Is Confederate flag a symbol of hate?

You know, it's funny. The Union generals knew Robert E. Lee well, either personally or by reputation. They treated him with honor and respect.

After the war, he was offered the presidency of the prestigious Washington College in Virginia, and he remained there in that capacity until he passed away in 1870.

I know you hate the man, and all such men who served their country with conviction and great deliberation, but when Lee died he was deeply mourned by his fellow Southerners, and his name was spoken with reverence for more than a hundred years afterward.

By contrast, consider a Union general like Sherman, who deliberately devastated, murdered, and utterly destroyed everything he could get his depraved hands on through Georgia, and on into South Carolina. Before we could find another such MAD DOG in military history, we would have to go all the way up to World War II and the rape of Europe caused by worst of the Nazi Einsatzgruppen. Sherman would have been right at home in that outfit!

. He thought he was some kind of 'Napoleon"... (note the pose).

 

Don't take my posting of history as hate.
What I hate is the idolizing. Especially in today's environment.

The country can't fully move past our slave history while we still idolize the people fighting to own black people.

 

There is now an intentional blurring of the line between racist thoughts and racist actions.
Thinking whites are superior and lynching blacks have melted into the same thing.
Even neutral thoughts are bad. “White silence is violence”. What a crock! That ripped the last filthy rags of respect I had for BLM and I suspect that Is true for many others.
I’m not going to be recruited into such an organization.

 

. He thought he was some kind of 'Napoleon"... (note the pose).[/QUOTE]

Sherman killed indiscriminately and said war is all hell and went on to prove it. He openly admitted that he hated reporters and wished they could all be hanged.
It’s noteworthy that after the war with his appetite already whetted with Confederate blood he turned to the Indian wars. (BLM isn’t concerned about that because only black lives matter). The man loved to kill.

 

There are plenty of laws on the books that penalize people for lynching blacks - even verbally offended them is deemed to be "hate speech" and that overrides the First Amendment. How many cities have these racists began looting and shooting in?

I liked your last post. While not one for war, hanging some reporters (after a fair trial) seems like an appropriate response to their political propaganda that fuels the emotions on both sides. The reporters are the primary instigators.

 

Well ... the demographic change is of course there, but it is often presented in an exaggerated way, or even massively misrepresented.
If you take the refugee crisis of 2015, then this silly talk about Germany will soon be a caliphate and all that kind of other mental bullshit was (and partly still is) to read and hear.
The fact and truth is that Germany has around 83 million inhabitants and around 4.5 million of them are Muslims ... so around 5.4% of the population. Germany (West Germany before reunification) has had a share of around 4% Muslims for 50 years due to the so-called wave of guest workers in the 1960s ... we are really close to becoming a caliphate because of the refugees and the "hordes" of Muslim refugees ... sorry, but with such an idiotic assertion as with the caliphate, only irony and sarcasm helps...
Likewise ... the proportion of atheists is many times higher and I am one of these atheists in Germany.

As for basic American values such as freedom of expression and freedom of religion, these are generally also present in most other western democracies. However, there are also limitations here, and often for good reason.
For example, Article 1 of our constitution is: "Human dignity is inviolable". This article and some others in our constitution can neve rbe changed by anyone in Germany by law.
There is of course a reason for this article from the Nazi era when Jews and other minorities were racially labeled as subhumans and parasites that were not worth living in and were ultimately murdered for this reason.
Any view or opinion that questions or opposes this article 1 of our constitution is not protected by freedom of expression, but a criminal offense because it is an attack on the constitution.

And that generally applies to everything that attacks the constitution ... because why should a constitutional right permit or even protect an attack on the very constitution that grants this basic right?
In my opinion the only correct solution and measure to prevent and forbid such attackes by law ...

In case of the rebel flag ... well ... as told in my eyes a rediculous issue to even think about to fobid this flag

 

Everyone is offended by something.
If I were to fly a confederate flag on my own property and people on the street could see it and were deeply offended, should I be forced to remove it or face fines or possible imprisonment if I don’t.
And this is off topic but since you brought it up, Belgium is the country most likely to become majority Muslim in Western Europe following present demographic increases and some Muslims are calling for Muslims to have as many children as possible to change the laws to support Sharia law. It will take awhile but it is likely to happen. Hitler proved that one needs only one election to get into power and then kick out the ladder of further elections.

 

agree, have never said otherwise, what I am against is it flying on state house lawns or other government property

private property, I disagree with it, but it's their property

 

nope, but people are also free to protest out on your sidewalk day and night, and if you don't like it, that would be tit for tat as both have a right to do those things

 

Of course ... no matter what someone does, there will always be someone who feels offended by it.
I guess for you in the US it is also a regional question about the Confederate flags. In the north it is more of a problem than in the deep south ... just as a problem as the demographics of an "area" is ... because hoisting the Confederate flag in your own garden in a part of the city where 90% are black is more likely not a good idea in terms of immediate reactions to it. Isn't it?

As far as Belgium is concerned, that's also a myth, because the proportion of Muslims in Belgium is 5.9% of the population ... so really a "dangerously high proportion", eh?
And of course ... of course the extremist Islamists babble bullshit about how many children are having, etc. ... the recipe is not new and not an invention of the Islamists. Only ... if you take every spiritual bulshit seriously, because such and other extremist groups are giving out, then you are doing yourself a disservice. Have a watchful eye, but not make the BS more important in the public perception than it is in reality through increased attention and reactions

 

exactly, yelling is rude, but so is hanging a Confederate flag where everyone can see it - but people have the right to do both

 

Agreed

 

5.9 percent can become a majority in just a few generations.
Surely you understand exponential growth.
I’m not in America by the way but I am next door to that hot mess in Belgium which is becoming a base for terrorist operations.
I agree with you that we can allow public perception to see dangers out of proportion to reality as evidenced by the COVID “crisis”.

 

Sure ... but how many of these 5.9% Muslims are at least Islamist? A clear minority ...
More important is to have a watchful eye on other things in this matter, for example the influence of Islamist states like Saudi Arabia or even Turkey today in these countries.
The Saudis, for example, do it very skillfully and quietly when it comes to their extreme view of Islam. Here and there they support mosques and Koran schools with money and donations in kind, so they begin to change the direction of the lessons and to steer it into their perspective. There are enough examples of this.
And as far as the housing of the terrorists in Belgium as a hotspot is concerned ... absolutely correct and whoever claims that is wrong with the hotspot is lying.
On the other hand ... you have to say clearly that here, as in other countries too, the integration of foreigners has simply failed miserably in the end for decades ... because this is the only way such hotspots of extremists emerge, and not only among Islamists, but in general.

 

We are largely agreed which is why I support the US no longer supporting Israel or Saudi Arabia. As they are rich and powerful enough to take care of themselves.

 

This idea of protesting at people's homes is a slippery slope. I realize it's the latest lefty craze, but I think it's a bad idea and no good will come of it.

 

You're right, and, these rioters had better be very damned careful to stay the hell OFF of the private property of the person they're screaming at with all their bullshit. In some states, if someone barges into your property with unknown threats, you can shoot them on the spot, and it's all legal -- so long as the body falls within private property limits! But, it varies from state to state....

In most states, a person has the right to defend himself, his loved ones, and his property -- at least he does until the America-hating, Left-wing dreck takes over the nation....

 

Sidewalks aren't generally private property.

 

Again, complete nonsense. Sherman destroyed a lot of property, but there was no widespread targeting of civilians for murder under him. Hell, the man even made his soldiers return property that they had stolen from private homes. Comparing him to the Nazis is borderline delusional.

 

Sherman's march was not about death. It was about psychological warfare. It was about terrorizing people by fear. I did a thesis on his approach in 2009. His approach was actually rejected by many Union high-ranking Officers. In the end, it worked. But his legacy is very questionable. I am from the north, btw.

 

Additionally:

His goal was to destroy southern agriculture. He knew they didn't have the money and infrastructure to rebuild

 

Oh, I have no doubt it was psychological, not to mention the way it cut off potential sources of supplies. I'm sure he was brutal and questionable and no man to be celebrating, but the idea that he was a Nazi-like mass murderer is nonsense. There was no large scale indiscriminate killing of civilians, as has been claimed by a couple of people in this thread.

 

No, but it's not inconceivable to compare him to a terrorist organization. That's literally what he did. There were executions he ordered, sure. Not many though compared to what the media portrayed him to carry out. None the less, terror was his goal. It worked, but it did more damage to civilians than soldiers in the long run.

 

The same is true, however, for the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and to a much, much greater degree, and for similar motives (devastating action to put an end to the war). Were those terrorist acts? I could see both sides in both situations. Not claiming to know the right answer here myself.

However, back to my original point. I don't necessarily think it would be going overboard to call Sherman a terrorist, but comparing him to the Nazis is ludicrous. The Nazis often did the precise opposite of Sherman -- Sherman targeted property for destruction and largely spared civilian lives (even the death count for Confederate soldiers was fairly low. Nazis often preserved property in order to seize it for themselves, while committing mass homicide against civilians. And I'm sure you'll agree that it is ludicrous to claim either that Sherman would have been "at home" with the Nazis or that "Before we could find another such MAD DOG in military history, we would have to go all the way up to World War II and the rape of Europe caused by worst of the Nazi Einsatzgruppen."

 

The North invaded the Confederacy to bring those states back into the Union where slavery was legal with their slavery fully intact. And nope they were not and are not traitors according to the US Government.