Confederate Flag Fight Rises Again in High School

Maryville, Blount County (WVLT) - The issue involving the confederate flag is coming back in Blount County after students at a local high school were ordered to cover up their shirts on Friday with the confederate flag on it.

More than 150 students at William Blount High School have signed a petition seeking support for the right to wear confederate symbols on shirts and other clothing items.

But students who wore the emblem on Friday say they were threatened with suspension if they didn't cover up.

Some students say they support the right to express their confederate heritage that the school has taken away.

Many students came to school on Friday wearing a confederate symbol but say school officials then threatened them.

"If we didn't they said that they were going to suspend us, but my friend Bruce, they threatened my friend Bruce that if he didn't turn his shirt inside out, they were going to take him to juvenile," says Derek Barr, who started the flag petition.

Barr says he hopes to seek more signatures for his petition but says he's concerned about retaliation from school officials.

Attempts to contact Principal Steve Lafon or Superintendent Alvin Hord were unsuccessful.

The policy may be facing legal action, local Sons of Confederates Camp Commander Ron Jones says they will be assisting the students should a suit be filed against the school system.

####I see your point now, but how does the Left differ from neo-confederates? You guys "turn your guns" on Washington, Madison, and Lincoln and what they believed.####

Some may, but I don't. I'm very proud of the achievements of Washington & Madison. In the case of Lincoln, I can understand his position on preserving the Union and I respect it, but I also understand and respect the view of those who sought to secede. All these questions are more complex than many people realize in their rush to get on the "correct" side. Take slavery as an example. Would it have been better if there had never been slavery in America? If any of us say yes, we must also realize that that would mean very few black Americans would be here today. No Walter Williams, or Clarence Thomas, or Janice Rogers Brown.

It would be the easiest thing in the world for me to join in the chorus and declare the Confederacy to be an unmitigated evil that deserves to be wiped from our national memory. Why, the Yankees should have sown salt in the fields of Dixie after burning our cities! But I respect my Confederate ancestors and understand their fears of an all powerful central government. I don't think Robert E. Lee & Stonewall Jackson were evil men. Nor were the countless Confederate soldiers who fought for a sovereignty they believed in. Nor are the symbols they chose for themselves offensive and evil. Ditto for the Union side.

The Confederates weren't traitors who were trying to overthrow the Constitution. All they wanted to do was leave. The Radical Republicans had more of a problem with the American system of government given to us by our Founders than did the Confederates. They wanted a MUCH more powerful central government than did the men who drafted our Bill of Rights. They wanted it in many cases for a good cause (freeing the slaves, etc.) but if you think the Confederates overstepped their bounds by seceding, how about the overreach of the 14th Amendment? We're still living with the negative judicial consequences of that vaguely worded amendment to this day.

#####You're quick to adopt any left-wing argument about racism in American history if you think it will suit your ends, and quick to defame our flag if you think it will make yours look good.#####

I'm not doing that at all. I'm trying to show you and some of the others here that there are additional ramifications to this anti-Confederacy pogrom the left has launched. The cultural left's war against the Confederacy is a wedge campaign to establish a precedent for future use against the Founding Fathers, the Bill of Rights, and the American Flag. We can see the beginnings of this already. There have been efforts to take Thomas Jefferson's name off of public schools, for example. I often hear people dismiss the Bill of Rights as the work of a bunch of old slaveholding white men. Every time you tell a southerner that he shouldn't honor his ancestors who fought for the Confederacy or value the symbols his ancestors fought for, because the Confederacy was evil, you enable future attacks on Jefferson, Washington, the Bill of Rights, and the American Flag.

Why was the Confederacy "evil"? Because they maintained slavery? So did out Founders. Because they seceded? So did our Founders. Because they didn't believe in racial equality? Neither did our Founders. Your attempt at nuance won't wash with the left. They'll knock Thomas Jefferson's name off the public school just as surely as they'll knock off Jefferson Davis'. In fact, they launched the war against the Confederacy with precisely the intent of using it is a precedent for a war against America.

####The idea that you guys are America's last defense is laughable if you take everything into account. You take one of America's real achievements -- the abolition of slavery -- and demean it in order to make the opponents look good.####

I don't demean it at all. But I don't think the slave owners of the south were wicked people. They were just American citizens who believed in an outmoded system and didn't want to let go of it. I'm glad they abolished slavery. But what if you or I were to be asked this question: Should American slavery have been nipped in the bud...stopped before it got started? If you say yes, then you eliminate most of America's black population. So, you see, it's a more complex issue. To wish that slavery had never occurred here is to wish away many fine black Americans.

I'm not for fighting the Civil War over again. Most southerners are very patriotic. They rebelled not out of hate for America but out of fear that the America they knew was going to change. Some of the changes they feared came about after the Union victory. Some were wonderful (slavery abolished), others not so good (transfer of massive power to the federal government). In the years since the war, southerners have provided more than their share of volunteers and patriotic support for our troops in war after war. Remember the old country song, "Okie from Muskogee"? Southerners from Oklahoma to Virginia remained pro-American and proudly waved the flag when some Yankee precincts were quite prone to Kerryism and Fondaism.

I don't think it's too much to ask of you and others that we in the south be allowed to honor our ancestors and their symbols, and even the lost cause of state sovereignty they fought for.

The war against Confederate symbols is just an opening wedge issue for an eventual leftist war against the U.S. Flag and Bill of Rights.

You mention war against the American flag. An interesting account about a war against the American flag is found in the fifth chapter of Hurlburt's contemporary history of the Civil War in Bradley County, Tennessee. Except for some rich merchants and slaveowners and a gang of opportunistic thugs, Bradley in 1861 was a predominantly Union county. The people proudly displayed their Stars and Stripes over the courthouse. But unfortunately for Bradley, the railroad connecting the Deep South to Virginia ran through the county seat. One day a regiment of Mississippi reb soldiers passing through didn't like to see our American flag peaceably flying over free Americans, so the rebs started shooting at Old Glory from the train and were began to make a movement to invade the town. Some citizens wanted to make a fight of it, but cooler heads convinced them it was a losing proposition for unorganized citizens to face off against a trained regiment of reb jackboots on short notice.

Who were the patriots in this incident? How would we like it today if a bands of armed men fired on Anerican flags flying over own communities today?

Should a group of traitors that fired on our Stars and Stripes be the model for patriotic Americans today?

People fire on one another's flags in time of war. I can't justify it, and won't, but it happens. Once returned to the Union, did southerners behave in an unpatriotic manner. Did we worry at wartime that southern boys might not be willing to fight? Did anti-war and anti-American sentiment break out in Alabama and South Carolina during the numerous wars we've fought since?

I suggest not, because the south is among the most, if not **THE** most, patriotic part of the country. Dixie didn't secede because of hatred for our founding principles. They did so out of fear that some of those principles were being threatened by the north. The Radical Republicans were the ones who wanted a big overhaul of what the founders gave us.

I don't think the Radicals wanted their modifications to go as far as they eventually did. But they transferred power to the federal government. Many of our worries today about judicial imperialism, something that would have been horrifying to the founders, lead straight back to the poorly worded 14th Amendment. Did they write it badly out of stupidity or deviousness? Either way, it's led to abortion on demand, Nativity Scenes ripped out of town squares, quotas, and many more disasters and it may lead to gay "marriage". A case can be made that the Radical Republicans staged a coup against the Founding Fathers.

For that matter, the work of the Radical Republicans led to state laws against burning Old Glory being struck down. Nice irony, huh?

Why is it that no one seemed to get their panties in a twist over the Rebel Flag until 1993 or so? Until then, even liberals didn't care if southerners flew these flags. It was just considered a form of local color. Liberal CBS featured the flag in the 80's in the admittedly silly Dukes of Hazzard TV series, but no one acted shocked or horrified to see it displayed.

What changed? Liberals found out that opposition to the flag could be used to split Republicans and trash our culture. So seemingly overnight liberals began to get hysterical over the flag. And, as always, they counted on a segment of weak kneed pansy conservatives to side with them.

They pat those conservatives on the head and praise them for being "mainstream" conservatives (you know, like Justice O'Connor) as opposed to those far-our radical right-wing types.

But even as they're praising you guys, they're laughing at you behind your backs for falling into their trap for the umpteenth time. Because they have every intention of using the precedents set in the war against the Rebel Flag against the founders of our country, Bill of Rights, and Old Glory.

You PC-Cons are doing such a great job!

You may be right, but no one threw a tantrum over the flag being shown. But when the equally silly movie version came out last year, there was controversy over the flag and several liberal columnists were bent out of shape over it. The movie had to include a scene to rationalize the flag being on the car.

As I posted earlier, the current hysteria and mouth-foaming over the flag can be traced back to 7/22/93 when corrupt leftist Senator Carol Moseley-Braun decided to play the race card during what was expected to be a routine extension of the trademark logo of the United Daughters of the Confederacy. After her tirade and accusations of "racism", a little over half of the Republicans and nearly every Democrat did a 180 and the Senate voted 75-25 to kill the group's copyright to their own logo.

Liberals around the country saw how quickly many supposedly principled conservatives folded like a tent in the face of the phony racism charge. They also noticed that some didn't fold, and they knew they had a new issue to use to split the GOP between its conservative Reagan wing and its "let's find a way to get the Democrats to like us" Jerry Ford wing.

And thus the flag issue was born.

There is little doubt that the CSA was on the wrong side of historical development. Trying to maintain a pre-feudal economy in an industrializing world is indicative of shortsightedness in the extreme. Morality need not even enter into it.

That was as futile an endeavor as stone age savages trying to resist a modern army. Slavery was doomed but the Slaver leadership of the South simply could not face facts.
Now maybe that is understandable and forgiveable but what is not is the modern day defenders of their actions who parrot their lies and distortions and ignore the reality of their actions.

Anyone who believes that the South fought for any reason other than slavery is deluding themselves. Believing that there was ANY other justifiable excuse for starting that war is just as delusional particularly when the instigators explained precisely why they did what they did. These are among the greatest criminals in history for several reasons not the least attempting to destroy the greatest nation mankind has yet produced.

Charters were imposed upon the colonies by the Crown. There was no true law since consent of the governed was not asked for or given. Colonial legislatures had no power when in conflict with the Crown's desires. Any "law" was like law under Saddam given from above and withdrawable at a whim.

New York was settled by the Dutch, ruled by the Dutch and considered Dutch until the British kicked them out and renamed it. Any claims prior to that were based only upon force not law. West India Company officials as well as the Dutch government ignored English claims to the area and England for the sake of the alliance with the Dutch against the Spanish ignored the intrusion. I have seen no indication that any tribute or tax was paid by the colony of New Netherlands. Certainly the Dutch did not surrender any claims until forced to do so by war.

Americans considered themselves a people from the beginning of the independence agitation after the Intolerable Acts. They spoke of themselves as Americans. They gathered together and spoke with a unified voice as Americans. Have you studied pre-Independence American history at all? These are simple matters that anyone should know.

States did not even exist until they wrote Constitutions transforming them from ex-colonies to states. EVERY state at the founding was subsequent to the formation of the Confederation and came into existence at the behest of the Congress. Even the Declaration speaks in the name of the "...United States of America" as a unity. Not one of the Founders believed the states could have survived as separate entities. Americans considered themselves as a People prior to states even being formed.

This was underlined and emphasized by the methods used to ratify the Constitution when Congress made sure that ratification would not be done by State action. It required conventions be called in each state NOT action by legislatures voting for ratification. The former would legally allow later legislative action disavowing ratification and allowing withdrawal from the Union. Fortunately, our Founders where such brilliant and farsighted men they made sure that option was NOT available.

The Treaty was negoitiated and signed by representatives of the United States not by representatives of each state.
Even today we are called the United "States" long after all pretensions of state sovereignty are over. And that is all it ever was since no state EVER acted independently with TRUE sovereignty.

Actually I only fight with friends. Sideline observers would believe my best friend and I are ready to kill each other at times we get so loud. As you can tell from my screenname I like to provoke a good argument.

For the Southern leaders the war was fought ONLY for slavery and they openly admitted it. It is their modernday allies which try to suppress that fact because of its racist overtones. I am Southern born and raised and still have most of my family there and was inculcated with the myth of the Noble Cause from childhood and as such love the people of the South. When I left there forty years ago it was undeniable that racism was rampant and I hated that since I truly liked black people and always fought for the underdog. None of this means that I am blind to the racism of the northern people during the war or the acts of their legislatures against blacks. But there there was at least a chance of changing those beliefs and many of those citizens were vehemently opposed to slavery and devoted to bringing blacks into the mainstream. In the South this was impossible and the lives of any who attempted to do the same were in danger. It was simply on the wrong side of history.

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