So there should be no Black History Month?

Or Founders' Days, apparently.
I know that I celebrate my noble ancestors, the founders of my sorority, the martyrs and saints of my religion and the great minds who founded my country because to do so is to encourage myself, my children, my sisters and my students to emulate them. It is to recognize the sacrifices and work they put into developing institutions I love. It is because I love what they loved, and want to pass a legacy of knowledge and understanding to my children, and their children. It is because while times and societies change, certain truths remain - and those are worth preserving.

There is nothing like that Good ole Southern Hospitality and courteousness, having lived in the midwest, and northeast there's something about the pace of life there and what I feel is more manners.

Rather than dwelling on the past-southerners are still hanging confederate flags. That's dwelling if I ever saw it. Sorry.

I don't agree. I think there are usually two reasons for hanging the flag. Either you're a white trash idiot who thinks we should secede again, or you're a southerner who is legitimately proud of their heritage. Unfortunately the former has ruined it for the latter.

There are a lot of things the south embodies that aren't present in the rest of the country. Naturally, people devoted to the south and proud of the values held here and the quality of life enjoyed here want to display that.

RTP certainly isn't Southern -- too many transplants. But most (not all) of what surrounds it definitely is Southern.

Fair enough, and I would agree that white trash have been more brazen with the whole 'the south will rise again' thing. It really makes the south look terrible.

Most people who want to argue that the Confederate Naval Jack is racist will point to the fact that the KKK marches with it - seemingly ignoring the fact that they also march with the USA flag. Logically, if the one is racist because the KKK uses it, then the other should be, too. They also march with a Christian flag - and I'm pretty sure that is not the use Jesus would like to see made of the symbol of the cross. Many southerners (myself included) absolutely cringe when any of the three aforementioned symbols are used in any hateful, ignorant manner.

Nebraska is one of those states that is half and half...Midwestern and Western. Once you pass Grand Island on that mindnumbing ride across the state on I-80, you're in the West. By Lexington, you're there for sure.

It's a flag, flags aren't racist, people are racist. People are also stupid. England's done a lot of horrible things in the past and I don't like that, but they're not doing it so much these days. They've also apologized a lot as well.

Hey mac, what kind of irons do you have.

Wow. Where would you get a dress for something like that? Some of them look like debutante type dresses, but most of those look straight out of a movie set.

I guess I don't think much of the whole north versus south thing. I grew up in the midwest but most of my Dad's family is in the south (Alabama, Georgia, and the Florida Panhandle-which my relatives call "LA"- lower Alabama). I never considered myself any better or worse than my "southern" relatives.

I have a confession. When we did our Civil War day in 8th grade, they split us up into the Union and the Confederacy. We got hats to wear. I wanted to be confederacy. You guys had way better food! I got stuck in with the Union.
See Rifles for Waitey (sp?) as a reference.

Just got a set of Titleist 735CM's. Golf club designs are so screwed up right now...but I really like the feel of them. They had a club testing day at the Country Club over Easter Weekend and I hit them a few times. Really like the feel and they have less weight on the heel....which I like.

Yeah I'm probably going to get the 755's. I'm coming off a hiatus, and I think they'll give me enough playability to improve without being completely unforgiving.

Learning and preserving history is a different thing from taking "pride" in your association with the past. If the people you are taking "pride" in did shameful things as well as good things, you should feel that shame to the same extent you feel pride. But that's not what I see people doing. I hear people linking themselves to honor, and sacrifice, and other noble qualities their ancestors had, but when it comes to filthy, hateful things their ancestors did, the same people say, well, they were just doing what was typical in their historical context, and I'm not responsible for the things they did, so I am not really associated with the filth and hate. Well, how can you be linked to one and not the other?

If you're German, you can learn and preserve of all the great things Germany and Germans have done throughout history. But if you tell me you feel personally proud of your association with Beethoven, you should also feel personally ashamed of your association with Goebbels. To pretend that your heritage is all about the good stuff is to sanitize history. It's dishonest.

But in some ways, doesn't getting rid of all the confederate symbols sanitize history as well? That's one of the things about the Georgia flag thing that seemed especially dumb. As long as the flag was what it was, we had to remember why. Changing it can be seen as progress, but it also allows people to forget about why the flag was changed in 56.

Not really...it could be viewed the same as a swastika. No one likes to see those plastered all over the place but no one has ever forgotten the horrors of world war 2 and nazi Germany. Not that I'm comparing the confederate flag to Hitler, it's apples and oranges, but you get what I mean.
People only forget when you allow them to forget.

Because I don't think it is as clear as the swastika example, I'm not sure you are right. The flag is a symbol that people feel really different about depending on their historic and political outlook. I don't want to spend even more time and energy in Georgia on the flag since it's simply a symbolic, rather than real issue, and so the present flag is a step forward in that regard. But it also allows people to tell themselves that we may be further along than we really are, and that there's a consensus that doesn't really exist.

Then to be fair Black History month should include less than noble examples as well.

I use that because the previous poster did...but that same principle would certainly change any sort of pride festival, month, rally...

I think Cypress Gardens no longer exists.:(

While I love the Confederate flag and all the history it represents, the way Arkansas respects it's history is in a word, respectful. On our flag is three stars, one for each countries we have been under, including the Confederacy.

Cypress Gardens looked like it was going under, but was purchased by new investors. I think they are planning to put in rides, but keep the Belles.

Ivyspice, it is possible to remember the mistakes of the past without having to celebrate them. You don't get on the phone and call everyone in your family when your child loses a soccer game or gets a bad grade, do you? But you do when they do something worthy of celebration. So too with a society's history. While you want to remember and learn from mistakes, it is the acomplishments which should be the primary focus. Should MLK be remembered as a great leader, or an adulterous plagerist? According to you, we should focus just as much on his faults as his acomplishments. I have to ask - why? He was a man, and as such, imperfect. But his ideas are how he distinguished himself -and so I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that it is his ideas and acomplishments which should be remembered on his holiday, not his failings.
As far as history goes, the sanitizing often conisists of the victors totally demonizing the enemy, instead of objectively studying what led to the conflict and trying to learn from it. This is true for just about any war, including dare I say the current conflict.
Most people who want me to feel guilty for slavery don't have a clue as to the actual history of the pre-War U.S.A. I do, and I don't have any reason to feel guilty. My ancestors owned slaves at a time when it was an accepted practice. Slavery was wrong, it was abolished, and that's that. More important than trying to make me feel guilty about the way society was 150 years ago is to focus on what can be done TODAY.
Instead of castigating me for the institutuion of slavery, how about focusing that energy on anger at the way the largely black population of New Orleans and the rest of the Gulf Coast have been treated by the Federal government? You want to tell me that had a similar tragedy happened in, oh, New York, we would have the same shameful treatment?That same Federal government that my ancestors thought were overstepping their bounds - near as I can tell, they were right to be worried then, and I'm worried now!

Don't worry, neither do I, and I've grown up/went to school/lived in New England my whole life. If you look on this board, you'll see criticisms come on both sides (North criticizing South, South criticizing North), so I don't think anyone can say that one side is more guilty than the other.

I sincerely doubt that there would be ANY country or group of people who claim a perfectly moral high ground. And as a genealogist, I feel that everyone should have pride in their ancestory to the extent that it's DNA, not something the descendant did. I had ancestors on both sides - it would be silly for me to claim one over the other.

BTW, Love your signature!

LA= lower alabama, my family does this too.

But they sacrificed to protect their land at a time when THAT was an accepted practice. They were chivalrous at a time when THAT was an accepted practice. Are you proud of that? How come there's no "that's that" about their sacrifice and chivalry?

Re shameful parts of MLK's life, yes, we should try to understand the whole picture of an individual if we're doing a biographical analysis. If you're studying the whole civil rights movement, though, MLK's private life really didn't play much of a role, especially since it wasn't publicized at the time. It's a very poor comparison to the role of slavery in the antebellum South (foundation of the economy, greatest concentration of wealth, preserved permanently in the Confederate Constitution, etc.).

Or maybe that his name isn't really Martin Luther to start off with, it's Micheal, he never had it legally changed.

My family has throughout its history fought to protect their country - from my Revolutionary War ancestors to my father, a former Air Force pilot and CIA operative, and brother the former Marine. Soooo . ..I take pride in that because it is a tradition that has continued to the present day. It is not just something enshrined in the past - it is a continuing defining characteristic of my family.
My family is still well-mannered - again, a family tradition that is of long standing. I take pride in those traditions that have been handed down through the generations and are still practiced.
We don't own slaves today, so why would I feel guilty for something we don't practice? For that matter, the majority of those who joined and founght for the Confederacy didn't own slaves. They did, however, believe in the concept of state's rights. They did believe in the words of the Declaration of Independence and the concept of consent of the governed. Virginia, for example, explicitly retained upon joining the Union the right to secede. Why should I feel guilty when they chose to exercise their right to do so? And more to the point, why is it so important to make me feel guilty? So you can feel somehow superior and self-righteous?
No thanks - I'm opting out. There will always be those who want to castigate the South and I fear that there is nothing that can be logically argued to those who wish to do so. I'm following St. Augustine's sage advice.

My family fought to keep all you whitey's the hell outta our country, but your smallpox infested blankets brought us down :mad: :cool:

....that and whiskey.

:D Good point :)

But, keep the faith!:D

No, they didn't. If they believed in the words of the Declaration of Independence (all men are created equal...endowed by their creator with inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness), then they wouldn't have owned slaves. That applies, of course, to all the slaveholders from north and south who signed (and wrote) the Declaration of Independence. Hypocrites all. Clearly, they didn't actually believe in those things; they believed in what was good for them, and they dressed up their economic and political self-interest with pretty phrases. It took a couple of hundred years for us to get close to applying the beautiful language they wrote to all the Americans it ostensibly covered.

Most of us would be very suspicious of a man who claimed to revere his Nazi ancestors solely for their dedication, sacrifice, and commitment. They were accomplices in a horrific crime against humanity that was socially acceptable at that time and place. If playing that role is forgivable when it comes to slavery, it ought to be forgivable when it comes to the Holocaust, too. Are we willing to forgive our predecessors' roles in all crimes against humanity, or only some?

You might rethink that statement.

I might, if you offered some kind of support for your apparent disagreement.

Do you have some sources showing that in Germany in 1938 it was socially unacceptable to join the SS, or that lots of Germans were ostracized by their friends and neighbors for turning people in to the Gestapo, or that ordinary people didn't dare show their faces in public after attending a pro-Hitler rally? Because if there were no negative social consequences to doing those things, then they were, by definition, socially acceptable.

Yeah, I do. I also just wrote a 30 page paper concerning the German Resistance to Hitler and the Third Reich. If you want some sources, let me know.