Is the confederate flag considered offensive by the majority of America?
1. The war was fought over State's rights... the State’s Right issue was the State's right to decide if people could own slaves. That is a historical fact. The South wasn't moving towards Abolition and the North took advantage of that. Southern apologists will try to pretend that the Civil War wasn't about slavery much the same way George Bush tried to change the narrative of the Iraq invasion from "OH NO, WMD!!!!" to "Saddam is a bad guy."
2. The flag being used today is *not* the Battle Flag of the Confederacy. I'll post a wiki to the history of the flag.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flags_of_the_Confederate_States_of_America
3. The flag is hated because it's only used by racists. Neo Nazis. Skinheads. KKK members and other such groups. Do any Southern churches fly this flag? Any valid organizations? Bank of America? Nope, it’s the bass-ackwards states like Mississippi that incorporated the flag into their identity. Look at the bottom of the education and poverty ladders and you’ll find all of the Confederate Flag waving states there.
4. Even if they flew the correct flag, it's still marred by the racists that use it for hate. "Heritage not Hate" folks are suffering the same curse as Islam. Because a percent of a percent of a demographic did something awful, everyone associates Muslims with terrorism. It doesn't matter that police officers and domestic american terrorists have killed more Americans since 9/11 than all of the terror attacks combined to include the people that died on 9/11.
There is a narrative concerning the Confederate Flag, and you "Heritage not Hate" folks have allowed the worst people on earth control it. Whatever your reasons for flying it, all we see are Klansmen stalking elementary schools and burning crosses on people's lawns. Occasionally, for shits and giggles, they drag a black person or gay man to death behind their truck.
The Swastika is a perfect parallel. The Swastika is over actually 12,000 year old. The symbol can still be seen on temples, buses, taxis, and on the cover of books. It was used in Ancient Greece and can be found in the remains Troy, which existed 4,000 years ago. But the Swastika was co-opted and used by of one of the most hated men on Earth. It now represents the slaughter of millions of people and one of the most destructive wars in the history of the world. Now Neo Nazis tattoo it on their necks. Skin Heads carve into their skulls.
To African Americans, the Confederate Flag is a symbol of hate and discrimination. That’s its legacy. If you truly care about your heritage, accept the past without excuses and control the narrative.
edit: added a link for the info I shamelessly copy/pasted
http://www.ancient-origins.net/myths-legends/symbol-swastika-and-its-12000-year-old-history-001312
Excuses, excuses, excuses. If you can make no better reason to keep a symbol of hate than a heritage of treason you honestly have no argument.
".. the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 penalized officials who did not arrest an alleged runaway slave, and made them liable to a fine of $1,000 (about $28,000 in present-day value). Law-enforcement officials everywhere were required to arrest persons suspected of being a runaway slave on as little as a claimant's sworn testimony of ownership. The suspected slave could not ask for a jury trial or testify on his or her own behalf.[6] In addition, any person aiding a runaway slave by providing food or shelter was subject to six months' imprisonment and a $1,000 fine. Officers who captured a fugitive slave were entitled to a bonus or promotion for their work.
Slave owners needed only to supply an affidavit to a Federal marshal to capture an escaped slave. Since any suspected slave was not eligible for a trial, the law resulted in the kidnapping and conscription of free blacks into slavery, as suspected fugitive slaves had no rights in court and could not defend themselves against accusations."
Lastly, some could find it troubling that others wish to celebrate the deaths of 600,000 - 1 million Americans in a costly and bloody war, when ALL other slave owning countries in the Western Hemisphere (aside from Haiti) were able to end slavery without a costly war. Prohibiting the expansion of Slavery into the new territories was a great start, abolishing the Fugitive slave act of 1850 WOULD have been a great addition, and the oncoming industrialization of the western culture would have made Slavery an economic impossibility in a very short time without the bloodshed, turmoil, and economic losses that lasted for decades after the War Between the States.
In order to forego any assertions to the contrary, I would like to reiterate that the freeing of the American Slaves WAS a positive, and much needed result of the War, but it was neither the reason for the initiation of hostilities, nor likely the primary motive for the North's desire to keep the Southern States as unwilling members of the Union.
As always, Respectful regards.
"From the Official Records, a Colonel Adin Underwood of Massachusetts described Sherman’s gratuitous bombing and burning of Atlanta after the Confederate Army had left the city as having burned to the ground “37 percent of the city” according to Sherman’s military engineers. This included many private homes and even churches.
An Ohio infantryman is quoted as describing “an ocean of fire” all throughout Atlanta. Eventually, at least “two-thirds of Atlanta lay in ashes” according to the Official Records. A Major Nichols was told that “the holocaust devoured no fewer than five thousand buildings.”
When Sherman’s chief military engineer, Captain O.M Poe, voiced dismay over seeing so many corpses of women and children in the streets of Atlanta, and informed Sherman that the day-and-night bombardment of the city was of no military significance, Sherman coldly called the corpses “a beautiful sight” that would quicken the ending of the war (Michael Fellman, Citizen Sherman, p. 184). There were approximately 4,000 private homes in Atlanta before Sherman’s bombing, with only around 400 left standing.
Sherman left a paper trail that was obviously intended to cover his murderous tracks, but at times he issued direct orders to murder civilians. Bothered by his inability to apprehend Confederate snipers who had been shooting at his railroad trains, he sent the following order to a General Louis D. Watkins: “Cannot you send over about Fairmount and Adairsville, burn ten or twelve houses of known secessionists, kill a few at random, and let them know it will be repeated every time a train is fired on . . ?” (John Walters, Merchant of Terror: General Sherman and Total War, p. 137). In order to carry out such war crimes, Sherman biographer Lee Kennett writes of how “the New York regiments were . . . filled with big city criminals and foreigners fresh from the jails of the Old World.” It took a special kind of “soldier” to carry out Sherman’s war crimes. (Lee Kennett, Marching Through Georgia, p. 279).
The Official Records also record how federal soldiers extorted money from Southern civilians by demanding “insurance” payments to avoid having their homes ransacked and burned down. A Major James Austin Connolly is quoted in the following way in response to reports that Southerners were hiding their valuables from thieving U.S. Army soldiers:
“Let them do it if they dare. We’ll burn every house, barn, church, and everything else we come to; we’ll leave their families homeless without food; their towns will all be destroyed and nothing but the most complete desolation will be found in our track. “
The Official Records also write of how Northern reporters associated with Republican Party newspapers often accompanied Sherman’s “bummers” as they were called, and then entertained the folks up North with tales of their raping, pillaging, plundering, burning, and murdering. One Northern reporter is quoted as saying of Sherman’s rampaging looters:
“If the spoil were ample, the depradators were satisfied, and went off in peace; if not, everything was destroyed . . . . Hogs were bayoneted to bleed; chickens, geese, and turkeys knocked over and hung in garlands . . . cows and calves . . . are shot . . . . the furniture [of private homes] is smashed to pieces, music is pounded out of . . . pianos with the ends of muskets.”
Another federal soldier is quoted as saying “I rather feel sorry for some of the women who cried and begged so piteously for the soldiers to leave them a little,” but nevertheless, “extermination [of the civilian population] is our only means now.”
When Sherman reached Hardeeville, South Carolina, one of his bummers is quoted in the Official Records as saying that “In a few hours a town of half century’s growth is thus leveled to the ground.” This even included a church where “First the pulpit and the seats were torn out . . . . Many axes were at work.” This is undoubtedly an example of what the Lincoln cult means when they refer to “military infrastructure.”
One of Sherman’s degradations was known as his “war on dogs.” A U.S. Army Colonel is quoted in the Official Records as saying, “We were determined that no dogs should escape . . . we exterminate all. The dogs were easily killed. All we had to do was to bayonet them.”
By the time Sherman was done with South Carolina, one of his officers boasted in the Official Records that “We have . . . burnt one city, the capital, and most of the villages on our route as well as most barns, outbuildings and dwelling houses, and every house that escaped fire has been pillaged.” This was no “family myth,” as the Lincoln cult shamelessly claims, but the words of a senior officer in Sherman’s army.
Sherman’s “march to the sea” was nothing new: he had been waging total war on the civilian population of the South for years. In 1862 he ordered the complete destruction through fire of the town of Randolph, Tennessee, near Memphis. Around that time, Sherman wrote a letter to his wife saying that “extermination, not of soldiers alone, that is the least part of the trouble, but the people” in general, was his intention. (Cited in John Walters, Merchant of Terror, p. 61).
In 1863 Sherman ordered the systematic bombardment of Jackson, Mississippi every five minutes, day and night. The city was sacked, looted, and destroyed, after which Sherman boasted in a letter to Grant that “the [civilian] inhabitants are subjugated. They cry aloud for mercy. The land is devastated for 30 miles around.” (Cited in Walters, Merchant of Terror, p. 101). He also boasted of the complete destruction of Meridian, Mississippi: “For five days, ten thousand of our men worked hard and with a will, in that work of destruction, with axes, sledges, crowbars, clawbars, and with fire, and I have no hesitation in pronouncing the work well done. Meridian . . . no longer exists.” (Walters, Merchant of Terror, p. 116). This, too, took place after the Confederate Army was long gone from the area.
James McPherson estimated that some 50,000 Southern civilians perished during the War to Prevent Southern Independence, but the true figure is probably much higher. Sherman himself boasted of how his “bummers” destroyed hundreds of millions of dollars worth of private property and walked off with hundreds of millions of dollars more. There are thousands of pictures of the burned out Southern landscape in the wake of Sherman’s “march” in addition to all the Official Records that record his war crimes.
But of course in war, the victors are never prosecuted. This probably explains why Sherman – and all the other Union Army top command, including Lincoln himself, became more and more murderous when it came to Southern civilians in the latter years of the war. They all understood that if the South was victorious, it would have been well within its rights to hang all of them as war criminals."
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My mention of Woodrow Wilson was intentional and deliberate to prove that yes the Civil War was not about Slavery entirely, because north and the south wanted to keep their machinery of wealth building preserved.
Fact: Abolishing slavery would have crippled the southern economy. I know this is a fact, so slavery is "a" reason why the civil war happened. Not indentured servants or any other form of human forced labor but slavery.
I too want us to get over slavery. Do you know why we will not any time soon? Jim Crow. Jim Crow was an extension of the culture of slavery. Practiced by the south and for the first time as a government agency started by Woodrow Wilson. Why? Why would Woodrow Wilson authorize segregation in the federal government and it last until President Truman? Because, slavery was a reality that the country accepted as just another form of wealth building. Of course you can't go on hanging and murdering your workers so eventually the moral side of our Constitution has to be corrected. But 1968? I was born in 1969.
I am sorry to focus on slavery but aint no way I am going to let our up and growing children forget the concept of immigrants.
If they get wif that blacks were never intended to be citizens then when our economy goes to crap we will be the first target for crap as the cause.
I already here it when people and politicians talk about welfare. If you listen closely, the insinuation is without welfare our country would be rolling in no debt and all white people would have their taxes. Just listen. I do. Remember indentured servants were a higher form of citizens mainly because they were not hung in mass numbers for 400 year.
For some the Confederate flag represents positive attributes, for others it represents racism and slavery... if you want to understand what it means to someone you should avoid making assumptions and ask them what it means.
By the way, I don't fly the Confederate flag because it has racist connotations and I don't want to unintentionally communicate to some racist that I condone his hatred.
http://www.ancient-origins.net/myths-legends/symbol-swastika-and-its-12000-year-old-history-001312
The symbol of the Swastika and its 12,000-year-old history
The swastika is a symbol used by of one of the most hated men on Earth, a symbol that represents the slaughter of millions of people and one of the most destructive wars on Earth.  But Adolf Hitl
Your opinion is invalid. Especially if you're an NCO as you claim to be.
Is it historically significant? Sure. It's also deeply embedded in the racist history of our country.
The Civil War Trust's history article analyzing the reasons for secession as set forth in the Articles of Secession and Declarations of Causes issued by the Southern states.