WOW! The Bold Confederacy In A Union state.

[loyalsister]

This could be interesting and dangerous. They very well could be on the defensive against Dean's remarks here. Get someone to sponsor just so they can vote against it. If not, they could pay dearly in November. Dean's remarks have\had potential to bring some shame to Republicanism. We'll see what happens.

A year after Confederate flags were yanked from state-run historic sites, Missouri lawmakers are trying to restore them.

A Senate committee last week approved a bill that would require Confederate banners to fly again at historic sites near Higginsville and Pilot Knob. It also would give more management authority to a state park board.

In January 2003, the Department of Natural Resources pulled Confederate flags from two historic sites managed by the department shortly after then-presidential candidate Dick Gephardt said Confederate banners shouldn’t fly anywhere. The action sparked an outcry from Confederate-heritage supporters, who picketed the Governor’s Mansion in response........

http://www.columbiatribune.com/2004/Feb/20040216News001.asp

[bluestateguy]

1. The Confederacy lost the war

hence, they don't get to decide where, or if, their flags will fly.

Confederate flags should not fly on taxpayer funded pieces of property. If people like that flag so much they can fly it in front of their home, in privately owned Confederate cemetaries or they can plop one on their car. Taxpayers should not have to fund their bigotry.

[madrchsod]

2. they did?

you better not tell them that they lost the war a 139 yrs ago. and don`t tell them that everyone who was alive then are now dead! hey morans, you guys lost and everyone is dead!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[jamesinca]

3. I am of the opinion that this country would be better off

if the south would just leave like they wanted to anyway. I could do with one less bible thumping fundie, I could do with less Tom Delay, I could sleep better at night if I did not have to live in a state that gives money to support them. Get rid of the south and most of the states on the Federal handout list would be gone, leaving the ones that actually pull their weight fiscally in this union. It would cut out 66% of the Repubican electoral vote. This time instead of naming it the Confedrate states, they could be Theocracy South or something like that. Split the country along the Mason Dixon line and don't allow Clear Channel to broadcast outside of their new country. Make sure Ann Coulter is there and that Molly Ivans moves north. Give everybody 10 years to relocate, then a Berlin Wall goes up. David Duke could be their Ambassador to the UN.

There are good ideas and people from the south, unfortunately they are a minority and their voices are not heard. Allow those people to move and let the south be the south that they want to be, behind a Berlin wall of sorts.

[not systems]

4. They have most of the army bases...

and would probably attack us to get revenge for the last civil war.

[Syncronaut Seven]

5. Lovely,

You just touched the nerve that has been costing me a helluva lot of sleep the last couple of years.

I have known southerners with a passionate generational commitment to re-fighting the US civil war.

Is that what it's going to take to set things straight?

Fuck.

[jamesinca]

6. No, don't fight a war

Just let them leave. They can have their country south of the Mason Dixon. If they need to shoot people, they can shoot those trying to leave after the wall goes up. Set up something like a DMZ. Let them liquored up southern boys pull guard duty. Instead of sweeping search lights, they could use burning cross light to see by at night. They could shoot each other for speaking out against drinking and whoring on Saturday and going to church on Sunday. We can have Soccer, NFL, MLB, NBA and the womens equals, they could have NASCAR. We could have Napa wines and Wisconsin Cheese, or those from France. They could have Budweiser and cheese whiz. We can have William Rivers Pitt, they can have Sean Hannity.

Don't fight them for it, let them just walk off with it. I think Bull Connor has a fire hose that needs to be coiled up or a dog that needs to be fed some where. That is not worth keeping as a national treasure. Theocracy South, where men are men and sheep are really afraid.

[SWPAdem]

7. My sentiments exactly

except I would rather just move all of the right wing loons into their western stronghold....a lot of the southern states are way too pretty to waste on them.

[eileen_d]

9. Uh... and people wonder how the Democratic Party can attract votes

in the so-called "red states?" :crazy:

This thread looks pretty fucking comical to this here left-wing "loon" in Montana... :mad:

[jamesinca]

14. Make them a different country

Then you won't have to attract votes.

[ConcernedCanuk]

11. I just had to do this

.
.
.

It was begging to be an avatar . .

It told me so !

[Gemini Cat]

8. Nah...

The south gave us lots of good music. I don't think I'd want to live with out the music of Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, REM. Tom Petty, Stephen Stills, Bessie Smith and a whole lot of other musicians. The south gave us Blues, Jazz and Rock'n Roll. Music would have been too dreary with out the south.

Then there are all the great people who came from the south: Martin Luther King, LBJ, Jimmy Carter, Thurgood Marshall, Helen Keller, and way too many to name. I would have hated to see a lot of great people both living and dead behind "a wall."

Sorry but America wouldn't be America with out the south.


:dem:

[jamesinca]

15. Sure, we could import things

You need trade to keep the economy going, we just don't have to have republicans or southerners in America, there is no place for them here. This is the land of the free, home of the brave and that is not republican by todays definition. The last time that people with such religious zeal as southerners ran the world it was called the dark ages. Roy Moore and his rock needs to be confined and the south is perfect. You could go visit, just get a passport. One that clears you to visit Theocracy South. You will be arrested at the border and confined to a TX jail if you try to smuggle anybody back across the border.

Now that America is what it is, music, cultures, food etc... we can cut off the south and let be. All the great minds will travel north, all of the Bush and Gingrich types will head south. We can have a southern-ectomy and get rid of them like the vestigial organ that they so desperately want to be. They can go to Florida where they suffered from electile dysfunction back in 2000.

The most important thing to remember of my post in this thread, I don't seriously believe in splitting up the U.S. I may consider allowing Hawaii to be a territory, but that is as far as I seriously go.

[Atlant]

23. Right. America without the CSA states would be vastly improved.

> Sorry but America wouldn't be America with out the south.

Right. America without the CSA states would be vastly improved.

Atlant
(A New England secessionist)

[David__77]

10. I am of the opinion that reconstruction ended 100 years too soon.

I would not have withdrawn the army. I would have not allowed Jim Crow. We should have shipped the slave owners out of the south and scattered them throughout the country to smash the racist-feudal class. We should have really given forty acres and a mule. We should have built a black-white labor alliance in the south to defeat racist terror--and backed it up with military force. Reconstruction ended much, much too soon, and many who should have been removed from power were not.

[Nietzsche]

12. yes

lol totally agree with you jamesinca...

ive been advocating two seperate countries my whole life. Lets see how the south does without the north.

[loyalsister]

13. Ugh!!!

I have no idea what would happen to me!! Missouri was one of the most divided states in the Civil War. We never seceded, but the Legislature and Governor wanted to. We were a slave state, but delegates were sent from Washington to control the process and keep us in the Union. The more Urban eastern part of the state was much more a part of the Union culturally, anyway.
The state government (defending the slave trading posts along the river) picked up and left the capitol and set up a governoment in exile.
Missouri would have been a scary place in that time. I would need to move fast before anything like that got under way.

[Virginian]

27. But it's cold up there in the frigid north.

Please don't paint us all with the same brush.

[HittinTheUpper90]

16. good to see the GOP isnt the only ones with closeminded bigots

The opinions here are exactly why the South is so alienated - crazy uninformed yankees. Let me clear some things up
There is more KKK activity in the midwest. During the 60s there were race riots in Boston and New Jersey. One of the most racist police departments is in LA, with another very racist one in NYC.
The biggest problem with racism we have in this country is northerners thinking that its a "southern" problem.
The tech industry is booming in places like Atlanta and Raleigh-Durham. Birmingham is a rapidly expanding city - with more buisness interested in it all the time. Nashville have several big offices of telecom companies in the city center. Need I go on?
We could live with out the Manhattan snobbery and the New England narsicism.
Im not going to even bring up that the food is far superior to clam chowder and that northerners/yankees are the most impolite people in the country.

Oh and to the person who suggested we divide the country by the mason-dixon line...
Do you even know where it is? Let me give you a hint... if you did that, the South would have a very major US City.

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

17. And Missouri was a border state, had two governments.. not union.

Also, let's not forget the party of the Warring South...was...The Democrats.

Really now. We are talking about battlefields here. This is where people fought and died for their flag, north or south. This is not an issue of racism, not a state flag or a state office building.

Are there German, French, Belgique, UK, US, and Hungarian flags on WWI battlefields?

Yes, there are.

Some WWII battlefields have flags from both sides, but it is still kind of touchy since the soldiers are still alive.

Come on, people, think.

[RainDog]

18. the south is so alienated because they refuse

to face reality.

-to accept that enlightenment occurred, and scholarship has shown that the bible is not literallly true, and therefore social positions they have taken do not have a foundation in anything other than their own prejudices.

-to acknowledge that southern states, ALL OF THEM, take more tax money than they give, yet they gripe about taxes. So their votes for tax cutting Republicans is a vote against their interests. (Google Givers and Takers/New York Times/Pink for an article with a graph of which states take and which states give...it's the democratic states which give money to the red, southern states. Indiana is the only state with a one-to-one ratio.

I'm from the south, and live in a border state. If you want to know the basic divider in the civil war, it would be the Ohio River. All states below the Ohio were slave holding states.

Missouri is...well, it's the home of John Ashcroft and the Church of God...what can I say...it wants to be southern, what with Bransford and all, it seems.

Yes, the south, with all its misery, has produced some great art. Blues comes from slavery and forced labor. As much as I love Son House, and because I do, I would not wish the conditions that made the blues on anyone.

and anyway, when blacks migrated to Chicago they were able to keep their musical traditions and electrify them, so I think the rest of the country could survive, artistically, on the legacy of nastiness for a long time still.

Frankly, I'm sick of the kowtowing to the south which regularly goes on in this country, and I fully understand the sentiments of people on this thread who are ready to divorce the south from the United States.

Yes, there were riots in Boston over busing. But Boston does not try to fly the equivalent of the swastika over govt buildings, does it?

maybe more to the point, have people who live in the south vote. take a referendum and ask all who live there if they want to continue to support the goals of the confederacy, or if they want their schools to be run by religious fanatics.

if that's what they would chose, then let them lose their federall funding.

[Fla_Dem]

19. Standing ovation

deserved for this post of the day.

[RainDog]

22. standing ovation?

yeah, and the reason that companies moved to the south was NOT because of its educated work force, but because the south is full of "right to work" states which have helped to decimate unions and thus helped to hurry the decline of the middle class which is based upon labor.

maybe if the south had supported labor, they wouldn't be parasites on the federal govt now, while gripping about paying taxes.

yes, Raliegh-Durham has a research triangle, but NC also has sent Jesse Helms to Congress for how many years? And many believe that people in the hills of NC helped to hide abortion clinic bomber Eric Rudolph.

yes, racism is too much a part of all parts of this country, but if anyone tries to paint the south as such an enlightened place apparently wears blinders if you look at the hold religious fundamentalists have over the region.

[October]

24. You're the snob, it seems

I'm growing weary of so many anti-NE posts. So many southerners around here need to feel superior on a 24/7 basis it seems, and they raise themselves up by putting down the NE.

<yawn>

The south has been growing in industry because of its cheap labor. It's been going on for decades as major companies headed south, getting away from paying union wages in the north. Good for you. Shall we applaud the loss of our jobs? By the way, the next trend is for industries to go to places like Sri Lanka, where labor is even cheaper. More applause?

You attack our food, our manners -- call us narcissists, etc., and WE'RE the snobs!!

[HittinTheUpper90]

25. are you kidding me?

I didnt attack the NE first. You act like everyone in the South are religious fundamentalists and racists. Youre as ignorant as the people you claim are ignorant. Southerners arent always attempting to seem superior - theyre constantly having to defend themselves. Do you have any idea what the North DID to the South during reconstruction? it was horrible. You listen to the Northern education system and you dont know what happened. I went to Prep School in the North and attend University there as well. However, my family is from the South so I got the other side of history. Do you know what the Union soldiers did to the southerners? And you have to nerve to call Confederates Nazis? Do you know what reconstruction did to the South? You blame their poverty on rejecting organized Labor - I blame it on reconstruction and northern bigotry.

[MadHound]

20. A little background, from Little Dixie

The Civil War hit very hard, and very close to home here in Missouri. The state, both population wise and territory wise was evenly divided between the North and South. The largest number of Civil War battles were fought in Missouri. It also had the most impact on civilians here in Missouri than any other state. The legacy of Quatrill's raiders, Ridgerunners and Jayhawkers still runs strong in the state, just witness the MU Tigers(named for the Union regimen that guarded the university during the Civil War) KU Jayhawk(named for the pro union insurgents that raided Missouri) rivalry. Hell, we even had a county(Callaway, my new home) that didn't officially rejoin the Union until ten years ago. The devisivness was real and all consuming, and the Civil War wasn't fought in distant battlefields, it was fought in our backyards. The war started sooner out here, with the KS-MO border wars in the 1850s(where Jim Brown rose to prominence), and lasted later, with former members of Quatrills' raiders wreaking revenge on a civilian populace(the Jesse James gang, among others).

The war though, suprisingly enough, isn't all consuming here, unlike the Deep South. The Confederate flag never flew over the statehouse, and the birthdays of Confederate heroes were never celebrated. Race relations were never what they should have been, but not as bad as other areas. For the most part all the people of Missouri wanted to do after the Civil War was go back to their farms and simply get on with their lives. They buried their dead and set up a few memorials(only the big battles in Missouri are commemerated, and sometimes not even them). And life got on.

Frankly speaking, I think that the idea of a Confederate Flag flying over two known Confederate burial grounds is apt. Though I can never agree with the reasons why the Confederacy came into being, I can agree that the Confederate soldiers were, for the most part, brave and honorable men, and should be remembered as such. After all, my forefathers were part of the Confederate AND Union armies. How can I honor one without honoring all?
If you were to go to Pilot Knob or Higginsville, you would be sorely tested to even find these historic graveyards. You would be even further tested to see the Confederate flags, if they were up. For like most country cemetaries, this one has grown, and the area where the Civil War soldiers of both sides are interred is now far in the back of the graveyards. Only if you had business in the back of the graveyard would you know that the Stars and Bars flew there.

So let us leave the Confederate flag there. It isn't being flown as a political or racial statement. It is being flown for the same reason it flew for the past 140 years, to honor the fallen soldiers who died in a state that was wracked with the violence of the Civil War. Strangely enough, it was flown to bring about the healing needed after that horrible conflict.

[RainDog]

21. And if you had family who fought for and against Hitler

would you want to fly the swastika to honor your forebearers who supported genocide?

what is it the so many white people (and I'm white, fwiw) don't GET about the sickness of what the confederate flag represents?

Does it not represent the poor white men who fought for rich white's right to own slaves? Is that a good thing?

Slavery allowed white to treat black people like STOCK. To breed them like animals, to tear families apart, to OWN human beings and treat them worse than dogs.

what is it that you can't GET about how offensive that is???????

According to your rationale about the south and those who fought with the south, Germany should now be allowed to fly the swastika over battlefields in Germany as a show of pride for their fallen soldiers who valiently lost their lives in support of a program to elimate Jews from Europe.

[jukes]

26. Raindog

Excellent, elegant, & eloquent post.

My ignorant, home-schooled, fundy, "southern" neighbors bray on & on about their heritage.

The real southern heritage is the white sheet; it's the last flag flown by the treasonous confederate criminals.



Very cool nick, too, RD!

[Moderator]

28. LBN Rules... locking

The rules of the Latest Breaking News Forum require posters to use the published title of linked-to articles in their subject line.

In this case, the subject line should read "Bill floats rebel flag proposal."

Thanks,
DU Moderator