The American Revolution from the view of Brexit

so-called Betsy Ross flag

We cannot legitimately celebrate history if we are not honest about what that history has been, both good and bad.  We must separate the fact from the folk fiction and from the more dangerously toxic fake fiction.

Union Jack from 1801

We MUST OWN both the best and the worst, and not try to sanitize the bad.  Revisionist history is the enemy of the present.


Today we celebrate the birth of our nation, as Lincoln phrased and praised it:

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

In the UK, out of disgust with conservative anti-immigrant bigotry combined with economic and political stupidity verging on national suicide, both Scotland and Northern Ireland may leave the United Kingdom.

While the colonies which became the United States of America did this in the 18th century, the premise then was the lack of representation in Parliament regarding taxation and other important issues of colonial determination, and the failure of legal petition as a means of redress. No option existed in that period for either the addition or expansion of representation, or a legal option for the colonies to leave the UK if their petition failed -- but at least they tried petition first. 

That left only the option of violent revolution and secession for those UK colonies.  However, a few things should be noted regarding that revolution, beginning with the uncomfortable fact that it was not supported by anything like a majority of the people who lived in the colony, as required by modern secession provisions.  Rather the divisions were roughly a third who were genuinely in favor of revolution, a third who were neutral, and a third who wanted to remain a part of the UK every bit as much as the revolutionaries wished to separate from the UK. OUR revolution never represented the majority, unlike the secession option requirement from voters for the secession of either Scotland or Northern Ireland.

Both Scotland and Northern Ireland have, respectively, a legal process for their secession, should they so choose, where in contrast no such possibility existed for the American colonies.  In our own Civil War, there was a process in place under which the southern states could have opted to pursue a legal
separation from the United States, but they never attempted to use it.  So far as I can follow in US history, there was never even a serious consideration of using the legal option; discussion of such an option is slim to none in the records of the time. Further, contrary to the conflict of the American Revolution, there was no equivalent history of violence perpetrated on the southern states by the United States government to that perpetrated by the UK in the colonial period.

Further, where the American Revolution was about representation, and while the United States in the earliest post-revolutionary period did not, by any stretch, support universal suffrage, they did systematically over a comparatively brief period of time expand the boundaries of who was eligible to vote.  In contrast, there were far fewer voters in those southern states which formed the Confederacy, reflecting even then a pattern of an intentional lack of representation, and those states continue to have a shameful history all the way through to the present of voter suppression, the antithesis of freedom, the polar opposite of the central, core premise of the American Revolution.

Just over a year ago there was a mass shooting by a confederate flag waving racist in Charleston, South Carolina.  South Carolina was also the state which fired on the Fort Sumter to begin the Civil War in an attempt for the Confederacy to violently secede from the United States.  There was a fascinating profile of those modern pro-Confederate flag wavers filmed by, coincidentally, a crew from that quintessentially UK government funded news service, the BBC, who were in Charleston, filming a documentary about the Klu Klux Klan. What was clear from that documentary as well as from decades of history, is that those Confederate pro-slavery states have been a continuous stain on our history as a nation, opposing that core premise for the vote for all free citizens.  Instead we have a history of traditions like the intimidation and lynching by the KKK, and Jim Crow, which attempted to approximate much of the horrors of slavery.  They perpetuate factually false notions of race and racial superiority, interspersed and promoted with violence, which we now better know to be a faulty and artificial construct.  Even a casual look at the views of so many of the modern Confederacy celebrating battle flag wavers resembles nothing quite so much as the worst of the Nazis and neo-nazis; in many cases they overlap.

There is no justification for treating the Confederate flag as some sort of equally respectable part of the United States history.  The Confederacy was about denying people the vote and perpetuating slavery of people they insisted then (and now) were inferior human beings -- even denying the vote to many white people who were not wealthy.  The Confederate flag continues to be about perpetuating the tradition of racism, bigotry, and hate crimes. 

To assert - as some do - that it deserves some form of legitimacy because some individuals acted honorably on the Confederate side is a bogus argument.  There is a comparable flag in Northern Ireland to the Confederate flag, and it is also not treated with equal legitimacy to the Union Jack, the so-called Ulster Banner. IF Northern Ireland does secede, they would either adopt a new and neutral banner, or join with the rest of the island, the Republic of Ireland, as one nation under the green, orange and white Irish tri-color.

There were honorable Japanese soldiers who fought against the United States in WW II, while trying to take territory that belonged to the United States.  We don't put up Japanese flags alongside the
sunken ship Arizona at Pearl Harbor because of that.  There were likewise soldiers on BOTH sides of the Civil War and of WW II who acted dishonorably and who even committed war crimes.  The issue if we are honest in recognizing our history with symbols, monuments and flags, and ceremonies can never be about issues like the honorable and dishonorable conduct of individual combatants. That is an attempt to divert and distract from the premises for war, both legitimate and illegitimate.  We are still suffering the continuing effects of illegitimate causes for modern war, and they, like the Confederacy, are a stain on our national history.

We cannot celebrate the 4th of July without considering the history of separation, and the new history of it being made.

South Carolina -- the symbol of evil is coming down!

The "history and heritage" argument has failed.




Not only will the flag come down, but the NAACP will be ending the boycott of South Carolina.  While some disagree on how successful the sanctions were over time, it is clear that the Governor and many of the establishment conservatives, as distinct from the more rabid and racist teabaggers, were concerned about the kind of corporate consequences that faced Indiana when they passed anti-gay legislation.  It was exclusively conservatives who attempted to block the passage of the flag takedown.

Conservatives are attempting to defend racism and oppression with false equivalencies.  The video below is excellent in making the more accurate distinctions that counter the false equivalents.



Pressure is effective.  Conservatives will not stop, will never stop behaving badly in preserving institutionalized racism like this, unless such pressure is brought to bear on them, especially the pressure of the dollar versus the shrinking bigot bucks, not conservative 'principles'.

From  WISTV:

Even before it began, more than 40 state and national groups canceled meetings and conventions.

Musicians, dancers and athletes refused to perform in South Carolina, families moved reunions out of the state, a Hilton Head hotel lost more than a million dollars in business and an African American religious group took its annual meeting over the state line to Charlotte.

In 2001, the NCAA banned post-season events where locations were "pre-determined."

Three years later, the NCAA added bowl games to the list of prohibited activities.

South Carolina has launched a trend across the south, across the nation.

What DOES the Confederate Flag represent to Southerners?

Confederate bigot flag loving, cross burning KKK

Many of us wonder why the heck Southern racists keep yammering on and on about how the Confederate flag is a symbol they honor, heritage, blah blah blah blah blah.

Here is one example of a comment on a FB page, in response to a prior comment that the Confederate secession was treason, about the news a county in Florida had taken down the Confederate flag and then put it back up again:

Treason? There was nothing treasonous in the South reclaiming their State soveriegnty. In fact, they were following the spirit of the Declaration of Independence in doing so, but I guess a hardcore, treasonous liberal can't understand that.

Based on the inability of the commenter to spell properly, I'm betting this is from another teabagger style conservative. (Sovereignty, it is not soveriegnty.)

Anyone, including am liberal with an adequate history and civics education, knows that the secession by violence of the southern states, including Florida WAS TREASON, as defined in the U.S. Constitution, specifically Article III, section 3:

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.
The Congress shall have Power to declare the Punishment of Treason, but no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood, or Forfeiture except during the Life of the Person attainted.

This article and section exists because of the earlier experience of the United States under the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Unity, where there were both small rebellions like Shay's Rebellion (1786-7) and individual wars between states like the Yankee Pennamite war (1769 - 1791).  To expand on what is included and what was rejected in defining treason in the U.S. Constitution  (1787), from wikipedia:

Under English law effective during the ratification of the U.S. Constitution, there were essentially five species of treason. Of the five, the Constitution adopted only two: levying war and adhering to enemies.

Proper legal secession is the reverse of joining the Union; it requires a similar vote of the states to allow a state to seceded, the mirror of accepting a state joining the Union.  It is peaceful, and it requires a broader consensus than just what any one states wants at some point in time.  This is because the founders understood from their experience under the comparatively libertarian Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Unity that a strong federal government was essential.  That experience is the reason the Articles of Confederation were replaced by the U.S. Constitution.

Therefore it was no surprise or secret, no surprise to those southern states that waging war against the Union they joined with their eyes wide open -- and in some cases like Virginia, Georgia, and the Carolinas participated in from the beginning -- that waging war was treason, not legitimate secession, and certainly not consistent with or like the conflict with the UK of the American Revolution.

Here is the applicable wording of the Declaration of Independence, with(which the pro-Confederate commenter appears unfamiliar.  You can view the entire text of the Declaration of Independence here for the complete list of wrongs against the colonies, but I think it is a fair observation that it is something of a 'kitchen sink' list, and that not all wrongs or perceived wrongs were equally serious or significant .  Below is the intro to the Declaration of Independence, followed by a few of those more important and substantive issues that distinguish and separate the American Revolution from the Southern War of Aggression (they started it), which was primarily about slavery, both directly and indirectly. 

Nothing could be more ironic and offensive than claiming a war to perpetuate slavery was consistent with all men being created equal, or having unalienable Rights, including Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness -- NONE of which applied to those held in slavery, and which at best minimally applied to the poor white underclass of the Confederacy. 

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed

Here are a few of the wrongs which justified the rebellion of the American colonies, notably the principle complaint was  taxation without representation - NONE of these can fairly be claimed of the United States federal government, where the slave holding states had exactly the representation they had negotiated as a compromise in the U.S. Constitution:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

States rights, and the Confederate flag has always represented one thing and one thing only to the exclusion of all other claims for it -- treason and oppression, violence and brutality of the worst quantity and quality, and conservatives wanting to justify something bad that the federal government prevented them from doing, like Jim Crow.  There has never been any honor or other desirable quality represented by EITHER states rights OR the Confederate flag, LEAST OF ALL all men being created equal, unalienable rights, or life, liberty or the pursuit of happiness.

It is on a par to this country and our heritage and history what the Nazi flag is to the history and heritage of Germany, except that our shameful era lasted longer, and tortured and killed more people, and stole the labor of more human beings.  At least the Nazis never sold anyone.  Only those who posit that African American lives did not matter then when they were slaves and do not matter since the Civil War under Jim Crow can claim that the Confederate flag represents anything else.

It's time for southerners to drop the bogus attitude of being aggrieved, pull up their big boy and big girl britches, and find themselves a new flag or other symbol.  Although since no other regional group of states feels any need to identify in this divisive manner, I don't really see any merit or need for them to bother.  The Confederate flag was for vicious and conservative racists then, and it is the emblem of vicious and conservative racists NOW.

If you believe that the Confederate flag is consistent with the Enlightenment principles of the founding fathers, then you are lying to yourself, and you are in denial of the reality.  That painful reality was yes, a gracious way of life, with gentility and a slow pace --- that existed only by the stolen labor, enforced ignorance, and enslavement of others.  That painful reality is that the life of the white underclass was horrific as well, in part because of the economic consequences of slave labor.  That painful reality was that Confederate flag symbolizes  a  systematic way of life that involved and accepted white men raping black women and then forcing or selling their own illegitimate children into horrific conditions, including expecting their daughters would be raped by future owners as well.  That is not freedom or equality or even basic human decency.   While all of that is sanctioned by the Bible, and by the alternate reality 'Murica', it is not any part of the heritage held dear by those who live in, are loyal to and love the REAL, historically accurate AMERICA under a very different flag.

No honor for the Confederate flag, NO RESPECT for Conservative bigots, no more elective office for racists!

In discrediting and removing the vile symbols of the failed confederacy, it is time for some plain, hard honesty.

There is no honor or  valor of treason or the acts of traitors, regardless of individual heroism.  There is no justification to respect the worst atrocities and failures in our heritage just because they are 'ours', but instead we should call them out for the evil they were.  There is no merit to celebrate in a tradition of oppression, and no decency in a history of violent intimidation and exploitation, no matter what words you employ to try to put lipstick on the Confederacy pig, or on any atrocity for that matter committed by the United States. The celebration of the Confederacy is as wrong as the premise of U.S. supposed "exceptionalism" when it denies anything bad was ever done by or on behalf of the United States.  Wrong is wrong, bad is bad, and putting on a lying label does not alter that reality. Pretending wrong is right or good only compounds the original wrong, in some instances, exponentially.

Senator Lindsey Graham is totally and shockingly wrong when he and others on the right make the claim that there has long been an acceptable, valid justification for venerating or respecting ANY of the confederate flags.

The removal of confederate image merchandise from a growing list of national retailers is NOT only a response to the tragedy of the right wing domestic terrorist attack that killed 9 people in a South Carolina church.

The growing pressure to remove the Confederate flag, from South Carolina, from Mississippi, from EVERY place it flies, especially in the old 'rebel' south, is not new.  The fight against the confederate imagery is as old as the flag and the civil war itself.

Too many on the right, including our own former member of Congress from Minnesota Michele Bachmann, have made excuses to justify slavery, and have misrepresented slavery as less evil and vicious than it actually was.  The symbols of the Confederacy are nothing more or less than an attempt to white-wash the black heart of White Supremacy, Jim Crow, and over-reaching, abusive southern government.  Jim Crow, the brutal and systematic trampling and obliteration of civil rights IS the worst government overreach in our history.

From Addicting info, back in August of 2011 - a relatively recent attempt to glam up, validate, and legitimize the brutal, horrific, immoral, and obscene, representative of old style southern conservative racism generally:

One of the more interesting tidbits to be discussed about GOP presidential front-runner Michelle Bachmann in the current issue of the New Yorker is that one of the books she kept listed on her website as a “must read” was a biography of Robert E. Lee by  J. Steven Wilkins. Wilkins is a revisionist historian that seeks to downplay or even glorify the Souths’ tradition of slavery. From the book:

Slavery, as it operated in the pervasively Christian society which was the old South, was not an adversarial relationship founded upon racial animosity. In fact, it bred on the whole, not contempt, but, over time, mutual respect. This produced a mutual esteem of the sort that always results when men give themselves to a common cause. The credit for this startling reality must go to the Christian faith. . . The unity and companionship that existed between the races in the South prior to the war was the fruit of a common faith.

Got that? Because Africans were forcibly converted to Christianity, they didn’t mind being slaves at all but rather worked extra hard to enrich their white owners. For Jesus.

It is a conservative 'meme', like right wing talking head Michael Medved at the conservative Townhall.com, via fear of ignorance,  in his appalling and grossly inaccurate  "Six Inconvenient Truths about the US and Slavery", for example claiming that :

THERE IS NO REASON TO BELIEVE THAT TODAY’S AFRICAN-AMERICANS WOULD BE BETTER OFF IF THEIR ANCESTORS HAD REMAINED BEHIND IN AFRICA.

Really?  Seriously?  No long-term harm, no foul, is that the idea?  Apparently it is when you are an apologist for racism, past AND PRESENT.

And that conclusion is based on .....what?  NOTHING factual is involved, only the purest animus.  But it is part and parcel of the offensive beliefs of conservatives, and of those who embrace the confederacy, including all of its symbols.

Apart from ignoring, for starters, all of the people who were never born because of the high percentage of deaths in the passage from Africa, and ignoring all of the pain and suffering and social breakdown that continued long after the end of slavery due to families having been separated and sold off from each other, the enforced lack of education, etc., this is merely adding insult to injury, and promoting the conservative meme that black people are somehow inferior, and are lucky to be in the United States where they have been fortunate to be converted to Christianity?  Who can assert what would have been different in the continent of Africa without the evil of slavery and the pattern it contributed to of European exploitation that later characterized European intrusion into that continent.

I recently saw a comment about African Americans on a right wing facebook site that argued black people were inferior because they did not invent the kind of recorded language that white Europeans did.  That seemed strikingly to omit from contributing to world culture the many accomplishments of the Egyptians, as well as the many accomplishments, both linguistic and mathematical and in the sciences of the Muslim world, including the African continent.  What a disgustingly racist and intellectually dishonest view of world culture -- as if even if the assertion were true (and it is not) then any abuse, exploitation, or brutality is excused and excusable?

That is unacceptable.  There is no difference between that revisionist history and claiming that Hitler wasn't that bad for the Holocaust or worse, that the Holocaust did not occur, with the notable exception that slavery tortured many more, stole the labor through brutal coercion from many more, and killed many more than the Holocaust -- roughly 20 million slaves died in the United States before slavery was abolished.

The BEST response to the claims about honor, duty, heritage and the rest of the claptrap came from South Carolina state senator Paul Thurmond, son of notoriously racist Senator Strom Thurmond.  Those on the right, from Reince Preibus, RNC chair, to former presidential candidate Mitt Romney, Governor Haley, ad nauseum are ALL wrong about this symbol. 

Paul Thurmond Via Slate:

“Our ancestors were literally fighting to keep human beings as slaves, and to continue the unimaginable acts that occur when someone is held against their will,” said State Senator Paul Thurmond, a Republican, explaining that he would vote to remove the flag.

“I am not proud of this heritage,” said Mr. Thurmond.

“We must take down the Confederate flag and we must take it down now. But if we stop there, we have cheated ourselves out of an opportunity to start a different conversation about healing in our state,” Thurmond continued. “I am ready.”

Here is the video of State Senator Thurmond:

Everyone should be proud of their heritage, where they come from and the culture of the people from whom they descend.  But that is not the same thing as being proud of the bad things done by people who preceded us, and the bad things done in the name of the confederacy and the principles for which it stood and affirmed were bad principles. This does not, as claimed by Fox News liar and buffoon Bill O'Reilly, mean we honor all war dead because they "fought hard".  Nazi soldiers fought hard in WW II; British soldiers and mercenary soldiers fought hard in the American Revolution.  The Swastika is not flown in Europe (although the confederate flag IS flown as a proxy for it) and we do not fly the Union Jack to honor our British heritage and those who fought on the side of the loyalists either.  There are plenty of other, better ways to deal with the challenges of mixed good-and-bad heritage, better and less oppressive and less offensive ways that do not constitute engaging in hate symbolism. No matter how you try to spin the Confederate flag, it represents sedition, disloyalty, violence, domestic terrorism, sabotage, assassination, and treason against the United States.  And it continues to embarrass us all world wide.  For example, in the Ukraine, we have our heritage, our southern white supremacist, racist, brutal and abusive national stain displayed to our very current shame:

Why are Nazi & Confederate flags on display in Kiev?

When Kiev’s City Hall was seized with guns and Molotov cocktails, one of the first acts of the Euromaidan street fighters was to unfurl a number of flags and insignia. Prominent among the flags were swastikas, Iron Crosses, Nazi SS lightning bolts, the Celtic cross used by the Ku Klux Klan, and the Confederate “stars and bars” flag of slaveholders in the United States. (tinyurl.com/ltfu4vq) This is no accident. The flag of the U.S. Southern slaveholders and the Klan cross are symbols understood around the world. They stand for racism, reaction, lynchings and mass terror, for keeping oppressive institutions intact and for beating down people of color and all those who struggle for a better world. Racists from across Europe have traveled to Kiev. Wearing these symbols on their helmets and jackets, these thugs roamed Kiev and defaced the homes of Jews. They destroyed memorials to those who fought the Nazi invasion and occupation of the Ukraine in World War II.

Here is a Ukraine Confederate flag, and a Ukraine Naziee flag: Feel the pride NOW, Senator Lindsey, Governor Haley?  THIS is that ol' Confederate Heritage you revere so dearly. No matter how much you try to pretend that states rights was a legitimate cause, it was a wrong cause in the civil war, and has been a wrong cause in every iteration since the civil war.  There is a reason we have the supremacy clause in the U. S. constitution; it is because when states try to deviate from that federal supremacy it has been consistently contrary and disloyal to that constitution, and has consistently been an attempt to justify the indefensible -- slavery was just one of many bad things that support for states rights has attempted to make appear valid or legitimate. Nullification has been another. The same has been true of attempts to suppress voter rights, to legislate segregation, anti-miscegenation, and the rest of Jim Crow, and to behave in bigoted ways towards the LGBT community, and to promote the pseudo-science of creationism.  And last but not least, it has been used to try to justify even more stupid proposals such as individual states currency.  That is far from a complete or encyclopedic list; states rights is what bad people, conservative bad people, fall back on to try to force through evil and foolish laws. It is imperative we do not continue the LIE about the Confederacy, the civil war -- an aggression STARTED by the south, or about the symbols of hate that represent an evil stain on our nation. It is impossible to defend the indefensible, and it is made worse by those who keep trying.  Own the bad, repudiate the bad ALL OF IT) and then, and only then, can we move on in something other than a vicious circle of more evil and further stain on our nation.