Thursday, September 29, 2016

Levin's Commenters -- Liars or Ignoramuses?

Maybe all of them aren't lying. Maybe they honestly don't know. Maybe they are assuming... buying into what they've been taught by the education system and the popular culture.

I think Mr. James Harrigan doesn't know the truth -- but his attitude says he wouldn't care if he did know. Posted at Levin's blog:

==========
James Harrigan says:   
September 16, 2016

I don’t think it is hard. Anyone flying the Confederate flag is engaging in an intentional act of racist provocation – for the simple reason that everyone knows that virtually all black people (and most whites) regard it as a racist symbol. Saying “that is not what it means to me” is incoherent and disingenuous – everyone knows how the CBF will be interpreted. To say “I don’t care how other people interpret it” is a racist statement. So, can someone engage in a conscious and deliberate act of racist provocation and somehow not be a racist? Of course not.
==========

Saying “that is not what it means to me” is incoherent and disingenuous – everyone knows how the CBF will be interpreted.

This is ludicrous. If someone says "that's not what it means to me" -- and it actually doesn't mean that to them, the statement is neither incoherent or disingenuous. It's simply a statement of fact. Moreover, the flag will be interpreted differently by different people. To imagine that everyone all thinks alike on this issue -- that they are all mental clones -- is risible.

We're not all mental clones. Even people who support the flag and its display can have different beliefs about it. If someone interprets differently than I do, that does not negate or override my view of it.

Claiming that To say “I don’t care how other people interpret it” is a racist statement, is equally ridiculous. It simply means they can interpret it however they wish, but that has no bearing -- and shouldn't have -- on my interpretation of it.

To claim that flying the flag is a "conscious and deliberate act of racist provocation" is one of the clearest examples of substituting one's perceptions for other people's intentions that I've seen in a while.

He claims it is an intentional act of racism, "...for the simple reason that everyone knows that virtually all black people (and most whites) regard it as a racist symbol..."

How does everyone know this? More to the point, how does HE know it?  Does he gaze into a crystal ball? Call Miss Cleo? Throw chicken bones? Because customary, accepted,  reliable methods of determining information do not find that virtually all blacks and most whites regard the flag as a racist symbol.

Less than a month after the Charleston shooting, a CNN poll found that 57% of Americans see the flag as a symbol of Southern pride, not racism. 75% of whites , and 28% of blacks do not see the flag as a symbol of racism. In other words, 25% of whites see it as a racist symbol, which cannot even begin to be "most" whites.  And the 72% of blacks who see the flag as a racist symbol is a large portion, sure enough -- but it doesn't begin to be "vitually all" blacks.

In 2011 a poll by Pew Research measured the reaction people have to seeing the Confederate battle flag. The majority (58%) say they have no reaction at all. 41% of African Americans have a negative reaction to the flag, while 29% of whites do. Still, a larger number of blacks (45%) have no reaction rather than a negative reaction to the flag. How can "virtually all" blacks regard it as a racist symbol when 45% have no reaction to it at all?

In 2000, a Gallup poll found that only 28% of Americans say that the Confederate flag is a symbol of racism, while 59% of Americans say the flag is more a symbol of Southern pride. The slightly lower positive number in the  CNN poll (57%) comes after a decade of a vitriolic anti-flag campaign by the NAACP and fellow travelers.

I once had an online conversation with somebody who purported to know how blacks felt about the flag. I asked him how he knew what they felt -- had talked to them, had he asked them, and if so, how many. His reply was, "Well, how would YOU feel?"

Since liberals, leftists and assorted progressives consider their feelings about something to be knowledge about it, perhaps his "feelings" tell Mr. Harrigan everyone knows that virtually all black people (and most whites) regard it as a racist symbol. And the same "source" -- his emotions -- provides him with the information that "Anyone flying the Confederate flag is engaging in an intentional act of racist provocation."

But he's as wrong about this,just as as he is about how "virtually all blacks" and "most whites" regard the Confederate flag, and he's wrong to claim that flying it is a conscious and deliberate act of racist provocation. That makes him the perfect commenter for Levin's blog.

48 comments:

  1. So what type of magic or voodoo do you and the Virginia Flaggers use to wipe the flag clean of its racial ties to the confederacy?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Your poll data only proves that most people in this country still buy into the notion of the Lost Cause...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. 57% of Americans oppose your pro-racist stance on the meaning of that flag and that counts as "most people in the country" Corey? Really?
      (sighs dramatically) You're not in class when you post here dude, you can lay off the Common Core math.

      Delete
    2. Carl cannot read. I said those 57% who don't see the flag as racist still buy into the Lost Cause Theory of the war...the same a Connie. Hence that is why they don't believe slavery had anything to do with the war.

      I don't teach Math so Common Core Math doesn't apply to me...but thanks for playing.

      Delete
    3. How do you know what that 57% buys into, Corey? There was no such question in the poll. So, how do you know? Did you consult a crystal ball? Call Miss Cleo? Throw chicken bones? Did you call them all on the phone and ask them? No. So, when did you get omniscient, so that you just magically know things? ... so that you know what millions of people you don't know, have never met, nave never talked to, believe?

      To say I don't believe slavery had anything to do with the war is a lie, Corey. I've explained that enough times, and you've seen it enough, to know that. But you just hafta lie. Why? What does it do for you? (Link to anything where I've said I don't believe slavery had anything to do with the war. You can't, because I haven't said that, because I don't believe it.

      Delete
    4. Common Core is more than math, and in the past, you glowingly defended it.

      Delete
  3. Corey, only indoctrinated leftists imagine that the flag's ties to the Confederacy are "racial." The CBF was the flag of an army that fought to defend its new nation, its people and their communities, from an army of invaders.

    The poll data indicate that Americans, who increasingly cannot think for themselves, have been unduly influenced by history-rewriters since WWII and especially since the civil rights era.

    I have noted that a lot of you critics of the Confederacy (most "academics" but not all) live lily white (racist) lives, and your criticism of heritage supporters indicate that you believe if you talk the talk, you don't have to walk the walk.

    It's the same with more modern racial circumstances. If you talk about how terrible things are in the black community, and blacks bear no responsibility for it, it's whitey's fault (it's the Confederate flag's fault) and it's whitey's responsibility to fix it (i.e., remove the flag), well, your "anti-racist" credentials are established and you don't have to actually DO anything to fix it, just call for empty gestures that won't change a thing in the black community.

    That's a lot of what the polling data indicate.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It wasn't just the flag of the army, that confederate battle flag emblem was included in the 2nd and 3rd National flag and the designer of the 2nd national flag said this about the design...

      "As a people we are fighting to maintain the heavenly ordained supremacy of the white man over the inferior or colored race." "As a national emblem, it (the confederate flag)is significant of our higher cause, the cause of a superior race." William T. Thomson

      No, the data shows that people have NOT be influence by history writers since WWII. It shows that 57% of these people still hold onto the debunked history of the Lost Cause.

      I have to laugh at your attempt to make us out as racists because of where we live and what you think the racial make up of that area is based on the government numbers...a government you don't trust to tell you the truth on any other subject. Nice try.

      Delete
    2. "the designer of the 2nd national flag said this about the design..."

      William T. Thompson did not design the Second National flag or any other Confederate flag.

      Delete
    3. Exactly, B.R. The Confederate Congress designed that flag. Thomson was a flippin' newspaper editor in Savannah (and was a damnyankee earlier in his life).

      You can laugh all you want to, Corey. Y'all are a sterling example of people who believe if you talk the talk, you don't have to walk the walk.

      Delete
    4. "It wasn't just the flag of the army, that confederate battle flag emblem was included in the 2nd and 3rd National flag and the designer of the 2nd national flag said this about the design...

      "As a people we are fighting to maintain the heavenly ordained supremacy of the white man over the inferior or colored race." "As a national emblem, it (the confederate flag)is significant of our higher cause, the cause of a superior race." William T. Thomson

      Actually Corey you are wrong on a number of levels.
      First of all, the guy's name was Thompson, not Thomson.
      Secondly, though Thompson did submit a design to the flag and seal committee, his original design was altered by said committee (widths of the battle flag and the length of the flag itself, as well as the width of the X and size of the stars) so in a way though he did put forth the original design, the final design was actually approved by the committee of flag and seal in the Confederate Congress.

      Finally, the very first use of the Stainless Banner was to cover the coffin a a Confederate solider - General T.J. "Stonewall" Jackson....you know that same Jackson who defied Virginia State Laws against educating black slaves and opened a Sunday School for the children of blacks both slaves and free men of color.

      So much for being a "white man's flag" huh?

      Delete
    5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Tappan_Thompson

      Delete
    6. However, if you read it you also find that Thompson was not a part of the committee which designed the flags and seal, the House, or the Senate. He was not even in the same city as those making these decisions, and had to receive news of the approved flags via dispatch. While we are told by this book that they approved a flag like what Thompson wrote of and had been submitted a design by him, it is clear they were considering a great number of design options and trying different options with modifying them.

      The flag approved by the Senate was not in actuality what he had suggested, but rather a field of white with a blue stripe which makes sense since the Confederacy drew inspiration for their flag from the Scottish flag, the St. Andrew’s Cross, which is blue and white, and they were trying to move away from the appearance of the United States flag. The House decided they didn’t like the appearance of the blue stripe so removed it, and the flag as it was made was of different dimensions than what Thompson had talked about due to inconsistencies with the revisions between the Senate and House. Revisions that were done without Thompson being anywhere around.

      http://takebackourhistory.com/index.php/2015/07/12/william-t-thompson-did-not-design-the-confederate-flag/

      Delete
    7. Corey: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Tappan_Thompson

      Looks like someone has added a note in that article:
      "In 1863, as the editor of the Morning News he proposed a design that would ultimately become the Confederacy's second national flag [dubious – discuss]..."

      There is no evidence that Thompson submitted a design to the Confederate Congress (I'm not even sure he made that claim) - only that he promoted a particular design in his newspaper.

      He is not mentioned in the Journal of the Confederate Congress and no one else associated with the Confederate government or any other contemporary mentions his name in connection with the design of the Second National flag.

      I've seen some lengthy obituaries of Thompson (he was an editor, so he made friends in the editor world) and there's no mention of designing a flag - any flag.

      Several historians have written books and articles about Confederate flags. The only one that is giving Thompson credit for designing the Second Nat'l is James Loewen - a notorious Confederate basher.

      Delete
    8. Ah, geez, BR. You're usin' facts. Facts Corey won't like. Now he'll have to scurry around and try to find a safe space...

      Delete
  4. Levin posts a comment at his blog about this... Andy recounted an incident several years ago when wooden plaques commemorating historical black figures were affixed to the barrier around a Confederate monument in Richmond. Andy's recall about the heritage response to this is faulty (which I may blog about) but what's interesting is Levin's reply:

    I thought that was an excellent example of how Confederate monuments can be utilized to highlight competing memories of the past, etc. In fact, it is a more powerful reminder of Denmark Vesey’s story compared to establishing a monument in his memory on the same spot.

    Levin's criteria for calling something "excellent" and "powerful" is determined by how well it insults the Confederacy and how insolent it is to heritage folks, and how well it trashes both. Isn't that pathetic, to have such contempt for your fellow human beings? Isn't that why racism is so bad -- because it is contemptuous of fellow human beings? But for left-libs, apparently if you remove the racial factor, hate and insult for others is a-okay...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You just don't want to tell the whole story at those monuments...you want them to tell the part of the story that they were valiant warriors fighting an oppressive government. You don't want people who see those statues in Richmond to understand that they were in fact the real oppressors...the slaveholders who were fighting to est. a new slave holding republic in the south...free from the abolitionist whims from up North or DC.

      Delete
    2. Corey, we don't want people like you to make lies about those monuments, and the Confederacy, mainstream. We don't want you brainwashing upcoming generations. We don't want you marginalizing and dehumanizing white Southerners, past and present, because none of them -- slaveowners or not -- are any worse than you or your fellow travelers trying to drum up hate for them.

      Delete
    3. Corey, we are telling the parts of the whole story you anti-racist jackasses leave out. Those valiant warriors were fighting an barbaric invading army. If there had been no military invasion, no fight would have been necessary to establish a new republic in the South, slaveholding or otherwise. It would have been done peacefully and democratically.

      What you all don't want is us pointing out that the South was no worse than those who came down here and made war on her people. This is why the north's/USA's sins are minimized, papered over, swept under the rug, perfumed, gussied up and, after all that, basically ignored so virtually all attention can be focused on the South and slavery.

      North and South both benefitted immeasurably from slavery; the primary difference was that the slaves were domiciled in the South because northerners hated black people and wanted to keep their presence in their states to an absolute minimum...

      Tell me this, Corey. If the national "expansion" debates and dialog were about keeping slavery out of the western territories, why did so many who were against "expansion" also argue for keeping FREE BLACKS out?

      Delete
    4. Oh look, Connie still thinks she can do history...lol

      Delete
    5. It's history as much as the incomplete crap you try to palm off as history....

      Delete
  5. The regressive ignoramus James Harrigan says:

    "I don’t think it is hard. Anyone flying the Confederate flag is engaging in an intentional act of racist provocation – for the simple reason that everyone knows that virtually all black people (and most whites) regard it as a racist symbol. Saying “that is not what it means to me” is incoherent and disingenuous – everyone knows how the CBF will be interpreted. To say “I don’t care how other people interpret it” is a racist statement. So, can someone engage in a conscious and deliberate act of racist provocation and somehow not be a racist? Of course not."

    My reply:
    Really? Humm....how does this fit into that particular limited worldview of yours?
    http://southernfriedcommonsense.blogspot.com/2015/12/the-epic-failure-of-hate-true-faces-of.html

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Carl, that post could cause delicate snowflakes some serious safe-space time... BTW, love the image in the header....

      Delete
    2. So many of the images in your post as so full of misleading lies its laughable...but you keep thinking your way if it makes you sleep better at night Carl.

      Have you written any more young kid porn lately?

      Delete
    3. Corey, you have to prove the images are misleading and untrue. You can't.

      Did you read what Carl wrote?

      Delete
    4. I can prove they are misleading and untrue. There are images of HK on Carl's page...he is very misleading in his support for the flag. Most of the people there are likely to have not read a single book on the war or its aftermath.

      What book have you recently read on the War Connie? Do tell.

      Delete
    5. That's not proof, Corey. It's your opinion -- your unproven and mistaken opinion.

      H.K. is not misleading in his support of the flag ... at least, not any more misleading than you are in your opposition to it.

      You know, or should know by now, that the issues surrounding the flag, are not confined to a war 150 years ago ... many are firmly rooted in today, and those are actually more pertinent to the war on Confederate heritage.

      Corey, why are you asking me what I've read recently about the war? You purport to know all kinds of other things without benefit of having been told.

      Now go fly a kite.

      Yes, I am censoring your lies.

      Delete
    6. Corey, have you read Carl's fanfic? HAVE YOU READ IT?

      Delete
    7. LOL I still can't believe that even after the EPIC butt-kicking and personal embarrassment that dear Professor Simpleton got as a result of that particular propaganda piece that any of your sort still throw it around. (FYI I went back earlier and saw that he's done some really fine editing on the comment section of that post, you know deleting all the 100+ comments that tore him a new one, LOL!)
      I suppose I must give you points for consistency on your lies, if not for intelligence in expressing something that has been debunked soundly on several occasions.

      Still, I think Corey-boy here might have just inspired a detailed blog post on the subject. It also could not come at a better time. The 20th anniversary of that particular show is coming up next weekend and I was already working on one blog post about the show, its great creators and fans, and how they impacted my life in a very good way.

      Perhaps a secondary blog post concerning the infamous "Simpson Spindive" (as some fanfiction writers still call it on certain message boards)in detail will prove most educational....not to mention add a bit of humor into what is going to be an excellent month of outstanding posts at my blog.

      Please stay tuned folks. Oh and thanks Polly Graff for your excellent responses, saved me the trouble of directly addressing Corey's lame attempt at being witty. Hee hee.

      Delete
    8. HK is misleading in his support of the flag because he believes that blacks fought for the Confederacy. That isn't opinion..its facts. But thanks for playing.

      Delete
    9. You cannot remove the flag from its past 150 years ago or 50 years ago. I know you will try, but you will, as always like your Va. Flagger friends, fail.

      Delete
    10. Have I read Carl's Fanfic...enough to know I should not be reading kiddy porn.

      Delete
    11. Wasn't trying to be witty Carl...

      Delete
    12. If you've read it, you know you are lying. It's not any kind of porn, kiddy or otherwise... It doesn't even meet the definition of erotica.

      This is the definition of pornography:

      printed or visual material containing the explicit description or display of sexual organs or activity, intended to stimulate erotic rather than aesthetic or emotional feelings. --Powered by Oxford Dictionaries

      Erotica is: explicitly sexual literature or art (dictionary.com).

      If Carl's story were a movie, it would be rated PG, not R and certainly not X.

      So you KNOW you are lying. How do you sleep at night? How do you look yourself in the mirror. Oh, wait, I know. For one's personal lapses in ethics and integrity to bother one, one has to care deeply about truth. You have too much hate for that. Your joy is to lie about people you hate because you think they haven't had your indoctrinated beliefs about history implanted in their brains. You get your jollies by hating people, and trying to induce others to hate the people you hate.

      You are devious and unethical, and if you are that way in the pursuit of people you hate on the Internet, what must you be like in real life? What kind of unscrupulous little minions are you striving to create at your school and send forth into the world to wreak havoc on the lives of people they don't even know....

      Delete
    13. You weren't trying to be witty ... therefore you were willingly and knowingly bore false witness in the form of a false question... All you anti-racist jackasses have no desire to be ethical, do you?

      Delete
    14. The ignorant regressive high school "educator" writes:
      "You cannot remove the flag from its past 150 years ago or 50 years ago."

      Well, if you understood a damn thing about the people you attack you'd know that we are doing nothing of the sort. We are well aware of the negative history associated, though unlike you we do not consider that a deal-breaker when it comes to respecting it. Nor do we only associate a tiny portion of the flag's history with the overall meaning.

      This is how you and the other Hysterians (or as Connie calls y'all "Floggers") view that flag's history:
      1861 - 1865 War "for slavery"
      1865 - 1957 (Vacuum...vacuum....couple of displays by aged veterans...vacuum...vacuum...)
      1957 - 1968 Segregation, Dixiecrats, resistance to civil rights (ect.)
      1968 - 2016 (Vacuum...vacuum...Dukes of Hazzard...vacuum...vacuum..."Revisionist history" and black Confederates...vacuum...Flaggers.

      The difference is that we demand a whole unedited account of that flag as a living symbol, an account we feel entitled to as the proud descendants of the men who carried it into battle. A whole and detailed account exonerates that flag of the charges you and yours accuse it of.

      Delete
    15. " What kind of unscrupulous little minions are you striving to create at your school and send forth into the world to wreak havoc on the lives of people they don't even know...."

      Connie, the answer to that question can be seen on virtually every major American college campus in the form of SJWs who care more for political activism and perpetual victimhood rather than academic excellence.

      Delete
    16. I would go back and read a little of them again but I don't want my browser to show I have been searching for kiddy porn...but thanks.

      Delete
    17. Corey, your browser wouldn't show that -- unless you're actually searching for kiddy porn. But if you do that, Carl's stories won't come up in the search index....

      Delete
    18. He already hangs out at Simpson's poor excuse of a blog....you remember the place that once harbored no less than two men who were themselves charged with child pornography.

      Corey can keep making that claim about one of my fanfiction stories all he wants. Nobody takes it seriously and the handful that did were all made laughingstocks when they tried to spread that little false narrative. :)

      Delete
    19. And you will note Carl, that there are no images of those men with Simpson or myself on the internet attending events together and as soon as those detail were known all ties were broken with those individuals. Unlike Susan and the Va. Flaggers.

      Delete
    20. There were no ties for Susan and the Va Flaggers to break, Corey.

      Delete
    21. Sorry but when did Susan and the VA Flaggers ever deal with or have ties with Simpson's child pornographers? I mean unless one or both of them wrote comments about the VA Flaggers that I am unaware of. But still that is a very long stretch even for you guys to make connections.

      Delete
  6. PEW Research

    That poll was taken again in 2015 (about a month after the Charleston shooting). The results- 55% of blacks say they have either a positive reaction or no reaction to the CBF (same as 2011). Negative reaction went up a whopping 1% from 41 to 42.

    "Reactions to Seeing Confederate Flag Little Changed From 2011"
    http://www.people-press.org/2015/08/05/across-racial-lines-more-say-nation-needs-to-make-changes-to-achieve-racial-equality/8-4-2015_04a/

    ReplyDelete
  7. Thanks, BR.

    Clickable link from BR's comment:

    "Reactions to Seeing Confederate Flag Little Changed From 2011"

    Amazing. Despite the war of words on Confederate heritage, the numbers remain basically the same. Of course, people like Mr. Harrigan and his heritage-hating buddies will be less than impressed with this TRUTH. They prefer lies that fit with their views....

    ReplyDelete
  8. Corey, if you want your comments to show here, stop lying. Consider yourself warned. Comment with lies in them will not be allowed.

    ReplyDelete
  9. So who makes you the decider of truth?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I'm not "the decider of truth." But I do know lies from anti-racist jackasses and heritage haters when I see them.

      Delete