State's Rights

I can't say I'm surprised to see that Mike Huckabee's a defender of the iconography of slavery and white supremacy but I hadn't known for sure previously:

“You don’t like people from outside the state coming in and telling you what to do with your flag,” Mr. Huckabee, a former governor of Arkansas, told supporters in Myrtle Beach, according to The Associated Press.

“In fact,” he said, “if somebody came to Arkansas and told us what to do with our flag, we’d tell them what to do with the pole; that’s what we’d do.”

We'll recall George Wallace's pledge to get rid of "every freedom rider, sit in, and every other trouble-maker backed by the NAACP that meddles in our affairs." Robert Farley wonders how flag pole ramming fits into Huckabee's vision of bible-centric ethics. "What if it's done for fun, and not for punishment?"

Comments

The assumption that both Huckabee and Wallace share is that any objection must be coming from "people from outside the state" who want to "meddle in our affairs."

As if blacks don't live in the south, as if blacks haven't lived in the south for centuries and are an integral part of southern culture, as if blacks living in the south have no objection to Confederate culture and its enduring legacy, as if blacks in the south aren't citizens whose equality before the law is diminished by the state adopting racially tinged symbols.

Posted by Jeet Heer | January 18, 2008 9:59 AM

"What if it's done for fun, and not for punishment?"
That is truly funny.It is a great line by the huckster. It will play well in the south.

Posted by cheflovesbeer | January 18, 2008 10:07 AM

Huck's taking a stand against oppressive and totalitarian Liberal Fascism! Why can't you see and applaud that?

Posted by ed | January 18, 2008 10:09 AM

Gawd knows I hate that fucking traitor's flag, but what Huckabee is saying is something different: it's an internal matter, and he'd react (badly), too, if outsiders wanted to control such a matter. Admittedly, it's a defense often used by scoundrels, but what are you going to do?

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | January 18, 2008 10:13 AM

it's an internal matter, and he'd react (badly), too, if outsiders wanted to control such a matter. Admittedly, it's a defense often used by scoundrels, but what are you going to do?

Amend the Constitution to specifically prohibit the Confederate flag, of course. As all good GOPers know, "States' Rights" is a concept that should only be evoked when absolutely convenient.

Posted by James Gary | January 18, 2008 10:16 AM

Has anyone every noticed that Arkansas's flag is a riff on the Stars and Bars -- same red field, same diagonal blue bars, same white stars? Put a series of each together, end to end, and they would look rather similar. Not that I'm trolling for a poling . . .

Posted by Barry | January 18, 2008 10:17 AM

Y'know, I'm a garden variety, ACLU-card-carrying liberal who despises the evangelical political agenda of Mike Huckabee, but maybe being from the South gives me a slightly different perspective on this. Huckabee isn't, or at least he doesn't think he is, "defending the iconography of slavery," etc. He's saying that it's not his or the federal government's business to tell South Carolina what flags it should display on state property, and I think he has a defensible point. Putting up a monument to the Ten Commandments on that property may violate the U.S. Constitution, but what does flying the Confederate flag violate except the feelings of many South Carolina citizens? And isn't it the business of South Carolina citizens who take an interest in this issue to fight it out among themselves? Huckabee doesn't live there, he doesn't have to see that flag every day, and neither do most the columnists and bloggers who've been happily snarking about Huckabee's comments. When I visit Richmond, it pains me to see all of those statues to Confederate heroes that line that big boulevard, but is it my business to tell the citizens of Richmond, or Virginia, that they should tear down those statues? Is it the President's business, or the federal government's? I just don't think so. And I don't think that this position of respecting local decision-making on these symbolic matters is remotely comparable to the xenophobia of 1960s "states' rights" racists like George Wallace.

Posted by Patrick | January 18, 2008 10:23 AM

"As if blacks don't live in the south, as if blacks haven't lived in the south for centuries and are an integral part of southern culture, as if blacks living in the south have no objection to Confederate culture and its enduring legacy, as if blacks in the south aren't citizens whose equality before the law is diminished by the state adopting racially tinged symbols.

Posted by Jeet Heer | January 18, 2008 9:59 AM"

Very true. The only federal holiday I can think of named after an individual is named after the most famous Southern minister in history. However, that was MLK, so he apparently doesn't count. The South has rose again in the influence of Southern black culture being exported to the rest of the US and the world, yet because they aren't white, they aren't of true Southern heritage.

Posted by Reality Man | January 18, 2008 10:28 AM

Patrick, has anyone ever really talked about in recent years sending the National Guard down to the South Carolina statehouse and removing the flag? No. Don't let the neo-confederates set the terms of debate. All that is happening is criticism. We would criticize Germany if they flew the Nazi flag and like it or not, both slavery and genocide, especially in the modern era, are so deeply, fundamentally evil that they are comparable in their inhumanity.

Posted by Reality Man | January 18, 2008 10:34 AM

He's saying that it's not his or the federal government's business to tell South Carolina what flags it should display on state property, and I think he has a defensible point. Putting up a monument to the Ten Commandments on that property may violate the U.S. Constitution, but what does flying the Confederate flag violate except the feelings of many South Carolina citizens?

Has McCain or Romney suggested that it's unconstitutional or that the federal government should ban it? My position is that the state probably has a legal right to display whatever flag it wants (subject to the Establishment Clause, which doesn't apply here), but that it's wrong to display a racist symbol, and that it's OK for people to condemn something that's wrong. And I'd have an easier time believing Huckabee when he says "It's an internal matter so outsiders shouldn't say anything about it" if he ever refrained from moralizing about anything else that wasn't his business.

Posted by Matt Weiner | January 18, 2008 10:38 AM

"And I'd have an easier time believing Huckabee when he says "It's an internal matter so outsiders shouldn't say anything about it" if he ever refrained from moralizing about anything else that wasn't his business.

Posted by Matt Weiner | January 18, 2008 10:38 AM"

Exactly. This guy wants to legislate gay men's assholes. He's not exactly a hands-off kind of guy.

Posted by Reality Man | January 18, 2008 10:41 AM

Not that I'm trolling for a poling . . . Maybe that's what Steve Spurrier was doing when he suggested the Stars and Bars weren't helping him recruit for the Gamecocks. (OMG! I just said Gamecocks!)

Posted by Peter Driscoll | January 18, 2008 10:42 AM

“In fact,” he said, “if somebody came to Arkansas and told us what to do with our flag, we’d tell them what to do with the pole; that’s what we’d do.”

How folksy!

He's a tough, little stomach stapled animal!

I just lost what little, tiny, miniscule respect I had for the man, and now hope he comes in behind Zombie Fred.

Posted by SoCalJustice | January 18, 2008 10:47 AM

using patrick's logic, why can't german citizens all over the country fly the swastika in front of their homes? or if they are a majority in a particular town - as they are all over the country in places like wisconsin - why couldn't they fly the swasika over city hall?
don't they have the right to show pride in their german heritage?
oh, i forgot!
if something offends jews or whites, then their sensitivities have to be taken into consideration.
if blacks are offended, then they should stop whining, just get over it and stop being so goddamn sensitive.
thanks for reminding me of that fundamental american principle, patrick.
every once in a while, i forget it.
silly me.

Posted by frankie frankie d | January 18, 2008 10:56 AM

If only we could eliminate all controversial iconography, then we wouldn't have to admit to doing bad things in our history books.

Posted by mike | January 18, 2008 11:03 AM

mike

Nevermind the enormous chasm between "eliminate" and "embrace."

Posted by SoCalJustice | January 18, 2008 11:07 AM

Patrick said, "He's saying that it's not his or the federal government's business to tell South Carolina what flags it should display on state property, and I think he has a defensible point."

If Huckabee wanted to defend state's rights, I think he could find a better example than a symbol of slavery.

Posted by Captain Noble | January 18, 2008 11:14 AM

Huckabee isn't defending state's rights. That's asinine, and anyone who believes it is automatically dumb.

Go read the article.

Huckabee is in South Carolina talking about the decision of a SOUTH CAROLINA GOVERNOR to remove the flag from a place of prominence. That's not an "outsider." He's also talking about McCain stating, AFTER BEING ASKED, that he admired SOUTH CAROLINA CITIZENS for deciding ON THEIR OWN to remove the confederate flag. Here's McCain's quote.

"“My answer, sir, is that I could not be more proud that the overwhelming majority of the people of this state joined together taking that flag off the top of the....”" at this point the article states that he was drowned out by cheering. Cheering citizens of South Carolina, by the way, unless those pernicious OUTSIDERS were crossing the border to interfere like they always seem to do.

Huckabee is trying to indicate support for the confederate flag while couching his support in code language that people who are more equivocal about the confederate flag won't find scary, redneck, or racist.

That's what he's doing, that's what everyone who knows anything knows he is doing, and at this point I think it is fair to presume bad faith on behalf of anyone who seems the slightest bit informed and yet says otherwise.

Posted by Patrick (a different one) | January 18, 2008 11:31 AM

The North won the war. The South lost. That's the only reason I need to support the idea that displaying the Confederate Battle Flag is unacceptable.

Posted by kindness | January 18, 2008 12:22 PM

Shouldn't flying the confederate flag be regarded as treasonous? Isn't it particularly _gracious_ of the federal government to restrain from hanging any government official who flies that flag? Sometimes I find it ridiculous that we even have to debate this issue.

Posted by mpowell | January 18, 2008 1:20 PM

When I visit Richmond, it pains me to see all of those statues to Confederate heroes that line that big boulevard, but is it my business to tell the citizens of Richmond, or Virginia, that they should tear down those statues?

Yes. You're a citizen of the United States, Virginia is in the United States, and yet Virginia is erecting monuments to traitors to the United States. If New York State suddenly started putting up statues of Benedict Arnold, don't you think we'd expect people to have something to say about it?

Posted by Stefan | January 18, 2008 1:45 PM

I am a Southerner, so I don't really have a neutral view on this, but it sometimes tends to get on my nerves when people say that this should be taken down because it is a symbol of racism and hate. If you think that the civil war was completely based on slavery, then you should probably do some more reaserch. The main objective of the Confederacy was winning the right for the states to choose their laws and practices on major issues on their own, and at the time, unfortunatly, slavery was one of them. Today, the Confederate flag is a symbol of pride more then anything, reminding us Southerners that our ancestors were willing to stand up for themselves, doing their best to preserve their cultural rights. Nobody I know would even think about supporting slavery, yet many of my friends (remember I live in the south) still keep the Confederate flag pridefully close to their hearts. To be forced to take the flag down would infringe on the same rights the Confederates fought for in the first place, the right of the state, and its people, to choose its own laws and symbols which might differ from the rest of the Unions culture.

Posted by Trebor Yelam | January 18, 2008 2:47 PM

I am a Southerner, so I don't really have a neutral view on this, but it sometimes tends to get on my nerves when people say that this should be taken down because it is a symbol of racism and hate. If you think that the civil war was completely based on slavery, then you should probably do some more reaserch. The main objective of the Confederacy was winning the right for the states to choose their laws and practices on major issues on their own, and at the time, unfortunatly, slavery was one of them. Today, the Confederate flag is a symbol of pride more then anything, reminding us Southerners that our ancestors were willing to stand up for themselves, doing their best to preserve their cultural rights. Nobody I know would even think about supporting slavery, yet many of my friends (remember I live in the south) still keep the Confederate flag pridefully close to their hearts. To be forced to take the flag down would infringe on the same rights the Confederates fought for in the first place, the right of the state, and its people, to choose its own laws and symbols which might differ from the rest of the Unions culture.

Posted by Trebor Yelam | January 18, 2008 2:47 PM

I am a Southerner, so I don't really have a neutral view on this, but it sometimes tends to get on my nerves when people say that this should be taken down because it is a symbol of racism and hate. If you think that the civil war was completely based on slavery, then you should probably do some more reaserch. The main objective of the Confederacy was winning the right for the states to choose their laws and practices on major issues on their own, and at the time, unfortunatly, slavery was one of them. Today, the Confederate flag is a symbol of pride more then anything, reminding us Southerners that our ancestors were willing to stand up for themselves, doing their best to preserve their cultural rights. Nobody I know would even think about supporting slavery, yet many of my friends (remember I live in the south) still keep the Confederate flag pridefully close to their hearts. To be forced to take the flag down would infringe on the same rights the Confederates fought for in the first place, the right of the state, and its people, to choose its own laws and symbols which might differ from the rest of the Unions culture.

Posted by Trebor Yelam | January 18, 2008 2:47 PM

Sorry about the triple post...

Posted by Trebor Yelam | January 18, 2008 2:51 PM

Trebor Yelam, if the pride argument held water, you would see more black Southerners flying the flag and voting to keep it when it's on a ballot. Nobody here is saying the war was only over slavery. It's such common knowledge that that made it into an episode of the Simpsons ten years ago (Apu getting his citizenship). However, the likes of Calhoun only cared about state's rights when slavery was involved. When you fire on your country's military (Fort Sumter) in defense of a system that is little more than systematized rape, you don't get to have pride in that. Case closed. Slavery wasn't some vague abstract. It was a system based on degrading other people, owning them, whipping them, starving them, beating them, raping them and breaking up their families. Should Germans be proud that he stood up for Germany's right to arm itself against the French bastards behind the Treaty of Versailles?

Posted by Reality Man | January 18, 2008 3:04 PM

As a white Southerner, I find only shame in that flag.

Posted by Ricky | January 18, 2008 4:30 PM

Mr. Reality Man, if you may recall, slavery was not what the Union was fighting about either. When the Southern states left, slavery had not been outlawed, nor was there reasonable evidence to claim that it would be. Even after the fighting started, the Union was perfectly content with letting the slave states that stayed with it (Maryland, Missori, and three others, I think), and any slave states that were willing to rejoin (West Virginia) keep their slaves. It was only after Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation that conquered territories in the South lost their slaves as punishment (which, by the way, I fully support, as I have never been an advocate of slavery nor ever will be). Two of the five slave states that stayed with the Union continued to have slaves after the war until it was outlawed by the 13th amendmant on December 6, 1865.
Would you say that our National Flag is a symbol of racism and hate, because at the time of the revolutionary war, all of our colonies had and to a degree supported slavery?
The thing is, almost all countries and flags have supported slavery at one time or another, but yet you still press on the Confederate flag as if it still does. Technically, all the states that once (and to some, still do) considered themselves prideful Confederates have all supported abolishion of slavery, so wouldn't that mean that the geological Confederacy does not anylonger support slavery?
And you say that my pride point doesn't hold any water, so why then do you think that so many southerners love that flag? Our ancestors fought and died for that flag, and many of us would sooner do the same before we let the federal government swoop in and take it from us.

P.S. The reason you don't see many African-Americans supporting the flag is probably the same reason you don't see many Northerners supporting it. Their ancestors weren't on the Confederates side (but reasonably so for the Blacks, considering one of the many issues at the time).

Posted by Trebor Yelam | January 18, 2008 5:24 PM

Trebor Yelam:
Nobody runs into cannon-fire for such an abstraction as states' rights, and nobody ever has. Everyone in the country who hasn't been indoctrinated by substandard southern schools knows what the Civil War was about, why it was fought and what the flag stands for. Your ancestors served an evil cause, pure and simple, and that's nothing to be proud of.

Posted by Henderstock | January 18, 2008 6:39 PM

Anybody who uses the term "states' rights" is guilty of a categorical error: States don't have rights. Only people have rights. States have powers. Compare and contrast the 9th and 10th amendments.

The founders would have been aghast at the very notion, I suspect: Remember that they claimed to believe, (See the Declaration of Independence) that rights were granted by God. Governments, of course, are a creation of Man. How can a creation of Man have what only God can give?

It is, at best, a very misleading metaphor, and usually something worse.

Posted by Brett Bellmore | January 18, 2008 7:23 PM

"Anybody who uses the term 'states' rights' is guilty of a categorical error: States don't have rights. Only people have rights. States have powers. Compare and contrast the 9th and 10th amendments."

You are correct, sir. I should have put the term in quotes, whatever the offense to the neosecessionists.

Posted by Henderstock | January 18, 2008 8:16 PM

Thank you for correcting my error, Brett. I guess what I meant to reference was State Powers.

Henderstock, may I ask you if you have ever studied in the South? What would make you think that our school doctrines are any different? I can guarantee you that in any unbiased text you read, you will be told that the states seceeded because they felt the federal government was infringing on their constitutional power to decide many issues for themselves, and unfortunatly (enormous understatement, I know), they believed that their "right" to own slaves was one of the many. The thing is, at the time, the issue of slavery was not as big of an issue as things like the southern states wish to have the power to override things like north-imposed federal trade tarrifs, which was filling the coffers of the north, while at the same time was strangling dry the economies of southern states, who relied heavily on the exportation of large amounts of cotton and other things to Europe. Of course, during and after the war, slavery (which yes, I agree is an evil thing, but you must remember some northern states had it too) was made a very much larger issue, for two reasons. The first reason was that the southern economies were largly based on cotton, in which was mostly produced by slaves. By getting rid of the Souths slaves, they could get rid of the Souths cotton, effectivly bankrupting them and winning the war. The second reason was, of course, to demonize the south. But you cannot say that slavery was the only, or even frontrunning, cause of the war. Of course though, history is always written by the winners.

Also, I bring up the point again, If you say that any flag that has ever supported slavery is an icon of it and racism, no matter where you lived, you would almost definatly not only be talking about someone else's flag, but your own.

P.S. To say that nobody would run into cannon fire for something so much as "states rights" (or power, you might say now) is something you might want to think twice about. You can make anyone fight for anything if you strike at their emotional cores hard enough. What exactly do you think the colonies revolted against the British for?

Posted by Trebor Yelam | January 18, 2008 10:28 PM

"P.S. The reason you don't see many African-Americans supporting the flag is probably the same reason you don't see many Northerners supporting it. Their ancestors weren't on the Confederates side (but reasonably so for the Blacks, considering one of the many issues at the time).

Posted by Trebor Yelam | January 18, 2008 5:24 PM"

Which means you just admitted it's a racially divisive icon.

"State's rights" was just a convenient excuse. The Confederacy's leaders sure seemed to have no problem in the troubles leading up to the war with the idea of expanding slavery into the likes of Kansas via violence. You're abstracting slavery into a non-entity and attempting to purge its reality from history just to make the flag look good. The Battle Flag only became a Southern icon with de-segregation and the fight against it. It was only added to many Southern states' flags after Brown vs. Board of Education.

Posted by Reality Man | January 18, 2008 10:52 PM

Also, the majority of the population of several Southern states at the time of secession was African-American slaves. I doubt they would have voted for secession. The Confederacy was just an early version of apartheid.

Posted by Reality Man | January 18, 2008 10:54 PM

Also, members of dad's family, the white side of my family, were likely in Kentucky during the Civil War and nobody ever seems to want to talk about them, which has made me wonder if they fought for the South. Then again, my dad's family is also Catholic so they would have been a target of the KKK (just like how a lot of Italians were lynched due to the 19th-century political alliances between Italian immigrant communities and African-Americans). I've also lived in a former Confederate state for a few years. I still fuck the racist flag and everyone who flies it. People like that are the reason the South is so far behind the rest of the developed world.

Posted by Reality Man | January 18, 2008 11:06 PM

Let me tell you that I would never attempt to try and purge the reality of slavery from history to make anything look good. I have stated many times that I strongly disapprove of slavery and racism, and let me say now that it WAS a major problem and one of the very few actions I can say that I am not proud to be biologically connected to. On the other hand, you must admit that the civil war was NOT slave-states vs. free-states, considering that over a fourth of the Unions states still owned slaves by the end of the war. So thus, that would make it North States vs. South States. You cannot pretend that the North was completely slave free, because then it is YOU that is trying to distort the issue of slavery.

On your comments about the Confederacy bringing slavery into the state of Kansas via violence, I must inform you that you are crucially mistaken about who started what where against who. Kansas had absolutley nothing to do with the Confederacy, for one thing considering that it hadn't even been born yet. For another, the slave owners from MISSORI (which remained a Union state in the civil war) settled in Kansas first, then distorted the election for the state becoming free or slave by going to free districts and voting, effectivly cheating. Yes this was wrong and illigal, and I by no means stand up for them in what they were voting for, but the fact of the matter is that the violence was started by the abolitionists in retaliation for this, which I also cannot support. But once again, this did not involve the Confederacy, considering most the slave owners came from Missori, a Union state. If you do not believe me I invite you to look it up, or prove me wrong (I will not be afraid to admit I was wrong if you can prove it, but I doubt you can).

Another fact you are crucially wrong in is the population of slaves and blacks in the Union leading to the war in 1860. In the South the black to white ratio was less than 1:5, and it took 4 black men to be counted as one population. This would mean that the census would put the states accountablity ratio around 1:20, so thus, it would have been very difficult for African-Americans to vote slavery away even if they were given that right. And about the Confederacy version being an early version of apartheid, I concurr. What the Confederacy had, and many UNION states for that matter, was slavery. There is a major difference between slavery and apartheid. They are both very wrong and evil, but slavery is much, much worse...

I am simply trying to say that it is not correct to say that slavery was all Confederacy, and that the Union in no way supported it. Saying this would be tragically wrong, because, once again, over one-fourth of the Union states supported slavery, making the Union just as bad as the Confederacy on the issue.

Posted by Trebor Yelam | January 18, 2008 11:45 PM

By the way Reality Man, I did not see your third post by the time I posted mine. I am sorry that your fathers family was targeted by the KKK. I can VERY much agree with you that they are murderous racist bastards, and I want to be clear that I am no racist, and would never even consider becoming accosciated (however you spell that) with anyone who was. I also must say the same about many of my friends who cherish the Confederate flag. No matter what it used to mean, we do not fly it in a meaning of division, hate, nor racism. WE fly it to remind us who we are, and to remind ourselves the price everyone must sometimes pay for compromise. I also must add that even through our debates, I respect your opinions and try to take them into consideration. I am not blind to the fact that the Confederate flag CAN be interpretted as a racist symbol, but I also see that so can any other flag. But one thing I must ask is why you think the south is so far behind the developed world?

P.S. I have just recently moved to a Northern State, so I guess we are both getting a taste of the other side (honestly can't wait to get back home, lol). But lets try to remember that no matter what our differences in the past were that we today are still a single nation and a single people, so lets try not to insult ourselves.

Posted by Trebor Yelam | January 18, 2008 11:59 PM

I can't say I'm surprised to see that Mike Huckabee's a defender of the iconography of slavery and white supremacy ...

Shouldn't that be "white supremacism"?

Posted by Mike | January 19, 2008 2:06 AM

Such is the marvelous flexibility of the english language that it can in fact be "white supremacy" without the accidental imputation that whites are actually supreme.

Posted by gerontion | January 19, 2008 7:56 AM