You might want to read the Confederate Constitution!

I do not now, nor have I ever had the obligation to which you refer. That's not the way our military is trained, nor are the activities that you suggest even tolerated. Those are the facts, and that's my last word on this discussion with you.

I can understand the "Don't Tread On Me" flag. The confederate flag is a more difficult issue for me. That is because in context it can be taken to indicate the threat of the initiation of physical force. If a foreign aggressor were to threaten the US with the initiation of physical force explicitly, the US would be obligated to destroy the enemy. Implicit reference to the initiation of physical force need further investigation. For example, if a rogue nation claims all allies of a certain nation will perish, and the US is one those, then that would be a clear but implicit threat of the initiation of physical force. Does the confederate flag fall within this same classification or doesn't it?

This is an enemy flag flying over a public building. It is treason and SC should either remove it or have its representation removed from Congress.

And you are a fool.

I love the second place comment! Hilarious. May have to go there an stick a red ribbon with "2" on each!

Good summary.

It isn't in the Constitution per se, but was part of the original deliberations in the Constitutional Convention. Many of the Founding Fathers wanted to do away with slavery at the inception of the US, but they couldn't get the Southern States to support ANY proposal while that was still on the table. So they were forced to abandon it as a principle of the Constitution and leave it for future generations, recognizing that until slavery was eradicated, it would be a source of great destabilization in the Union.

The 3/5 compromise was a measure that was critical to getting the Southern States to adopt the Constitution, but which was passed separately:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-Fift...

I found the following sources which allude to economic differences, but don't get into the detail you mention:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origins_of...
http://www.historynet.com/causes-of-the-...
http://americanhistory.about.com/od/civi...

Can you point me to more information on the tarriffs issue? My understanding was that tarriffs were put on _incoming_ goods from other nations - not outgoing goods. I appreciate your elaboration.

I lived in the Capital of The Confederacy while I went to college. There is a rather prestigious road in the Fan District called Monument Avenue. It has statues of all the important heroes of the confederacy running down the middle. People who live on it are quite proud to live there.
While I was living in Richmond, there was a DJ on a station down there, not from the south, who made a comment on air, LIVE, that Monument Avenue was the street with all the second place trophies running down it. Well, I laughed my dupa off, but people were screaming for his head! He was made to publicly apologize, and nearly lost his job. It was crazy! And my roommate for a few years was in the Daughters of The Confederacy. Her dad was pissed she was living with a Yankee... It was an unusual city, and I'm glad for the experience, but I would never live in Richmond again. It was a very strange place... Dangerous as well.. And they have not, nor do I think they will EVER forget the war of northern aggression... I was of the mind that they needed to get over it, wipe off the hands and move on!

I just went onto EBay and did a search for Nazi flag and guess what. There are 98 listings. Where are the thought police?

The 3/5s compromise was part of the original Constitution.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-Fift...

I agree wholeheartedly that the North was not a just on a noble crusade. However, the North-led US Government specifically limited slavery in new territories and states admitted to the Union, and the South specifically referred to these actions in withdrawing. For example, New York wrote laws prohibiting the transport of slave, which stopped wealthy southerners from bringing servants when vacationing in New England. Read the secession letters from South Carolina et al. They clearly refer to the limits on slavery as a reason for their actions.

Look at it a different way. What distinguished the North from the South? Agrarian model extended based on growing season and slavery.

If the South had simply changed their economic model and abolished slavery, they would (like now) have morphed into a version of the model of the North.

Why didn't they change it? Money, based on an economic model of (as I've noted elsewhere today) Milton Friedman's "involuntary servitude". It was wrong. It violates reasonable Objectivist logic, and this money, the money taken from the backs of others, was the basis of secession and the consequent Civil War.

Actually, over 70% of U.S. revenue came from the export of Southern cotton and tobacco. Northern states, burdened by the cost of industrialization, wanted to shift the wealth to expand their economic growth. When excess tariffs and shipping costs were imposed on Southern goods, in an attempt to force them to sell most of their cotton to Northern states mills, the friction led to conflict. Abolitionists saw an opportunity to finally end slavery through violence, and stoked the flames of North-South hostility as a means to the end they had been unable to accomplish through legislation.

With all due respect, as a career human, I take exception to those who want to initiate the use of force to kill those who have not initiated the use of force or to destroy property which does not belong to the destroyer. How do you justify your “obligation” to do so?

Where in the Constitution would that be?

I'm not comfortable with banning of sales of anything by the Fed. or any governmental agency.

If you mean the need of the GOP to enslave the southern farmers, then I agree. The winner of every war in history chooses the history that is taught that makes the winner look heroic and admirable, and makes the loser take the blame regardless of the truth, and that war is no exception. For the real history of why that war was fought, read the book "The Real Lincoln" and "Lincoln Unmasked" by Thomas DiLorenzo. He provides documentation throughout the books. (Don't just go read the book reviews because DiLorenzo takes on the history "establishment" who have a vested interest in the misleading history, and for obvious reasons they will give bad reviews, albeit without any documentation to refute DiLorenzo's documented statements.)
The war was primarily about taxing one group (Southern Agriculture) in order to give the money to another group (Northern Manufacturing who monetarily supported/elected the GOP/Lincoln which was created from the failed Whig Party.) Slavery was not a reason for the war, just a way for Lincoln, the consumate lying politician, and for the historians (who sought to deify Lincon) , to excuse his war crimes and unconstitutional acts.

With all due respect, as a career officer I take great exception to your remarks.

Slaves were already counted as 3/5 in the Constitution, primarily to keep Southern representation lower than it would have been if slaves had been counted the same way as the rest of the population.

That happens every year in Tampa. It's called "Guavaween" and it's complete with pirates, parades, beads, a few bared beasts and some adult beverages consumed. There is also a children's parade sans breasts and adult beverages.

I have Southern roots, with four relatives who fought for the Confederacy (one rode with Gen. Jeb Stuart). The sad fact is that negotiations over ending slavery broke down during Buchanan's Presidency over how to compensate the slave owners. Congress couldn't agree on what they felt was an outrageous price, but the price asked would have been less than 1% of the cost of the Civil war, and over 600,000 young men would not have died.

Lincoln envisioned the Reconstruction as an act of revitalization for the South, reuniting them with the rest of the nation, but his assassination destroyed his vision. The bitter abolitionists who took over the Reconstruction saw it as a way to punish a rebellious population, and the South was pillaged economically, treated far more harshly than any other nation defeated by the U.S. That created an angry, resentful South that treated the African Americans as a surrogate for the abusive North.

Many of the various monuments and the tolerance for the rebel battle flag were a kind of backhanded excuse to soften Southern bitterness. President Wilson (racist to the core) actually admired the Ku Klux Klan, and stated he felt that "Birth of a Nation" (that portrayed the KKK as heroes) was the greatest film made.

The Civil war is history. Time to treat it as such, objectively, as symbolic of anachronistic thinking.

You know if Amazon does not want to have certain items in its warehouses I am cool with that.

However Ebay and Amazon serve as a marketplace for a lot of small businesses. They pretty much said we are not going to sell this stuff and you can't either. What is the small business guys alternative market place? What if the search engines said they would not link to merchandise bearing the confederate flag?

Starts to sound more like censorship than a business preference .

(Apologies --That's just me playing Devil's advocate to your devils advocate).

The civil war started over slavery. It started with white free men who owned black slaves and ended with a federal government that owned all people as slaves. It would take time for them to claim their slaves, but the mental shift and the damage was done. The right of the federal government to use force to keep those within it who no longer wished to be there was established.

It makes me think of the beginning of the slavery of mankind, not the emergence of freedom for the blacks.

Guess I am just a glass half empty kind of guy. :)

Spoken like a true soldier. If you don’t like something, even if it is the private property of somebody else, flying from their house (also private), you would feel obligated to tear it down---a feeling, no doubt instilled by your superior officers who would give you the authority to do so. The Purpose of a Military is to “Kill People and Break Things.” Stanley Milgram showed how terrible this is.

Fabulous! I get along well with dirty old dinos.

The backwards one (left facing) is a Buddist symbol. Hindu's use both left and right facing versions, and the often refer to Kali (not the nicest of their gods).
I don't think the Oriental and Nazi versions are related. I think the Nazi black swastika is derived from Aryan runes.