Free Republic

Jeb Bush said Monday that the Confederate flag has become a "racist" symbol and applauded efforts to remove the flag outside the South Carolina State Capitol after a racially motivated church shooting. In his first campaign stop in South Carolina since the deadly shooting that killed nine at AME Emanuel Church in Charleston, Bush recalled how he "decided to do something politically incorrect" and removed the flags outside the Florida state house when he was governor in 2001. "The symbols were racist," the Republican presidential candidate said during a campaign stop at a pharmaceutical manufacturing plant.

As we sit in the midst of this progressive purge of our heritage, judging every instance of historical indiscretion beneath the microscope of political correctness, perhaps the most relevant question has yet to be asked: what would our forefathers think of America today? Yes, what would the architects of our liberties, values and government think about abortion, gay marriage, transgendered parents, internet pornography, strip clubs, drug abuse, urban poverty and violence, communism, media collusion, Hollywood, pop culture, video games, public education, petulant youth, absentee parents, modern feminism, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Benghazi, disparagement of military personnel, public surveillance, censorship, affirmative...

A man in Louisiana is asking for an explanation from Walmart after his request for a Confederate flag cake at one of its bakeries was rejected, but a design with the ISIS flag was accepted. Chuck Netzhammer said he ordered the image of the Confederate flag on a cake with the words, "Heritage Not Hate," on Thursday at a Walmart in Slidell, Louisiana. But the bakery denied his request, he said. At some point later, he ordered the image of the ISIS flag that represents the terrorist group. "I went back yesterday and managed to get an ISIS battleflag printed....

On an incredibly hot day, a cool decision was made by the Governor of Alabama. He took down the Confederate flags flown on our capital grounds in Montgomery. This is a good thing. It is good because now our capital, and so symbolically our State, is more welcoming than before. The Governor took a stand for all the people of Alabama. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Most of the soldiers of days gone by knew about as much about grand politics as soldiers of today. They would be content, I'm certain,to have their time and flag memorialized in a museum, not as a prop...

Memphis Mayor Wants to Literally Dig Up Confederate General and Move Him by Alex Griswold Memphis Mayor A C Wharton has called for the removal of the grave of Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest from a city park, along with an attached memorial. “These relics, these messages of this despicable period of this great nation, it’s time for those to be moved,” Wharton said in a press conference Thursday. Most historians believe that Forrest was also the first Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan, although he later distanced himself from the group as they became more violent. “This is...

I believe it was the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. who expressed the opinion that true racial harmony would come to the South before it comes to the North. The reaction of the people of Charleston, SC, and more specifically, the bereaved family members of the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church where such a heinous crime was committed, may give credence to Dr. King’s assessment. If we compare the recent Baltimore circumstance to the tragedy in Charleston and forget, for the moment, that the Baltimore incident was triggered by the arrest of a suspected drug dealer while in Charleston,...

A Confederate battle flag was attached Sunday night to a Boston memorial that commemorates one of the first all-black regiments to fight for the union during the Civil War, hanging there for over an hour before a woman removed it. Melissa Carino, 37, of Lowell said she saw the flag hanging from the Robert Gould Shaw and Massachusetts 54th Regiment Memorial across the street from the State House at about 8 p.m. Carino said she left and returned to the location later, angered that it had not been removed.

The statue of Confederate General P.G.T. Beauregard has been spray-painted with the words 'Black Lives Matter' on both sides of its base. The statue stands at the main entrance to City Park in the circle where North Carrollton and Esplanade avenues intersect, directly in front of the New Orleans Museum of Art. Beauregard was considered the first prominent general of the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War. According to New Orleans Historical, it took twenty years to raise the $22,000 needed for the monument, which was completed in 1915....

Today we are here in a moment of unity in our state without ill will to say it is time to remove the flag from our capitol grounds,” said Haley, who is the state’s first non-white governor. WASHINGTON – Growing outrage against a slavery-era Confederate flag, artfully channeled by South Carolina’s governor Nikki Haley, nee Nimrata Randhawa, following last week’s racist-terrorist attack in Charleston, has pitch-forked the Indian-American politician into being talked up as a potential Republican vice-presidential candidate in 2016. The flag, seen by many as a symbol of the slavery-supporting confederate states that were defeated in the American...

Who says things can’t change in politics? We just learned, again, that they can — and fast! Ten days ago, you couldn’t find a politician in the South who had anything bad to say about the Confederate battle flag. Today, they’re tripping all over themselves to get rid of it. To their credit, Mitt Romney and Jeb Bush led the pack. Bush pointed out that as governor of Florida, he’d given orders to take down the flag and consign it to a museum. Calling it a “symbol of racial hatred,” Romney tweeted that South Carolina should remove the flag from...

FLINT, MI — An artist/protester has been arrested after taking down the Confederate flag in South Carolina, and Flint-area filmmaker Michael Moore has offered to pay for her bail and legal fees. According to NBC News, two activists were arrested Saturday morning after one removed the Confederate flag from a pole outside South Carolina's Statehouse in Columbia. Reports say Brittany Ann Byuarium Newsome, of Raleigh, N.C., climbed the pole around 6:15 a.m. and unhooked the flag, according to a statement by the South Carolina Department of Public Safety Bureau of Protective Services. James Ian Tyson, of Charlotte, North Carolina, was...

With a name like Dixie Flags, you might think the San Antonio-based business would be the last place on earth that would banish Confederate flags — you would be wrong. After 57 years in a business started by his parents, Pete Van de Putte said that Dixie Flag will no longer make or sell the Confederate battle flag. In an interview with the San Antonio Express-News this week, Van de Putte says that in conversations with manufacturers and suppliers, they have all decided to stop making or shipping the controversial flag. “My official opinion is now that it is an offensive item and we...

BLOCKBUSTER PROOF: Slain South Carolina Pastor Voted FOR Confederate Flag June 27, 2015 Look at the evidence quickly before it is scrubbed by the powers that be… His death was quickly used by the Mainstream Media and the Obama White House as a tool by which they could call for the outright banning of a historical image sacred to many who proudly declare their Southern heritage. And yet, the facts of Pastor Clementa Pinckney’s actual vote to locate the Confederate flag during his first term as a South Carolina senator have been willfully ignored by those same figures. Senator Pinckney...

This will have the potential to be lengthy, so bear with me and I will try my best to relate my honest feelings on the Confederate flag in question, which was actually the battle flag carried by several Confederate army regiments – and was not the official flag of the Confederacy. I was born in 1936, a mere 71 years after the Civil War ended, when the South was looked upon by what seemed to be a majority of the Northern States as an inbred, backward, uneducated, slow-talking and slower-thinking people, with low morals and a propensity for incest. This...

Earlier today D.C. Whispers shared the stunning proof of slain Senator Clementa Pinckney’s actual vote to SUPPORT the placement of the Confederate flag on the South Carolina statehouse grounds. Now more proof is available of Senator Pinckney’s recent opposition to gay marriage. This evidence has once again been willfully ignored by the Mainstream Media, the Obama administration, and gay rights activists across the nation who are now falsely placing the slain pastor as one of their own. Here is evidence of Senator Pinckney’s vote outlining that legal marriage in South Carolina only be between one man and one woman: READ...

Obama told everyone his intent was to “fundamentally change” the United States of America. This outline is simply going to point out a couple of visible footprints, amid the dozens possible, and show how all the modern activism stems from, and traces back to, the Obama White House. Black Lives Matter, or BLM, stemmed from a social justice group [] containing some of the same members of, “The Dream Defenders“, or TDD. TDD was mostly visible in Tallahassee Florida occupying the capitol following the Zimmerman trial. The 2013 Dream Defenders failed [] as the FL legislature rebuked their attempts to...

Defenders of the Confederate Flag (of whom I’m not one) have a new and unexpected ally: MSNBC’s Ed Schultz. The liberal talker said recently that purging the flag from museums and war memorials is a “desecration” of American history. Yes, really (listen to the audio here): "You know, I understand the effort to remove the Confederate flag from state capitols in the South and anywhere else in this country. There’s no doubt about it that it sends the wrong message. But at this point, I asked the question, is it overboard? And I don’t understand the attempt to erase American...

ABBEVILLE, S.C. — Three people stood in line recently at the Southern Patriot Shop, Confederate flags tucked under their arms, waiting their turn to check out at the cash register. Owner Robert Hayes, a 75-year-old with crow’s feet and a lingering smile, had a bit of advice for his customers before they headed back out into a world they say is drifting further and further from the America they believe in. “Don’t display them in your house but outside of your house,” Hayes said. “We need to be making a statement to the people that know their history and know...

A confrontation described as heated but non-violent thwarted a planned burning of the Confederate flag by demonstrators Saturday in Brooksville. A few hundred counter-protesters — many carrying Confederate and American flags — showed up at the steps of the Hernando County courthouse to cut short a rally in which organizers denounced “rampant white racist violence.” Organizers of the protest included the Uhuru Solidarity Movement, a St. Petersburg group of white people under the leadership of the African People’s Socialist Party, which seeks reparations for black Americans. As about a dozen people protested, they became greatly outnumbered by a pro-Confederate flag...

After the manufacturer decided to no longer supply Confederate flags to her business, Alabama Flag and Banner owner Belinda Kennedy decided to take matters into her own hands. Starting early Friday morning, Belinda and the employees at Alabama Flag and Banner began producing Confederate flags in-store using their own materials and equipment. And just as soon as they hit the machines, the orders came pouring in. "I feel like my responsibility to my customers is to fulfill their needs when they want it, and I had customers wanting it and I wasn't going to turn them away as I felt...