Confederate Flag/Why Many Don't View It As Southern Heritage (O.J. Simpson, retirement)

[Moth]

Originally Posted by green_mariner

Thank you. What I was trying to do was explain why the Lost Cause myth would have taken place anyway. In Germany, they tore down everything that was reminiscent of the Nazi era. In the South, there was not much to tear down. In Germany, you could come up with better speech because there was plenty to tear down. Combating bad speech with better speech was easier. People could see that Hitler no longer represented the progress and freedom they thought he would. The mindset might have still been there, but they realized that if they wanted a prosperous, orderly nation again, they would have to do differently.

In the South, there were no statues. There were certainly flags. However, they weren't hanging until after Reconstruction ended. You couldn't combat the Lost Cause because it had not come around yet. You could certainly combat the KKK. There were plenty of bad things around. However, it was a different level, and a different mindset. In Germany, many people could deny it, until they were shown those films. In the South, there was no denial. Instead of combating denial, you would have to combat rage.

The Lost Cause would have cropped up, simply because it was in the works. I think this Lost Cause would have been different. Fighting a Civil War is different from WWII. It's literally one country, but two factions at war. Germany was at war with countries around it. The South wanted its slave-owning way of life back. The Lost Cause myth would have been about blaming Blacks for the condition that the South was in. It wouldn't just be about blaming northerners.

I think the better analogy is post-WWII France.

[green_mariner]

Originally Posted by Moth

I think the better analogy is post-WWII France.

I would like to hear that analogy.

[Moth]

Originally Posted by green_mariner

I would like to hear that analogy.

A group/society/country is ashamed of past actions or inactions. Rather than confront them head on, a mythology is created and embraced.

France was humiliated by an easy defeat by the Germans. Then they were occupied. The Occupation was characterized by a high level of collaboration. This ranged from French officials outdoing their German overlords with deportation of Jews right down to French women hooking up with German soldiers. After the war, the French preferred to either forget about it or emphasize the Resistance, which was in reality quite small. There was very little reckoning until the 1990s.

Now, think about it. Any parallels?

[Ellis Bell]

Originally Posted by ChiGeekGuest

I don't really understand the flow of your thoughts here? What are you trying to say? What are your straight forward points? I'm particularly confused about your notions about God? I was taught in Catholic schools, both grammar & high school, but not in college. Now I'm mostly a Jesus loving agnostic. Is God a bully of sorts? Is that what you're saying here? I'm confused by the notions.

We shall conclude the argument from Scripture with the following just and impressive testimony of the Princeton Review:

"The mass of the pious and thinking people in this country are neither abolitionists nor the advocates of slavery. They stand where they ever have stood — on the broad Scriptural foundation; maintaining the obligation of all men, in their several places and relations, to act on the law of love, and to promote the spiritual and temporal welfare of others by every means in their power. They stand aloof from the abolitionists for various reasons. In the first place, they disapprove of their principles. The leading characteristic doctrine of this sect is that slaveholding is in all cases a sin, and should, therefore, under all circumstances, be immediately abandoned. As nothing can be plainer than that slaveholders were admitted to the Christian church by the inspired apostles, the advocates of this doctrine are brought into direct collision with the Scriptures. This leads to one of the most dangerous evils connected with the whole system, viz., a disregard of the authority of the word of God, a setting up a different and higher standard of truth and duty, and a proud and confident wresting of Scripture to suit their own purposes. The history of interpretation furnishes no examples of more wilful and violent perversions of the sacred text than are to be found in the writings of the abolitionists. They seem to consider themselves above the Scriptures; and when they put themselves above the law of God, it is not wonderful that they should disregard the laws of men. ... "" (my emphasis) An Essay on Liberty and Slavery - THE ARGUMENT FROM THE SCRIPTURES


"If there is anything in the Bible that makes modern people nervous, it is its treatment of slavery. Slavery is humanely regulated in the legal portions of the Old Testament, and in the epistles of the New Testament slaveholders are exhorted to show kindness to slaves, but nowhere in the Bible is there anything which can be interpreted as a disapproval of the institution as such. People of our generation, Christians included, tend to have a very hard time with this, because it seems to amount to a tacit approval of the institution, and we balk at the idea that God did not consider the institution itself to be immoral." ‘Make Good Use of Your Servitude’- Some Observations on Biblical Interpretation and Slavery


3000 years of it and people only want to talk about the last of it. Interesting enough, it was also the era that women were the property of their husbands again, ordained by God Himself.

KJV Bibles were distributed to the slaves in the south. There were some abolitionists that didn't not agree with doing that. It was then the black people learned to read using the Bible, as that was the only book available to them.

African American Christianity, Pt. I:
To the Civil War
"But in North America, slaves came into contact with the growing number of Protestant evangelical preachers, many of whom actively sought the conversion of African Americans."

What changed at the ending of the civil war, was ownership of property and citizenship. And with all arguments it begins and ends with taxation. When we labor today, a percentage of our wages goes to the government. When the slave labored, it was to benefit their owner.

The Bible teaches the first fruits of our labor belongs to our Master ---

[Ellis Bell]

Originally Posted by Mosep

Do you actually believe what you're posting or are you just trying to be contrarian? Do you actually believe it's acceptable to compare chattel slavery with taxation? And if so, what does that prove?

Property taxes ...

[green_mariner]

Originally Posted by Moth

A group/society/country is ashamed of past actions or inactions. Rather than confront them head on, a mythology is created and embraced.

France was humiliated by an easy defeat by the Germans. Then they were occupied. The Occupation was characterized by a high level of collaboration. This ranged from French officials outdoing their German overlords with deportation of Jews right down to French women hooking up with German soldiers. After the war, the French preferred to either forget about it or emphasize the Resistance, which was in reality quite small. There was very little reckoning until the 1990s.

Now, think about it. Any parallels?

I get where you're coming from. Both regions have a history that many refuse to talk about. I will at least give France this. It is truly ashamed of what happened. I'm not seeing much shame when it comes to the South's history. At least in France they aren't lionizing Nazi collaborators. I think in France, there was alot of denial based on shame. In the South, there wasn't much shame, but rage at the North.

[Moth]

Originally Posted by green_mariner

I get where you're coming from. Both regions have a history that many refuse to talk about. I will at least give France this. It is truly ashamed of what happened. I'm not seeing much shame when it comes to the South's history. At least in France they aren't lionizing Nazi collaborators. I think in France, there was alot of denial based on shame. In the South, there wasn't much shame, but rage at the North.

Does it not amount to the same thing?

And the French most certainly did lionize collaborators, or at least look the other way. Maurice Papon?

Look at this way. You have made some outstanding points on this thread. The majority if not all of the people who argue against you here are not stating that Slavery or Jim Crow was a good thing. They are trying to disassociate the Civil War and the Battle Flag from both. They love their regional culture and for good reason. Just as the French love their culture and glorious history.

Lincoln/Johnson and later DeGaulle were not interested in some grand "Judgement at Nuremberg" for their respective countries. They wanted to pick up and move on. It was too horrible to ponder.

These are examples where the victors did not write history.

[Ellis Bell]

Originally Posted by green_mariner

I get where you're coming from. Both regions have a history that many refuse to talk about. I will at least give France this. It is truly ashamed of what happened. I'm not seeing much shame when it comes to the South's history. At least in France they aren't lionizing Nazi collaborators. I think in France, there was alot of denial based on shame. In the South, there wasn't much shame, but rage at the North.

Hate Propaganda

"In a time of war the nation is always of one mind, eager to hear something good of themselves and ill of the enemy." ~ Samuel Johnson, The Idler, No. 30 (Nov. 11, 1758) ~

"It has been rightly said that the injection of the poison of hatred into men's minds by means of falsehood is a greater evil in war-time than the actual loss of life. The defilement of the human soul is worse than the destruction of the human body." —Arthur Ponsonby, Falsehood in Wartime (London 1928), p. 10.

When I was a teenager I read the article reproduced below in a book that my father bought. In it I learned about the rabid state of mind that the American public had fallen into during the First World War. At first I doubted whether the things described in the article were really true. It did not seem to resemble the America I grew up in. Then it occured to me that my grandparents were teenagers during that time, and so I asked my grandmother about it. She said, yes, this is how it was. She remembered the bonfire of German books in our town, and how nervous her mother became during the war. She was the daughter of a German immigrant, and spoke German.

This made a deep impression upon me, because it made me see how intense and unreasonable the hatred toward the Germans was during the war, and how it affected people in my own town and in my own family. But this irrational hatred and fear of anything German was deliberately fostered by propaganda agencies of the American and British governments. And I believe this partly explains why 'our boys' were willing to kill German civilians with air attacks during the Second World War. The entire population of Germany had been demonized by years of hate propaganda.

There is, however, one thing in the article that some historians have questioned for good reasons. The purported words of Woodrow Wilson in the first sentence, in which he agonizes over the likelihood that a "spirit of ruthless brutality will enter into the very fibre of our national life," were probably never spoken by him. It seems likely that they were fabricated by a Wilson admirer (Frank Cobb, editor of the New York World) who, after the evils of wartime fanaticism became manifest, wanted to make Wilson seem less responsible for it than he really was. See Thomas Fleming's discussion of this in his book, The Illusion of Victory: America in World War I (Basic Books, 2003).

“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”
― George Orwell, 1984

[Ellis Bell]

Originally Posted by Moth

Does it not amount to the same thing?

And the French most certainly did lionize collaborators, or at least look the other way. Maurice Papon?

Look at this way. You have made some outstanding points on this thread. The majority if not all of the people who argue against you here are not stating that Slavery or Jim Crow was a good thing. They are trying to disassociate the Civil War and the Battle Flag from both. They love their regional culture and for good reason. Just as the French love their culture and glorious history.

Lincoln/Johnson and later DeGaulle were not interested in some grand "Judgement at Nuremberg" for their respective countries. They wanted to pick up and move on. It was too horrible to ponder.

These are examples where the victors did not write history.

Apocalypse At Dresden
"If the British Commonwealth and the United States last a thousand years, men may say that this was their darkest hour.

Were all the crimes against humanity committed during World War II the work of Hitler's underlings? That was certainly the impression created by the fact that only Germans were brought to trial at Nuremberg. Alas! It is a false impression. We all now know that in the terrible struggle waged between the Red Army and the German Wehrmacht, the Russians displayed their fair share of insensate inhumanity. What is less widely recognized - because the truth, until only recently, has been deliberately suppressed - is that the Western democracies were responsible for the most senseless single act of mass murder committed in the whole course of World War II." (my emphasis)


Who wrote history? The official versions, that is ... push past the governments one might find where the people live.

[ChiGeekGuest]

Originally Posted by Ellis Bell

We shall conclude the argument from Scripture with the following just and impressive testimony of the Princeton Review:

"The mass of the pious and thinking people in this country are neither abolitionists nor the advocates of slavery. They stand where they ever have stood — on the broad Scriptural foundation; maintaining the obligation of all men, in their several places and relations, to act on the law of love, and to promote the spiritual and temporal welfare of others by every means in their power. They stand aloof from the abolitionists for various reasons. In the first place, they disapprove of their principles. The leading characteristic doctrine of this sect is that slaveholding is in all cases a sin, and should, therefore, under all circumstances, be immediately abandoned. As nothing can be plainer than that slaveholders were admitted to the Christian church by the inspired apostles, the advocates of this doctrine are brought into direct collision with the Scriptures. This leads to one of the most dangerous evils connected with the whole system, viz., a disregard of the authority of the word of God, a setting up a different and higher standard of truth and duty, and a proud and confident wresting of Scripture to suit their own purposes. The history of interpretation furnishes no examples of more wilful and violent perversions of the sacred text than are to be found in the writings of the abolitionists. They seem to consider themselves above the Scriptures; and when they put themselves above the law of God, it is not wonderful that they should disregard the laws of men. ... "" (my emphasis) An Essay on Liberty and Slavery - THE ARGUMENT FROM THE SCRIPTURES


"If there is anything in the Bible that makes modern people nervous, it is its treatment of slavery. Slavery is humanely regulated in the legal portions of the Old Testament, and in the epistles of the New Testament slaveholders are exhorted to show kindness to slaves, but nowhere in the Bible is there anything which can be interpreted as a disapproval of the institution as such. People of our generation, Christians included, tend to have a very hard time with this, because it seems to amount to a tacit approval of the institution, and we balk at the idea that God did not consider the institution itself to be immoral." ‘Make Good Use of Your Servitude’- Some Observations on Biblical Interpretation and Slavery


3000 years of it and people only want to talk about the last of it. Interesting enough, it was also the era that women were the property of their husbands again, ordained by God Himself.

KJV Bibles were distributed to the slaves in the south. There were some abolitionists that didn't not agree with doing that. It was then the black people learned to read using the Bible, as that was the only book available to them.

African American Christianity, Pt. I:
To the Civil War
"But in North America, slaves came into contact with the growing number of Protestant evangelical preachers, many of whom actively sought the conversion of African Americans."

What changed at the ending of the civil war, was ownership of property and citizenship. And with all arguments it begins and ends with taxation. When we labor today, a percentage of our wages goes to the government. When the slave labored, it was to benefit their owner.

The Bible teaches the first fruits of our labor belongs to our Master ---

That is some messed up nonsense right there ^

Oh. No wonder, this particular 'Yosemite Sam' was an architect of the nonsensical lost cause mythologies. Nonsensical Confederate apologia.

Albert Taylor Bledsoe (November 9, 1809 – December 8, 1877) was an American Episcopal priest, attorney, professor of mathematics, and officer in the Confederate army and was best known as a staunch defender of slavery and, after the South lost the American Civil War, an architect of the Lost Cause.[1] He was the author of Liberty and Slavery (1856), "the most extensive philosophical treatment of slavery ever produced by a Southern academic", which defended slavery laws as ensuring proper societal order.[2] ...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Taylor_Bledsoe

No wonder folks got so messed up from reading this tripe.