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Nothing proclaims July 4th weekend quite like some stars and bars

Confederate flag in Watertown

Adam McCready shows us how one household celebrates our independence on Sycamore Street in Watertown.

Carlson, meanwhile, gets to enjoy this quaint display in Arlington:

Confederat flag in Arlington
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IMAGE(http://www.beforethecross.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/wavewhiteflag.jpg)

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in the other hand.

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You can't have it both ways Adam. It is their right.

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Please point to the exact spot in my post in which I demand these flags be torn down and their owners tarred and feathered.

You betcha - it's their Constitutional right to fly their flags. And it's every bit as much my Constitutional right to be amazed and disgusted at them. The Constitution is wacky that way.

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You say you appreciate their Constitutional right to fly that stupid flag, yet you list the exact street in Watertown that it's being flown on. If I was the person who owned that house, I would say that you were the one looking for trouble.

You have summarily painted them as bigots without knowing them or their story as to why they're flying the stupid thing, they're just bigots to you and click bait for your easily offended readers. Grow up and just go back to reporting on people getting shot or killed in neighborhoods the majority of your readers don't live in or care about and whipping up the bike riders for page views.

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You might have a point if I only ever used vague descriptions of where photos are taken, but in general, I always try to get the name of the street for the photos I post. But then, maybe you think that when I mentioned the specific intersection where a truck spilled a ton of milk yesterday I was inciting people to go beat up the truck driver.

And, yeah, I didn't post the street of the Arlington flag. I'm a horrible, horrible person.

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You have summarily painted them as bigots

Pretty sure they did that themselves.

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When people show you who they are, believe them

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How dare Adam publish the street of the home that flies this flag for all to see in public! People have a right to express their views in public without the public knowing it, dammit!

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it's not like Adam posted an exact street address.

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dixie as you typed that reply....

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Why is it that every time someone says something completely off the wall or does something like fly the confederate flag someone always says "well that is their right"? Yes we all get that but that same right is why others can mock them for doing it.

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Like when protesters who block traffic say it's their right? Not sure what your taking about

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someone always says "well that is their right"

I bet these types of people were a real hoot during Weimar Germany.

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They have a right to fly a flag of treason.

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So brave.

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That flag is the Third National Flag of Confederacy - pretty rare and unknown - especially in these parts.

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Hipster confederates?

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They were into slavery before it was cool.

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grays.

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They were fans of Neutral Grays, but only the first two albums.

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with that.

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at least they follow guidelines by flying the American Flag higher than the other one.

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Happy 4th

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...but you can't take the trailer out of the trash.

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Different Strokes, Different Folks....

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Trailer ain't got nothing to do with it (spits).

Crackers come in all kinds of boxes! Even fancy McBoxes.

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...against the skyrocketing value of their property?

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... and great schools?

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*Confederate flags
*Bicycles....ANYTHING bicycles

To get things going on Uhub.

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Q: What happens if a bicyclist wearing a Confederate flag got doored in a bike lane? Which posts do I upvote?

A: stenographer output

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I wonder if the Arlington one belongs to one of UHub's more well known grumpy commenters. The town seems to be down to three or four remaining right wingers so the odds are pretty good.

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Gasp! Those right-wingers, ya know, those people with different opinions!

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You really are a noob, aren't you?

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You seem to have vastly different views of terrorists and those flying flags of treason.

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If you think the flag of treason is a "different opinion" how come you don't seem to be so respectful of people praying on a T platform?

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Not everyone who admires the flag is a right winger. In New Englad people see the flag and they shudder as if someone's declaring they're Nazis (remember that 1990's incident in Harvard Yard?) or Yankees fans. In the south people display the flag all over the place without shame. I think the biggest they do that today is to rile Northerners.

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These two homeowners are good ol' boys from Pigeon Forge, TN who for some reason found themselves living way up in the state that was home to the abolition movement (sounds like the premise for a wacky sitcom, somebody get on that) are just flying these things to rile up the damnyankees?

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Sitcom? That's already the premise for a reality show, Duck Dynasty.

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Seeing these flags makes me angry, sad, hurt, and frustrated and fantasize about winning a war of words over their bearers.

But that is the why they are flown right? To instigate? I have to believe there is no possibility of victory in volley of ideas with this person.

They are proudly displaying their stubbornness and ignorance. I hope someday to get over my anger and just feel sad for them. And I hope for them that someday they will get over themselves and feel shame for pledging allegiance to an awful state and its humiliating heritage.

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Ignorance of what exactly? If you do not know their motivations for flying the flag how in the world would you be aware of what exactly their ignorance is.

Are you ignorant to the fact that today is the day that started the battle at Gettysburg, a battle in which American men fighting under both flags lost their lives? In one instance the American flag is higher, in the other they are side by side.

Ignorance? Your post reeks of it.

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Regardless of their motivations, the flag itself represents slavery and oppression. It was also the flags of traitors to the United States of American who attempted to slit the country. If these were at a civil war enactment, like say the ones they hold for Gettysburg, then fine, great - you have the historical context/etc. Flying it on 4th of July on your random house? Yeah, no, there is no context there for it be appropriate to fly that flag.

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Today is not the 4th of July. Today is the first day of the battle at Gettysburg the bloodiest battle of the civil war.

Poorly read or deliberate ignorance on your part?

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*4th of July Weekend.

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And again, today is the day 1 of the bloodiest battle of the civil war, that is the only historical relevance to the day in this context.

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And yet you disregard the rest of my comment - its a traitors flag representing slavery. That's it. There is no context to fly it outside of historical reenactments.

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"its a traitors flag representing slavery"

You sure can argue that, but without knowing the motivations of the person flying the flag that would simply be a waste of breath.

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Nope, you don't. That is what the flag stands for - there is no arguing that and it isn't a matter of opinion. That flag was flown and created for traitors who fought to keep their human slaves in chains. That's it - the meaning is there, and their motivation really doesn't matter. Unless, of course, like I said before, they are flying it in a reenactment, which is totally fine, as it has context, and of course we all know it ends with the traitors behind that flag losing, and the slaves freed.

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The context is day 1 of the battle of Gettysburg. Both pictures show the flag flying beside or underneath the American flag.

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And outside of a historical reenactment, there isn't a context for a private citizen to fly it. Flying just the real American flag is all that is needed.

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The 4th of July, the day the colonies seceded declared independence from Great Britian.

The irony is that if the Founding Fathers had not committed treason themselves to fighting for freedom, then slavery in the American colonies would have ended in 1834.

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or they could be from the South - or had ancestors that fought and died during the war between the states. The fact that they are flying the Third Flag or the Confederacy tells me they may actually know something about history. Before slamming someone for being ignorant and stubborn, consider that they may have other motives other than simply getting you upset.

And, because they are flying the American Flag higher than the Confederate flag (as we are supposed to do) it seems they are pledging their allegiance to American, rather than the south.

Its interesting that you seem to be doing all of the pre-judging - thereby shutting down any potential "volley of ideas".

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If I came from lineage of Germany military in WWII and let's say they were staffed at a concentration camp it'd be totally cool to fly a Nazi flag, right?

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Today is also the day that began the battle at Gettysburg. The largest and bloodiest battle in the civil war. A battle in which Americans fighting under both flags lost their lives.

I do not fly the confederate flag, but looking down on people that do from some preposterous moral high ground is laughable.

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stance against the symbols of the Confederacy, which in my reading of history was first and foremost about defending the institution of slavery. In that light, my judgement on a person who in the 21st century still celebrates those symbols is, "There's a hateful asshole and/or ignoramus, likely both."

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The Confederate flag is the flag under which American men fought and died. On this anniversary of Gettysburg flying them alongside the American flag is entirely appropriate and does nothing to express support for the ideals of the confederacy.

You reject confederates as Americans and you reject the justification for the war itself.

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that filter for Universal Hub that hides the dribblings of right-wing thick-wits and trolls? I could really use that one.

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What a witty argument. As stated in my original post I do not fly the confederate flag and to add nor will I ever, the reasons the south were seceded were atrocious.

. But your failure to think a bit deeper about the American men that lost their lives fighting under it is simply a desire to blind yourself from history. For one must accept confederates as Americans if one is willing to accept the justification for the war, the reunification of the Union. Today is an entirely appropriate day to fly such a flag.

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meriting a response, I'll let you know, DPM. And you can let me know what day you celebrate the soldiers who died nobly defending Pol Pot's regime.

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I wish you luck in blinding yourself to reality.The men that fought under Pol Pot were not Americans. The men that fought under the battle flag of the confederacy were in fact Americans.

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watching the witless dig themselves deeper into holes of illogic in the defense of the contemptible. I've gotten over that, thank goodness.

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John Walker Lindh was born in the US. Benedict Arnold was born in the US. Picking the wrong side* isn't negated by the happenstance of your birth. Are you a big fan of the Black Panthers? They had some issues with the US government back in the day but were definitely Americans.

* in my opinion

Plenty of ordinary Germans were conscripted into fighting for the Nazis - that doesn't make putting a Nazi flag somehow OK as a symbol of German heritage. (yes, yes, Godwin's Law. I know but I find the parallels to celebrating the CSA and the Nazis to be more related than most things)

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Americans fought and died under the American Flag. Traitors that renounced their American citizenship fought under a different Flag. They were no more American than Omar Mateen or Anwar al-Awlaki.

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Tell that to Lincoln. Remove their status as Americans and you remove the entire justification for the war.

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became a sensitive issue for the non American traitors.

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"The Confederates were now our countrymen, and we did not want to exult over their downfall."

General Grant.

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confederate flag. The white flag of surrender. They were then welcomed back into the real America.

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"I would make this war as severe as possible, and show no symptoms of tiring till the South begs for mercy."

"My aim, then, was to whip the rebels, to humble their pride, to follow them to their inmost recesses, and make them fear and dread us. Fear is the beginning of wisdom."

Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman

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Sherman was alot like Trump wishing to kill the families of his enemies, in fact he even took it further in deliberately attacking civilians.

Sherman was a war criminal, not one I would point to in attempts to make arguments.

In Atlanta :"“No consideration must be paid to the fact they are occupied by families, but the place must be cannonaded.”

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The southern confederates were much more akin to the Trumpster than any Union General, including Sherman. The bombastic notion of taking up arms against our own countrymen simply because you disagree with election results is much more Trumpesque than General Sherman's march to the sea.

The Confederate rebellion was, like Trumnp, long on bluster and bluff. Like Trump, they did little planning and operated under false assumptions. Britain did not enter the war to maintain their cotton supply, they simply imported cotton from Egypt. To the Confederate surprise, the slaves brought to the front to dig earthworks, deserted to the Union side by the thousands. Also to their surprise, when most southern men were off the plantation at the front, the slaves who stayed at home worked at a much more leisurely pace.

General William T. Sherman on the other hand, was very effective in his march to the sea. Like U.S. Grant, he realized that the rebels would fight to the bitter end and the only way to defeat them was use the Union's superior resources in a war of attrition. Part of that was a matter of denying food being used to support the rebellious army.

Indeed, if one looks at Trump's career anything he's done has involved bullying people, not paying people for services and goods in his far flung grandiose schemes. He is much akin to the ridiculous rebellion that Southern leadership foisted upon the Confederate states.

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Sherman knew how to run a campaign.

He also knew the difference between words and actions.

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ties too?

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That's the last thing most posters on this topic want introduced into the conversation.

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I never got around to looking for an equivalent to GreaseMonkey for Chrome. I could probably put up a JS file somewhere, and you can just bookmark it to get the same effect, but that means you're trusting someone else's code to run in your browser window, which is usually a bad idea.

I'm still fiddling with the one that makes every post by DPM show up in a speech bubble coming out of a giant rooster. I feel it gives it the appropriate gravitas.

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Should I post trigger warnings for you?

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That's for helping people who have experienced some trauma, helping them avoid content that might remind them of it and distress them.

Your posts are about as distressing as the noise of one of those fat houseflies whose intermittent buzzing indicates they're about to croak: modestly annoying for about five seconds, then trivially easy to ignore.

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Buddy those guys didn't consider themselves Americans. They were fighting to no longer be considered American by everyone else. They were traitors to the United States.

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If they were not Americans how were they traitors?

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A battle in which Americans fighting under both flags lost their lives.

Yes, Confederates were Americans. So were Tokyo Rose, Aldrich Ames, Benedict Arnold, John Walker, Jr., and Nidal Malik Hassan

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You think men who march to war have much of a choice?

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The leadership absolutely had a choice. And men of conscience will choose jail or death over treason.

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Leadership did not fight and die under the flag at least not in any meaningful numbers. The tens of thousands that died were not leadership.

" And men of conscience will choose jail or death over treason."

All this reflects is your lack of understanding of where loyalties lied in the time. Men were loyal to their states, not to the nation. We were much more a collection of states in those days.

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McCarthy, George Wallace, Lee Atwater

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The Confederate flag is the flag under which American men fought and died.

You have a different definition of secession than I do.

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The entire justification for the invasion of the south was the restoration of the union, that the south was still part of the US and it did not have the right to secede.

Lincoln in recognizing this saved the union when he waged the war and also saved the union when he put reunification ahead of revenge.

The arguments that seem rather prevalent today would have solely succeeded in truly ending the Union for military might alone would not have been enough to have brought us where we are today. Lincolns understanding of these realities are what truly saved the Union and made us what we are today.

It seems nobody likes Lincoln anymore.

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It's not an invasion if the South was part of the nation still. And they're not Americans if it was an invasion.

You can't have it both ways...unless you're attempting to make some sort of rationalization for the actions of the secessionist states post hoc.

Either the South were Americans but traitors and shouldn't be celebrated or recognized except for their influence on the direction the country avoided by squelching them...or they weren't Americans and were heroes who seceded and were invaded by the Union in an attempt to usurp their control and ownership of their own destinies.

This new rationalization that exists these days that the Confederacy was simultaneously heroic rebels looking out for what's right while also being yoked to the rest of the Union is bullshit hypocrisy.

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I take it you reject Lincoln's reasoning's as well as his efforts in reunification not revenge?

American men who fought under the confederate flags were largely poor men forced into service as most men are in war. Recognizing them as such is hardly inappropriate. The men who fought and died under the confederacy ultimately fought where their loyalties lied, with their states.

One can readily honor the men that died while also rejecting their leaderships cause. Apparently that is difficult for you? Prefer to condemn American men that were ultimately victims of war?

Thank God it was Lincoln at the helm of this nation when he reunified it and not someone like you. Your reasoning and prescription would have destroyed this nation.

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The flag was created to represent an area that chose to leave the United States, to no longer be "Americans." It is akin to referring to those who fell at Lexington and Concord as "British," which makes more sense since in April of 1775 there was no declaration that they were not British.

If the Confederacy was successful, they would not be considered Americans. Period.

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"If the Confederacy was successful, they would not be considered Americans. Period."

The confederacy was not successful.

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the invasion of the south

We gots ourselves a real live Johhnnnny REB here!

Tell us again how you ain't a nutjob?

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Southern states were invaded by the north following secession. This is not exactly a point of contention...

Was the invasion justified? Totally.

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The Confederate States of America was not recognized as independent by any other nation. It was never an independent country - it was merely a failed secession. This was confirmed by Texas v. White, which addressed the issue of the rebel Texas government selling United States bonds to fund the war effort. The Supreme Court ruled that the confederate government was illegitimate and could not authorize the sale of U.S. bonds. They confirmed that the United States constitution did not allow states to secede. For these reasons, Texas (and any other Confederate state) had never been outside the Union and any state actions taken to declare secession or implement the Ordinance of Secession were null and void.

That being the case, how does the legitimate government of the United States invade itself?

You are simply engaging in mental masturbation and have demonstrated yourself to be a pseudo-intellect.

As for the Confederate flag being some sort of historically relic honoring the South's heritage - complete bullshit. Since the rise of the KKK and other white supremacist groups, the stars and bars have become a provocative symbol intend to intimidate and repress - in particular people of color.

I lived in the south in the 50s - I learned upfront and personal what the southern view was of decendents of slaves - not a whole bunch (particularly below the surface) has changed in the ensuing years.

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"It was never an independent country - it was merely a failed secession."

Please do indicate where I claim otherwise.

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"Southern states were invaded by the north following secession. This is not exactly a point of contention..."

The North couldn't be invading the South if the South wasn't being recognized as an independent state. Since it never was, the North by definition wasn't invading, but, simply fighting to keep the union together.

You need to try harder on the troll game man, starting to fall apart here.

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Give me a better term for what happened, I do not have one. The action was justified, I did not say otherwise. In fact I have repeatedly stated I supported the reunification.

You call reasoned arguments trolling? Do not like discussion and reasonable debate?

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You call reasoned arguments trolling?

bgt didn't call reasoned arguments trolling; they called your arguments trolling. Which they are.

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The Confederate flag is the flag under which traitors lived and died - and killed more Americans than any other group of people in the history of the country.

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So you reject the entire premise for the war? That secession was illegal and that the people that lived in seceded states remained Americans?

If as you state the people living in seceded states were no longer Americans all you have is a war of northern aggression (not an argument I subscribe to).

You also reject Lincolns action that SAVED the union under reunification?

If the secessionist states were no longer Americans what pray tell was the legal justification for the war?

Man the historical ignorance is astounding.

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So you should maybe go read a book or two about the Civil War. I hear there's any number you can pick from.

Enough already for the Northern invasion crap. Why did the North invade Southern states? Because they committed treason and seceded and started the War of Southern Aggression.

If you look at the articles of secession passed by the Southern states, they were not noble and American. They were written by profiteering, amoral, racist slaveowners committed to preserving "the peculiar institution," no matter the cost to their states, their fellow citizens and the hundreds of thousands of people they enslaved.

No, not all Southerners were racist slaveowners. You might recall how a big chunk of Virginia seceded from the secessionists in Richmond and gave us an entirely new state.

The fact remains, however, that Southerners were the ones who tried to pull out of the union. They are the traitors. They are the ones who were enslaving and killing people based on the color of their skin.

The Stars and Bars are not honorable. They do not represent some Great Cause. They are the symbols of genocidal, anti-democratic despots responsible for the deaths of more Americans than any other group in history. They are to be despised, the people who fly them to be pitied, at best, especially here in Massachusetts, the state that gave us Charles Sumner and the 54th Massachusetts.

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If they were not Americans they could not commit treason against America.

Men who fight in war, especially in the past, do not do so largely out of some sense of honor, they fight in war because they are forced to. One does not need to argue from a position of honorableness to honor the dead.

Which are they? Americans or not Americans?

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And yet you keep displaying yours. We have this document called the Constitution. Article III, section 3 actually defines treason:

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.

So, yes, an American can commit treason against the US.

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Yet if they are not Americans they are not treasonous. Japan did not commit an act of treason when it bombed pearl harbor it committed an act of war.

One must accept secessionists as Americans to argue they committed treason. You in your post rejected the premise that confederates were Americans.

I have no beef with the argument that they were treasonous.

I have many beefs with the argument that they were not Americans and also treasonous. You cannot have it both ways. Non Americans cannot commit acts of treason.

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Regardless of whether they were American traitors or self-declared soldiers of a new nation, the fact remains they were horrible people fighting a horrible cause and flying a confederate flag is celebrating one of the deadliest periods in American history, in part because of things such as Andersonville. And I'm wondering if that's really the argument you want to make.

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Americans have been sent to unjustified wars for a very long time. What is it you say to the men forced to fight in Vietnam?

Should we tear down the wall honoring them because they fought an unjust war?

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They are heavy. You must be exhausted.

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What is it you say to the men forced to fight in Vietnam?

Don't drag me into your bullshit dorm-room argument, and leave that memorial the fuck alone.

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"leave that memorial the fuck alone."

I was not advocating for the removal of the memorial, I was making the point that the justification ultimately is irrelevant to honoring the men who were victims of a war.

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Now I'm a victim? Really, kid, just give it up. You're way past tiresome.

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If you were forced into military service against your will? Absolutely. You disagree?

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I disagree that your half-informed squishy arguments are worth the pixels they occupy on my monitor, yes.

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I see you have not answered the question, why bother responding? You are more than welcome to ignore my squishy half thought out arguments.

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I did answer one of your questions. The other one was, as you might say, not worth the bother.

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The states never lawfully seceded from the United States because they COULD NOT lawfully secede. However, within those states, large groups of rebels tried to end the power of the lawfully elected U.S. government. That is the definition of treason. The Union Army was therefore responsible for stamping out a treasonous movement within the rebellious states. This does not require invasion; merely physical occupation of the Union's own sovereign territory. By committing treason against the United States, however, the rebels (temporarily) lost their rights as Americans. It is the act of treason that renders them non-American, up until the point that President Johnson granted amnesty in May 1865.

Those who did not take up arms against the Union in the rebelling states never lost the American-ness.

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"The states never lawfully seceded from the United States because they COULD NOT lawfully secede. "

No debate here. As I have stated I agree with the argument that they were treasonous.

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For the sake of argument, let's say I accept the following concepts:

1) CSA soldiers were Americans
2) CSA soldiers were simply following orders

Please explain why on the weekend which celebrates the nation of the United States of America, we're supposed to also randomly honor the dead of failed secession by flying their flag as well. Back to the Nazis, do the French fly the Nazi flag in Normandy during commemorations on Remembrance Day? I suspect not, in spite of the many, many Germans that died in France (again, this was for the good. Not defending Nazis...)

I don't get the 'me too' aspect of celebrating a failed rebellion and the people who fought for it on the our national holiday. You'd have more of a point if this was surrounding a Veteran's Day celebration but on the 4th of the July it's just pointless contrarianism at best and dog-whistle stuff at worst. There is no valid reason to celebrate the confederacy on the 4th of July.

Tl; dr = USA rules, CSA drools.

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One can do more than one thing in a weekend. As stated elsewhere today is the anniversary of the bloodiest of civil war battles.

Why would the french honor Germans? The confederates were Americans, the context is not the same.

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... thinking Lincoln would be a pushover. Fort Sumter's garrison was almost out of food -- and the Confederate leadership knew that the garrison would surrender when the food finally ran out. Jefferson Davis and the Confederacy's military leadership gave explicit orders instructing that Fort Sumter be attacked before such surrender could take place. The Confederacy planned a war of conquest -- aimed at both the border states and more importantly everything west of the Mississippi -- because it needed new slave territories which could serve as a market for the Deep South's slave "crop" (producing and selling slaves was more profitable at that point than selling cotton -- because much of the land there was becoming exhausted due to over-intensive cotton planting). Attempts to present the South as victims of Northern aggression are pathetic.

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"Attempts to present the South as victims of Northern aggression are pathetic."

I have done no such thing and have rejected such an argument within this thread. This is a strawman.

As I stated before the war was justified based upon the fact that they remained Americans and it was a war of reunification I SUPPORT THIS ARGUMENT.

Those that claim that the secessionists were not Americans reject the very basis for the war.

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... that displaying the symbols of _American_ traitors (and, as to military officers, deserters and oath breakers) can evoke legitimate hostility. American or not, they WANTED to destroy the USA -- and did their very best to do so. Why should their flag be honored? And can we not mourn the human costs of the victims of Confederate greed and treachery (on both sides) without honoring any sort of Confederate flags? (Battle re-enactments and the like is a separate matter).

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They wanted to secede. The US would have still existed, it would have just been smaller. The confederacy wanted out of the union, they did not seek to destroy the union.

Arguing they wanted to destroy it is like arguing the UK wishes to destroy the EU. Were the reasons for secession legitimate? NOPE not at all.

Why should the flag be honored? Because American men fought and died under that flag. Did they do so for a terrible cause? Yes. There have been plenty of other wars with terrible causes since the civil war, except for a time during Vietnam we did not blame the men fighting those wars.

of course free thinking people can choose to honor or not honor the flag on this historical day. I myself will choose not to, but that is just me. I will not go around assuming the intentions of those that do choose to fly it. The complete lack of mention of the historical context in this post by Adam really is a shame.

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Why should the flag be honored? Because American men fought and died under that flag.

That makes no sense. Americans have fought and died under the ISIS flag. Let me know when you plan on flying that one in their honor.

Just because someone decides to rally under a particular flag doesn't mean that flag should be honored later on in some warped sense of patriotism. If you want to honor those *people*, then honor the people, not the flag they fought for which itself is a symbol of something other than themselves (as you're so repeatedly pointing out).

So, if you think the people aren't their cause, then their flag which obviously represents that cause isn't what you should be celebrating if you're interested in paying homage to those people by your own definition of what's important. Unless you're just being hypocritical for the sake of trolling.

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And the American flag was fought under when we invaded Vietnam. Should we hide it away as a consequence?

Entire STATES fought under the flag. Tens of thousands of American men fought under it. The flag symbolizes what the flyer wishes it to symbolize, nothing more.

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No, that flag symbolizes failed secession and treason, along with enslavement of humans, just like the the Nazi Flag stands for their ideologies, genocide, and crimes. Just because you fly the the Nazi flag and want to have your own special snowflake meaning of it doesn't change what it means and represents, or the ideas behind it, just because you want to have it have a different meaning.

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American men didn't die under the confederate flag. Racist traitors who got their ass kicked by Americans did. Anyone who is proud of that is ignorant and full of hate.

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So you accept the confederates arguments that they had the right to secede? I sure do not.

If they were not Americans they were lawful in their action, if they were Americans, as Lincoln argued, they were ultimately treasonous.

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No, as you seem incapable of understanding treason - they were Americans until they unlawfully attempted to secede and break the union. At this point, they cease being Americans, but rebellious traitors occupying American soul. After the Federal Government put down the traitors, they were pardoned and thus restored of their rights as Americans.

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If they aren't Americans they aren't traitors. One cannot have it both ways.

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If one understands words like until and at this point and after. These words indicate the passage of a thing we call time, a useful concept when discussing conditions that are not immutable and unchanging. You are simplistically pretending that the rebels' condition of being Americans is immutable, and are trying to make that equivalent to historic events that, having once occurred, cannot be changed. It's as though you're arguing that Jeffrey Dahmer could not be a murdering cannibal because he was once a law-abiding grade-schooler.

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"preposterous moral high ground"? Ya mean like the Abolitionist (anti-slavery) movement? I guess that was just a bunch of elitist Yankee nanny-staters forcing their views on others.

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Lincoln fought the war to reunify the union not to abolish slavery. The south seceded to preserve slavery no doubt, but that is not what the war was fought over.

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This is a flag of treason. It has no place being flown in the US, which has its own flag.

Why do you love terrorists so much?

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One can readily honor the American men that died while also rejecting their leaderships cause.

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By not flying the flag of treason.

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You claim they are not Americans. If they are not Americans how in the world can it be treason?

Holy cognitive dissonance batman.

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QED. PS - You're dense.

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Yet the Union rejected that argument when it waged war to return them to the Union. Did you forget that part? It was rather bloody.

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One, it's a distinction without a difference. Two, I still think you're dense. And for shits and giggles, it sounds like you're trying to use apologetics to excuse racism and also slavery.

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"trying to use apologetics to excuse racism and also slavery."

Utter garbage. I have repeatedly stated that the reason the south seceded was atrocious.

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I see you pointlessly, pedantically trying to justify this person's actions while at the same time making it easy to conflate the same effect, re: apologetics.

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Is that better?

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My ancestors died in the Civil War too on the union side. Flying the confederate flag is spitting in their face.

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sure one 'can readily honor the dead' of the CSA, but one need not readily honor the dead CSA soldiers on the FOURTH OF JULY - i.e. the celebration of the USA itself.

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Today is the anniversary of the bloodiest of Civil war battles. The houses are flying both flags. The historical context is entirely appropriate.

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Just like it's a mere coincidence that the Dome of the Rock happens to be a top the site of the Temple. Etc...

Sorry, when I see people flying the confederate flag, the more likely explanation is dog whistle racism than arbitrary commemoration of a civil war battle.

I wonder what Civil war battle this guy is commemorating?

IMAGE(http://esq.h-cdn.co/assets/15/42/1444680593-confederate-flag-truck.png)

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northern aggressor Dunkin Donuts.

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It's nice of them to warn everyone that they're trash. Gives neighbors, delivery people, etc, a nice heads up :)

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Black flag is the best west coast punk band ever.

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I sometimes teach a course in leadership in coastal North Carolina, where it's pretty common to see the flag of the confederacy flying. One particular class was roughly half black and half white, and we talked for about an hour on the topic. The overwhelming consensus of my black students was that they view the flag as a very clear 'blacks are not welcome here' message and avoid people and businesses displaying it. The white students were surprised at this for some reason.

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July 1 is CANADA DAY!

IMAGE(http://seachangeseafoodsandgifts.ca/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/img_5851_2lowres.jpg)

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