Giant Confederate Flag To Fly Over Tampa

ABC News:

The i's are dotted, t's are crossed and a 139-foot flagpole is ready to fly the Stars and Bars over one of the busiest highway interchanges in Florida.

The Sons of Confederate Veterans in Tampa plan soon to raise what they claim is the world's largest Confederate flag on a private triangle of land tucked near where Interstates 75 and 4 meet. The flag measures 50 feet by 30 feet.

Read the whole story: ABC News

Comments

[Spifficus]

04:13 PM on 06/04/2008

Good for them. It will be a beautiful day for those who love to exercise their 1st Amendment rights, even though the flag has always represented hatred a bigotry.

What would make the day more beautiful is for good people to exercise their own 1st Amendment and protest the symbolic display of hatred and bigotry.

[surfbum3000]

12:03 PM on 06/04/2008

God bless the Confederate States of America. Deo Vindice.

[Quaoar]

11:34 PM on 06/03/2008

Interesting how the right wing gets their panties in a bunch over Rachael Ray's scarf yet they ignore (and even subtly encourage) obvious racist anti-American symbols like the Confederate Flag.

[MajorKong]

07:01 AM on 06/04/2008

If we could only talk the Palestinians and Mexicans into wearing Confederate Flag scarves we'd get to watch right-wing heads explode on a daily basis.

[McSameisthegame]

11:02 PM on 06/03/2008

Thank you!

[McSameisthegame]

09:15 PM on 06/03/2008

I lived in Tampa for 2 years-this is no surprise at all!! Flori-DUH is, north and west of Palm Beach, a yahoo redneck state-no different from Georgia or Alabama! Hopefully, one day we can have 2 Floridas-North and South----like the Carolinas and Dakotas.

[KBAR]

07:06 PM on 06/03/2008

West Virginia was the last slave state
admitted to the Union, annexed in 1863. If the western counties of Virginia stuck with the Confederacy, they'd be forced to free their
slaves by the Emancipation Proclamation. If they joined the Union,
they could keep them. There's just no argument here. You can't
say the Union fought to free the slaves when they were busy
admitting a new slave state at the same time, as well as having 1/2
million slaves in Union border states.

[Pyrrhus]

07:32 PM on 06/03/2008

They freed the slaves in the rebellious States- that's what the Emancipation Proclamation did.

How is that not fighting to free slaves?

I agree that Lincoln was in a tight spot vis a vis the Union border States. And I agree that freeing slaves was not the only goal of the war. However, it is a part of it, and it motivated many people to join, black and white. And because they were unable to free some slaves while freeing others doesn't mean they didn't want to free slaves.

Plus, when the war ended, what was the first thing Congress did? They freed the slaves everywhere. Sounds like an endorsement of abolition to me.

[MajorKong]

07:39 PM on 06/03/2008

Can you honestly say that there would not have been a civil war without slavery?

[ChicagoBob]

06:20 PM on 06/03/2008

!

It's a part of history, of reality.

Just look at the flag and be reminded how much better things are because they lost.

!

[choadius]

05:26 PM on 06/03/2008

I'm a Yankee in Pennsylvania and I don't think it's offensive. I don't live far from Gettysburg where Union and Confederate flags are everywhere, frequently on the same building, and no one seems sensitive about it. I wish it could be like that everywhere.

[Big0725]

06:18 PM on 06/03/2008

Oh, isn't ignorance bliss. Guess you never had a redneck chase after your because of your color. I've had them chase after me because I had a black friend. Were you ever called "nig*er lover" Choad? There's quite a difference between a historical display and what these mugwumps in Tampa are doing. That flag has, does and always will stand for one thing. Oppression.


If I knew what the exact location was, I'd check out if they got all the proper clearances from the FAA. By my calculations they are within 20,00 feet of an airport. The FAA is VERY particular about putting up obstructions around active runways.

[Redrover666]

10:15 PM on 06/03/2008

As a southerner living in Tennessee, I'll bet the farm, your ass is sitting in an efficiency apartment in San Fransisco and made that little story up between bites of pizza.

[ramal]

12:15 AM on 06/04/2008

Bigo725: The story you related could have happened anywhere in the nation by any type of person acting as your harrasser. If you had been attacked the very person who came to your aid could have had a Confederate Battle Flag flying from his front porch. Stereotypes are very easy to make and very hard to break. Oh and so far as the FAA goes, I wouldn't worry about it; any agency of the Federal Government has hundreds of bureaucrats who do nothing but sit around looking for just such infractions as you described.

[Pragman]

04:37 PM on 06/03/2008

People are far too prone to overreact when it comes to certain symbols. Here's a brilliant essay on just this issue: http://www.squeakywheelsblog/symbols

[Pyrrhus]

04:28 PM on 06/03/2008

I wonder how many "citizens' groups", "States' Righters", etc., will try to secede from the Union when Obama is elected.

I know it sounds silly, but it could be serious if enough of these right wing nuts get together and decide to stockpile guns and hole up, a la David Koresh, Ruby Ridge, etc. Obama's first few weeks in office could be defined by how he deals with this.

Anyone else agree, or am I being paranoid again?

[SkelDaddy]

06:22 PM on 06/03/2008

Make no mistake, Lee Atwater and the rest of his ilk deliberately kicked over the embers of the Civil War with the so-called "southern strategy;" in essence, that IS the southern strategy.

We have been either fighting the last battle of the First Civil War, or the first battle of the Second American Civil War ever since, depending on your point of view.

[Pyrrhus]

07:12 PM on 06/03/2008

I think you're right.

[guajiro]

09:31 PM on 06/03/2008

I'd say that Obama would be willing to sit down with the confederacy movement and discuss how it is that the Democratic Party has more in common with the confederacy movement than the republican party does. I would say that the corporate dominated agenda that permeates the republican party ideology is what has been killing the white, middle class, family in America and if those in the confederacy movement turn their noses up at protecting the last bastion of the middle class, at protecting a way of life that used to be common in America, then there won't be any syypathy for their riotous act if and when it happens.

[Pyrrhus]

10:04 PM on 06/03/2008

"Protecting a way of life that used ot be common in America."

like slavery? I'm confused.

[amanda85]

04:22 PM on 06/03/2008

...and these are the people who still don't understand where Rev. Wright's sermons come from...

[ObamaLover]

04:04 PM on 06/03/2008

if i have a right to be proud of my heritage, they also have that right.
God Bless America!

[TooLooze]

04:03 PM on 06/03/2008

Just what we need to look like bigger morons in Florida. I thought the Interstate was federal property, how can a county permit this?

[ewj1]

04:00 PM on 06/03/2008

Confederate Flag = Saddam Iraqi Flag

People who fly the Confederate Flag are America haters.

Partisan Ranger Act of 1862 is an act which encouraged and legalized terrorist activities against the North.

South stole property from people, in the south, that did not support its actions.
Beat, drowned, and killed Americans of African descent (slaved and freed) in a genocide manner before and during the Civil War.

Had a judicial system that was answerable only to Jefferson Davis

Fought the war to keep slaves:
Georgia's Governor Joseph E. Brown noted that "the country and the army are mainly dependent upon slave labor for support."

Confederate Flag = Saddam Iraqi Flag

People who fly the Confederate Flag are clearly America haters.

[sl26]

03:01 PM on 06/03/2008

Personally, I am offended by the Confederate flag. For whatever "cultural" reasons people give for flying it, it represents inequality and treason. If someone wants to get a tattoo or fly it on the back of their truck, that's fine with me. Putting it on a government building is an insult to the Constitution and this country.

[Redrover666]

10:09 PM on 06/03/2008

You were offended?!

Well, then for goodness sakes, we'd better make them take that flag down right away!!!

We don't want you feeling offended!

After all, liberals are all for freedom of expression, no matter how obnoxious it is... as long as it's a liberal expressing themselves. Those other people.... well, we all know they are just to stupid and don't deserve to express their hateful and OFFENSIVE stuff.

Liberalism: A philosophy founded on hypocrisy, appealing to the young, naive, and loud.