Thursday, February 20, 2014

Georgia Approves New Confederate Flag License Plate

Georgia license plate

The Guardian

Georgia officials have once again approved a specialty license plate featuring the Confederate battle flag, infuriating civil rights advocates and renewing a debate among those who believe the symbol honors Confederate heritage and those who see it as racially charged.


The Georgia division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans requested the new plate design, and the Georgia Department of Revenue recently approved it. The group’s old plate had a small Confederate battle flag. The new one features an additional, larger image in the background that covers the entire plate.
Georgia must be jealous of places like Alabama and Mississippi and is striving to become the most backwards state in the country. This disgraceful initiative is just the latest indicator. There have been others.

The thing about the confederate flag is that it symbolizes everything that's wrong with the country, poor education, high access to guns, beer-drinking inbred rednecks, misogyny, racism, homophobia, xenophobia, creationism and general intolerance.

The confederate flag should be seen with the same shame and embarrassment in America as the swastika is seen in Germany.

21 comments:

  1. The confederate flag stands for creationism?

    Please, do tell us how you got that one.

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    1. Is that the only thing you had a problem with? That's pretty funny.

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    2. That's just the connection you made that was so ludicrous it tipped over my gigglebox.

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    3. Ideas of evolution and an old Earth were being discussed in scientific circles for several decades before Darwin's book came out in 1859, but it was On the Origin of Species (actually with a much longer title) that brought the subject into the public's consciousness. How much the matter had spread to either side is an interesting question.

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  2. I suppose you consider "Sons of Confederate Veterans" to be the equivalent of the KKK?

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    1. Of course you wouldn't see a difference, Mikeb.

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    2. Wow! My eyes are opened! Respect shown for Confederate veterans and their sacrifices are obvious signs of Racism! "To Kill a Mockingbird" is obviously a stealth racist book!

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    3. Confederate soldiers were racist, treasonous secessionists. They should be remembered with shame and embarrassment, not honored.

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    4. Nice oversimplification of an extremely complex issue.

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    5. As were the revolutionist.

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  3. "The thing about the confederate flag is that it symbolizes everything that's wrong with the country, poor education, high access to guns, beer-drinking inbred rednecks, misogyny, racism, homophobia, xenophobia, creationism and general intolerance."

    Ah, Greg's "side."

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  4. It symbolizes intolerance, beer-drinking inbred rednecks...and irony.

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  5. As a matter of fact, many on the Northern side were racists who weren't fighting to free the slaves but to preserve the Union. Misogyny certainly wasn't unique to either side. Homophobia wasn't even a concept that either side would have understood. Educational standards are another interesting subject, given the quality of writing that we see in letters home from both sides. In fact, while we've learned a great deal in the years since the war, the average person of 1860 wasn't any less educated in basic skills like reading and mathematics. In many cases, I'd put my money on someone from then over many of today's students. What else--oh, xenophobia, right. That was a common condition the world over. As for general intolerance, well, you just had to throw that in, it being the worst sin to a leftist, but again, it wasn't an attitude unique to either side.

    On the subject of guns, most people had at most a shotgun or a singe-shot rifle--in other words, what you gun control freaks claim you'll let us keep. But as we've discussed before, gun control's racist roots are to be seen right after the Civil War when southern states passed laws designed to keep freed blacks from owning firearms.

    Also, Confederate is capitalized.

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    1. As a matter of fact, many on the Northern side were racists who weren't fighting to free the slaves but to preserve the Union.

      That actually describes the attitude of Lincoln himself:

      I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution. The sooner the national authority can be restored; the nearer the Union will be "the Union as it was." If there be those who would not save the Union, unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that.

      Freeing the slaves, in other words, was far less important to him than regaining his power over the states that had left the union.

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    2. Why did Southern States secede?

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  6. Hey, Mikeb, since we're talking again about the Confederate flag, could you do me a favor and once again say that displaying it is "nearly treasonous"?

    You know how much I love the humor of that--perhaps your best joke ever.

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    1. Thanks for reminding me. I forgot about the treason connection when I wrote this post.

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  7. I forgot about the treason connection . . .

    Well, "the notional treason connection" would be more accurate wording.

    Anyway, thanks for helping me start the day with a good laugh.

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