Walmart to remove all Confederate Flag items; Do you think their response went overboard?

Sir! If the flag was used as a guidon with the spear end, it can do TREMENDOUS damage!

SrA Edward Vong

Excellent POINT...get it, I am a pun master. I know that guidon spearings have been a terrible problem lately...well in the last two centuries...not so much the last century but you know what I mean.

SrA Edward Vong - Sir; it is not the flag, nor the guidon doing the damage …. it is a miss-guided idiot.

Yeah, this is the funny part. I grew up in the South and remember very little of this stuff. I doubt this is a huge move on their part.

SSG Thomas Brasington SGT Jeremiah B. The underlying fact is the Southern economy was directly dependent on the high manpower / low cost product of slave labor. Remove that and the Southern economy would utterly fair. So the Southern response was one of the threat of complete economic collapse.

SPC Jan Allbright, M.Sc., R.S.
"A rose by any other name is still a rose"...
While I will certainly not defend slavery as anything but horribly wrong and inhumane, the fact is that the conditions in the factories and many companies in the "industrialized North" that used child labor and immigrant labor were actually worse than those endured by slaves in the South. Both systems needed to be eradicated...

SGT Jeremiah B. - I agree with what you are saying, to a point, however, historians try to rewrite history to suit their causes. Lincoln was a driving force in the creation of a nation where freed slaves/black Americans could be taken, as he did not think they would ever assimilate into the American society/culture. He also was known to have had the opinion that blacks, although they should be freed as slaves, should not have the same rights as whites.

COL Jean (John) F. B. , that was a (un)surprisingly common mode of thinking. Even Lee, who thought that slavery was evil, felt that they were not ready to be equal and that slaves were better off than they would have been otherwise. Ugh. No one was particularly nice. It was a step in the right direction but we're still dealing with a society that didn't like Africans, the Irish or Catholics.

As for historians, well, I grew up in the unapologetic nationalist mythos era. Lincoln was a saint, the Boston Tea Party was a totally selfless act from which the organizers totally didn't profit from immensely, and everyone in the colonies was totally on board with Revolution except Benedict Arnold. Oh, and being a Southerner, the Civil War was totally about states rights and the South was going to free the slaves anyway.

PO1 (Join to see) - I understand what you are saying, but I don't know why you are trying to compare the Confederate flag and the Gay Pride flag on the basis of violence. My point is that the Gay Pride flag is just as offensive to some as the Confederate flag is to some. If one can be deemed as representing "hatred", both can. I have seen a whole lot more "hatred" displayed lately by those displaying the Gay Pride colors than those displaying the Confederate flag.

If the argument is that the Confederate should be banned because of the history it represents, then so should the Democrat Party and its symbols and logos.

TSgt Jaime Jones - Thank you for your insightful research into this discussion.
While we all know that statistical analysis, especially by a Government agency, can be manipulated to show anything you want it to, the fact is that it is really an apples-to-oranges comparison. The classification of "hate crimes" skew any realistic comparison. People and agencies are quick to identify anything against gays as a "hate crime"; they are less likely to do so for crimes against religious affiliation. The same holds true for classification of white-on-black versus black-on-white crimes, where white-on-black crimes are much more likely to get a "hate crime" classification that the reverse, even if the very same situations exist.

My point was that the whole controversy over the Confederate flag is that it represents hate and oppression and that it is offensive to some. The same can be said for the Gay Rights flag, which is much more offensive to me than the Confederate flag.

As I commented in another post, if the basis for banning the Confederate flag is the history of what it allegedly represents, then the Democrat Party and its logos should also be banned, as its history is worse than that of the Confederate flag.

TSgt Jaime Jones
The LGBT movement has spewed much more hatred than a few rednecks with a Confederate flag. Their attacks on Christian and family values, fully supported by the liberal media, in an effort to make the gay lifestyle "normal", is a greater threat to this country than the racists you depict.

I am as offended by images, such as the one I posted, as I am by the one you posted.

TSgt Jaime Jones - I am fully aware of the methodology used to gather data for the statistical reports published by the FBI and others. I am also very aware of the parameters set for classifying such data. Such parameters make it much easier to classify crimes against some groups than it does for others. I don't dispute there is crime against homosexuals strictly because of their lifestyle, but it is certainly not an epidemic, as liberals would have you believe.

As far as your question .. "When was the last time a person was murdered in America for being a Christian?", I guess I could Google it and come up with a precise answer, but I see no need to do so, as it means nothing to the discussion. Off the top of my head, I distinctly recall a woman being beheaded at work by a Muslim because she was Christian; I would argue that the murder of soldiers at Ft Hood by MAJ Hassan could fit that category, as could the 9-11 incident. Although those may not technically be because the victims were Christian, it was because they were not seen to be Muslim or supporting Islam. But, again, I don't know how that is pertinent to the discussion. Persecution of Christian by the LGBT movement is not about murdering Christians.

That's quite correct, LTC. It's a legal product. Just like all the stuff W-M sells that comes from China.

SP5 Joel O'Brien - I have no issues about imports from China...other than generally being low quality stuff.

The push to take that flag down is already beginning.

By It causing further cultural division.

Rednecks giving up Walmart would be like a fish giving up water. It isn't going to happen and Walmart knows it. The actual societal impact of this will be virtually nill as I would hazard your hardcore Rebel Flag flyer's number of black friends approaches zero anyway.

SGT Jeremiah B. - I personally take offense to the manner you toss the words, Red Neck," around. You use it derisively. It seems you expect people to be tolerant of the viewpoint that they must not offend someone else, yet tolerate your offensive speech of them. Nice, typical Liberal Double Standard.

SPC Don Stringer, I am a left-leaning moderate. I think you'll find I don't give a great deal of weight to personal offense unless there's serious history there.