Rep. Steve King Defends Confederate Flag On Desk: Slavery Just 'Small Part' Of Civil War

http://www.rightwingwatch.org ^ | 7/15/2016

[ObamahatesPACoal]

Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, landed in some hot water this week after he gave an interview to a local TV station in his Sioux City district office and viewers noticed that he kept a Confederate flag on his desk.

(SNIP)

And we’ve lived with respecting the South and their way of life for 150 years and now, after 150 years, there has to be an issue about a Confederate flag?”

King told Angelo that he had ancestors who had fought and died in the Union Army.

“Our family cares a lot about unity but also about the truth and accuracy in history,” he said, “and so that Confederate flag has been here for a long, long time, it just does a reflection of our history, it’s not meant to be anything else. And, by the way, up until about a year ago, it never occurred to me that anyone would think that it has something to do with — that it was an advocacy for anything other than, let’s just say, a piece of our history that we should remember and remember the right lessons from.”

[Gene Eric]

The issue of slavery was not a factor until the war effort required greater political support many years in. I’m happy to review any related documents that tell a different story. And it’s doubtful the Country would willingly sacrifice more than half a million young men for the issue of slavery regardless of its egregious nature. It was about commerce and control.

[wardaddy]

You’re full of shite and should have your sorry ass booted off the forum advocating killing half the population of antebellum USA and many of our founders who you Mr Jackass think you are superior to cause geez you loves you some Tropical Africans

Do you feel the same way about Jews who held slaves?

Or Commanches?

Or blacks who owned other blacks?

Or orientals?

Or basically every member of the historical human race had slaves one time or another

Kill them all eh?

Man woman and child?

Or just whites who owned blacks?

Is that the part gets your goat in particular.

You ain’t lived much to talk so much self righteous trash

What do they call such warbling nowadays....”cheap virtue”

Cheap....hell in your case it’s free.....

You don’t like slavery....whooptedo.....you might want to read up that it sure beat hell out of total annihilation after defeat and was encouraged as humane versus butchering the vanquished

It’s easy to preach free of charge about an era you had jack to do with

You and the other nutter ccmay are the only two freepers I’ve ever seen spout such nonsense.....

And in those times very few beyond looney John Brown said such crap

Know what I really hate?

Politically correct preeners that pollute this forum with such idiocy....you sound Jonah Goldberg

Which reminds me:

To: Greetings_Puny_Humans
Trump is a fraud. Unfortunately, his moronic supporters are blind to the facts and are too emotional.

3 posted on February 19, 2016 at 7:43:13 AM CST by sagar (3 way race; cranky populist - Trump/Sanders, establishment - Hillary/Kaysick, conservative - Cruz!)
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Oh yes Sagar.....ain’t you just the peach boy

[wardaddy]

C42

Trying to communicate in my usual subtle and affectionate way with the hopelessly dull and lost

[Rockingham]

Not so. Uncle Tom's Cabin turned Northern opinion decisively against slavery, making it an increasingly contentious issue before the Civil War, with Kansas and Nebraska in bloody turmoil, a band of anti-slavery fanatics led by John Brown attacking a federal arms depot at Harper's Ferry, and the secessionist states and the Confederacy's leaders identifying slavery as the cause of the conflict.

[miss marmelstein]

My family were Union people and I proudly display the Confederate flag. Believe me, I get it. But no pc types are going to bully me into not owning one or showing one. They can go to hell and not in a hand basket.

[vetvetdoug]

When Generals Fremont and Hunter suggested that early on during the Civil War the issue be made to free the slaves, Lincoln fired them.

[Rockingham]

Good for you. The Brits have a saying that of the sides in their Civil War, the Cavaliers -- the royal forces based on the aristocracy -- were wrong but romantic, while the Roundheads -- Cromwell and the Parliamentary forces drawn from the rising commercial and entrepreneurial classes -- were right but repulsive.

The same sort of thing can be said to apply to the Confederacy and the Union in our Civil War. Unless we shun truth and good reason, we cannot but reject slavery and recognize that its elimination was a moral necessity, even at a terrible price. Yet there is much to admire about the Old South, and it produced many fine personalities and made essential contributions to America's founding and national character.

I recognize that my detached view arises in part from my lack of Confederate or Union ancestors. My grandparents were immigrants and arrived in an America already defined by the Civil War and much else. Gradually, I came to the view that to be an American in full requires that one know and embrace the country's history without narrow partisanship.

Union, Confederate, slave, slavemaster, abolitionist and so on all have their roles and should be understood and accepted. And sometimes a Confederate flag may find its way to the desk of someone with Union ancestry. I submit that is a different and better thing than descendant of slaveholders arguing that no, really, the Confederacy was not at all about slavery.

[miss marmelstein]

To be a true American one must study the Civil War. It is one of my pet peeves that immigrants are not taught about this defining moment in history. Actually, it’s not taught to anyone unless a person expresses interest in it.

Gore Vidal, who whatever his faults, was a Civil War expert, never forgave Norman Poderetz for saying that the American Civil War was as remote to him as the Ming Dynasty. Not the right thing to say to old Gore!

Banning the Confederate flag will do nothing to elevate African-Americans. I think this is well proven.

[miss marmelstein]

Very few plantation owners were killed by slaves and none of them received the death penalty for owning slaves, so your fantasies must remain that.

My suggestion? Burn a copy of Gone with the Wind. Make yourself feel better and virtue signal to the rest of us.

[chasio649]

Wardaddy off the chain...The way i like him!

[StoneWall Brigade]

Dixie Ping

[hlmencken3]

The war was about the EXPANSION of slavery into new states and territories.

The South took the position that its recognition in the Constitution meant slavery was applicable in all states and territories, whereas the North took the position that the Constitution recognized the ‘peculiar institution’ only in states where it was already a defining feature.

It always puzzles me why it is ignored that the Abolitionist Movement was a novel interpretation of Christianity by the Second Great Awakening.

[Pelham]

There was a faction within the Radical Republicans who were genocidal and advocated the extermination of southern whites. Thaddeus Stevens, Charles Sumner, and a few others. They would have fit in nicely with the Bolsheviks and it’s not a surprise that in 1861 Marx and Engels recognized the Radical Republicans as fellow travelers on the road to the Progressive Eden. The majority of the country, including Lincoln, thought that they were nuts.

It is a surprise to find some haters celebrating them.

[hlmencken3]

One of the founders of the Republican Party and early supporter of Lincoln was Horace Greeley, who for years published Karl Marx in his newspaper.

[Pelham]

Marx and Engels closely followed the American Civil War, writing columns for a London paper which Greeley may have picked up. Or they could have been original pieces for Greeley, I’m just not familiar with the Greeley pieces.

Their columns were collected in the volume ‘The Civil War in the United States’ that I found in a used book store. It all makes fascinating reading. You will find condemnations of America originating with Marx and Engels that have become all too common among our current Politically Correct crowd in both parties, the Obama Left and the neocon/GOPe Right.

Advocating the extermination of southern whites like a couple of freepers are doing is a special touch, I’m not sure that even the two proto-Communists did that although they may well have. But as Lenin is reputed to have said, you have to break a few eggs to make an omelette, and I’m sure that these freepers think that genocide is a small price to pay to further their goals.

[hlmencken3]

Marx wrote 350(!) articles while on the payroll of Greeley’s New York Tribune, which was the leading newspaper of its time (like the NYT in recent decades). He only started writing for a Vienna newspaper about a year before the NY Tribune stopped publishing him.

[Pelham]

thanks-

[Ohioan]

The vicious hatred of honorable people, long dead, who disagreed with Mr. Sagar's fantasy view of history, is indeed something to behold. He seems to be trying to justify the present incipient revolution.

But against the Sagar diatribe against the Southern leadership, consider Booker T. Washington's testimony, which attests to a very different reality. That Washington understood the subject clearly--having been born into a time when one could rely on personal witness--is as clear as is the irrationality of Mr. Sagar's consuming hatred.

Atlanta Exposition Address.

One might also contrast Mr. Sagar's tone, with Lincoln's in his 2nd Inaugural Address: "With malice towards none," etc.

Mr. Sagar had no part in the War; but for some very, very bizarre reason, seems to have greater bitterness than the actual participants, over one of the issues. He reminds one of the psychotic haters of the period--John Brown & Thad Stephens. But they at least were consumed by hate of people with whom they disagreed on contemporary issues. Mr. Sagar is consumed with hatred against people who have been gone for generations; and seems to pant for the equivalent of the French Reign Of Terror, where the teenaged daughters of leading families went to the guillotine because of Sagar like hatred of their cultural heritage.

[Ohioan]

I had no idea that Marx was that involved with the American Left, at the time. Thought he was a pen pal of Thad Stevens, but 350 articles on Greeley's payroll!