Short version: a couple of short-sighted idiots went and climbed that stupid flagpole in Columbia that has that freaking flag* and then stupidly caused a scene by cutting it down because they couldn’t wait their stupid selves until after the weekend. Because, let’s be honest: the legislature is going remove the flag next week, even after this stupid stunt. As to why it was all stupid? Because of Alinksy, of course:
Witnesses said the incident might hurt efforts to remove the flag permanently from the State House grounds.
“I’m glad to see it down,’’ said Willie Hampton, an African-American who said he saw the flag being removed. “But now, this is going to bring a bunch of riff raff about the flag.’’
Rule 6: “A good tactic is one your people enjoy.” If Willie Hampton is your target audience for your activist antics, said antics probably shouldn’t be leaving him shaking his damn head, and visibly trying to avoid peppering his disapproving response with a few choice epithets. I’m going to speculate, in fact, that Mr. Hampton would have been just as happy to have the flag removed, quietly and without fuss; only some stupid activists showed up and decided to rile things up. Now he’s got to worry about whether there’s going to be more drama on the Capitol lawn.
And they wonder why the South Carolina Democratic party isn’t allowed outside without a keeper…
Via Hot Air Headlines.
Moe Lane
*That’s as polite as I’m going to be about that flag.
Some people won’t let an opportunity to kick someone else in the teeth go by.
A note to the “activists” out there: Those people did not live and die so you could use their coffins as a dais from which to wave the bloody shirt. And by “activists” I mean “buffoons”.
Agreed. I don’t know anything about any of the people the detestable Master Roof killed, really. But if I had been one of them, I would rather my death be used as an opportunity to remember me as a person, or at least to address ways to help (or stop) future Roofs so that fewer people joined me. Rather than, you know, using it to remove a piece of cloth from a flagpole.
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Not that it matters, right? To a certain mentality, people are nothing more than complex tools — unwieldy, but useful if you can point them in the right direction. Never let a good crisis, etc.
South Carolinians have a long, long history of being stupidly hot-headed.
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Mew
My family resembles that remark.
(OK, only half my family is from SC. The other half is Scots-Irish.)
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Mainly, I’m being disgusted about how historically illiterate both sides of the discussion are.
The flag we’re discussing is the Confederate Commemorative, commissioned after the war (and near the very end of Reconstruction) to commemorate the soldiers who fell in service to their States. This was supported by the federal government (especially the GAR voting block) as a gesture of national healing.
It is *not* the battle flag. Those were square (with the notable exception of The Army of Tennessee in the Western theatre of the war, but those were considerably more elongated than the standardized 3’x5′ commemorative.)
And it is especially not the stars and bars. (If you want to use the informal nickname, the design we’re discussing was called the southern cross.)
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As to taking it down, it rather obviously isn’t very good at commemorating sacrifice if people can’t even remember when it was instituted and what it symbolized. Even those writers with layers and layers of fact-checkers.
But I could go as far as to hoist up the Bonnie Blue, and I doubt one person in a thousand would bat an eye.
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Nor am I impressed with the accusations levied against my ancestors who died in that war, who had never owned a slave, nor had any interest in doing so, and were very clear in their writings about exactly what they were fighting for, and against.
You can certainly make a case that the Lost Cause is overromanticized.
Or that Jefferson Davis was twice the tyrant Lincoln was. (And much more of a bastard, to boot.)
But to claim that an overwhelming percentage of the population across all demographics wanted to seceed “because racism” is contradicted by nearly all available evidence.
The planter class cared deeply about slavery, so the politicians who were of that class, or pandering to them for money, reflected that. But they were a very small percentage of the population. Heck, during the debates leading up to secession, South Carolina debated ending slavery. (The planter class won, much like amnesty supporters are winning today.)