for the insignificant price of a metro pass. Cities with public transit always have a significantly higher levels of people being able to get out of poverty.

If that Georgia guy wants to see some progress, he should try to get politicians to establish bus lanes and trains and subways that can get people to where the jobs are. City folks can take the sub-way and rural folks can get the bus or trains. That's how you get your state out of poverty.

But no, 'cus dats socialism', or whatever.

>In the year 1765, that portion of the British Empire embracing Great Britain, undertook to make laws for the government of that portion composed of the thirteen American Colonies. A struggle for the right of self-government ensued, which resulted, on the 4th of July, 1776, in a Declaration, by the Colonies, "that they are, and of right ought to be, FREE AND INDEPENDENT STATES; and that, as free and independent States, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent States may of right do."

-South Carolina's Declaration of Secession

avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_scarsec.asp

>Hurr Durr the civil war was only over slavery

Eat shit dumbasses, it was more about states rights and sectional tensions than just muh slaves

Alabamaian here, whose forebears fought in the war and owned slaves in Georgia.

It's treasonous and ludicrous. I support keeping up Confederate monuments because I don't condone the removal of historical objects, but the whole flag-waving Southern hillbilly culture is fucking retarded; I should know, I had to grow up around it and fucking hate it.

If anyone is responsible for the South being shit, it's the South. The treasonous "Lost Cause" ideology was nursed in the backwoods by bumfuck hicks and the actual people who fought in the war washed their hands of the whole project.

I wish the South would try and rise again. It'd be funny to see them get their shit pushed in just like the first time, then beg for Northern money. Then get put back another 50 years of cultural and economic development. I would love that. I wish they would secede so they could stop being such a fucking embarrassment.

States rights to own slaves.

Try and backpedal all you want. I'm not trying to argue that the war wasn't spurred on by other things, but the core reason was slavery. It was the South's economic livelihood and without it they would've been strangled.

Try and dress it up all you want to defend this pitiful rebel faction that got wrecked by the Union but the states rights and tariff argument was paper-thin then and it is now.

I think it's fine in the former confederacy, but I don't really like it much here is fucking central Indiana.
In the South, it can be considered a remembrance of the the dead soldiers who fought on that side, in the north, it's an insult to the soldiers from that area.

Most modern efforts to build even small public transit system in the US have been boondoggles that cost far more than their return.

It has nothing to do with socialism, if Americans wanted to build them and it was cost effective then they would

Ive seen this in Massachusetts of all places. (including in a trailer park). And well as in a college parking lot (on a pick-up truck).

Did you not read

>they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent States may of right do.

?

It was about states right and section issues, you can try to spin this declaration of secession into your a priori beliefs, but that does not make your beliefs true.

Sorry that your entire liberal worldview that was drilled into you via middle school was built off lies, but hey if you're pissed off you yankees can just force starving irishmen to come kill us again.

When southerners move north they often take southern "culture" with them

For Eurofriends and other sensible minded individuals who haven't studied this topic in detail, This is your daily reminder that the "Confederate flag" in OP's pick was never, in fact, a flag widespread use by actual confederates, but was only adopted in the 20th century specifically as a symbol of segregation and Jim Crow Laws.

This is what the actual Confederate flag looks like

>Northerners think they have culture

Didn't know spitting in the streets and swearing at traffic counted as a culture

those state rights and cultural divisions were mostly the result of slaver ownership and the slave economy.

In fact many in the North felt that the fugitive slave act was a gross violation of "states rights" Nor at the time of succession was there any plan to tighten restrictions on slavery in slave states. The south flipped out when a republican was elected because he could *potentially* put in place rules on new states that would weaken the position of the slave state block in congress.

So Bleeding Kansas and the issue of congressional representation and slave states were merely trifles? They didn't figure at all into things? And the fact that the states right which they were so adamant about maintaining, that being slavery, was inconsequential as well?

Your post didn't advance your argument in any meaningful way. Saying that the war wasn't about slavery or at least principally concerned with slavery is willful ignorance. Perhaps the declaration of secession makes a convincing argument in isolation, but viewed in the context of the tumultuous events of the 1850s, it doesn't hold up.

Are you illiterate? That's not the statement of secession, it's a legal discussion of the history of the document. Your quote is mostly talking about declaration of independence and the articles of confederation. It's not an extract from the declaration of secession. You know what's in the actual document?

>the frequent violations of the Constitution of the United States, by the Federal Government, and its encroachments upon the reserved rights of the States, fully justified this State in then withdrawing from the Federal Union; but in deference to the opinions and wishes of the other slaveholding States, she forbore at that time to exercise this right. Since that time, these encroachments have continued to increase, and further forbearance ceases to be a virtue.
>For many years these laws were executed. But an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery, has led to a disregard of their obligations, and the laws of the General Government have ceased to effect the objects of the Constitution.

There's also a lot of complaining about how northern states aren't returning escaped slaves.

ucs.louisiana.edu/~ras2777/amgov/secession.html

You talk like your only knowledge of Northern culture comes from watching TV.

Pic related, you get statues like these in virtually every small town in New England. We like making statues too, the only difference is that we only like statues of winners.

My tiny, backwoods farming town alone has like, three war memorials, and the last place I lived was across the street from a Union cemetery and an old textile mill which had been converted into loft apartments for wealthy STEM professionals

Oh yeah, we also keep commercial chains confined to specific areas and in virtually every town you go through, big and small, you still get shitloads of small independent businesses and delis with either the freshest seafood or the most fucking delicious pizza you ever shoveled into your gullet.

the only place in the South which still has authentic culture (not handed to them by a television guy from New York or Los Angeles) is Charleston, SC

>Muh slavery was the only reason for the war yet again

Jeez you really have a hard time reading. States rights was about living in a confederation of states where the states are their own countries who get to dictate their own laws fully with a more limited central government. The problem with your view is you only take into account the 1850's and not america since the revolutionary war. It was much more deeply rooted issue than just slavery. Slavery was seen as the final straw in a long chain of growing differences and disputes between the north and south.

>Slavery is a violation of states rights

No, using the federal government of s sections power within a political body to force states you hate to change their ways is a violation of states rights.

>In isolation it doesn't hold up to my views
>More a priori deductive reasoning

Pure idealogy. Your entire worldview is in isolation of events outside of the 1850's.

>Northern culture is s statue of what was their culture

Northern culture has died completely , all anyone in the north has for culture is then LARP'ing about their pre colonial heritage in Europe. I mean , you citing the existence of small businesses as "culture" bwahahah

confederates were like nazi's in the sense they were mostly inept/incompetent opportunists with conservative sympathies. Also they sucked at logistics despite some decent tacticians.

the Neo-confederates are like nazi's in their incompetence/stupidity but also their reactionary yearning for something that never existed in the first place.

>Jeez you really have a hard time reading. States rights was about living in a confederation of states where the states are their own countries who get to dictate their own laws fully with a more limited central government.
That's bullshit. One of the confederate states' chief gripes was that the fugitive slave act was not being properly enforced and Northern states were not returning runaways even though the law said that they had too.

Confederates loved States' Rights except when they didn't. They only invoked it when they were being selfish cunts (like the governor of South Carolina refusing to share fresh uniforms with Lee's Virginians who were dying of exposure from lack of proper clothing) or on the diplomatic front, because the argument that blacks are actually inferior was falling on deaf ears in European courts, so their solution is to just get really vague and ideological and achieve victory through solipsism and hope nobody notices what's going on in the cotton fields.

>I mean , you citing the existence of small businesses as "culture" bwahahah

Just keep whacking the TV if the reception keeps coming in shitty, Cletus. That will help you feel superior in whatever shithole of a trailer park you call home, eating whatever grease and BBQ covered slabs of diabetes you call food.

>is it about hate or heritage?
Neither, its about being butthurt their inferior way of life was supplanted by something objectively better.

> "Lost Cause" ideology was nursed in the backwoods by bumfuck hicks

from what I've heard it was butthurt confederate veterans. or rather their offspring.

"Sons and Daughters of the Confederacy", along with history books written by mostly southern professors in the 1890's-1900's, romanticized the Confederacy.

>Even more muh slavery

Look up what a proper means ffs, because you obviously know nothing about analytic philisophy. Like I said, slavery was the final straw in a long list of events and differences between the north and south , all you just said re affirms that statement.

>He thinks the north was pro racial egalitarianism

Topkek , you really drank the cool aid didn't you?

It was segregationists about 80 years later who lead the neo-confederate revival specifically as a statement supporting segregation and Jim Crow

>Now that he has run out if arguments he fallen upon argumentum ad hominems

Well, I'd Cletus at the trailer park can beat you in an argument then I guess that makes you dumber than an inbred dipshit kekekek

>le north was just as racist as the south meme

There's a difference between being racist and owning slaves and expanding the slave trade.

All you did was send hordes of half starved irishmen you stole from New York to kill us, freed the slaves, then refuses to take them when they came North because apparently you hated negroes more than we did.

Now you have the balls to say your idiocy was superior. Lmao

>he fallen upon argumentum ad hominems
Says the guy pretending to laugh in an online image board.
>"bwahahah"
Now how can a degenerate Yankee like me ever compete with compelling prose like that?

Is this the part where you tell me that you were only pretending to be retarded?

>Le we took these negroes into our homes instead of hung them, beat them , and tried to get them move back to the South meme

Topkek, you know the KK had a senator elected in Indiana, which was the heart if the KKK. Indiana isn't a southern state :^)

>There is a difference between treating blacks like cattle and treating blacks like shit

Hey I guess you're right , I guess you treating them like shit instead of cattle really benefitted them

>Cherry-picking this hard
You know that the entire confederate economy was dominated by the slave trade right? Even if only a tiny fraction owned them, most southern whites were employed either directly or indirectly as a result of their presence, and it was a form of job security that any southern white, no matter how down on his luck, could grab his gun and get a job as a slave overseer and devote his life to terrorizing negro slaves into getting their quotas up. They didn't call it "king cotton" for nothing.

But yeah, making them suffer capitalism is so much worse.

Wait, who put all the black people on North America?

All I see from your statement was a net positive.

Yeah it did. If you honestly believe that blacks were better off as slaves then there's no use arguing with you.

>He has now stopped arguing entirely

Bwahaha

that was during the nadir of race relations and was in part due to Dixieboo propaganda.

Because there's literally nothing to argue about, Cletus, you're not making any quantifiable statements about culture other than "I don't think it's culture, there for it's not", and you certainly don't have anything to say in defense of the state of southern culture in 2017

>Cherry picked

You had klan chapters all over the north, you had race riots all over the north, you had police best the shit out if negroes all over the north...

>Cherrypicking

Indeed.

>Everyone loved slavery

Wrong. If the Confederacy loved slavery so mcub why did they keep the ban on the international slave trade meanwhile places like Brazil didn't? It's almost like local whites couldn't compete with the local cotton barons and didn't want more slaves to be brought into the US and most Southerners were farmers.

Weird.

Yeah I think they were better off. They werent treated nearly as bad as people go on about, in a lot of ways they were seen as family (at least among the middle class)

>Th-they was only because of southern shills and it was just a low point. Before the first world war every white person in the north had the opinions if modern day liberals

Why do you liberals always project modern phenomena on the past?

>I'm not saying anything

I just said over and over again that the main cause of the civil war wasn't slavery , and instead of confronting the evidence I brought up you've gone on a complete tangent and now want to get me a ban for talking about contemporary southern politics.

This is Veeky Forums, discussion on contemporary politics belongs on /pol/

Doesn't change the fact that they were someone's property and considered to be chattel, unable to decide their own destinies or work to improve themselves, and could be separated from their families if it tickled their master's fancy or pocketbook.

Perhaps they were treated like shit, have gone through a lot of shit as a community, and don't always do what they need to do to improve their situations, but they aren't other people's property anymore.

To say they were "treated well" misses the entire point. Prisoners might thrive in a prison environment, maybe ever moreso than in the outside world, but they never lose reckoning of the fact that they are imprisoned.

But again, I don't expect to convince you. It's no use arguing with someone who is a nonironic supporter of slavery.

>You had klan chapters all over the north, you had race riots all over the north, you had police best the shit out if negroes all over the north...
Yes, that's all so much more horrible than shackling them in a barn and beating them for missed quotas and daring to read a book.

>b why did they keep the ban on the international slave trade meanwhile places like Brazil didn't?
Because they didn't need to. They were having a well enough time breeding them here on their own.
>It's almost like local whites couldn't compete with the local cotton barons and didn't want more slaves to be brought into the US and most Southerners were farmers.
You answered your own question before you even asked it: The south went from being the most economically productive region of the country during revolutionary times to being a decrepit backwater which was being grossly outpaced economically by the north by the 1860's. Because the large plantations drove so many southerners off their farms that the only jobs to be found was in the cotton industry, and in the end it completely crippled the South's ability to industrialize.

"King Cotton", not "my wacky third uncle whom nobody takes seriously Cotton"

>I just said over and over again that the main cause of the civil war wasn't slavery , and instead of confronting the evidence I brought up you've gone on a complete tangent and now want to get me a ban for talking about contemporary southern politics.
Typical wishy-washy confederate apologist, trying to dodge the entire fucking conversation that he started.

What we were specifically talking about was the presence of culture in the north vs the south. I gave examples to counter your point, you went full retard, I called you out on it, and now here you are desperately trying to weasel your way out of the discussion.

Still have nothing nice to say about Southern culture in 2017? Because let me tell you, there are some pretty darn beautiful pockets of it remaining. I feel a sense of regret knowing how much they sacrificed just to keep their welfare state going.

Sorry pal , you've rationalized a lie so far that is hopeless for you. They were better off as slaves. Now that they're free there is no going back, we aren't going to establish their in country and they are going to continually be persecuted and hated.

We can't give them a Liberia unfortunately. But hey, that was your dumbasses decision. Now the only way to keep the is total denial of biological determinism and creating an infinite amount of nee racial castes in order to satisfy a utopian post racial ideal. The Yankee's cognitive dissonance knows no bounds.

>Yes, that's all so much more horrible than shackling them in a barn and beating them for missed quotas and daring to read a book.
>Yankes actually believe this

Wew lad

>Because they didn't need to. They were having a well enough time breeding them here on their own.

Wrong , it would've been more efficient to import them on the international market. They chose to limit slavery.

>Extreme urbanite Yankee posting about how much it sucks to be a poor farmers

Kill yourself you urbanite degenerate, there is nothing wrong with living a simple life. Not everyone is jealous of material wealth like you

>believing that human beings desire freedom
>a lie

If it wasn't so bad, why don't you try it?

>The Yankee's cognitive dissonance knows no bounds
Awww, cute, an ad hominem. Is poor (emphasis on poor) wittle Cletus upset? Why don't you just secede again and see what happens.

>Wew lad
Read a book. One written by an actual historian

>Wrong , it would've been more efficient to import them on the international market. They chose to limit slavery.
Yeah, that looks SO limited!

>Being this buttblasted
yess, yess, your tears are like sweet, soothing nectar to me. I do love these talks we have, Cletus

Your response to
Was
If you call that an argument up north and not an ad hominem then it looks like I was right about you being rude and LARP'ing as pre colonials

>Read a book. One written by an actual historian

I have. You have obviously only seen meme image.

>Yeah that looks so limited
>Looks

Absolute plebian, yes, compared to importing them from international markets that is limited. God the liberals on Veeky Forums are retarded.

See

>Jeez you really have a hard time reading. States rights was about living in a confederation of states where the states are their own countries who get to dictate their own laws fully with a more limited central government. The problem with your view is you only take into account the 1850's and not america since the revolutionary war. It was much more deeply rooted issue than just slavery. Slavery was seen as the final straw in a long chain of growing differences and disputes between the north and south.

I am very aware of the conflicts over taxation and the nullification crisis, and while those fed into the conflict they were not what brought it to the breaking point, that was, as I said the restrictions the republicans wanted to put on allowing new slave states into the union.

>>Slavery is a violation of states rights

That's not what I said. I said the fugitive slave act which required northern governments to be a party to returning run away slaves to their southern masters was an abuse of state rights.

Out if that entire post you somehow though I wanted to bring slavery back? Then you have the balls to call my analysis of your character an ad hominem when it was merely a comment on my own arguments and not an attack meant to refute any of yours?

Sub 80 IQ detected, Jesus. I was talking about how we should've given the slaves their own country instead of try and integrate the into ours because it would avoid conflict

...

>they were not what brought it to the breaking point,

Secession is more complicated than the 1800's, like I keep trying to tell you. The seeds of Secession were planted back in the Jeffersonians vs Federalist days of the founding of thr US following the war. It goes all the way back then , and only continued to worse decade after decade.