Marissa's writings about individual rights, justice, neurodiversity, and being different from the norm
Another piece of positive news: the site of a huge Confederate battle flag in Alabama has been spruced up with a new sign. The flag, along highway I-65 between Montgomery and Birmingham, is maintained by the Prattville Dragoons SCV Camp. It received a new, permanent sign this past weekend after the previous one was destroyed by a storm.
Source: Dixie Forever
More photos can be seen at this Facebook post by the Prattville Dragoons.
Yesterday, a huge Confederate battle flag was raised at the State House in Columbia, South Carolina by the organization Flags Across the South (source here). The flag raising marked the anniversary of former governor (and intolerant bully) Nikki Haley’s decision to destroy the state flag, thereby sending the message that only people who fit in and are like the majority, are welcome in her state. Thanks to Flags Across the South, for one day, a flag was flown that signifies actual diversity and inclusion. A flag was flown that sends the message that it’s OK to be different, that people who don’t have friends, who are excluded, who are different from the norm, who don’t fit in, have a right to exist too. This is a glorious sight indeed.
Edit: You can watch a video of the flag raising here.
Additional edit: You can see some more photos and videos from Dixie Forever, here and here and here.
A message of hope from the Virginia Flaggers:
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It makes my heart happy to know that there are other people out there who share the belief that people who fought back against authority deserve to be honored. Despite the efforts of authoritarian bullies to eradicate us, we still exist, and we still build memorials. Hopefully we always will.
I love this. Hopefully what is depicted in the second image will come true.
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Source here
View this post on Instagram
Source here
Some positive news: a mega Confederate flag erected by the Virginia Flaggers will remain flying proudly despite the county’s attempt to force its removal.
The High Bridge Memorial Battle Flag was erected in April 2022 by a private landowner in Prince Edward County, Virginia. Despite the landowner having a permit to do so, and despite the zoning board of appeals siding with the landowner, the county’s Board of Supervisors went to court to force the flag to be taken down. When the Circuit Court ruled against them, the county appealed to the Virginia Appellate Court. But yesterday, the Appellate Court threw out the appeal, allowing the flag to stay. You can read a more detailed version of events in the Virginia Flaggers’ Facebook post.
“It is perfectly clear that the real issue is not the size of the flag, but the message they perceive it to communicate,” the Flaggers point out. The message that the flag communicates: acceptance and inclusion of people who are different. The fact that people who are different from the norm, have a right to exist. That’s the message that the Prince Edward County Board of Supervisors – along with so many other people in our society – finds so objectionable. I am glad that, in this case at least, the intolerant bullies lost.
“Hateful.”
This was the word used by Jacksonville Mayor Lenny Curry to describe a flyover by the organization Save Southern Heritage Florida, in which an airplane carrying a banner that read “Put Monuments Back” flew over a Jacksonville Jaguars game.
How exactly is it “hateful” to argue that people like me have a right to a life worth living?
How exactly is wanting to have a life that is actually worth living “hateful”?
Apparently, only Mayor Curry and people like him are allowed to have lives that are worth living.
And I am not.
Believing that I am actually entitled to the same respect and the same protections as others… is hateful.
Daring to ask that I be treated equally… is hateful.
Apparently, I am required to just put up with everything that makes my life worth living, being destroyed. Other people are allowed to hurt me as badly as they want, with complete impunity, and I am not allowed to defend myself. I am not allowed to point out that actually, destroying everything that makes a person’s life worth living, is bad. I am not allowed to state that I would like the things that make my life worth living, returned.
In the eyes of Mayor Curry, asking for the world to allow you a life that is worth living is “hateful.”
No, Mayor Curry. You are the one who is truly hateful.
At a Memorial Day ceremony in Natick, Massachusetts, one brave member of the public decided to hold up a Confederate flag. Presumably, he was motivated by an entirely understandable and noble desire to honor the Confederate soldiers who lost their lives fighting for independence, and perhaps also an equally understandable and noble desire to make a statement against our society’s vicious, full-scale assault on everything related to the Confederacy. Infuriatingly but unsurprisingly given said vicious assault, a frenzy of intolerant, hurtful, and idiotic comments ensued.
For example: State Senator Becca Rausch and Natick Select Board chair Karen Adelman-Foster made the following statement:
This statement is deeply wrong for numerous reasons:
In conclusion, it is difficult to imagine a public statement more hypocritical or illogical than the one put forth by Rausch and Adelman-Foster. They are literally condemning a flag that stands for freedom at the same time as they claim to be steadfastly committed to freedom. They are condemning an unpopular minority’s flag at the same time as they claim to support the ideas of diversity and inclusion. And they are claiming that the display of a flag that stands for freedom desecrates the memory of people who have fallen in defense of freedom.
It is this statement, as well as the intolerant, mean-spirited attitudes that motivate it, that is truly hurtful and harmful, and it is this statement that deserves to be condemned. Instead of apologizing for the fact that a Confederate flag was displayed, Rausch and Adelman-Foster should apologize to the brave Confederate veterans whom they insulted, as well as to all the people who have been hurt and harmed by their heartless, mindless, and thoughtless words.
The Confederate monument in Albertville, Alabama has an unlikely defender.
As has been happening all over the country, political-correctness-obsessed bullies are demanding that a Confederate flag and monument in front of the county courthouse be removed. According to local news station WHNT, the leader of Say Their Names Alabama, Unique Dunston, called the Confederacy “ugly and hateful” and called her group’s demand that the statue be moved to a nearby museum or a nearby cemetery a “compromise.”
Daniel Sims, a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans who happens to be black, came to the statue’s defense, saying: “Regardless of how the next person feels, I’m not going to take my flag down. If I got anything to do with it, ain’t no monument going to come down… It makes my blood boil if they just come up here and feel like they can just tear it down. I don’t see me still living if they do that right there. That monument ain’t hurting nobody. That monument ain’t killing a soul. It ain’t talking bad to nobody. It ain’t even racist.”
He’s got that right. The Confederacy was neither ugly nor hateful. Its monuments are not racist and do not hurt anyone. There is no reason to take them down, relocate them, or alter them in any way. And I am skeptical of the claim that moving the monument is a compromise. The anti-Confederate bullies began by advocating relocation to battlefields, cemeteries, or museums, but now they are demanding that statues be removed from battlefields as well, arguing that placement in museums and other locations is inappropriate, and vandalizing statues at churches and cemeteries. Given the despicable and relentless assault against all things Confederate, any attempt to move any piece of Confederate iconography to a less prominent location should be vigorously opposed.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo recently signed a bill banning the sale and display of Confederate flags on state property. The law makes it illegal to sell Confederate flags at state or local fairs and bans their display unless deemed necessary for historical or educational purposes. In addition to violating the First Amendment, this is yet another example of our society’s intolerant, senseless war on all things Confederate.
“This country faces a pervasive, growing attitude of intolerance and hate — what I have referred to in the body politic as an American cancer,” Cuomo said. “By limiting the display and sale of the Confederate flag, Nazi swastika, and other symbols of hatred from being displayed or sold on state property, including the state fairgrounds, this will help safeguard New Yorkers from the fear-installing effects of these abhorrent symbols.”
But the Confederate flag is not “abhorrent,” nor is there any need to “safeguard” people from it. The Confederate flag is a symbol of liberty and of Southern heritage. Even as someone born and raised in Massachusetts, who is not directly related to anyone who fought for the Confederacy, I recognize that this flag represents a nation that valiantly but unsuccessfully fought for its independence. I find this flag beautiful, glorious, and uplifting. Anyone who feels fear upon seeing a Confederate flag is ignorant as to what the flag is truly all about.
Cuomo is right about one thing: there is indeed a pervasive attitude of intolerance and hate in America that is growing like a cancer. But the nature of this cancer is the opposite of what Cuomo believes it to be. The true American cancer is the movement to obliterate, erase, destroy, and “cancel” everything and everyone that has anything whatsoever to do with the Confederacy, as well as everything and everyone that in any way falls short of the arbitrary requirements of political correctness. This movement is intolerant, it is hateful, and unfortunately it is pervasive and growing. Public support for the Confederacy and its symbols is, sadly, shrinking and shrinking as the political correctness movement increases in power. It is that movement that America needs to be fighting back against, instead of further stomping on the unpopular but honorable cause of the Confederacy.
In addition to getting intolerance and hate completely backward, Cuomo’s Confederate flag ban also runs up against the pesky issue of freedom of speech. “A private entity can choose to sell or not sell offensive symbols but when the government bans the sale of offensive, but constitutionally protected symbols, on its property the First Amendment comes into play,” said noted First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams, according to the New York Post.