Well yeah, I'm currently having an argument with a friend on facebook about how when people desecrate the US flag i either figure they are trying to provoke a reaction or they are just a dumbass, but when people fly the confederate flag and try to argue that it has anything to do with anything other than slavery, they are either lying or full of crap.
Our country does things I can't be proud of. I imagine that this is a common sentiment among all major political stripes, though some may deny it in public. We have done regrettable things. We have even done horrible things.
But when palestinian teenagers burn an american flag they are protesting a country that doesn't exist, because they don't know who or what we are or what re really believe. They have only swallowed the line of BS that their politicians fed them, and they are acting on it. I feel sorry for them because it will be harder for them to accept peace in the future. If they get the chance.
When people in america desecrate the flag they are just trying to provoke a reaction, and i decline to be provoked. I understand that they have complaints - valid and invalid, but all the same to them, complaints. Their provocative act is at worst a distraction.
And our soldiers take an oath to protect the constitution, not the flag. Dying for a flag is pretty stupid, imho. Compared to the constitution anyway.
As far as the confederate flag is concerned, this is what the vice president of the confederacy said:
Quote:
The new Constitution has put at rest forever all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institutions—African slavery as it exists among us—the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson, in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the "rock upon which the old Union would split." He was right. What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact. But whether he fully comprehended the great truth upon which that rock stood and stands, may be doubted. The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old Constitution were, that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with; but the general opinion of the men of that day was, that, somehow or other, in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away... Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the idea of a Government built upon it—when the "storm came and the wind blew, it fell."
Our new Government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition.
23 Jun 2015, 7:25 pm
