Skip to main content

The return of Confederacy in Modern Times

It seems like most wars end the same way: as a cease-fire, but the hatred continues. Recently there has been quite a significant amount news-coverage on bringing down the Confederate flags and eradicating the nation of any symbols related to the Confederacy; I couldn't agree more.

Most people need a refresher on the Civil War that occurred here.

"The American Civil War, known in the United States as simply the Civil War as well as by other sectional names, was a civil war fought from 1861 to 1865 to determine the survival of the Union or independence for the Confederacy. Of the 34 states that existed in January 1861, seven Southern slave states individually declared their secession from the United States and went on to form the Confederate States of America. The Confederacy, often simply called the South, grew to include eleven states, although they claimed thirteen states and additional western territories. The Confederacy was never recognized diplomatically by a foreign country. The states that remained loyal were known as the Union or the North.

The war had its origin in the fractious issue of slavery, especially the expansion of slavery into the western territories. After four years of combat, which left over 600,000 Union and Confederate soldiers dead and destroyed much of the South's infrastructure, the Confederacy collapsed and slavery was abolished. The process of Reconstruction then began, with the goal of restoring national unity and guaranteeing civil rights to freed slaves.

The American Civil War was one of the earliest true industrial wars. Railroads, the telegraph, steamships, and mass-produced weapons were employed extensively. The mobilization of civilian factories, mines, shipyards, banks, transportation and food supplies all foreshadowed the impact of industrialization in World War I. It remains the deadliest war in American history, resulting in the deaths of an estimated 750,000 soldiers and an undetermined number of civilian casualties. One estimate of the death toll is that ten percent of all Northern males 20–45 years old, and 30 percent of all Southern white males aged 18–40 died. From 1861 to 1865 about 620,000 soldiers lost their lives."

I've highlighted some of the key-points in the previous passage. When you look at it, the Civil War occurred because of Slavery. One group wanted slavery while the other wanted to abolish it.

You can't preach equality in the states yet remind the people constantly with symbols of inequality. Imagine going to Germany and seeing statues of Hitler everywhere. The lives of German national citizens of German descent weren't put into harms path by Adolf himself; lives were lost due to the aggressive nature in which he attacked the world. I'm going to speculate that most German citizens of German descent don't feel the kind of resentment towards Hitler like their Jewish neighbors do. If Germany wants to preach equality and freedom, they can't display Hitler's monuments...even though that's quite a big chunk of their history.

Here's another one for you in regards to the Confederate Flag:

"Designed by William Porcher Miles, the chairman of the Flag and Seal committee, a now-popular variant of the Confederate flag was rejected as the national flag in 1861. It was instead adopted as a battle flag by the Army of Northern Virginia under General Robert E. Lee. Despite never having historically represented the CSA as a country nor officially recognized as one of the national flags, it is commonly referred to as "the Confederate Flag" and has become a widely recognized symbol of the American south. It is also known as the rebel flag, Dixie flag, and Southern cross and is often incorrectly referred to as the "Stars and Bars". (The actual "Stars and Bars" is the first national flag, which used an entirely different design.) The self-declared Confederate exclave of Town Line, New York, lacking a genuine Confederate flag, flew a version of this flag prior to its 1946 vote to ceremonially rejoin the Union. As of the early 21st century, the "rebel flag" has become a highly divisive symbol in the United States."

If you've read the previous paragraphs you'll see that the "Confederate flag" is a clear statement of Slavery; it needs to come down. Going back to Germany again, the swastika was a sacred and auspicious symbol in Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism literally meaning a lucky or auspicious object, however it was a symbol of Jewish Genocide in Germany: it needed to come down regardless of how much it's "part of history."

If you want to have a tolerant world, you have to behave accordingly. I know that if this was occurring in another country, the US would be the first to voice their opinions on how this should not occur in the modern world and would NEVER occur in a nation like ours.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Beginner Java Exercise: Sentinel Values and Do-While Loops

In my previous post on while loops, we used a loop-continuation-condition to test the arguments. In this example, we'll loop at a sentinel-controlled loop. The sentinel value is a special input value that tests the condition within the while loop. To jump right to it, we'll test if an int variable is not equal to 0. The data != 0 within the while (data != 0) { ... } is the sentinel-controlled-condition. In the following example, we'll keep adding an integer to itself until the user enters 0. Once the user enters 0, the loop will break and the user will be displayed with the sum of all of the integers that he/she has entered. As you can see from the code above, the code is somewhat redundant. It asks the user to enter an integer twice: Once before the loop begins, and an x amount of times within the loop (until the user enters 0). A better approach would be through a do-while loop. In a do-while loop, you "do" something "while" the condition

Programming Language Concepts Questions/Answers Part 3

1. What is an associative array? - An unordered collection of data elements that are indexed by keys. 2. Each element of an associative array is a pair consisting of a _______ and a _______. - key and a value 3. True or False? Java supports associative arrays? - True. As a matter of fact, Perl, Python, Ruby, C++, C# and F# do too. 4. What are associative arrays called in Perl? - hashes 5. Why are associative arrays in Perl called hashes? - Because their elements are stored and retrieved with a hash function 6. What character does a hash in Perl begin with? % 7. In Perl, each key is a _____ and each value is a _______. - string - scalar 8. In Perl, subscripting is done using _______ and _______. - braces and keys 9. In Perl, how are elements removed from hashes? - using delete 10. In Perl, the ________ operator tests whether a particular value is a key in a hash. - exists 11. What are associative arrays called in Python? - dictionaries 12. What is a dif

Creating your own ArrayList in Java

Wanted to show that certain data structures in Java can be created by you. In this example, we'll go ahead and create an ArrayList data structure that has some of the methods that the built in ArrayList class has. We'll create 2 constructors: The default constructor that creates an ArrayList with a default size of 10. Constructor that allows an initial size to be passed to the array. We'll also create a number of methods: void add(Object x);  A method that allows you to place an Object at the end of the ArrayList. void add(int index, Object x);  A method that allows you to place a value at a given location. Object get(int index):  Allows you to retrieve a value of the arrayList array from a given location. int size();  Allows you to get the number of elements currently in the Arraylist. boolean isEmpty();  Tests to see if the Arraylist is empty. boolean isIn(Object x);  A method that sees if a particular object exist in the arrayList. int find(Object x);