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Capitol Hill Buzz: House Republicans solve flag fight—coins

Ahlevah

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House Republicans sidestepped the divisive fight over displays of the Confederate battle flag at the U.S. Capitol with plans to put up state coins instead. Rep. Candice Miller, R-Mich., who heads the House Administration Committee, announced Thursday that reproductions of commemorative quarters depicting the 50 states, District of Columbia and the territories will line the wall between the Capitol and the Rayburn House Office Building. “A print of each state’s commemorative coin will be tastefully displayed for this highly trafficked area, as each quarter serves as a reminder of the ideals, landmarks and people from each state, as well as this nation’s great motto, ‘out of many, one,’” Miller said in a statement.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/poli...d58c50-07e7-11e6-bfed-ef65dff5970d_story.html

This is just getting silly. I mean, I'm a resident of Mississippi and I'd prefer the Magnolia flag, but the current flag is our official state flag and has been since 1893. But coins? Seriously? I'll bet the people of Wyoming can't wait to see their coin on the wall. :doh
 
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This is just getting silly. I mean, I'm a resident of Mississippi and I'd prefer the Magnolia flag, but the current flag is our official state flag and has been since 1893. But coins? Seriously? I'll bet the people of Wyoming can't wait to see their coin on the wall. :doh

Flyoverland...near the air base in Columbus? I'm from down in the Delta in between Indianola and Cleveland.

And I got rid of my Stars and Bars about eight years ago. Sorry, but unlike I was taught in high school there, the war really was about slavery. From our Articles of Seccession:

In the momentous step, which our State has taken of dissolving its connection with the government of which we so long formed a part, it is but just that we should declare the prominent reasons which have induced our course.

Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery - the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product, which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin.


They never showed us this in our high school Civics class - I guess you can see why.
 
Flyoverland...near the air base in Columbus? I'm from down in the Delta in between Indianola and Cleveland.

Gulf Coast, near Biloxi. :2wave:

And I got rid of my Stars and Bars about eight years ago. Sorry, but unlike I was taught in high school there, the war really was about slavery.

Yeah, I don't dispute that. And I'd add that the Confederate Battle Flag was added to the state flag after the Plessy decision and Jim Crow was just getting cranked up, just as it was added to various other flags (such as Georgia's) during the civil rights battles of the '50s as one means of flipping the bird to the federal government. All I'm saying is, like it or not, it is the official flag of the state, but political correctness has gotten us to the point that official anything is irrelevant.
 
Gulf Coast, near Biloxi. :2wave:



Yeah, I don't dispute that. And I'd add that the Confederate Battle Flag was added to the state flag after the Plessy decision and Jim Crow was just getting cranked up, just as it was added to various other flags (such as Georgia's) during the civil rights battles of the '50s as one means of flipping the bird to the federal government. All I'm saying is, like it or not, it is the official flag of the state, but political correctness has gotten us to the point that official anything is irrelevant.

Down on the coast - heck, that was almost a different country, as far as we were concerned. The closest thing we had to waves was on the lake when a bass boat passed by. And I don't know if you remember Camille, but we had family down there at the time, and I can still picture that boat on top of a house across the street from the beach.

But back to the flag, I remember how none of us flew it because we supported slavery - of course not! We flew it for much the same reason that many Russians today look wistfully back to when they were the Soviet Union, a time when they fought and died in great numbers against a mighty enemy to stand on their own. It matters not that the Soviet Union was also committing crimes against humanity, just as the Confederacy was quite literally fighting to preserve the institution of slavery. Another example is Serbia - they eventually lost their independence in WWI, but even though they were very much the underdog, they fought a hell of a fight against the Austro-Hungarians...and Gavril Princip, the Serbian who shot Archduke Ferdinand and lit the fuse that resulted in 10M deaths, is remembered as a national hero.

That said, I think that most of us who flew the Stars and Bars - while we didn't do it for any racist reason - never grasped just how offensive it was and is to nearly 40M Americans. I really don't think we realized that to them, it really is a symbol of great injustice and shame every bit as much as is the hood of a Klansman...and nothing we can do or say could ever be expected to get them to think otherwise. Bearing this in mind, should the government - federal, state, or local - ever display something that is so incredibly offensive to nearly 40M Americans? That is the key question.

So what this all means is that yeah, you do have every right to fly the Stars and Bars as a private citizen, and while - as I described above - you almost certainly don't mean anything racist by doing so, there's millions of Americans who take great offense at seeing anyone doing so...because just as there's a lot of us Down South who look back with a measure of pride on "Johnny Reb" and the hundreds of thousands who wore the gray and believed their cause was just and right, there's almost as many who take that aforementioned great offense...and with good reason, since they may not have lived through slavery, but there's millions who are old enough to remember what Jim Crow was like, and how the Stars and Bars was waved in protest against desegregation and Civil Rights.

To summarize, I hope you see that I understand your argument, because I believed the same for many years. But I've since learned their side of the argument to an extent that most of my particular demographic never do...and I really think they have the stronger argument.
 
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