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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 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?