Daniels makes a couple of great points. One, as a northerner, I can concur wholeheartedly with. When I was growing up the confederate flag, to me, was never a symbol of racism. I always thought the south waved that flag as a way of telling the north that they weren’t “all that,” because the elitist north most definitely looked down upon the south, just as Daniels suspected.
It was a team mentality that was largely instigated by school curriculums. We were always taught about the Mason-Dixon line, and the distinct separation between the north and south. Why? We continued to virtually fight the civil war over a hundred years after it was fought.
Why did that have to be taught? It’s a stupid rift. We are all Americans.
Daniels clarifies that he doesn’t see it as his place to tell the people of South Carolina or anywhere else what flags they can fly, “but I truly hate to see the opportunists move in and create a symbol of hate out of a simple piece of cloth.”
He adds, “Of course we know most politicians are going to chime in and glean whatever political hay that is available, but, in my book, the corporate rush to rid their shelves of anything with the Confederate battle flag on it is pure hypocrisy. If they felt that deeply about the subject, they should have done something years ago and I notice they have no problem accepting the profits from the merchandise they have on hand.”
Daniels goes on to recount his own experience growing up in the South, where he says there was a widespread feeling at the time that Northerners looked down on Southerners. The country legend says that as result, “the Confederate battle flag was a sign of defiance, a sign of pride, a declaration of a geographical area that you were proud to be from.”
“That’s all it is to me and all it ever has ever been to me,” he states. “I can’t speak for all, but I know in my heart that most Southerners feel the same way.”
Daniels writes that he has no desire to see the return of the Confederacy, and he believes people of all races deserve the same rights and advantages. He sees the flag issue as an issue of states’ rights. “I feel that this controversy desperately needs to be settled without federal interference and input from race baiters like Al Sharpton, that it’s up to the individual states as to what they allow to be a part of their public image, what the majority of the people of any given state want should, in my opinion, be their policy,” he says.
To those who question his sincerity, Daniels points out that he lived through times of deep racial prejudice and Jim Crow laws, “when the courts were tilted against any black man, the segregated educational system was inferior and opportunities for blacks to advance were almost nonexistent,” adding that he formed his own views “out of experience and disgust.”
“I hold no ill feelings and have no axes to grind with my brothers and sisters of any color. The same God made us, the same God will judge us, and I pray that He will intervene in the deep racial divide we have in this nation and make each person — black or white — see each other for what we truly are, human beings, no better, no worse,” he says.
“It’s time to do away with labels, Caucasian-American, African-American, Asian-American, Native American and so forth,” Daniels finishes. “How about just a simple ‘AMERICAN’?”
I agree with Daniels’ last point, as well. As long as the country is in the throes of leftist fiat, how about we make a demand of our own.
The term African-American has to be sh!t-canned. It is divisive. It is every bit as *divisive as the confederate flag.
*If the confederate flag is divisive.
I have ordered the Confederate Battle Flag and decals for my truck.
I am so damn sick of everything from the left. The Red States need to secede from the blue states and tell them to GO TO HELL! 😡
Sorry, but we are not all Americans.
It’s just a damn shame that Abraham Lincoln had to die when he did, because he was the one man who, due to his humanity and compassion, had a chance at bringing the nation back together without lingering hatred and revenge. His assassination and the subsequent mistreatment of the South by the North were what inspired over a century of Southern bitterness. For people of the South, the Confederate flag has always stood for defiance in the face of oppression, never for slavery and racism.
If the Red States secede, they’re not gonna have much access to the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans…
😉
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/election/2012/
Houston, in my opinion, is the best port in the country today. They move freight faster and more efficiently than any other. Second is Charleston.
New York and LA can pound sand. They suck!
North, east, and west are directions. The South is a place.
Vietvet, I agree 100%. That SOB Booth is the cause of much more misery than he is credited for.
Amen to Charlie Daniels and BFH!!!
Not sure Mork, it’s difficult to know exactly how things might be if history was changed. This is a good example.
Lincoln thought that the free slaves should be exported to Liberia and colonized. If that happened, we most likely would never know who Martin Luther King was. We would most likely never had Motown music, or Thomas Sowell. Probably never have Ben Carson either. Of course Rap music would not have come to fruition, but I’ll take that one for the team. Bottom line, this would be a much different country than it is today.
The West WAS a destination at one time and became a lifestyle… the West is a place too….ya’ll might need to flee here sometime if this crap keeps up….just don’t go too far west…LOL….
The problem I see today is that the government and the left are one and the same. It has become a perpetual motion machine trying to control the entirety of even the most innocuous actions of a supposedly free people through over-regulation in an attempt to rule over people they view as being their moral and intellectual inferiors..
That was the most basic issue of the civil war – self government by the people that were affected by whatever decisions were made.
Had Lincoln had the wisdom to butt out of the affairs of the southern states or even try to work out a long term plan, some 700,000 men would not have had to sacrifice their lives. Technology, market forces and western ideals of morality were already making slavery untenable in the south over the long term. With a little time, the south would have given up slavery voluntarily because it was objectively the best option available.
The northern states wanted to end slavery overnight through force of law (which is always enforced at the point of a gun). Just as the bloated, arrogant, wrong-headed federal govt. does things today, destroying the economy of the southern states overnight would have also severely damaged the very people they claimed they wanted to help.
The 4 million or so blacks in the south at the time would have suffered tremendously right along with the non slave owning whites because the north wanted to deprive the small percentage of whites that owned slaves of the means of production for most of the economy in an abrupt fashion. Extreme poverty and hunger for everyone would have been the norm across the south had slavery been extinguished at the speed of the stroke of a pen (and much of the south suffered for decades from the damage done by the war and its aftermath).
There would have been far less of the bitterness and strife caused by the war and “reconstruction” because the people of the south would have accepted their own solution on their own terms quite readily rather than having an edict from on high brutally forced on them by the northern states.
As is always the case, coercive force by an overbearing centralized govt. is the worst solution to any given problem. In reality, the red states of America and conservatives today are fighting much the same battle that the south did 150 years ago.
Let’s face it. The wrong side won.
Great scene from my favorite Western: Lonesome Dove.
Pablo, the Mexican cook rings the bell for supper. The men gather in and sit around the table.
Gus McCray (Duval) tells Pablo. “They ain’t no sense ringin’ that
damn bell for supper. Any fool knows when it’s sundown.”
Pablo. Offended. says “Robert E. Lee free de slaves. I ring that bell when I want to.”
Deitz chimes in. “It weren’t Robert E. Lee who freed the slaves, Pablo, it was Abraham Lincoln. And it weren’t Mexicans he freed, it was, ah, it was
ah, Americans that he freed.”
I like Charlie Daniels
Don’t forget Savannah.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_of_Savannah
Check out Fred Reed “Black Power: A Done Deal.”
An interesting read.
“Why, I’ll bet he’s even got a [rebel] flag tacked up on the wall inside o’ his garage!”
“I ain’t even got a garage–you can call home ‘n ask my wife.”
Vietvet ~
Agree with you about Lincoln. The supreme irony is that had he NOT have been assassinated he probably would have had Robert E. Lee’s assistance in healing the country.
As some of you are Lincoln fans I am not. He meddled in States affairs, started a Civil War by doing so and 700,000 good men, women and children died. To some his assassination was deserved. Were the deaths of 700,000 worth the preservation of the Union? I do not think so.
There was a lot of support for the “Back to Africa” movement both before and after the Civil War, and many former slaves did go back – that’s how the country of Liberia came to be in the first place. It is an interesting fact that many Southerners resisted this movement, even after the War, because the need for Black laborers was so great, whether as slaves or freedmen. In any event, there was no way that ALL the former slaves could be rounded up and sent back – the numbers were too high, and who would have paid for it anyway?
As much as I sympathize with the Southern cause, I must respectfully disagree. I believe the right side did win, but not because of ideological reasons. Had the South prevailed,
we would undoubtedly be two weak, second-rate, contentious nations today instead of the great power we have come to be. America is what it is because we remained united,
whatever the cost.
To be fair, the South didn’t give him a lot of time to meddle in their affairs – they seceded before he even took his first Oath of Inauguration! Here is an excerpt from his Inaugural Address, where he attempted to allay Southern fears:
“Apprehension seems to exist among the people of the Southern States that by the accession of a Republican Administration their property and their peace and personal security are to be endangered. There has never been any reasonable cause for such apprehension. Indeed, the most ample evidence to the contrary has all the while existed and been open to their inspection. It is found in nearly all the published speeches of him who now addresses you. I do but quote from one of those speeches when I declare that—
I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.”
The full text of the address can be found here:
http://www.bartleby.com/124/pres31.html
Without a doubt. Lee was one of the most highly respected men in the country, both North and South. Together, they would have been a formidable force for reconciliation.
Bottom line: will whitey succumb to collectivism? Because it’s not going towards indiviualism. Ah. Property ownership requires help, doesn’t require a whip.
911 and Pamela Geller changed the way I thought about New York city. It’s pitiful that leftists won’t listen to any of the logic from the South with a genuinely open mind. Of course, if they actually had a genuinely open mind, they wouldn’t be leftists, would they.
Charlie Daniels is a great man and a great representative of the Southern states. A man I’ve always respected. Bullshit meter needle never moves off of zero with him.
Houston, in my opinion, is the best port
NON union??