Angry Historical Prospective: We ended up letting the South off too easy.

A disclaimer: I am, in the contexts of this discussion, a yankee. I was born in Michigan and can trace family roots to John Brown. And I'm proud of both of these facts.

Why is the Confederate Flag still allowed to fly? It's the flag that was flown by a treasonous segment of our population, who thought that they could break off from this country because they didn't like the results of one political election. Never mind the Fucking Fact that they practically owned the White house before that point, Lincoln threatened to destroy all that the South held dear, just by sitting there and being President. They forced the hand of the federal government to act against them and their barbaric institution. I know why the flag is still flown, we didn't break the soul of hatred in the South for long enough. We let their leaders off too easily, instead of being given a traitor's trial and burial (like all of the criminals in WW2). During Reconstruction, actual progress was being made towards equality. Having an equal chance, Black Americans were able to express their will and start to build for themselves a place in this country. Terrorist groups, like the KKK, threatened this, which is why federal troops were needed, because some stupid southern bastards couldn't pull their heads out of their asses and the hate they had developed for a generation. Jefferson said he trembled when he reflects that God is just in regards to slavery, and this punishment should have been visited full circle upon the controlling classes in the south, those that sought to betray their country.

Instead the beginnings of the shift of the Parties placed the Republicans in league with big business, which had no use for the radical wing that sought equality, so it allowed troops to be removed from the South before a generation could grow up knowing equality and simply allowing the anger and hatred that had been bottled up by un-hung traitors to be vented into the system, bringing us the era of Jim Crow.

Gods Help them.

I'm sick and tired of hearing religious extremists attack those who feel that they can live their lives without religion, as if my very presence, even though I keep my mouth shut about it, causes them to be oppressed. They try to legislate the government to become a christian one, because they feel that they have most of the country standing behind them. The sad thing is, they might be right. Right now, with things as they are, they can probably legislate religion into the primary law of the land (as long as the corporations are free to rape and pillage as they please). But you know what my response to that idea is: France. Europe has long dealt with peoples that have an overabundance of faith and a dearth of compassion, and they have revolted in many small and large ways against it. The teacher is a joke, the law is a joke; this is one of the things that percolates in the young, a revolt on some level against authority. For some, this rebellion is wild, unfocused, and ultimately pointless. But for some, they start looking for answers, still the young child asking "Why" and because is no longer an answer that they can accept. If you place God as the Order, then children will rebel, maybe not all, but perhaps enough to change things. And when your order offers no answers but because drawn from a piece of over-translated fiction, they will reject it. I see it already among the people I knew at college, among many of them, religion was a joke, something to be laughed at and laughed off. But start attacking them, and they will start attacking back. And they will bite. Hard. And you will begin to remove God from public life. It's a cycle, a vicious one. The words change, but the melody remains the same. This country was founded by people looking to get away from religious oppression, and time has removed those oppressions from Europe and installed them here.

Christians: Stop attacking science. It just encourages science to attack you. You book is a castle built of cards, with little holding together except inertia. If you try to place God in the holes of theory, you are forced to defend those holes, even while science closes them. Try to insert your God, and he will be crushed and ground up as science seals up the holes. Stop declaring yourself morally superior to those around you. You're human. No better then the rest of us, and perhaps worse, because you think you have an out for your actions, the chance to be a bastard and still be saved because you believe in Jesus. I live knowing that my life will be judged only by the actions that I take, and that might be all my life means.

One anecdote to close out this rant: I spent some time with my grandfather over the holidays, and relished in the rabidly liberal conversations that were exchanged. But I noticed one difference, I had no respect for religion, just because it was a man's religion, while my grandfather tried to judge a man on broader terms then that. This one difference is, I think, because of the preaching and preening I've grown up with. A minister on a TV or a pulpit starts at huckster, and has to redeem himself from that point with me. It's not a hard trail, but that is the way I view things.