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Google, Apple, and Others Remove Content Related To the Confederate Flag
davek writes with news that Google is removing results related to the Confederate Flag from Google Shopping, the company's online marketplace. They're also blocking advertisements involving the flag. They say, "We have determined that the Confederate flag violates our Ads policies, which don't allow content that's generally perceived as expressing hate toward a particular group." At the same time, Apple is removing from the App Store any games or other software featuring the Confederate Flag. This, of course, follows the recent shooting in South Carolina, which triggered a nationwide debate over whether the flag should be flown at government buildings (or anywhere). Major online merchant websites like eBay and Amazon have already taken the step of banning merchandise relating to the flag.
Tired of revisionist history on this nonsense, so why oh why do we still let an enemy oppressor flag still fly in this country? What are we celebrating by doing so?
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Search google for "confederate flag" and click the "shopping" tab.
https://www.google.com/#q=conf...
Now replace "confederate" with just about any other potentially offensive term (nazi, communist, rhodesia) and you get plenty of results.
(NOTE: I don't support flying the flag. It's a rebel flag and I don't like it. But banning it from the marketplace? That seems rather self-defeating)
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Who fought to just leave. What is the definition of oppression?
But that is not sufficient reason to stop selling it to civilians. This is a country founded on the idea of Free Speech.
We believe that the best way to fight evil is to let evil speak so we can hear who is evil. Much better than outlawing their vile ideas and having to guess who secretly harbors them.
In other words, I want to be able to see what shmucks wear/use the flag so I know whom to avoid.
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Amazon, WalMart et al, are still selling that sh!t on their sites.
The US flag has flown over hundreds of other countries and we have killed or caused to be killed hundreds of thousands in countries we were never invited to. The US flag flies over the NSA, CIA, DOJ, 3 agencies that we are always pointing out how anti-american they are.
I allow others to have opinions I may not agree with so they will allow mine.
Pulling this garbage is not acceptable. A flag only represents something to those who believe in it. To the rest of us it is colored cloth at the end of a pole.
Great to see everyone jumping on the bandwagon. Focusing on the flag once again ignores the real problems since it's easier to find a "magic pill" to fix everything. This is like Obama's first election where, once the flag is down, everyone will declare an "end to racism" and happily ignore the real work involved with tackling endemic bias.
Exactly this. A government agency (state, local, or federal) has no business flying a Confederate flag any more than they can fly the US flag upside down while lit on fire. Citizens, however, have free speech and can use that to express themselves in almost any way they want so long as that way doesn't hurt someone else. If you want to paint a big Confederate flag on your truck while wearing a Confederate flag jacket and a "The South Shall Rise Again" pin (with Confederate Flag), go ahead. Of course, the rest of us have our rights to form opinions of you based on your Confederate flag obsession.
All in all, I think the flag issue is a side track. Yes, it's partially related to the church shooting, but it's not the whole problem. You could ban and burn every single last Confederate flag in existence and it wouldn't solve the problem. So by all means take it off of government buildings, but then let the issue rest and move on to more important issues related to what happened.
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Shall we remove all confederate items from museums? Shall we rewrite the history books so the civil war never happened? If we remove the confederate flag from everywhere, will that mean slavery never happened? The civil war happened. Slavery happened. Racism happened, and it is still happening. Removing some flags will not advance the goal of eliminating racism.
Instead of quibbling about a flag that some people find offensive, why don't we work to fight actual racism. Lets stop looking the other way when whites are treated differently than other races. Fighting so hard over symbols while we are mostly ignoring the reality of racism in the US seems counterproductive.
OK, I do see the point of removing the flag from statehouses, but historical displays and museums...give me a break. And, yes this is happening, as crazy as this seems.
Your country was founded on the principle that the government should not stop anybody from speaking. It wasn't founded on the principle that corporations must be compelled to distribute other people's material regardless of content. Apple are not obligated to publish this material.
Nobody is outlawing anything. This is an example of a business choosing not to publish something.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
You do not understand free speech.
Private companies DO NOT have to allow things which they find objectionable. Censoring your own product line does NOT run contrary to the idea of free speech.
It only applies to the GOVERNMENT - that is, they can't make it illegal to produce/sell/display your own flags.
Any citizen or private company CAN choose not to carry offensive things.
No, it was all about slavery, and tariffs weren't even on the radar. It is true that only the most extreme Republicans (so called "Black Republicans) supported full federal abolitionism, but even as early as the 1840's they awaited a sea-change of public opinion on the matter. The 1861 election of Abraham Lincoln represented a small step toward that sea-change, and the South seceded to avoid it.
Think of it like this: In 2008, both Barack Obama and John McCain disowned gay marriage. But if you were a gay marriage advocate, who are you gonna hitch your horse to? How did that end up playing out? It really was no different in the 1860's: Lincoln may not have been as strident an advocate of abolitionism as the so-called "Jacobins" in the Republican party wanted, but to southern democrats, he might as well be John Brown himself, riding in on the Devil's back.
The US Constitution is just a piece of paper, as are all of the articles in the Bill of Rights - made of the same stuff I wipe my butt with after take a shit.
USA PATRIOT act. Trans-Pacific Partnership. What the ever-living fuck, need I go on? The US Constitution is no longer fit for bumwad, it's been shit upon too much already.
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You guys are screwed. Good luck recovering and creating a reasonable culture.
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Wow, saying the confederate flag means slavery, hatred, bigotry and treason and it gets a +5 Insightful? The second part may be insightful but somehow this isn't marked flamebait.
Some people say the flag means that, some people say it means states rights, who knows. But do people actually believe someone who flies the flag is saying bring back slavery or a succession from the Union? Maybe they just want to stand for a weaker Federal government, something many people support today.
Maybe the reason they fly the flag is to respect their ancestors who fought and died for what they believe in. Would you ask someone to take down the original U.S. flag that so heavily fought for their rights and owned slaves?
My point is, people are afraid of a flag that is being flown for many reasons. But the fact remains, that those spreading all of this fear of the flag are just as guilty of perpetrating hatred as those they accuse of flying the flag...and in most cases more so.
I think I'll buy a confederate flag, just to support the right to own a confederate flag. Does that make me a racist? Will America ever stop generalizing everything with labels just to make complicated issues easier? Stay tuned...
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No. It was absolutely about slavery. The documents and statements written at the time of secession were all about slavery. The statements made after the war had all the other reasons, revisionist history was being written by the confederates once the defeat was imminent.
The north would absolutely have made a pre-war deal to let slavery continue in the existing slave states. The long vicious debate in congress had been about the expansion of slavery. The south wanted to maintain the equilibrium and wanted half the new states added to the union to be slave states. The south feared that in the future a non-slave majority could abolish slavery and destroy the base of their wealth and economy. The north wanted slavery confined to existing slave states, maybe they would go for self-determination of a territory knowing that most would go non-slavery. In negotiation terms confinement was their aspirational point but self-determination was their resistance point.
This is revisionist history. The North won so obviously they twisted the truth in the history books to make the Southern states out to be demons. Of course they would. MOST southerners DID NOT own slaves during that time. Yet we all went to war. Congress made a series of aggressive moves that pushed the southern states into a war.
No, the revisionist history is from the south. At the time of secession, one secession declaration after another repeatedly cited slavery. The "aggression" was the north wanting to confine slavery to existing slave states with the goal of adding non-slave states to the union and eventually voting in abolition. That was the confederate nightmare, well the nightmare of the confederate 1%. Its this confederate 1% whose wealth and power was slave based that made the decision to go to war, who wrote those declarations.
The confederate 99% didn't make the decision to go to war, you are partially correct that they were generally not economically vested in slavery and most likely not willing to risk their lives to defend slavery. So the 1% had to sell the war to the 99% using different arguments. Imagine that, a war waged for one reason but sold to the public for other reasons. So while some confederate soldiers may not have been willing to fight for slavery itself, they in fact did so because that was the absolute cause behind the war, why the 1% voted for war.
The confederate soldiers were the pawns of the confederate politicians. Pawns that defended their "betters" economic interests, slavery. Yes, this truth hurts. Hence the revisionism, hence the focus on great-great-great-grandpappy's love for his state to rebrand a symbol of the defense of slavery as a symbol of heritage.
They seceded due to the perceived (likely correctly) future threats to their lifestyle. The North then said no you can't do that and the war begun. The war was fought over the right to secede from the Union. The reason to secede was for slavery. No one started a war over slavery (maybe it would have happened in the future, who knows), the war was started over secession. It's a minor but important distinction. Slavery was involved, but not the direct cause.
It's like someone dying after accidentally shooting themselves when picking up a gun. They didn't die because they picked up a gun (it's safe to pick up a gun, it was legal to own slaves), they died because they were shot by the gun (it's unsafe to get shot, it's not legal to secede). Had some other group of states tried to leave the Union for some other reason, there likely would have been a war then.