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In South Carolina, the governor has called for the Confederate flag to stop flying over the capitol. The governors of Virginia and North Carolina quickly declared that they would remove the flag from state license plates. Meanwhile, several of the country's top retailers -- including eBay and Amazon -- announced in quick succession that they would stop selling Confederate flag merchandise. Now MJ Lee reports at CNN that the debate over the Confederate flag is the most recent and vivid illustration of how changes in the business community can influence and pressure politics. "What you are seeing is a broad, acknowledgment across both the consumer, the political and the business community that that particular emblem is no longer part of something that should be a state-issued emblem," says GOP strategist Scott Jennings.
Walmart, Amazon, eBay and Sears announced within the span of one day that they would ban the sale of Confederate flag merchandise from their stores, saying they had no intention of offending customers. As Walmart CEO Doug McMillon put it, the decision was straightforward: "We want everybody to feel comfortable shopping at Walmart." Corporate and business leaders say that the abandoning the flag is a step towards inclusiveness for a region that has long struggled to shed negative images. "The business community -- they have a lot of say and power all over the country, whether it's on religion or ethnicity or LGBT issues," says Ralph Northam. "When you're running a business, you have to have the doors open and welcome diversity."
takyon: Alabama Governor Orders Removal Of Confederate Flags From Capitol
'Dukes of Hazzard' toy car General Lee loses its Confederate flag
Note: These moves are in response to the events in Charleston.
Original Submission
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Freeman on Wednesday June 24 2015, @11:26PM
The Confederate Flag is a part of the history of the United States. The "Dukes of Hazzard" was an awesome television show. Removing the Confederate flag from the toy car General Lee is really stupid. How about educating your children, instead of "protecting" them. Not selling the Confederate Flag Won't Change the way people act or feel. What it Will do is stir the pot to make sure it's boiling.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 3, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 24 2015, @11:26PM
Ironic post given your username.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 24 2015, @11:37PM
He's a freeman because people before him understood why teaching history is important and censorship is bad. It looks like he also understands this. Did you pay attention in class or were you cutting up? I believe it may be time for this flag to not be flown on Gov flag poles. If I had some balls I'd fly it on my pole to protest this misdirection to the flag and away from the reason this tragedy happened. I'll leave it up to you to reflect on the reason. Think careful, think smart; and you might "get it."
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 24 2015, @11:44PM
Oh, I get why he thinks it is an appropriate name for himself.
You seem to be suffering from the same missing sense of irony.
I guess the ability to "think careful, think smart" precludes cultural literacy.
I'll give you a clue. [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday June 29 2015, @03:30PM
I actually got the name from Half-life. ;-)
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 4, Insightful) by bob_super on Wednesday June 24 2015, @11:53PM
> why teaching history is important and censorship is bad
I'm really close to earn a Godwin point to illustrate how teaching history is not incompatible with not flying the symbols of hatred in the face of the minority that was oppressed in their name.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Yog-Yogguth on Sunday June 28 2015, @05:46PM
I'll Godwin away on your behalf then :D I think Godwin's Law expired at the turn of the millennium anyway, not that I knew.
I'll assume you meant the German bans? But did the German ban on the swastika etc. help? Banning a symbol that didn't belong to the nazis in the first place only made them steal even more symbols including Celtic crosses, stylized triscelions (like the (Gaelic) Manx flag), the Norwegian flag etc.
Strange how easy it is to think that banning symbols, thoughts, and opinions will work out to anyones advantage but it never really does. Not only is it superficial and lazy and counterproductive but it's also fascist and there's not much fucking point if the alternatives are fascism vs. fascism. In addition to that the confederate flag does not automatically signify a support for slavery or it would never have stayed in the state flags. Thinking otherwise is mostly just prejudice: it is a symbol of rebellion, self-determination, and cultural identity i.e. “the South”. It wouldn't surprise me much if all in all it's less racist than the average northern State dinner party.
Some of the people who use it will be total assholes and bigots, I've seen that and certainly won't condone it, but some who use it won't be.
And while we're in the neighborhood: the red star and the hammer and sickle are also symbols of hatred to many people (which is why at least around where I live many communists have stopped using them, they struggle hard enough to distance themselves from the Soviet Union without adding that burden), as is the stars and stripes now.
So will Amazon and the others stop selling merchandise with the US flag? Because by their own “logic” they must.
They also tried doing this with the “Don't Thread On Me” Gadsen flag [wikipedia.org] not long ago but stumbled, this time they managed not to stumble.
Forget HOPE [wikipedia.org], it was always about OBEY [wikipedia.org].
Don't get me wrong, I was suckered too.
Bite harder Ouroboros, bite! tails.boum.org/ linux USB CD secure desktop IRC *crypt tor (not endorsements (XKeyScore))
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 24 2015, @11:40PM
And you're just ignoring the fact that the Confederate States existed for political and economic reasons that had nothing to do with your precious little obsession with slavery. The CSA wanted a less powerful federal government, more autonomy for state governments, and that's what they got. Unfortunately, President Davis wasn't enough of a aggressive tyrant to defend the Confederacy adequately after Lincoln made it his mission to destroy it by any means necessary.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 24 2015, @11:52PM
And you're just ignoring the fact that the Confederate States existed for political and economic reasons that had nothing to do with your precious little obsession with slavery.
You are delusional. Slavery was front and center the primary issue, for example from Mississippi's declaration of secession: [civilwar.org] "Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world. " All of the states had simi
From Georgia's portion: The prohibition of slavery in the Territories is the cardinal principle of this organization.
You really can't read the declaration and come away with any other conclusion.
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Thursday June 25 2015, @08:54AM
[1] Slavery had previously been made illegal in Britain via a backdoor, where a judge ruled that since slavery had never explicitly been made legal (and constitutional law in the UK says that you have all freedoms that are not explicitly removed by statute law) then there were no slaves in Britain and anyone who arrived in Britain as a slave ceased to be so as soon as they entered British jurisdiction. Which made it slightly problematic for the slave traders based in Bristol...
sudo mod me up
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 25 2015, @12:23PM
> The debate is over the degree to which the north was opposed.
Yeah, we are debating whether or not the north were hypocrites! That is what's going on - a great big tu quoque.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 25 2015, @12:55AM
The red herring that is generally offered as the reason for succession was "States Rights".
In reality, this is how it worked:
Plantation owners liked to get away from the beastly heat and humidity of The South and experience some culture.
To do this, they would take a vacation in The North.
The thing is, New York didn't recognize slavery.
As soon as a slave crossed into NY, by state law, he became a free man.
The elites from The South thought it was unfair that NY should have States Rights that allowed this.
The States Rights argument was bunkum.
It was always about slavery.
-- gewg_
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 25 2015, @01:06AM
The States Rights argument was bunkum.
It was always about slavery.
I disagree.
It was about both. It was two sides talking past each other. One telling the other what to do. The other saying 'nuh uh we can sell people'.
To this day people still do not get that. It was both. You dont get a few thousand hicks to fight over the rights of a black man.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 25 2015, @02:23AM
> You dont get a few thousand hicks to fight over the rights of a black man.
Yeah, they would rather just murder the black men.
The fact that the "state's rights" argument was only of interest to the south with respect to their 'right' to keep slaves makes it completely subordinate to slavery.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by jmorris on Thursday June 25 2015, @01:27AM
And you're just ignoring the fact that the Confederate States existed for political and economic reasons that had nothing to do with your precious little obsession with slavery.
As other have already pointed out, slavery WAS part of the problem. But not the important part, which is where they too fail.
The problem in a nutshell was that everybody understood at the time of the Declaration of Independence that slavery was utterly incompatible with the Revolutionary ideas they were putting down on paper like "All men are created equal...". At the same time they were practical men who realized that going whole hog and abolishing slavery would have meant no Revolution. So they punted and did it again with the Constitution. They allowed the existence of slavery without exactly mentioning it by name. (Oh and if I see another so called educated person here totally misunderstand the 3/5ths clause again I'm going to pimp slap them. It was an -ANTI SLAVERY- poison pill/compromise. Google it.)
So yes, slavery is America's "Original Sin" which was going to have to be dealt with eventually. And it was, importation of new slaves had a sunset clause built into the Constitution that was exercised. A slow effort to end the entire practice could have been mounted, especially as the whole business was becoming uneconomical. But no, Lincoln and the prototype SJWs of the day wouldn't hear of doing things the legal way. So they gave the South a classic Vader "I am altering the bargain, pray I do not change it further." whereupon the South took that about as well as Lando did. Simply ending slavery at that time would have been suicide so they fought like people who had nothing to lose... and against overwhelming numerical and industrial production superiority they darned near won their Independence; exactly like their forefathers had won theirs from Britain.
Any wonder their deeds still command respect? Heck, everybody and their dog knows Lee was the superior general vs anything the Union put forth and his army committed no wholesale war crimes... unlike a certain Union general who made a policy of attacking civilian populations. They behaved to the end as free men should in a no-win scenario, had we such men today we wouldn't be in nearly the trouble we find ourselves in.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday June 25 2015, @01:52AM
And, your view is the one that most closely matches my own.
At any time, congress could have passed a simple law, a compromise on slavery, which specified that any black person born in the US after some specific date was a FREE CITIZEN of the United States who could not be deprived of his liberty.
As evil as slavery was (still is in some parts of the world) it could have been addressed without violating state's rights, and without a war.
But, everyone had his own narrow minded self interests to attend to. No compromise, and no way forward possible, so we fought a vicious war instead.
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 25 2015, @02:18AM
> And, your view is the one that most closely matches my own.
You didn't even have to post for everyone to know that. You are the clarence thomas to his antonin scalia.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Thursday June 25 2015, @07:17PM
But, unfortunately, he posted anyway. Thomas to his Scalia!! Ha! Do we have a mod for "Funniest"?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 28 2015, @06:30PM
Why would you give a Funny to a cryptofascist anonymous coward making a racist comment?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by jmorris on Thursday June 25 2015, @02:57AM
Not quite that easy but probably not much more complicated either.
Just passing a law saying nobody is born a slave would have a huge unintended consequence that everybody at the time would have seen and it would have scuttled the idea. Slaves were both an asset and a responsibility, owners had obligations both legal and practical. They couldn't just kill them or otherwise obviously mistreat them; if the law didn't catch you the slaves would still know and good luck getting productivity out of the truly hopeless. The obligation of interest here is care in old age, you couldn't just shoot em when they got too old to work you know. An owner was obligated to care for them until they died, which usually wasn't a problem since at any time you would always have a few elderly, some children, etc. who weren't currently productive but it all evened out and seeing that the old were being cared for now meant a young working age slave would have reason to believe he would receive similar treatment. Cut off the supply in a single stroke and every idiot would know what would be happening a few decades out. They would all be manumitted when they grew old and left to fend for themselves with zero resources because the plantations would have no other viable option.
Btw, this is a very similar problem to trying to unwind any other pension system like the Social Security Ponzi scheme. Also note that Lincoln's Final Solution to the question of slavery likewise had the exact same problem, but this detail was of course totally ignored among the horrific pain and misery generally afflicting the conquered lands of the South. In the end, exactly like SJWs of today, they were lying; they cared not for the plight of the slaves but for the feelz of superiority they got from their political posturing. And the rush of -POWER-.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by linuxrocks123 on Thursday June 25 2015, @07:07AM
I think you're a little too generous to the Confederacy here, and a little too harsh on the North. Lincoln said the following after being elected in 1861, repeating an earlier speech: "I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so." Lincoln was no fan of slavery, but he never had any intention of actually abolishing it through federal coercion. Of course, during the Civil War, he just went for it because, well, why not?
The North's goal was containment. They wanted to make sure slavery didn't spread to new states, since the US was an expanding country at the time. The South saw this as an attempt to reduce their power in Congress, particularly the Senate. After Lincoln was elected, they decided to make their own country rather than see their influence in the US slowly decline as new free states were admitted.
The Civil War was a tragedy. It may have been avoidable, but sole blame can't be placed on any one individual, group, or region. See here for a Wikipedia-rabbit-hole starting point for the decades-long lead-up to the Civil War: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Triumvirate [wikipedia.org]
Had we had great statesmen like that active in 1861, perhaps the South could have been convinced to accept slowly waning influence in exchange for some Constitutional guarantees about slavery -- like the last-ditch compromise effort of a proposed unamendable (!) Constitutional amendment that would have made slavery in the South completely outside the domain of federal jurisdiction. Had this happened, some hundreds of thousands of people would not have died.
Of course, had that happened, slavery would have stuck around for who knows how long. That's unfortunate, unless slavery would have died out on its own within a few decades. I do think that very well may have happened had cooler heads prevailed.
The South by 1861 had become radicalized extremists on the issue of slavery. Us-versus-them fights tend to do that to groups of people, and the South and North had been going at it in Congress for decades, about slavery and unrelated economic policy (tariff) issues a well. Radicalized extremists tend not to have any capacity for introspection. If the Civil War could have been avoided, and the South could have taken the North's concessions and both sides could have been convinced to stop fighting each other, over time it's likely the South, like all other advanced societies, would have realized on its own that slavery was wrong and abolished it. This would have become easier as time went on and the economic advantages of slavery decreased.
Instead, we had a war, which the South lost after much bloodshed. Savvy political maneuvering by Southern Democrats combined with a constitutional crisis in the presidential election of 1876 caused the end of Reconstruction in 1877, ending federal intervention in the South even though the South was still radicalized. Thus, we had the Jim Crow laws, the KKK terrorists, school segregation, etc., etc., etc. Unfortunate, for sure. Unavoidable? Maybe. Whatever the case, it's what happened, so now we have to live with it.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by TheRaven on Thursday June 25 2015, @09:02AM
Of course, during the Civil War, he just went for it because, well, why not?
He went for it because the British Empire was planning on entering the war on the side of the South (who were good trading partners and who would give Britain a chance to put the rebellious colonies in their place). If slavery had been a side issue in the war, then it would have been the North against Britain and the South, which would have been enough to decide matters quite solidly in favour of the south. Once the war was publicly about slavery, it became politically impossible for Parliament to intervene in favour of slavery.
It was a brilliant bit of politics, but the fact that it took 30 years after the end of the war to actually enforce the emancipation proclamation tells you how important the issue actually was to the north.
sudo mod me up
(Score: 3, Informative) by Non Sequor on Thursday June 25 2015, @02:28AM
Both ends of the states rights argument had been played multiple times in various issues involving tension between regional interests and national interests. It's politics, no one is ever intellectually consistent, they just fool themselves into thinking they are.
Leading up to the war, slavery was the single most divisive issue in national politics, to the point where a gag rule forbidding debate of slavery in congress was instituted because every time it started it shut down all legislation on other issues. Every effort to talk through the problem resulted in deadlock and congress gave up on addressing it.
Pro-slavery and abolitionist supporters tried to end the deadlock by securing a strong enough margin of support nationwide to shut out the other position. For the abolitionists, winning meant ending slavery and for the pro-slavery side, it meant avoiding an economic transition that they had no idea how to make (which lead to other rationalizations). Leading up to the Civil War there were bitter conflicts over the slave state/free state status of any new states to join the union.
It had been brewing for decades and almost every issue in the theory of governance during this era ended up being a proxy battle for resolving the slavery question. Election of a president from the Republican party, which sought to end slavery, directly triggered the secessions that lead to the war.
The fucking Civil War was about slavery. Period.
I'm born and raised in Georgia by the way.
Write your congressman. Tell him he sucks.
(Score: 2) by TK on Thursday June 25 2015, @08:00PM
Middle school: The civil war was about slavery
High school: The civil was was about states rights, economics, and social issues
Graduate history program: The civil war was about slavery
The fleas have smaller fleas, upon their backs to bite them, and those fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 25 2015, @01:46PM
You lost the war. Get over it.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Hairyfeet on Thursday June 25 2015, @12:35AM
Not to mention I thought the USA was a country that valued free speech? I can go onto those same sites and buy models that have Nazi imagery on them and there is no way in hell you can argue the old confederacy caused anywhere near the insane loss of life the NSDAP did.
Then there is the rotting elephant in the room, watch the users scream when I point this out....the USA flag as been worn by more soldiers committing more atrocities against minorities than pretty much any flags other than the NSDAP and USSR hammer and sickle. From the firebombing of Tokyo and Dresden to My Lai, from the death squads in South America in the 80s to Abu Ghraib and Blackwater, more atrocities have been committed by those wearing the US flag and with the full support of the US government than the confederate could ever even come close too. I would also note that both the USA Neo Nazi party and the KKK both fly the USA flag at every event....why are we not banning it to replace it with some politically correct rainbow flag or the like?
The answer is simple...its because flags can mean more than one thing to more than one group. Do we REALLY want to get to the point that we start erasing our history, taking a page from the USSR and simply whitewashing anything that offends somebody? Because I got news for ya there is always some group offended by everything. Just for shits and giggles I pointed out the above and suggested the "rainbow flag" idea on a left wing site, figuring I'd get attacked by most but at least would make everybody think....nope, I had many cheering that idea, because "we would have a flag without any of the ugly colonial connotations of the past"..so think about that next time you cheer banning anything, because there are those that will ban everything if they could.
BTW feel free to do the "rainbow flag" bit at any left or right leaning site and see what ya get. As a 1970s socialist left it saddens me to see how badly the right of free speech is just carelessly tossed by the new left,whereas the new right, despite being total batshit when it comes to everything else, rightfully told me where I could stick banning the USA flag with many rightly pointing out the free speech issue of the stars and bars.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 25 2015, @02:52AM
> Not to mention I thought the USA was a country that valued free speech?
Is it not freedom of speech for Amazon to decide what products they will sell? Invoking freedom of speech to force somebody to do business they do not want to is really messed up. To the point where I can't help but think you are more interested in defending injustice than making an honest argument. Kind of like how Dr Oz invoked freedom of speech [mediaite.com] when he was criticized for enriching himself by selling quackery.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 25 2015, @06:20AM
Is it not freedom of speech for Amazon to decide what products they will sell?
Not if they feel they have to in order to avoid being crucified by public outrage. Being forced to shut up is censorship, weather it's governments doing it or bloodshot eyed soccer moms.
Invoking freedom of speech to force somebody to do business they do not want to is really messed up.
If they didn't want to do business with this particular good, then why were they selling it so far?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 25 2015, @12:31PM
Is it not freedom of speech for Amazon to decide what products they will sell?
Not if they feel they have to in order to avoid being crucified by public outrage.
I see. So it couldn't possibly be because they realized what they were doing was fucked up and that they wanted to stop.
No, it must be because they are being threatened by all those evil, hypocritical crypto-racists!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 25 2015, @04:38PM
Just so you know, the First Amendment protects you from government censure of your speech. It does not protect your from public opprobrium.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 25 2015, @06:46PM
Just so you know, the concept of freedom of speech isn't limited to the first amendment.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Non Sequor on Thursday June 25 2015, @03:33AM
The fact that you feel comfortable talking about whether the sum total of the atrocities of one group is worse than another means that there are some oversimplifications in your worldview.
There are some atrocities that are worse than others. There are some pairs of atrocities where I'm not sure which one is worse right now, but I might come to a clear opinion if I thought about it. For still others, I'm not sure I would come to a conclusion in a reasonable amount of time.
So atrocities are a partially ordered set. There's a relation on this set called "is worse than" that's transitive, but not every pair of elements has an order.
A totally ordered set has all of the blanks filled in.
Summing up the atrocities in one column and comparing them to another sum requires you to have a mapping from atrocities to the real numbers, either explicitly or implicitly, that preserves your "is worse than" relation. That also happens to be a procedure that converts a partially ordered set to a totally ordered set.
A procedure like this either has to be so computationally difficult that it can't be completed in a reasonable amount of time, or it has to file off nuanced details that warrant consideration. If it's both computationally easy and nuanced, then you would have to ask the question why any moral questions are difficult in the first place.
So I don't think you've stayed awake at night every night for your entire life scoring atrocities so you'd have a clear picture of where everyone ranks. I think you're oversimplifying a problem with much deeper structure than you'll ever know in order to bring false clarity to your own life.
Write your congressman. Tell him he sucks.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 25 2015, @03:41AM
> I think you're oversimplifying a problem with much deeper structure than you'll ever know in order to bring false clarity to your own life.
Not clarity, rationalization of pre-existing bias. If you've read many of hairy's posts, you would have no difficulty predicting how he would come out on this issue. Even to the point of him citing, for the millionth time, his former membership in the socialist left 40+ years ago. He's like that climate change denier constantly citing his former membership in greenpeace the 1970s. [mediamatters.org] I'll go out on a limb and guess that both of them did what they did so long ago not for ideology, but for pussy.
(Score: 2) by Non Sequor on Friday June 26 2015, @06:58PM
I consider it a hobby to try to disrupt people who wear political blinders. I don't really care which side their on, since all of the sides make themselves useless in different ways.
Honestly local politics and positional bargaining (i.e. horse trading type deals) on niche issues are the only really meaningful politics to me. Sweeping gestures tend to cause as much damage as good.
Write your congressman. Tell him he sucks.
(Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Thursday June 25 2015, @08:33AM
So let me get this straight...are you REALLY supporting the oppression olympics [knowyourmeme.com]....is that REALLY your position?
Get ready to have your little worldview blown away friend, because there is absolutely no difference between that position and "Blacks and Indians are 3/5ths of a person", none at ALL! In BOTH cases you are picking an arbitrary group based on a random characteristic, be it color, sex, religion, whatever, and saying "this person counts for more than the others because reasons". And folks wonder why the SJW movement is being attacked by both the left AND the right, its because when you cut through their Orwell Speak what you end up with is SJW or Stormfront [reddit.com] where by just removing the name of which group is to be persecuted? You can't tell the difference between the SJW and a neo-nazi. Feel free to play the game yourself, I played for about 20 minutes and was only able to guess right about 1 in 4.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 2) by Non Sequor on Thursday June 25 2015, @10:35AM
I have no earthly idea how this is upposed to relate to my post.
Write your congressman. Tell him he sucks.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 25 2015, @01:20PM
FTFY. Commas, not question marks. Or are you, like, totally a valley girl?
(Score: 2) by Tork on Thursday June 25 2015, @03:50AM
Not selling the Confederate Flag Won't Change the way people act or feel.
What it affects is how much money they make. It has nothing to do with educating kids.
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Thursday June 25 2015, @06:55PM
A retailer not selling a Confederate Flag will hardly be a blip on their sales radar. How much money a person with hateful feelings won't be affected by whether or not they can buy a Confederate Flag from a specific retailer. The issue at hand is that the Confederate Flag is Just a Flag. Censoring / Banning / Burning / Insert destructive action here won't make things better.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 25 2015, @08:27PM
> Censoring / Banning / Burning / Insert destructive action here won't make things better.
None of which is happening here - there are thousands of other outlets where the people who chose to glorify racist traitors can buy their memorabilia. There is no government ban on the ownership, sale or use of these products.
What is happening here are companies and people within those companies saying, "We recognize that these products represent pain, suffering and subjugation to some of our customers and we are choosing to stop participating in that." This is the most purely libertarian option available.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Thursday June 25 2015, @11:30PM
That's why they also stopped selling everything to do with the Nazi symbol? Oh, they didn't? Isn't that just as bad or worse of a symbol? What the companies are doing is voluntary censorship. The problem with racism is the intolerant and often hateful views held by individuals. That can only be changed slowly through experience and education.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by Tork on Thursday June 25 2015, @11:01PM
A retailer not selling a Confederate Flag will hardly be a blip on their sales radar.
It certainly will if their shoppers decide to avoid buying from them if they take offense to it.
Censoring / Banning / Burning / Insert destructive action here won't make things better.
How's the weather up there in your soapbox?
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 25 2015, @02:59PM
Tell that to Apple: http://www.macrumors.com/2015/06/25/apple-removes-civil-war-games-confederate-flag/ [macrumors.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Bot on Thursday June 25 2015, @05:46PM
Yes, this is 2damnatio memoriae". Today done for a (debatably) good cause, tomorrow, when people are accustomed to it, who knows.
Most examples I can recall of it come from totalitarian states. In fact, all of them do.
Nobody should tell you what you can or cannot see. On the other hand, you should be responsible of the fallout of thinking/behaving your way.
Account abandoned.