I think that the point with national flags is that while there is evil associated with the flags, there is also good. Slavery has a vise grip on the Confederate flag(s). The Confederates lost. The only positives associated with the ideals of the Confederates are buried with the soldiers. The idea that they would have freed the slaves  cannot be proven. The fact that they would have been more humane to the slaves cannot be proven. The fact that the states themselves would have respected states rights cannot be proven. What can be proven is that they were willing to support themselves on the backs of slaves.

Britain faced a similar economic quandary when they freed the slaves in 1833. Liverpool was profiting by building slave ships. A significant portion of the British economy was built on slavery. Britain stayed out of the Civil War despite Southern agents like Henry Hotze traveling to England to try to convince the British of the inferiority of Africans. 

The Confederate flag stands for one thing, slavery.

A cowboy hat is included in the class of objects designated symbols. Just as the confederate flag, nazi flag, Eiffel Tower, and numerous other objects are included in the classification symbols. In that way and only that way they are the same. But the Eiffel Tower and the cowboy hat has never been associated with oppression as the confederate flag has and it should not be treated the same way.

Your attempt to make that association is wrong and stretches the imagination to the point of ridiculousness. I've spent considerable amount of time on the Lakota reservation as well as Apache and Navaho reses. I've studied with several Native American elders and participated in hundreds of Native American ceremonies. I've seen cowboy hats on Native Americans everywhere. That's because its just a damn useful hat in certain climates. It has never been a symbol of oppression just because ranchers wore it. Yes it could have become a symbol of oppression but it never was and it is not today. Just as boots with spurs could have  became a symbol of oppression to Native Americans but they never did.

Clive Bundy is not adding a whole new level of stupid to the cowboy hat. The fact that he wears one doesn't make it a symbol of him. No one is refusing to wear a cowboy hat in opposition to Bundy. No one is suggesting that supporters wear cowboy hats to show solidarity to Bundy. A cowboy hat is not a symbol of Bundy's fight nor was it used as a symbol of previous fights with the Federal government over the use of the large tracts of federal land in many western states.

If you can't see that there are intrinsic and fundamental differences between the use and history of symbols like the nazi or confederate flag and a cowboy hat or the Eiffel tower there's no sense in continuing this debate. So this will be my last post on this stupid waste of time idea you've posted.

The film The Grey Zone (I haven't seen it but hear it is good) focuses on A Nazi doctor, along with the Sonderkomando, Jews who are forced to work in the crematoria of Auschwitz against their fellow Jews, find themselves in a moral grey zone.

  That the slaves were sold by other Africans creates some shared responsibility. But there wasn't an equivalence. The slavers were both black and white, but none of the victims were white.* The white buyers determined the scale of the slave trade, and sometimes compelled Africans to supply slaves.

* The people enslaved by the Barbary pirates were white,  but black Africans had little to do with that.

Thanks - I'm not even a good example of a Southerner, but 1 thing I tried to get across is that people seem to think living there it's day-to-day racism, when there were years went by where nothing racial was even discussed - I played hockey with a black kid and it was as completely uneventful as that clause. Aside from a few stupid racist jokes and youthful amusement at Soul Train or the local black radio station (who quite played up their morning patter like all AM radio), around the neighborhood there was never any talk of superiority or any worries/not even mention about civil rights, no big differentiation if something was done by a white or black person - we simply didn't care and were oblivious to it. The first 2 black kids at my school fit in very well, very nice kids, everyone seemed to like them, I'd recall any racist comments in my presence and there were none. Getting a bunch of white rednecks from the country to bolster the football team caused a much bigger stir. I don't pretend this was universal, but I imagine it was more common that folks think. Even now when I visit, the black ladies in the shops will launch into a 5 minute chat with me as if I've been living next door to them all my life - teasing, scolding, joking - and I wonder why my reality is so different from the angst-ridden discussions on these blogs.

I don't get this comment at all. I don't see how its eternally humiliating to say you don't get to wave the symbol of slavery and racism without public disapproval.

Are the ancestors of Germans who fought in WWII humiliated because they can't wave a nazi flag?

Yes the stream is getting thinner. Younger generations are less racist then their parents.  They are more influenced by social media on line, even in the south, that is progressive about human rights. They have even made friends on line in other countries of different races and religions. 

As you note - over a few hundred years, under British, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Brazilian, US and various Arab flags. The Confederate flag was in use for 4 years for a war, and US slave practice was 10% of slavery in the Americas. Then there comes salt mines in India, diamond mines in Africa, etc., etc.

So your analogy is (a bit facetiously) like banning the flag of Hannover for being a symbol of Nazi atrocities.

Okay, this is worth thinking about.

If the SnB--I actually did a little research on the CSA flag last night, and it appears that a different flag was the real SnB, something closer, in fact, to the US flag--was only used for four years in association with the rebellion...

And the rebellion is over, yes...

Then it seems to me that it's served its purpose and should go into the museum. It's worth noting that the war/rebellion flag may not have been flying at every plantation, but it was flying as the standard of rebellion to preserve the plantation and slave auction. I think that's right.

Anyway, there's no issue around individuals flying the flag whenever they want and to mean whatever they want. Fine. But they shouldn't be surprised when it gets a certain reaction, either. Even if I have a mental ticker with all the possible meanings the flag could represent to the waver, one of those possible meanings is the rebellion for which it stood and the way of life for which the South rebelled.

If the waver wants to avoid others taking his flag to mean that, then maybe he needs a second flag that says, "The first flag just reminds me of the grits I used to eat as a kid. Boy were they yummy." Up to him, however.

But I do agree that we shouldn't jump to the conclusion that just because a person is waving the CSA war flag he is a racist, etc., etc. Who knows what he believes? No one does unless you ask him.

However, I draw a line at the war flag being used as a state flag or as an inset in the state flag. And this is really where the controversy has raged.

At that point, you're ignoring the feelings and history of a sizeable portion of your native population of Georgians, etc., and saying they don't count. Of course, individuals have all kinds of feelings about flags and everything else, but a flag is designed to represent a collectivity, a group, a state, a people and their aspirations. And for most black people, I'd wager, the CSA flag represents the fight to preserve slavery and later Jim Crow, etc. So unless, "you" want to say, "Black people don't count," or "Let's create or reinforce a race-based division in our state," then it's not a smart move. Unless your goal is to appeal only to certain white people in your state.

To bring it back to Ramona's thesis: I don't think a state or any governmental body can reasonably fly the CSA flag (or any flag) and then say, "Well heck, that flag can mean anything to you that you want it to mean." That's not the function of an official flag; that's not how an official decision to adopt a certain flag as THE official flag works, IMO.

"You can't really make the "likely" argument unless you know the first thing about them. " - I live here - I know the first thing about them. They're not Americans. They all know about Nashville, Nancy Sinatra & Johnny Cash, Jack Daniels the rebel flag, and the wild west, and regularly spend their weekends by a campfire singing, drinking, lighting up. They know the words to Folsom Prison Blues better than I do. They're not right-wingers. Where they quite possibly are racists is against gypsies, not blacks, which has nothing to do with the rebel flag. They've never even met a black.

This is a dodge. When I use the statement that you view the world from a White Supremacist viewpoint, I am saying that you tend to see wrongs occurring to Whites in a higher order than you do for a Blacks. You see White experience as trumping Black experience. When BeauEvil puts a benign mark on the Confederate flag during the Civil Rights era, instead of reflecting on the fact that the flags had a resurgence during the Civil Rights era, you rubber stamp his comment.

You view Southerners as having reasons to be aggrieved, but Blacks who complain about injustice are whiners. You dismiss things that fall outside of a myopic White viewpoint. Do you acknowledge that slavery was evil. Yes. But you have also wanted it noted that Blacks during slavery had parties on the plantation. Happy slaves. You wondered why people would not want to focus on the fact that slaves could have periods of pleasure. You needed to diminish the harshness of slavery. Your current commentary about happy Blacks in the South has the same tenor as your focus on plantation parties.

You reflexively dismiss ongoing injustice against Blacks. That is not a list of grievances that is a direct observation of behavior. Couple those facts with your statement about bone density rather than lack of access to swimming pools being the reason for low percentages of swimmers in the Black community.

Blacks don't find the fact that people want to wave the Confederate flag as something that is benign. You dismiss those feelings and give support to those who want to fly the flag. Your experience says that the flag is benign and people should just get over bashing Southerners for wanting to be rebels.

Given the bone density comment, the dismissal of Black grievances, the need to focus on plantation parties and happy Southern Blacks, I would have been more surprised if you condemned the Confederate flag as an abomination. 

I don't have a list of grievances, I'm just making observations. You don't live in the United States, so your impact here is zero, I don't get upset. Your statements serve to confirm an impression.

You're missing my point, by a country mile. I also grew up in the South, so no, I don't think it's terrible you grew up in the South. I think it's amazing that even after all these years and all of your ranting about dagbloggers being part of an echo chamber you don't realize that you were living in a bubble.

We I didn't hear about it 24x7, we weren't I wasn't following riots or what not on TV, we were I was more into WWII model airplanes or sniffing glue or ripping apart car engines. I.e. we were I was in the middle of the South, and we weren't I wasn't hating on blacks, nor we was I sorrowfully mourning the loss of the Civil War. No one talked about any problems at school around me, there was no worrying I didn't worry about Civil Rights or mention of it. We I went to the river or pool, played sports, hung out, and that was it. I remember Humphrey and Wallace and Nixon on TV, but the main thing anyone I cared about there was Vietnam and hippies.

FTFY. As I said, when blacks stepped outside of "their place", they were quickly reminded of white society's view of their place. Naturally, being a white boy you wouldn't have been likely to witness this. I share your opinion that this phenomenon was not limited to the South.