Gaming sites are reporting that Apple has pulled all war games featuring the confederate flag from the App Store as “offensive” and “hateful.” That decision of course wipes out historically accurate Civil War games. As a military history nut, I find the actions by Apple to be bizarre and revisionist. This was the symbol of one side in one of the world’s most famous military conflicts. When used in the context of a war game, it is obviously being used to closely mirror the symbols, uniforms, and equipment of the time.
It is astonishing that a debate over the use of this flag on state buildings has morphed into a complete ban of the appearance of this flag, even in games about the Civil War. Apple’s Tim Cook reportedly recently spoke against displaying the Confederate flag, but this is a complete ban. It is also intruding on the personal choices of consumers who are not offended by the appearance of the flag in a historical context.
Apple is quoted as stating that “we have removed apps from the App Store that use the Confederate flag in offensive or mean-spirited ways, which is in violation of our guidelines.” According to these sites, developers will have to either remove or replace the Confederate flag to be allowed on the App Store. I find that decision deeply troubling when applied to games or programs related to the Civil War.
What do you think?
Vietnam was bad, wrong, evil, stupid, etc., according to the brilliant minds that perpetrated it. 18 year-old boys were drafted and forced to fight. 58,000 died. Mexican General Santana took – kidnapped – boys off the land on his way north to the Alamo, as a further example of conscription.
1.4% of citizens owned slaves. If the Confederate soldiers were fighting for slavery, it was indirect and conceptual. More accurately, those innocent young kids were fighting to be alive at the end of a particular day; waiting for and fearing the next.
There must have been a whole lot of scared kids who didn’t want to be there simply doing their “duty,” standing up for the people who told them to and waiting to be killed, for God, country and family.
Hundreds of thousands of dead, dumb, young, manipulated, obedient kids.
The “duty” of their survivors and ancestors is to honor the dead, in this case, with the flag they died under and because of.
Freed slaves and their ancestors should be thanking the Confederate soldiers for losing the Northern War of Aggression. I’ll bet those Confederate kids were terrified and didn’t want to die. They probably wanted to go home an be with their sweethearts. As fate would have it, freed slaves and their ancestors should be thanking those young Confederate kids for dying.
Freed slaves, who unlike the Hebrew slaves In Egypt, did not return to their homeland but, for some reason, stayed in the land of the slavery, have been given everything on a sliver platter, as people who were not American citizens, since 1865. Believing they were above adapting to and living with the consequences of freedom, they have received “entitlements” such as the vote, different/superior “civil rights,” citizenship by circumventing the legal immigration process, the Presidency, control of the country, affirmative action jobs, affirmative action college, welfare, food stamps, social services, Obamacare, Social Security, Medicare, HAMP, HARP, utility subsidies, forced busing, free extravagant public schools, HUD, HHS, Labor, Education, etc. (did I leave anything out?). Americans would have been grossly embarrassed to receive this “public dole” until the advent of the American communist state.
America can give those poor dead Confederate kids and their survivors and ancestors SOMETHING.
What’s the backup plan, once the Confederate flag is removed, to honor the poor, young innocent dead kids who are perpetually forced, by leaders on both sides, to go die?
Well heck, the durn picture didn’t print. Let me try again:
https://squeekyfrommgr.files.wordpress.com/2015/06/rebelflag.jpg
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
“In that part of the Union where the Negroes are no longer slaves, have they become closer to whites? Everyone who has lived in the United States will have noticed just the opposite. Race prejudice seems stronger in those states that have abolished slavery than in those where it still exists, and nowhere is it more intolerant than in those states where slavery was never known.”
— Alexis De Tocqueville (1805-1859), Democracy in America
“The Northern onslaught upon slavery is no more than a piece of specious humbug designed to conceal its desire for economic control of the Southern States.”
— Charles Dickens, 1862
“Any reasonable creature may know, if willing, that the North hates the Negro, and that until it was convenient to make a pretence that sympathy with him was the cause of the war, it hated the abolitionists and derided them up hill and down dale… As to Secession being Rebellion, it is distinctly possible by state papers that Washington considered it no such thing — that Massachusetts, now loudest against it, has itself asserted its right to secede, again and again.”
— Charles Dickens
“The Framers had a deathly fear of federal government abuse. They saw State sovereignty as a protection. That’s why they gave us the 9th and 10th Amendments. They saw secession as the ultimate protection against Washington tyranny.”
— Dr. Walter Williams
“Today’s blacks clearly benefited from slavery. My wealth is far greater and I have far greater liberties than if my ancestors had remained in Africa.”
— Dr. Walter Williams
“There is a class of colored people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs — partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs.”
— Booker T. Washington
“We of the North couldn’t make slavery pay, so we are convinced that it is the sum of all villainy. Our plan is more profitable; we take care of no children or sick people, except as paupers, while the owners of slaves have to provide for them from birth to death. So how we view the issue depends on what kind of glasses we use. If we of the North were called upon to endure one half as much as the Southern people and soldiers do, we would abandon the cause and let the Southern Confederacy be established. We pronounce their cause unholy, but they consider it sacred enough to suffer and die for. Our forefathers in the Revolutionary struggle could not have endured more than these Rebels. A nation preserved with liberty trampled underfoot is much worse than a nation in fragments but with the spirit of liberty still alive. Southerners persistently claim that their rebellion is for the purpose of preserving this form of government”.
— Private John H. Haley, Seventeenth Maine Regiment, USA
“Union depends for its continuance on the free consent and will of the sovereign people of each state, and when that consent and will is withdrawn on either part, their Union is gone. A state coerced to remain in the Union is a subject province and can never be a co-equal member of the American Union.”
— Bangor (Maine) Daily Union editorial, 13 November 1860
“Lincoln’s war implied, and the Gettysburg Address set to words, a firm message to the States of the Union – I love you all, and if you leave me, I’ll hunt you down and kill you.’ The Address was not the sagely comments of a wise statesman, rather the vain, obsessive rantings of a power-hungry demon engaging in a blood-thirsty mission of self-aggrandizement, no matter the volume of corpses required to attain it.”
— Lewis Goldburg
“This is only one among the many proofs I had witnessed of the fact, that the prejudice of color is not nearly so strong in the South as in the North. [In the South] it is not at all uncommon to see the black slaves of both sexes, shake hands with white people when they meet, and interchange friendly personal inquiries; but at the north I do not remember to have witnessed this once; and neither in Boston, New York, or Philadelphia would white persons generally like to be seen shaking hands and talking familiarly with blacks in the streets.”
— James S. Buckingham, abolitionist
“All these cries of having ‘abolished slavery,’ of having ‘saved the country,’ of havinf ‘preserved the Uniopn’, of establishing a ‘government of consent,’ and of ‘maintaining the national honor’ are all gross, shameless, transparent cheats so transparent that they ought to deceive no one.”
— Lysander Spooner, prominent Northern abolitionist, attorney, and legeal scholar, fice years after the ‘Civl War’
“The parties in this conflict are not merely Abolitionists and slaveholders, they are Atheists, Socialists, Communists, Red Republicans, Jacobins on one side and the friends of order and regulated freedom on the other. In one word, the world is the battleground, Christianity and Atheism the Combatants, and the progress of humanity the stake.”
— James Henley Thomwell
“If you bring these leaders to trial, it will condemn the North, for by the Constitution, secession is not rebellion. His [Jefferson Davis] capture was a mistake. His trial will be a greater one. We cannot convict him of treason.”
— Salmon P. Chase, Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court, 1867
“The Emancipation Proclamation… professes to emancipate all slaves in places where the United States authorities can not exercise any jurisdiction. ..but it does not decree emancipation … in any states occupied by federal troops.”
— Earl Russell, Britain’s Foreign Secretary
“The North has used the doctrines of Democracy to destroy self-government. The South applied the principle of conditional federation to cure the evils and to correct the errors of a false interpretation of Democracy.”
— Lord Acton
The Dictator Lincoln invaded the South without the consent of Congress, as called for in the Constitution; declared martial law; blockaded Southern ports without a declaration of war, as required by the Constitution; illegally suspended the writ of habeas corpus; imprisoned without trial thousands of Northern anti-war protesters, including hundreds of newspaper editors and owners; censored all newspaper and telegraph communication; nationalized the railroads; created three new states without the consent of the citizens of those states in order to artificially inflate the Republican Party’s electoral vote; ordered Federal troops to interfere with Northern elections to assure Republican Party victories; deported Ohio Congressman Clement L. Vallandigham for opposing his domestic policies (especially protectionist tariffs and income taxation) on the floor of the House of Representatives; confiscated private property, including firearms, in violation of the Second Amendment; and effectively gutted the Tenth and Ninth Amendments as well.”
— Thomas J. DiLorenzo
“In his memoirs Sherman wrote that when he met with Lincoln after his March to the Sea was completed, Lincoln was eager to hear the stories of how thousands of Southern civilians, mostly women, children, and old men, were plundered, sometimes murdered, and rendered homeless. Lincoln, according to Sherman, laughed almost uncontrollably at the stories. Even Sherman biographer Lee Kennett, who writes very favorably of the general, concluded that had the Confederates won the war, they would have been ‘justified in stringing up President Lincoln and the entire Union high command for violation of the laws of war, specifically for waging war against noncombatants.”‘
— Thomas J. DiLorenzo
“The centralization of governmental power not only leads to the looting and plundering of the taxpaying class by the parasitic class; it also slowly destroys freedom of speech and the free exchange of ideas. One of the first things every tyrannical government does is to monopolize the educational system in order to brainwash the young and bolster its political power. As soon as Lee surrendered at Appomatox the federal government began revising history to teach that secession was illegitimate. This was all a part of Lincoln’s ‘revolution’ which overthrew the federal system of government created by the founding fathers and put into motion the forces of centralized governmental power.”
— Thomas J. DiLorenzo
“If tyranny and despotism justified the Revolution of 1776, then we do not see why it would not justify the secession of Five Millions of Southrons from the Federal Union in 1861.”
— New York Tribune, 5 February 1860
“If it [the Declaration of Independence] justifies the secession from the British empire of 3,000,000 of colonists in 1776, we do not see why it would not justify the secession of 5,000,000 of Southrons from the Federal Union in 1861. If we are mistaken on this point, why does not some one attempt to show wherein why’?”
— New York Tribune, 17 December 1860
“If the Declaration of Independence justified the secession of 3,000,000 colonists in 1776, I do not see why the Constitution ratified by the same men should not justify the secession of 5,000,000 of the Southerners from the Federal Union in 1861. We have repeatedly said, and we once more insist that the great principle embodied by Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence that government derives its power from the consent of the governed is sound and just, then if the Cotton States, the Gulf States or any other States choose to form an independent nation they have a clear right to do it. The right to secede may be a revolutionary one, but it exists nevertheless; and we do not see how one party can have a right to do what another party has a right to prevent. We must ever resist the asserted right of any State to remain in the Union and nullify or defy the laws thereof; to withdraw from the Union is another matter. And when a section of our Union resolves to go out, we shall resist any coercive acts to keep it in. We hope never to live in a Republic where one section is pinned to the other section by bayonets.”
— Horace Greeley, New York Tribune
Well, I just added this to the top of the sidebar on my website, right under the words, Free Speech Zone:
https://squeekyfrommgr.files.wordpress.com/2015/06/rebelflag.jpg?w=474&h=356
Sooo, maybe more people with blogs should do this, too. Whatever. Plus, I put “Resistente non est frustra! on it which shows up when you hover your mouse on the image. Resistente non est frustra! means Resistance is not futile!!! (for the non-Star Trek fans)
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
erkme73
erkme73’s picture
This is POWERFUL. Anyone who questions the revisionist history we’ve been taught should be forced to read just 10, any 10, of the quotes on this page:
http://www.coljohnsloancamp.org/reference/the-war-for-southern-independe…
“So far from engaging in a war to perpetuate slavery, I am rejoiced that slavery is abolished.”
— General Robert E. Lee, CSA
“There are few, I believe, in this enlightened era who would not agree with me that slavery as an institution is a moral and political evil.”
— General Robert E. Lee, CSA
“I wish to see the shackles struck from every slave.”
— Lt General Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson, CSA
“Every man should endeavor to understand the meaning of subjugation before it is too late… It means the history of this heroic struggle will be written by the enemy; that our youth will be trained by Northern schoolteachers; will learn from Northern school books their version of the war, will be impressed by the influences of history and education to regard our gallant dead as traitors, and our maimed veterans as fit objects for derision… It is said slavery is all we are fighting for, and if we give it up we give up all. Even if this were true, which we deny, slavery is not all our enemies are fighting for. It is merely the pretense to establish sectional superiority and a more centralized form of government, and to deprive us of our rights and liberties.”
— Maj. General Patrick R. Cleburne, CSA, January 1864, writing on what would happen if the Confederacy were to be defeated
“Only a despotic and imperial government can coerce seceding States.”
— William Seward, US Secretary of State under Abraham Lincoln, to Charles Francis Adams, minister to England, 10 April 1861
“The sole object of this war is to restore the Union. Should I become convinced it has any other object, or that the Government designs its soldiers to execute the wishes of the Abolitionists, I pledge you my honor as a man and a soldier I would resign my commission and carry my sword to the other side.”
— General Ulysses S. Grant, USA, in a letter to the Chicago Tribune, 1862
“If I thought this war was to abolish slavery, I would resign my commission, and offer my sword to the other side.”
— General Ulysses S. Grant, USA
“Good help is so hard to come by these days.”
— General Ulysses S. Grant, USA, explaining why he didn’t free his slaves until the passage of the 13th Amendment, after the war
“The more Indians we can kill this year, the less will have to be killed next year, for the more I see of these Indians, the more convinced I am that they all have to be killed or be maintained as a species of paupers.”
— General William T. Sherman, USA
“My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that.”
— Abraham Lincoln, 22 August 1862, in a letter to Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune
“I will say, then, that I am not, nor have ever been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races… I am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.”
— Abraham Lincoln
“Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable, a most sacred right – a right which we hope and believe is to liberate the world. Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government, may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people that can, may revolutionize, and make their own, of so much territory as they inhabit.”
— Abraham Lincoln, 12 January 1848, in a speech in Congress
“In saving the Union, I have destroyed the Republic.”
— Abraham Lincoln
“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.”
— Abraham Lincoln, 14 March 1861, First Inaugural Speech
“I am a little uneasy about the abolishment of slavery in this District [of Columbia]…”
— Abraham Lincoln, 24 March 1862, in a letter to Horace Greeley, New York Tribune editor
“I am not in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office… I am not in favor of Negro citizenship.”
— Abraham Lincoln
“Amend the Constitution to say it should never be altered to interfere with slavery.”
— Abraham Lincoln, 24 December 1860, presenting his stand on slavery to the Senate
“[Lincoln] was an infidel of the radical type… never mentioned the name of Jesus, except to scorn and detest the idea of a miraculous conception.”
— William Herndon, law partner to Abraham Lincoln
I believe this Flag banning crap is going to backfire big time. I’m already boycotting companies like Wal Mart for other reasons, but know they’ve pissed off millions of customers. I’ll be watching their sales numbers looking for a huge drop.
Below is some history of The War For Southern Indepence:
UNDERSTANDING THE CAUSES OF THE UNCIVIL WAR
A Brief Explanation of the Impact of the Morrill Tariff
By Mike Scruggs for the Tribune Papers
Most Americans believe the U. S. “Civil War” was over slavery. They have to an enormous degree been miseducated. The means and timing of handling the slavery issue were at issue, although not in the overly simplified moral sense that lives in postwar and modern propaganda. But had there been no Morrill Tariff there might never have been a war. The conflict that cost of the lives of 650,000 Union and Confederate soldiers and perhaps as many as 50,000 Southern civilians and impoverished many millions for generations might never have been.
A smoldering issue of unjust taxation that enriched Northern manufacturing states and exploited the agricultural South was fanned to a furious blaze in 1860. It was the Morrill Tariff that stirred the smoldering embers of regional mistrust and ignited the fires of Secession in the South. This precipitated a Northern reaction and call to arms that would engulf the nation in the flames of war for four years.
Prior to the U. S. “Civil War” there was no U. S. income tax. Considerably more than 90% of U. S. government revenue was raised by a tariff on imported goods. A tariff is a tax on selected imports, most commonly finished or manufactured products. A high tariff is usually legislated not only to raise revenue, but also to protect domestic industry form foreign competition. By placing such a high, protective tariff on imported goods it makes them more expensive to buy than the same domestic goods. This allows domestic industries to charge higher prices and make more money on sales that might otherwise be lost to foreign competition because of cheaper prices (without the tariff) or better quality. This, of course, causes domestic consumers to pay higher prices and have a lower standard of living. Tariffs on some industrial products also hurt other domestic industries that must pay higher prices for goods they need to make their products. Because the nature and products of regional economies can vary widely, high tariffs are sometimes good for one section of the country, but damaging to another section of the country. High tariffs are particularly hard on exporters since they must cope with higher domestic costs and retaliatory foreign tariffs that put them at a pricing disadvantage. This has a depressing effect on both export volume and profit margins. High tariffs have been a frequent cause of economic disruption, strife and war.
Prior to 1824 the average tariff level in the U. S. had been in the 15 to 20 % range. This was thought sufficient to meet federal revenue needs and not excessively burdensome to any section of the country. The increase of the tariff to a 20% average in 1816 was ostensibly to help pay for the War of 1812. It also represented a 26% net profit increase to Northern manufacturers.
In 1824 Northern manufacturing states and the Whig Party under the leadership of Henry Clay began to push for high, protective tariffs. These were strongly opposed by the South. The Southern economy was largely agricultural and geared to exporting a large portion of its cotton and tobacco crops to Europe. In the 1850’s the South accounted for anywhere from 72 to 82% of U. S. exports. They were largely dependent, however, on Europe or the North for the manufactured goods needed for both agricultural production and consumer needs. Northern states received about 20% of the South’s agricultural production. The vast majority of export volume went to Europe. A protective tariff was then a substantial benefit to Northern manufacturing states, but meant considerable economic hardship for the agricultural South
Northern political dominance enabled Clay and his allies in Congress to pass a tariff averaging 35% late in 1824. This was the cause of economic boom in the North, but economic hardship and political agitation in the South. South Carolina was especially hard hit, the State’s exports falling 25% over the next two years. In 1828 in a demonstration of unabashed partisanship and unashamed greed the Northern dominated Congress raised the average tariff level to 50%. Despite strong Southern agitation for lower tariffs the Tariff of 1832 only nominally reduced the effective tariff rate and brought no relief to the South. These last two tariffs are usually termed in history as the Tariffs of Abomination.
This led to the Nullification Crisis of 1832 when South Carolina called a state convention and “nullified” the 1828 and 1832 tariffs as unjust and unconstitutional. The resulting constitutional crisis came very near provoking armed conflict at that time. Through the efforts of former U. S. Vice President and U. S. Senator from South Carolina, John C. Calhoun, a compromise was effected in 1833 which over a few years reduced the tariff back to a normal level of about 15%. Henry Clay and the Whigs were not happy, however, to have been forced into a compromise by Calhoun and South Carolina’s Nullification threat. The tariff, however, remained at a level near 15% until 1860. A lesson in economics, regional sensitivities, and simple fairness should have been learned from this confrontation, but if it was learned, it was ignored by ambitious political and business factions and personalities that would come on the scene of American history in the late 1850’s.
More….
http://ashevilletribune.com/archives/censored-truths/Morrill%20Tariff.html
Apple stock was down earlier. They might have made a mistake with this decision. Why would anyone go to their App Store anyway?
The South Carolina legislation have yet to convene and commence upon relegating the Confederate flag to the museum. I’m still taking a wait & see attitude on this one.
Didn’t Hitler start by banning books and authors he hated? Then when the German people remained silent, he then moved on to murdering German Jews and anyone who objected, and the world remained silent. History does repeat itself.
Jerry Dolan – first Hitler murdered incompetents, disabled, etc. However, the US was doing the same thing. Actually, it is not uncommon for the State to order the sterilization of women who have low IQs.
@NickS
Yes, you are absolutely right! The Democrats love barefoot and pregnant voters! The hysteria over the flag is only creating more racial divisiveness. Black people aren’t the only ones who can practice passive-aggressive tactics. But, Democrats love to do that! It stirs up the base.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
As being from the south I think this is disgraceful. The flag does not show slavery but a pride of the south for state rights. The slavery thing is long gone except for the people that want to keep bringing it up to stir hate and discontent. It is a part of our history and what scares me is so many want to rewrite our history to benefit themselves and what they want and believe. Reminds me of what Hitler and Stalin did as well as Iran and not believing the holocaust happened.
My family had family members that fought for both the North and South. That is where brother against brother and father against son came from and I know this first hand from our family. Every generation until today have entered and fought for this great nation. Every generation of our family has given and spilled blood to preserve what we hold as a free country and government.
We still live in the greatest nation on earth and should honor that and those that give to preserve this. It worries me when we start bending and rewriting the laws and constitution to benefit ourselves. When our supreme court takes away the rights of the states to govern and rule of law as to what the populist vote has put in place is troubling. This is getting farther and farther away from what made this country great.
I think Clarence Thomas should speak out on this issue. Displaying a Confederate Battle Flag is not a terrorist act. It can be a statement that one is UnReconstructed.
Darn. My half blind guy just bought more Apple stock recently. Now he wants to sell it all. We need a bump up not a big bump down. Who is the dork at Apple who made this dumb decision?
The National Park Service at Fort Sumter is no longer selling anything with a Confederate emblem. That borders on the insane.
Paul C. Schulte…..Paul, I just bought some LG stock (LPL) this week. With a PE of about 7, it looks undervalued to me. No guarrantees.
Tom Nash – honest to God, every time I look at that Apple logo with the bite out of the apple, I expect a worm to come out of the bite.
Well, I don’t buy Apple products to begin with, but a boycott by the South would cause a ripple in the stock. Think I’ll be moving my stock to Samsung for awhile.
Nick Spinelli is a distraction.
Isaac, when he speaks of this great country, validates the axiom, “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.” When he pontificates about this, or many subject, always remember, he hates our Constitution. If you understand that about him, then you’ll understand his polemics. I see there was an attack on a US company in his beloved southeast France. That country needs to learn how to police terrorists.
The War on Police. The War on the Confederate Flag. These are all distractions. Liberal Dems don’t want black folk to come to the conclusion that their being enslaved to the Dem party the last 50 years has made them poorer and less educated. It’s the Dem strategy of “Keep ’em barefoot and pregnant.” Many major US cities, controlled completely by Dems, have been an abject failure. So, you keep the huddled masses distracted w/ symbols. Despicable!
I see it takes the liberals a while to get outta bed. The flag is not banned..YET. Tobacco is not banned..YET.
http://www.militarytimes.com/story/military/2015/06/25/military-is-ok-with-confederate-flag–for-now/29235155/ The flag is not banned. Apple is free to take a strong stand on this as they have on gay marriage. If the court rules in favor of gay marriage, I think Texas should secede. They could fly the confederate flag, ban gay marriage, and refuse to provide health care for its citizens.