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Flags Quotes

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• A lot of folks are still demanding more evidence before they actually consider Iraq a threat. For example, France wants more evidence. And you know I’m thinking, the last time France wanted more evidence they rolled right through Paris with the German flag. – David Letterman • A thoughtful mind, when it sees a nation’s flag, sees not the flag, but the nation itself. – Henry Ward Beecher • A thoughtful mind, when it sees a Nation’s flag, sees not the flag only, but the Nation itself; and whatever may be its symbols, its insignia, he reads chiefly in the flag the Government, the principles, the truths, the history which belongs to the Nation that sets it forth. – Henry Ward Beecher • After I left D.C. to join Black Flag, I felt I was in a band. – Henry Rollins • America has an almost obscene infatuation with itself. Has there ever been a big, powerful country that is as patriotic as America? And patriotic in the tinniest way, with so much flag waving? You’d really think we were some poor little republic, and that if one person lost his religion for one hour, the whole thing would crumble. America is the real religion in this country. – Norman Mailer • America is the only country in the world where you can burn the flag but can’t tear the tag off the mattress. – Jackie Mason • And the word is capitalism. We are too mealy-mouthed. We fear the word capitalism is unpopular. So we talk about the free enterprise system and run to cover in the folds of the flag and talk about the American Way of Life. – Eric Johnston • And when we view a flag, which to the eye is beautiful, and to contemplate its rise and origin inspires a sensation of sublime delight, our national honor must unite with our interests to prevent injury to the one, or insult to the other. – Thomas Paine • Any power must be an enemy of mankind which enslaves the individual by power and by force, whether it arises under the Fascist or the Communist flag. All that is valuable in human society depends upon the opportunity for development accorded to the individual. – Albert Einstein • As Conservatives, We Don’t Care About The Color of Your Skin, We Care About The Color of Our Flag – Allen West • As long as I live, I will never forget that day 21 years ago when I raised my hand and took the oath of citizenship. Do you know how proud I was? I was so proud that I walked around with an American flag around my shoulders all day long. – Arnold Schwarzenegger • As National Socialists we see our program in our flag. In the red we see the social idea of the movement. – Adolf Hitler • Ashcroft vowed to] spare no effort to preserve the rights of all our citizens to pledge allegiance to the American flag. – John Ashcroft • At least in my country, we have come to accept the flags burning, but what we cannot accept is violence, burning of embassies and intimidations, and there is no excuse for that. – Daniel Fried

jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'flag', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '68', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_flag').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_flag img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); ); • Bastard Freedom waves Her fustian flag in mockery over slaves. – Thomas Moore • Behold a republic standing erect while empires all around are bowed beneath the weight of their own armaments – a republic whose flag is loved while other flags are only feared. – William Jennings Bryan • But didn’t you say you were satisfied with your life?” “Word games,” I dismissed. “Every army needs a flag. – Haruki Murakami • By the rude bridge that arched the flood, Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled, Here once the embattled farmers stood, And fired the shot heard round the world. – Ralph Waldo Emerson • By the way, I don’t mean to pick nits here, but Obama has just ordered the flag at half-mast for 10 days for Mandela. He did not order the flag at half-mast at all for Lady Thatcher. – Rush Limbaugh • Call it ‘nationalism’ when you affix a flag to your car, and leave the word ‘patriotism’ for your efforts to make this country a kinder, more egalitarian place, and one that is less dangerous to the rest of the world. – Barbara Ehrenreich • Can you imagine what Bush would say if someone like Hugo Chavez asked him for a little piece of land to install a military base, and he only wanted to plant a Venezuelan flag there?- Jose Saramago • Canadians are fond of a good disaster, especially if it has ice, water, or snow in it. You thought the national flag was about a leaf, didn’t you? Look harder. It’s where someone got axed in the snow. – Margaret Atwood • Democratic Rep. Charles Schumer of New York made a plea to Livingston, the incoming speaker. These new hearings, these new subpoenas wave a red flag that common sense and common wisdom are not welcome here, .. Mr. Livingston, this may be the first and most important task you will ever face as speaker. Lead us out of this abyss. – Charles Schumer • Donald Trump appears to be searching for an enemy. Is it flag burners, recounts, the press, the popular vote? Trump has gone after them all at times, using wild experience theories even as president-elect to do it. – Chuck Todd • Emblem: the carapace of the great crowned snail is painted with all the flags of the United Nations. – Mason Cooley • Even if only one guerilla cub survives the prolonged struggle, I am confident that he will raise the flag of Palestine overJerusalem… Jerusalem is destined to be the eternal capital of our sovereign, independent Palestinian state under the P.L.O. leadership. – Yasser Arafat • Even if the flag burning amendment does become law, the larger problem will remain of how to respectfully dispose of older, tattered flags. Well, fortunately the U.S. official Flag Code has a suggestion about this. “The flag, when it is in such a condition that it is no longer a fitting emblem of display, should be destroyed in a dignified way, preferably by burning.” Owwwwcchh. In response, the House Republicans are calling for tattered flags to be kept alive via a feeding tube. – Jon Stewart • Every man that tried to destroy the Government, every man that shot at the holy flag in heaven, every man that starved our soldiers… every man that wanted to burn the negro, every one that wanted to scatter yellow fever in the North, every man that opposed human liberty, that regarded the auction-block as an altar and the howling of the bloodhound as the music of the Union, every man who wept over the corpse of slavery, that thought lashes on the naked back were a legal tender for labour performed, every one willing to rob a mother of her child – every solitary one was a Democrat. – Robert Green Ingersoll • Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats. – H. L. Mencken • Every time a colony wants independence, the questions on the agenda are: a) how do you get the imperialists out, and b) what kind of society do you build? There are usually the bourgeois nationalists who say, ‘Let’s just change the flag and keep everything as it was.’ Then there are the revolutionaries who say, ‘Let’s change the property laws.’ It’s always a critical moment. – Ken Loach • Every time I hit a shot, I feel like I am shaking hands with the flag stick. – Moe Norman • Everything becomes agitated. Ideas quick-march into motion like battalions of a grand army to its legendary fighting ground, and the battle rages. Memories charge in, bright flags on high; the cavalry of metaphor deploys with a magnificent gallop; the artillery of logic rushes up with clattering wagons and cartridges; on imagination’s orders, sharpshooters sight and fire; forms and shapes and characters rear up; the paper is spread with ink – for the nightly labor begins and ends with torrents of this black water, as a battle opens and concludes with black powder.- Honore de Balzac • Fascism will come to America wrapped in a flag. – Sinclair Lewis • Flag desecration is not a constitutional issue for the courts. It is a political one that belongs to the people. – Larry Craig • Flag of the free heart’s hope and home! By angel hands to valour given, Thy stars have lit the welkin dome; And all thy hues were born in heaven. – Joseph Rodman Drake • Flags are bits of colored cloth used first to shrinkwrap people’s brains and then as ceremonial shrouds to bury the dead. – Arundhati Roy • For black folks, the Confederate flag represents the same thing that the Nazi flag represents to the Jews. There is absolutely no difference when we look at it. Now, white folks try to explain it away like, ‘Oh, it’s OK.’ But when you’re black, it is not OK. It represents oppression and murder. – Ken Page • For me, I’m just trying to be the best at what I do. I’ll wave an Asian American flag if I get that opportunity. I’m not hiding or trying to discredit my background or anything, I just haven’t had the opportunity. – Chad Hugo • Ford used to come to work in a big car with two Admiral’s flags, on each side of the car. His assistant would be there with his accordion, playing, Hail to the Chief. – Richard Widmark • Getting that audience approval is always a question mark, and it’s always that flag that flutters in front of you. – William Shatner • Growth at an exceptional rate is a red flag in banking. It is hard enough to manage an ordinary bank; to control a sprouting weed is well-nigh impossible. If loans are expanding too quickly, the lending officers have probably been saying ‘yes’ too frequently. – James Grant • Haul up the flag, you mourners, Not half-mast but all the way; The funeral is done and disbanded; The devil’s had the final say. – Karl Shapiro • Have not I myself known five hundred living soldiers sabred into crows’ meat for a piece of glazed cotton, which they call their flag; which had you sold it at any market-cross, would not have brought above three groschen? – Thomas Carlyle • He is a poor patriot whose patriotism does not enable him to understand how all men everywhere feel about their altars and their hearthstones, their flag and their fatherland. – Harry Emerson Fosdick • I always carried a small American flag red white and blue with me so people would know I was from America. – George Foreman • I am not the flag: not at all. I am but its shadow. – Franklin Knight Lane • I believe in America. I’m one of those silly flag wavers. – Paul Prudhomme • I believe our flag is more than just cloth and ink. It is a universally recognized symbol that stands for liberty, and freedom. It is the history of our nation, and it’s marked by the blood of those who died defending it. – John Thune • I believe that movements to suppress wrongs can be carried out under the protection of our flag. – Mother Jones • I came to the resolve that the attempt was not only worth trying, but should be tried in the very near future if we wanted at all to keep our flag flying; for I was sure as of my own existence that if another decade was allowed to pass without an endeavour of some kind or another to shake off an unjust yoke, the Irish people would sink into lethargy from which it would be impossible for any patriot . . . to arouse them . . . – James Stephens • I can train a monkey to wave an American flag. That does not make the monkey patriotic. – Scott Ritter • I can’t fly a flag for monogamy or whatever the opposite is; it depends on the person and on the situation. – Sting • I consider that 9/11 was the day when war was started against my own work and against myself. Even though we are not sure of the links, Iraq was one of the countries that did not lower its flags in mourning on 9/11. – Adam Michnik • I don’t judge others. I say if you feel good with what you’re doing, let your freak flag fly. – Sarah Jessica Parker • I don’t want the news to be patriotic. I don’t want to see flags on the lapels of the anchors. I don’t want any of that. – Aaron McGruder • I expect the Republicans will enjoy a large bounce out of their convention. They’re here wrapping themselves in the 9/11 flag, which I think is inappropriate in many ways, but it’s their choice. – Harold Ford, Jr. • I fear my enthusiasm flags when real work is demanded of me. – H. P. Lovecraft • I feel like I’m waving the flag for musicianship, trying to bring back bands that can play. – Jonathan Davis • I feel there should have been some recognition of the Spice Girls at this year’s 25th anniversary. We flew the flag for Britain around the globe in the 1990s and we achieved a hell of a lot. – Melanie Chisholm • I had an encyclopedia with a list of flags in the back, so I would look at all these flags of China and Liberia and England and Denmark and whatever, and I learned all the different flags and I tried to imagine what it would be like to be voyaging on some of these ships. – George R. R. Martin • I have a great respect for the flag, (but) if the government passed a law saying that I had to pledge allegiance to the flag, I don’t think I would do it. I’ve always felt that I lived in a country…where if I wanted to worship God as a Baptist, I could do so. If I were an atheist, I could be one. If I wanted to be a Catholic but was born a Jew, there’s no condemnation…from a government authority. – Jimmy Carter • I intend to talk about race during this election in the South because the Republicans have been talking about it since 1968 in order to divide us. And I’m going to bring us together. Because you know what? You know what? White folks in the South who drive pickup trucks with Confederate flag decals in the back ought to be voting with us and not them, because their kids don’t have health insurance either and their kids need better schools too. – Howard Dean • I learned this a long time ago. If you call a guy into your office and shut the door, if there’s media around, it sends up a red flag. I never wanted to embarrass a player. – Jim Leyland • I look for the entrepreneur to capture my attention. If you don’t come out with a great presentation, you’re dead. That’s a big red flag. – Robert Herjavec • I mean Black Flag happened. I was lucky. I don’t think I could have put together something with one percent of that oomph on my own. – Henry Rollins • I pledge allegiance to the Christian flag, and to the Savior, for whose Kingdom it stands, one Savior, crucified, risen, and coming again, with life and liberty for all who believe. – Dan Quayle • I prefer a man who will burn the flag and then wrap himself in the constitution to a man who will burn the constitution and then wrap himself in the flag. – Craig Washington • I savored my time on top of the podium by watching the American flag rise up out of the crowd as the anthem played, thinking about how every single second of training I’ve done was for this minute and how many people played a role in my achievement. – Hannah Kearney • I stand fearlessly for small dogs, the American Flag, motherhood and the Bible. That’s why people love me. – Art Linkletter • I still want to be the candidate for guys with Confederate flags in their pickup trucks.- Howard Dean • I think love is blind. I hate to use that cliched statement, but people, when they love somebody, they seem to be able to somehow to put aside red flags. – Eric Close • I would warn Orlando that you’re right in the way of some serious hurricanes, and I don’t think I’d be waving those flags [gay pride flags] in God’s face if I were you, This is not a message of hate , this is a message of redemption. But a condition like this will bring about the destruction of your nation. It’ll bring about terrorist bombs; it’ll bring earthquakes, tornadoes, and possibly a meteor. – Pat Robertson • I wrote the script of Patton. I had this very bizarre opening where he stands up in front of an American flag and gives this speech. Ultimately, I was fired. When the script was done, they hired another writer and that script was forgotten. – Francis Ford Coppola • I’d buy myself a cabin on the beach, I’d put some glue in my navel, and I’d stick a flag in there. Then I’d wait to see which way the wind was blowing. – Albert Camus • If a jerk burns the flag, America is not threatened, democracy is not under siege, freedom is not at risk. – Gary Ackerman • If I fall, pick up the flag, kiss it, and keep on going. – Omar Torrijos • If one, then, asks me the meaning of our flag, I say to him, It means just what Concord and Lexington meant, what Bunker Hill meant; it means the whole glorious Revolutionary War, which was, in short, the rising up of a valiant young people against an old tyranny, to establish the most momentous doctrine that the world had ever known – the right of men to their own selves and to their liberties. – Henry Ward Beecher • If the flag of an armed enemy of the U.S. is allowed to fly over government buildings, then it implies that slavery, or at least the threat of slavery, is sanctioned by that government and can still legally exist. – Amiri Baraka • If the test of patriotism comes only by reflexively falling into lockstep behind the leader whenever the flag is waved, then what we have is a formula for dictatorship, not democracy… But the American way is to criticize and debate openly, not to accept unthinkingly the doings of government officials of this or any other country. – Michael Parenti • If you buy the flag it’s yours to burn. – Jesse Ventura • If you start studying history closer, you’ll find that most all wars are based on false flag operations to get people – to convince the people that they’re under attack in some way so that they will support the wars. – Jesse Ventura • If you want a symbolic gesture, don’t burn the flag, wash it. – Norman Thomas • If you wave a flag, make it an American Flag. – Antonio Villaraigosa • I’m about as far from being a flag-waver – you won’t find any American flag pins in my drawer – as someone can be. – Tom Peters • I’m beginning to wonder if the symbol of the United States pretty soon isn’t going to be an ambassador with a flag under his arm climbing into an escape helicopter. – Ronald Reagan • Im in love with red. I think its such a passionate color. Every flag of every country pretty much has red it it. Its power, theres no fence sitting with red. Either you love it or you dont. I think its blood and strength and life. I do love red. I love all colors. Great shades of blue, you find them in nature. Theyre all magic. – Bryan Batt • I’m just always learning lines. I’ve learned to flag the really crucial scenes, and I start figuring them out and committing them to memory as soon as I get them. – Claire Danes • I’m proud of the U.S.A. We’ve done some amazing things. To wear our flag in the Olympics is an honor. – Shaun White • In prosperous times I have sometimes felt my fancy and powers of language flag, but adversity is to me at least a tonic and bracer. – Walter Scott • In the middle of the cavernous cargo hold was a simple, aluminum coffin with a small American flag draped over it. We were bringing another American soldier, just killed, home to his family and final resting place. The starkness of his coffin in the center of the hold, the silence except for the din of the engines, was a real time cold reminder of the consequences of decisions for which we Senators share responsibility. – John F. Kerry • In uniform patriotism can salute one flag only, embrace but the first circle of life – one’s own land and tribe. In war that is necessary, in peace it is not enough. – Bill Moyers • Invention flags, his brain goes muddy, And black despair succeeds brown study. – William Congreve • Israel’s capital will never again be a divided city, a city with a wall at its center, a city in which two flags fly. This city, will, in its entirety, absorb immigrants, welcome pilgrims and be the eternal capital of Israel forever. – Yitzhak Shamir • It is a dangerous day when we can take the cross out of the church more easily than the flag. No wonder it is hard for seekers to find God nowadays. – Shane Claiborne • It is said that peace is the basic tenet of all religion. Yet it is in the name of religion that there has been so much disturbance, bloodshed and persecution. It is indeed a pity that even at the close of the twentieth century we’ve had to witness such atrocities because of religion. Flying the flag of religion has always proved the easiest way to crush to nothingness human beings as well as the spirit of humanity. – Taslima Nasrin • It is said that the Queen has come to love the Commonwealth, partly because it supplies her with regular cheering crowds of flag-waving picaninnies; and one can imagine that Blair, twice victor abroad but enmired at home, is similarly seduced by foreign politeness. They say he is shortly off to the Congo. No doubt the AK47s will fall silent, and the pangas will stop their hacking of human flesh, and the tribal warriors will all break out in Watermelon smiles to see the big white chief touch down in his big white British taxpayer-funded bird. – Boris Johnson • It is the will of the American people that we have a right to protect our flag and this can only be accomplished by passing a Constitutional amendment. – Adrian Cronauer • I’ve got one Aussie flag on my car. It would be nice to have two. – Tom Lehman • Japanese-owned cargo ship Tsimtsum, flying Panamanian flag, sank July 2nd, 1977, in Pacific, four days out of Manila. Am in lifeboat. Pi Patel my name. Have some food, some water, but Bengal tiger a serious problem. Please advise family in Winnepeg, Canada. Any help very much appreciated. Thank you. – Yann Martel • Laws protecting the United States flag do not cut away at the freedom of speech guaranteed in the First Amendment… Congress made this position clear upon passage of the Flag Protection Act of 1989, which prohibited desecration of the flag. – Larry Craig • Let it be borne on the flag under which we rally in every exigency, that we have one country, one constitution, one destiny. – Daniel Webster • Liberals hate America, they hate “flag-wavers”, they hate abortion opponents, they hate all religions except Islam (post 9/11). Even Islamic terrorists don’t hate America like liberals do. They don’t have the energy. If they had that much energy, they’d have indoor plumbing by now. – Ann Coulter • Life is not fair. And you have to choose your battles, because there are some that you cannot win. If you’re passionate about something, then you should pick up your flag and run with it.- Bette Midler • Long live Germany. Long live Austria. Long live Argentina. These are the countries with which I have been most closely associated and I shall not forget them. I had to obey the rules of war and my flag. I am ready. – Adolf Eichmann • Men do not fight for flag or country, for the Marine Corps or glory or any other abstraction. They fight for one another. And if you came through this ordeal, you would age with dignity. – William Manchester • Most people are willing to take the Sermon on the Mount as a flag to sail under, but few will use it as a rudder by which to steer. – Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. • My dad has totally taken my Cat Stevens T-shirt, but it’s OK; I have his Black Flag one, and that’s amazing. – Zoe Kravitz • My daughter, who goes to Stuyvesant High School only blocks from the World Trade Center, thinks we should fly an American flag out our window. Definitely not, I say: The flag stands for jingoism and vengeance and war. – Katha Pollitt • My goal is people associate November with COPD awareness month as much as they notice October with breast cancer and pink. That’d be a great thing if it happened. The fact that COPD kills more people than breast cancer and diabetes put together should raise some red flags. – Danica Patrick • My major aim in writing is to set out flags and issue wake-up calls. – James Broughton • My version, of course, is not this flag-waving, let’s all get on the Jesus train and ride out of hell. I’m not that kind of guy. It’s an embrace that life is good, worth living and yeah, it’s not easy, but there are more pluses than minuses. – Billy Corgan • Nationalism is just racism with a flag. – Peter Joseph • Not another flag has such an errand, carrying everywhere, the world around, such hope for freedom such glorious tidings. – Henry Ward Beecher • Nowhere else in history has there ever been a flag that stands for the right to burn itself. This is the fractal of our flag. It stands for the right to destroy itself. – Ken Kesey • Obama’s a nice person, he’s very articulate this is what’s been used against him, but he couldn’t sell watermelons if it, you gave him the state troopers to flag down the traffic.- Dan Rather • Of all the names Polygamy went by (so as not to exasperate the Gentile population and even some of the wives of the members’ own bosoms any more than necessary) — such as Pluralism, Plural or Celestial Wedlock, the Principle, the Doctrine, the New Covenant and the Gospel Dispensation of the Meridian of Consummate Time — the latter was thought to be the least like waving a red flag in front of a bull. But as it was hard to remember and did not make instant or any other kind of sense, it was not much used. – Ardyth Kennelly • Of course, Mr. Hannity was outraged that any American would not cross her hand over her heart and repeat the hypocritical words, one nation. Whenever we come up on the Fourth of You Lie, I think of Frederick Douglas and his masterful oration, The meaning of the Fourth of July to the Negro. Pledge the flag? I think not! – Julianne Malveaux • Off with your hat, as the flag goes by! And let the heart have its say; you’re man enough for a tear in your eye that you will not wipe away. – Henry Cuyler Bunner • Oh, it’s home again and home again, America for me! I want a ship that’s westward bound to plough the rolling sea To the blessed land of Room Enough beyond the ocean bars, Where the air is full of sunlight and the flag is full of stars. – Henry Van Dyke • Oh, say can you see by the dawn’s early light What so proudly we hailed as the twilight’s last gleaming? Whose broad stripes and bright stars thru the perilous fight O’er the ramplarts we watched were so gallantly streaming? And the rocket’s red glare, the bombs bursting in air, Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there. Oh, say does that star-spangled banner yet wave O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave? – Francis Scott Key • On a royal birthday every house must fly a flag, or the owner would be dragged to a police station and be fined twenty-five rubles. – Mary Antin • On no further occasion present a flag or medal to an Indian. – Zebulon Pike • On the field of battle, the spoken word does not carry far enough; hence the institution of gongs and drums… banners and flags. Gongs and drums, banners and flags, are means whereby the ears and eyes of the host may be focused on one particular point. – Sun Tzu • On this question of principle, while actual suffering was yet afar off, they [the Colonies] raised their flag against a power to which, for purposes of foreign conquest and subjugation, Rome in the height of her glory is not to be compared,-a power which has dotted over the surface of the whole globe with her possessions and military posts, whose morning drum-beat, following the sun, and keeping company with the hours, circles the earth with one continuous and unbroken strain of the martial airs of England. – Daniel Webster • Ostentation is the signal flag of hypocrisy. – Edwin Hubbel Chapin • Our flag honors those who have fought to protect it, and is a reminder of the sacrifice of our nation’s founders and heroes. As the ultimate icon of America’s storied history, the Stars and Stripes represents the very best of this nation. – Joe Barton • Our flag is a proud flag, and it stands for liberty and civilization. Where it has once floated, there must be no return to tyranny. – Theodore Roosevelt • Our flag is not just one of many political points of view. Rather, the flag is a symbol of our national unity. – Adrian Cronauer • Our flag is read, white and blue, but our nation is a rainbown-red, yellow, brown, black and white – and we’re all precious in God’s sight. – Jesse Jackson • Our flag means all that our fathers meant in the Revolutionary War. It means all that the Declaration of Independence meant. It means justice. It means liberty. It means happiness…. Every color means liberty. Every thread means liberty. Every star and stripe means liberty. – Henry Ward Beecher • Our flag represents every American and it should not be hidden away as a result of property agreements. – Mike Fitzpatrick • Our great modern Republic. May those who seek the blessings of its institutions and the protection of its flag remember the obligations they impose. – Ulysses S. Grant • Our moneyed men have ruled us for the past thirty years. Under the flag of the slaveholder they hoped to destroy our liberty. – Denis Kearney • Patriotism consists not in waving the flag, but in striving that our country shall be righteous as well as strong.- James Bryce • Patriotism has become a mere national self assertion, a sentimentality of flag-cheering with no constructive duties. – H. G. Wells • Patriotism threatens free speech with death. It is infuriated by thoughtful hesitation, constructive criticism of our leaders and pleas for peace. It despises people of foreign birth. It has specifically blamed homosexuals, feminists and the American Civil Liberties Union. In other words, the American flag stands for intimidation, censorship, violence, bigotry, sexism, homophobia and shoving the Constitution through a paper shredder. Whom are we calling terrorists here? – Barbara Kingsolver • People from major labels were afraid to go to Black Flag gigs throughout most of the bands existence. They treated our gigs as something threatening. Im sure that it probably was. They probably had reasons to be scared. – Greg Ginn • Punishing desecration of the flag dilutes the very freedom that makes this emblem so revered. – William J. Brennan • Queen’s University flies the flag for the arts in Northern Ireland and beyond. – Liam Neeson • Red flag of the eating disorder: the muffin. Keep your eye on the ladies with the muffins… and sometimes I’ll just eat the muffin top. – Janeane Garofalo • Remember the hours after September 11th when we came together as one to answer the attack against our homeland. We drew strength when our firefighters ran upstairs and risked their lives so that others might live; when rescuers rushed into smoke and fire at the Pentagon; when the men and women of Flight 93 sacrificed themselves to save our nation’s Capitol; when flags were hanging from front porches all across America, and strangers became friends. It was the worst day we have ever seen, but it brought out the best in all of us. – John F. Kerry • Roger Ebert was the last mammoth alive who was holding the flag for real movies and moviemakers. – Werner Herzog • Saying you are a patriot does not make you one; wearing a flag pin does not in itself mean anything at all. – Viggo Mortensen • Since trade ignores national boundaries and the manufacturer insists on having the world as a market, the flag of his nation must follow him, and the doors of the nations which are closed against him must be battered down. Concessions obtained by financiers must be safeguarded by ministers of state, even if the sovereignty of unwilling nations be outraged in the process. Colonies must be obtained or planted, in order that no useful corner of the world may be overlooked or left unused. – Woodrow Wilson • So, friends, every day do something that won’t compute. Love the Lord. Love the world. Work for nothing. Take all that you have and be poor. Love someone who does not deserve it. Denounce the government and embrace the flag. Hope to live in that free republic for which it stands. -Wendell Berry • SST was formed to put out the first Black Flag record. Basically, there wasn’t anyone else to do it. I felt that what I was doing with Black Flag was very worthwhile, and I wanted to get it out there. – Greg Ginn • Sure I wave the American flag. Do you know a better flag to wave? Sure I love my country with all her faults. I’m not ashamed of that, never have been, never will be. – John Wayne • Sure I wave the American flag. Do you know a better flag to wave?- John Wayne • That one flag encircles us with its folds today, the unrivaled object of our loyal love. – Benjamin Harrison • The American flag is the most recognized symbol of freedom and democracy in the world. – Virginia Foxx • The American flag is the symbol of our freedom, national pride and history. – Mike Fitzpatrick • The American flag represents all of us and all the values we hold sacred. – Adrian Cronauer • The American flag, Old Glory, standing tall and flying free over American soil for 228 years is the symbol of our beloved country. It is recognized from near and afar, and many lives have been lost defending it. – Jeff Miller • The Bible represents a fundamental guidepost for millions of people on the planet, in much the same way the Koran, Torah, and Pali Canon offer guidance to people of other religions. If you and I could dig up documentation that contradicted the holy stories of Islamic belief, Judaic belief, Buddhist belief, pagan belief, should we do that? Should we wave a flag and tell the Buddhists that the Buddha did not come from a lotus blossom? Or that Jesus was not born of a literal virgin birth? Those who truly understand their faiths understand the stories are metaphorical. – Dan Brown • The few took advantage of the ignorant many. They pretended to have received messages from the Unknown. They stood between the helpless multitude and the gods. They were the carriers of flags of truce. At the court of heaven they presented the cause of man, and upon the labor of the deceived they lived. – Robert Green Ingersoll • The flag is a symbol of the fact that man is still a herd animal. – Albert Einstein • The flag is the embodiment, not of sentiment, but of history. – Woodrow Wilson • The flag of racialism which has been hoisted in Wolverhampton is beginning to look like the one that fluttered 25 years ago over Dachau and Belsen. – Tony Benn • The flag of the United States has not been created by rhetorical sentences in declarations of independence and in bills of rights. It has been created by the experience of a great people, and nothing is written upon it that has not been written by their life. It is the embodiment, not of a sentiment, but of a history. – Woodrow Wilson • The flag of your nation – wave it! Begin to separate your nation from whatever covenant your forefathers must have had. Break the covenant of corruption/ stealing/ killing/ destruction/ idolatry – break it right now! – T. B. Joshua • The flag represents all the values and the liberties Americans have and enjoy everyday. – Bill Shuster • The flag still stands for freedom and they can’t take that away.- Lee Greenwood • The flag that was the symbol of slavery on the high seas for a long time was not the Confederate battle flag, it was sadly the Stars and Stripes. – Alan Keyes • The headline is the ‘ticket on the meat.’ Use it to flag down readers who are prospects for the kind of product you are advertising. – David Ogilvy • The less a statesman amounts to, the more he loves the flag. – Kin Hubbard • The meteor flag of England Shall yet terrific burn, Till danger’s troubled night depart, And the star of peace return. – Thomas Campbell • The Minutemen were seen as more of an art thing than Black Flag, although I didn’t see them that way. It confused people when we put out Saccharine Trust, too. – Greg Ginn • The mother condemned for a witch and burnt with dry wood, and her children gazing on;The hounded slave that flags in the race and leans by the fence, blowing and covered with sweat, The twinges that sting like needles his legs and neck, The murderous buckshot and the bullets, All these I feel or am. – Walt Whitman • The Palestinian state is within our grasp. Soon the Palestinian flag will fly on the walls, the minarets and the cathedrals of Jerusalem. – Yasser Arafat • The people are urged to be patriotic … by sacrificing their own children. Patriotism requires allegience to the flag, which means obedience and readiness to kill father, mother, brother, sister. – Emma Goldman • The Royal family to me are not England, and they are not the flag. – Steven Morrissey • The stuff that I got in trouble for, the casting for The Godfather or the flag scene in Patton, was the stuff that was remembered, and was considered the good work. – Francis Ford Coppola • The things that the flag stands for were created by the experiences of a great people. Everything that it stands for was written by their lives. The flag is the embodiment, not of sentiment, but of history. – Woodrow Wilson • The trouble with America is that when the dollar only earns 6 percent over here, then it gets restless and goes overseas to get 100 percent. Then the flag follows the dollar and the soldiers follow the flag. – Smedley Butler • The victory march will continue until the Palestinian flag flies in Jerusalem and in all of Palestine. – Yasser Arafat • The writer is delegated to declare and to celebrate man’s proven capacity for greatness of heart and spirit—for gallantry in defeat, for courage, compassion and love. In the endless war against weakness and despair, these are the bright rally flags of hope and of emulation. I hold that a writer who does not believe in the perfectibility of man has no dedication nor any membership in literature. – John Steinbeck • Then finally I said, ‘Okay, well, I want to know all the details. I want creative input. I want to be consulted. I want to know what they’re doing and who’s involved. And I want to see the space.’ So they took me to see it, and then I realized it was major! All these red flags on the Rue de Rivoli with my name on them right by the Louvre! – Kate Moss • There are some pop songs I hate but I can’t get them out of my head. Our songs also have the standard pop format: Verse, chorus, verse, chorus, solo, bad solo. All in all, I think we sound like The Knack and the Bay City Rollers being molested by Black Flag and Black Sabbath. – Kurt Cobain • There are those who wrap themselves in flags and blow the tinny trumpet of patriotism as a means of fooling the people. – George Galloway • There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn’t an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag…We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language…and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people. – Theodore Roosevelt • There is a strong tendency in the United States to rally round the flag and their troops, no matter how mistaken the war. – George McGovern • There is hopeful symbolism in the fact that flags do not wave in a vacuum. – Arthur C. Clarke • There is much more to being a patriot and a citizen than reciting the pledge or raising a flag. – Jesse Ventura • There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people. – Howard Zinn • There is no rule in the pink-triangle guide to coming out that you must wear a rainbow flag cap and organise a full band parade. – Beth Ditto • There’s a certain elitism that has crept into the attitudes of some in journalism, and it played out perfectly over the issue of these little [American flag] lapel pins. – Brit Hume • There’s a principle here and I’m hoping the court will uphold this principle so that we can finally go back and have every American want to stand up, face the flag, place their hand over their heart and pledge to one nation, indivisible, not divided by religion, with liberty and justice for all. – Michael Newdow • There’s an enduring American compulsion to be on the side of the angels. Expediency alone has never been an adequate American reason for doing anything. When actions are judged, they go before the bar of God, where Mom and the Flag closely flank His presence. – Jonathan Raban • There’s one beneficial effect of going to Moscow. You come home waving the American flag with all your might. – Mary Tyler Moore • This flag .. is raised not without costs, .. without the costs of having struggled for many years, without the costs of having lost so many lives in order to have a free and sovereign and good Afghanistan. – Hamid Karzai • To secure respect to a neutral flag requires a naval force organized and ready to vindicate it from insult or aggression. – George Washington • To survive in peace and harmony, united and strong, we must have one people, one nation, one flag. – Pauline Hanson • Tonight the American flag floats from yonder hill or Molly Stark sleeps a widow. – John Stark • Tony Stewart — Broke out a new chassis at Pocono Raceway last June and raced to the checkered flag for his first victory of 2003; has finished among the top 10 in all but two of his 10 career starts here; Turn one is probably the easiest of the three, but you’ve got the challenge of having to downshift in the middle of the corner, .. You go down the backstretch and into the tunnel turn and it’s basically one lane. – Tony Stewart • Tree of Liberty: A tree set up by the people, hung with flags and devices, and crowned with a cap of liberty. The Americans of the United States planted poplars and other trees during the war of independence, “as symbols of growing freedom.” The Jacobins in Paris planted their first tree of liberty in 1790. The symbols used in France to decorate their trees of liberty were tricoloured ribbons, circles to indicate unity, triangles to signify equality, and a cap of liberty. Trees of liberty were planted by the Italians in the revolution of 1848. – E. Cobham Brewer • Under this flag may our youth find new inspiration for loyalty to Canada; for a patriotism based not on any mean or narrow nationalism, but on the deep and equal pride that all Canadians will feel for every part of this good land. – Lester B. Pearson • Unfortunately a Constitutional amendment that would have empowered Congress to make desecration of the United States flag illegal failed to pass by one vote. – Kenny Marchant • United States, your banner wears Two emblems–one of fame; Alas! the other that it bears Reminds us of your shame. Your banner’s constellation types White freedom with its stars, But what’s the meaning of the stripes? They mean your negroes’ scars. – Thomas Campbell • Using a metaphor in front of a man as unimaginative as Ridcully was like a red flag to a bu… was like putting something very annoying in front of someone who was annoyed by it. – Terry Pratchett • War is the spectacular and bloody projection of our everyday living. We precipitate war out of our daily lives; and without a transformation in ourselves, there are bound to be national and racial antagonisms, the childish quarreling over ideologies, the multiplication of soldiers, the saluting of flags, and all the many brutalities that go to create organized murder. – Jiddu Krishnamurti • We Americans are the most lavish and showiest and most luxury loving people on the earth; and at our masthead we fly one true and honest symbol, the gaudiest flag the world has ever seen. – Mark Twain • We are raised to honor all the wrong explorers and discoverers thieves planting flags, murderers carrying crosses. Let us at last praise the colonizers of dreams. – Peter S. Beagle • We are to regard existence as a raid or great adventure; it is to be judged, therefore, not by what calamities it encounters, but by what flag it follows and what high town it assaults. The most dangerous thing in the world is to be alive; one is always in danger of one’s life. But anyone who shrinks from that is a traitor to the great scheme and experiment of being. – Gilbert K. Chesterton • We cannot allow the American flag to be shot at anywhere on earth if we are to retain our respect and prestige – Barry Goldwater • We considered ourselves Jordanian until the Jews returned to Jerusalem. Then all of the sudden we were Palestinians – they removed the star from the Jordanian flag and all at once we had a Palestinian flag. – Walid Shoebat • We do not consecrate the flag by punishing its desecration, for in doing so, we dilute the freedom this cherished emblem represents. – William J. Brennan • We have but one flag, one country; let us stand together. We may differ in color, but not in sentiment. – Nathan Bedford Forrest • We have room in this country for but one flag, the Stars and Stripes! – Theodore Roosevelt • We have two American flags always: one for the rich and one for the poor. When the rich fly it means that things are under control; when the poor fly it means danger, revolution, anarchy. – Henry Miller • We identify the flag with almost everything we hold dear on earth, peace, security, liberty, our family, our friends, our home. . .But when we look at our flag and behold it emblazoned with all our rights we must remember that it is equally a symbol of our duties. Every glory that we associate with it is the result of duty done. – Calvin Coolidge • We join ourselves to no party that does not carry the flag and I keep step to the music of the Union. – Rufus Choate • Well, start waving and yelling, because it is the so-called Oxford comma and it is a lot more dangerous than its exclusive, ivory-tower moniker might suggest. There are people who embrace the Oxford comma and people who don’t, and I’ll just say this: never get between these people when drink has been taken. Oh, the Oxford comma. Here, in case you don’t know what it is yet, is the perennial example, as espoused by Harold Ross: “The flag is red, white, and blue.” So what do you think of it? Are you for or against it? Do you hover in between? – Lynne Truss • What does one plant who plants a tree? One plants the friend of sun and sky; One plants the flag of breezes free; The shaft of beauty towering high. – Henry Cuyler Bunner • What if the invasion forces will not leave our lands? What if the U.S. forces and others stay in our beloved lands? What if their companies and embassy headquarters will continue to exist with the American flags hoisted on them? Will you be silent? Will you overlook this? – Muqtada al Sadr • What I’m trying to do is to at least raise a flag to the blinding light of technology. – Godfrey Reggio • When a war ends, what does that look like exactly? do the cells in the body stop detonating themselves? does the orphanage stop screaming for its mother? when the sand in the desert has been melted down to glass and our reflection is not something we can stand to look at does the white flag make for a perfect blindfold? yesterday i was told a story about this little girl in Iraq, six-years-old, who cannot fall asleep because when she does she dreams of nothing but the day she watched her dog eat her neighbor’s corpse. if you told her war is over do you think she can sleep? – Andrea Gibson • When facism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the American flag. – Sinclair Lewis • When fascism comes to the United States it will be wrapped in the American flag and will claim the name of 100-percent Americanism – Sinclair Lewis • When Freedom from her mountain height Unfurled her standard to the air, She tore the azure robe of night, And set the stars of glory there. – Joseph Rodman Drake • When Freedom from her mountain-height Unfurled her standard to the air, She tore the azure robe of night, And set the stars of glory there. She mingled with its gorgeous dyes The milky baldric of the skies, And striped its pure, celestial white With streakings of the morning light. Flag of the free heart’s hope and home! By angel hands to valour given! Thy stars have lit the welkin dome, And all thy hues were born in heaven. Forever float that standard sheet! Where breathes the foe but falls before us, With Freedom’s soil beneath our feet, And Freedom’s banner streaming o’er us? – Joseph Rodman Drake • When I see the American flag, I go, ‘Oh my God, you’re insulting me.’ – Janeane Garofalo • When I was in college there was a girls’ flag football league. The girls were extremely aggressive. – Lynn Swann • When somebody say no, it’s a red flag to a bull to me. – Duncan Roy • When the wheel was accepted as part of the national flag, it was surely implied that the spinning wheel would hum in every household. – Mahatma Gandhi • When you go to plant a flag on the visiting team’s field, it’s a form of taunting, .. What message are you sending when you spear it into the turf of your defeated opponent?. – Brad Davis • When you make love you’re using up energy; and afterwards you feel happy and don’t give a damn for anything. They can’t bear you to feel like that. They want you to be bursting with energy all the time. All this marching up and down and cheering and waving flags is simply sex gone sour. If you’re happy inside yourself, why should you get excited about Big Brother and the Three-Year Plans and the Two Minutes Hate and all the rest of their bloody rot? – George Orwell • While the rest of the country waves the flag of Americana, we understand we are not part of that. We don’t owe America anything – America owes us. – Al Sharpton • Words are some of the most powerful and important things I know….Language is the tool of love and the weapon of hatred. It’s the bright red warning flag of danger–and the stone foundation of diplomacy and peace. – Ani DiFranco • Worrying that banning flag desecration would inhibit free speech reveals a misunderstanding of the flag’s fundamental nature. – Adrian Cronauer • Ye mariners of England! That guard our native seas; Whose flag has braved a thousand years, The battle and the breeze! – Thomas Campbell • Yes, I’m a patriotic person. For these people who disgrace the American way and burn our flag and do all of these things… I say, don’t live here and disgrace my country. Go live in the Middle East and see how you like it. – Payne Stewart • Yonder are the Hessians. They were bought for seven pounds and tenpence a man. Are you worth more? Prove it. Tonight the American flag floats from yonder hill or Molly Stark sleeps a widow! – John Stark • You are the generation that will reach the sea and hoist the flag of Palestine over Tel Aviv. – Yasser Arafat • You are the makers of the flag and it is well that you glory in the making. – Franklin Knight Lane • You cannot have companies where many of the largest ones lose money indefinitely without someone finally waving the white flag, and IBM is the most recent example of that. – Kevin B. Rollins • You don’t defend national sovereignty with flags, cheap election rhetoric, and advertising campaigns. – Stephen Harper • You have to eat before you train. Otherwise, that really intense training, after about 40 minutes you start to flag. – Hugh Jackman • You the devil in drag. You can burn your cross, Well, I’ll burn your flag. – Ice Cube • You’re a grand old flag! You’re a high-flying flag, And forever in peace may you wave. You’re the emblem of the land I love, The home of the free and the brave. Ev’ry heart beats true ‘Neath the Red, White and Blue,’ Where there’s never a boast or brag. But should auld acquaintance be forgot, Keep your eye on the grand old flag. – George M. Cohan

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equitiesstocks · 5 years ago

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newssplashy · 6 years ago

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Opinion: The decline of the civil war re-enactor

GETTYSBURG, Pa. — The sun rose on the second day of the Battle of Gettysburg, 2018, to reveal a line of cars parked behind the Union Army’s tents.

It was an annoying historical anachronism for the brigade’s commander, Ted Brennan, 49, who was brushing his teeth with a horsehair toothbrush.

“We try to be as authentic as we can without getting dysentery,” Brennan said of his unit, several of whom were frying bacon and brewing coffee over a fire. They were camped in a sea of canvas tents that housed many of the 6,000 re-enactors at the event. Beyond the spectator stands and hot dog stalls, the Confederates were camped just out of sight.

The 155th Gettysburg anniversary re-enactment, which was held over the second weekend in July, was a chance for dedicated hobbyists to blast away at each other with antique rifles and rekindle old friendships over campfire-cooked meals. Spectators paid $40 to watch nearly a dozen mock skirmishes over the course of four days, and there was an old-timey ball Saturday night. An Abraham Lincoln impersonator was on hand to pose for photos.

It was also a snapshot of a hobby in decline. Gettysburg is among the biggest re-enactments of the year, and it still draws thousands to the sweltering Pennsylvania countryside in the middle of summer.

But that’s nothing compared with the re-enactments of the 1980s and 1990s, when tens of thousands would turn out. In 1998, at the 135th anniversary of Gettysburg, there were an estimated 30,000 re-enactors and 50,000 spectators.

Many of today’s re-enactors were born as the last Civil War veterans were dying, and grew up amid the celebrations and re-enactments of the centennial that lasted from 1961 to 1965. But the heyday of re-enacting was the ‘90s, during another moment of national fascination with the Civil War.

In 1990, Ken Burns’ “Civil War” documentary pulled in nearly 139 million viewers (huge ratings for a PBS program), and James McPherson’s 900-plus page academic book, “The Battle Cry of Freedom,” published in 1988, spent months on the best-seller lists.

Interest in the battlefield experiences of Civil War soldiers was fueled by cinematic hits, like the 1989 Oscar-winning film “Glory” and “Gettysburg,” a 1993 release that was more than four hours long. (Hundreds of re-enactors were cast as extras.)

But in the past decade or so, the crowds at large scale re-enactments have dwindled. Longtime hobbyists are aging out and retiring — soldiers in their 50s and 60s filled much of the camp at Gettysburg — and younger people aren’t marching onto mock battlefields in nearly the same numbers.

Enthusiasts cite a number of factors. Video games are to blame, some grouse, while others attribute diminishing interest to the rising expense of gear. A reproduction Civil War rifle alone can cost more than $1,000.

But many are more introspective about it. In the 1980s and ‘90s, “the whole tone of the country was different,” said Thomas Downes, 68, a retired machinist from Cleveland, who has been re-enacting for the Union side for 38 years.

“Up until the last five or 10 years, the social causes of the war did not come into what we do,” he said. “We were paying tribute to the fighting man.”

“It wasn’t ‘I’m racist and I want to glorify slavery,'” he said. “Nobody really thought a lot about the social reasons of why the South went to war. It was just these poor guys who were underfed, undermanned, underequipped, fighting valiantly to the last man, until they couldn’t stand anymore.”

Brad Keefer, a 61-year-old corporal in the Union re-enactor ranks and a professor of history at Kent State University, said: “Re-enactors look at the war as a four-year period between 1861 and 1865 in which you can cut out all the stuff leading up to the war and very much ignore everything that happened afterward.”

“We don’t get tangled up in all the messy bits, which are the causes and outcomes, which are complicated and uncomfortable,” he said.

It’s a vision of history placed in narrow context. The military details are meticulously researched and re-created down to the stitching of a uniform, but the broader social and political realities of the Civil War — the profound struggle over slavery and emancipation, racism and equality, citizenship and disenfranchisement — are largely confined to the margins.

Still, those issues can’t be ignored. After a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, where demonstrators wore swastikas and carried Confederate flags, and where an anti-racist protester named Heather Heyer was killed, at least two smaller Civil War re-enactments were canceled. That the battle flag Confederate re-enactors carry is still used as a means of intimidation makes it hard to defend as a purely historical object, independent of its racist implications.

“You build a comfort zone for the hobby to function,” Keefer said. Pointing to the Confederate camp, he said: “And give them the benefit of the doubt that they weren’t at Charlottesville.”

There are many ways to be a Civil War re-enactor.

It’s not just the battlefield roles. At Gettysburg this year, there were also nurses and surgeons, nuns and chaplains, and 1860s-era government volunteers.

Steven Mark Diatz, a retired librarian from Alexandria, Virginia, had appointed himself the role of war correspondent for the New York Herald, one of the largest newspapers at the time and, in Diatz’s words, a “sensationalist rag.”

“I was always intrigued by how the war was brought home,” Diatz, 63, said. “Plus I can go anywhere on the battlefield as long as I stay out of the way of the firing.”

Diatz spends much of his free time portraying other historical characters, including soldiers in the American Revolution, the Spanish-American War and World War II. After Gettysburg, he planned to shave off his mustache and spend the next weekend dressed as a Royal Navy officer at a Jane Austen festival in Louisville, Kentucky.

Katie Mullins, who was portraying a volunteer for a long-extinct government organization, said that technically, she and her fellow volunteers on the U.S. Sanitary Commission shouldn’t be at the re-enactment at all. “It’s a bit of an anachronism that we’re here now during the course of the battle because the Sanitary Commission arrived afterward,” she said. “But nobody does a re-enactment of a battle’s aftermath.”

Despite the obsession with historical detail, there were plenty of re-enactors who brought air mattresses, propane burners, flashlights and jugs of Gatorade. Some camped out with entire families in tow.

There are many hard-core re-enactors — the kind of people who want to know what it felt like to march 25 miles in disintegrating shoes, sleep in ditches and subsist on hardtack and rancid salt pork — who eschew Gettysburg as a mainstream event. But at least one Union unit spent several days marching along highway shoulders to get to this year’s re-enactment, retracing the movements of the Army of the Potomac.

Another unit traveled from Germany, and hundreds of cavalry re-enactors showed up with their horses.

One cavalryman, Nathaniel Williams Sr., said he grew up riding in southern Virginia but didn’t learn that his ancestors served in the 2nd U.S. Colored Cavalry, a Union regiment of free blacks and liberated slaves, until later in life.

“I had no idea we were in the Civil War,” said Williams, his horse grazing in a field behind his tent. “It was never taught to me. It opened up my eyes to a lot of things.”

Williams first organized a re-enacting group about 20 years ago, recruiting relatives, friends and members of his church. This year, about two dozen people in his unit made the trip. They were the only black unit there.

Black re-enactors form a small faction within the overall hobby. But groups who portray U.S. Colored Troops — the designation the Army gave to ranks of all-black regiments — tend to re-enact battles where black troops played key roles in the fighting, including the Battle of Fort Wagner in South Carolina, depicted in “Glory.”

Army commanders initially made black regiments perform menial labor and didn’t regularly order them into combat until after Gettysburg.

“Even though we didn’t fight here, we make it a family event,” said Williams, sitting alongside his wife, Angela, who was wearing period dress. “We’ve got three days, we can spend time together and have fun.”

The actual battle of Gettysburg was some of the most savage fighting in the Civil War, but no one wants to die early in a re-enactment. If you catch an imaginary bullet in the beginning of a skirmish, you miss out on most of the action. (For the cavalry, dying in mock battle is even rarer because it means falling out of the saddle.)

But casualties inevitably mount. Sometimes, there’s just “no way around it,” Keefer said, not long after going down under intense fire from the Confederate lines.

“We were getting killed there,” he said. “There were just too many Rebs shooting.”

Once down, some of the wounded took the opportunity to pull out their smartphones and take photos and videos. A crew of bucket-carrying women made their way around the battlefield, topping off the canteens of both the living and the dead.

Re-enactors shoot gunpowder, not bullets, but serious accidents do happen from time to time. Usually it’s heatstroke and heart troubles that pose the greatest threat, a problem that has grown as the average participant has aged. A Friday evening skirmish at this year’s event was interrupted when an infantryman collapsed in the sun. Modern medics carted him off the field.

The fighting was over when the buglers sounded “Taps.” The soldiers placed their caps over their hearts, shook hands and congratulated each other on a good fight.

Union and Confederate re-enactors alike turned out to a ball Saturday night, as did women in hoop skirts, bonnets and period jewelry. Music was provided by the 2nd South Carolina String Band, which played several hours worth of popular mid-1800s ballads and waltzes with a decidedly pro-Southern slant, ignoring requests for “Yankee Doodle” in favor of “Dixie.” (The band’s website boasts that “all five of their recordings have been listed in the Top 30 selections on Amazon.com’s Civil War Music page for the past 5 years running.”)

Back in the army camps, re-enactors pulled out bottles of whiskey and moonshine, traded stories and rehashed historical debates.

“We’ll talk about McClellan moving too slowly on the peninsula and then we’ll talk about Joe getting divorced,” said Frank Beachem, a 59-year-old from Manassas, Virginia, and onetime mall Santa who works in government procurement.

At one camp, a seasoned re-enactor tested a new recruit’s recipe for hardtack, the tooth-cracking bread that formed the backbone of a soldier’s field rations. “If it’s edible, it’s not real hardtack,” he said. As he bit into a piece — barely edible, passably accurate — the sound of a banjo and fiddle wafted over.

Historical flourishes and stacked rifles aside, the camp at a Civil War re-enactment resembles a Boy Scout jamboree. The slice of rustic outdoor life is one of the hobby’s big draws.

“I tell people it’s a chance to have a guys’ weekend out camping, just doing it a little more old school than people are used to,” said Christopher Wesp, 34, a relatively recent recruit and former Marine who served three tours in Afghanistan and Iraq.

“From my first event, the camaraderie that I felt and started building was very close and comparable to what it was like being in the service,” he said. “That’s the thing I missed most about being in the Marine Corps.”

Politically, Civil War re-enactors tend to be conservative, perhaps a reflection of the demographics of a hobby that skews heavily white and middle-aged. But it’s not a monolith. One Union infantryman, a 20-year-old college student, described himself as a Marxist and card-carrying member of the International Workers of the World.

Most re-enactors have strong preferences, but few stick exclusively to one side, instead switching into Confederate or Union garb if the opposing ranks are too thin.

Still, some Union re-enactors said they chose to wear blue at least in part because of their political convictions or because they wouldn’t fight against the U.S. flag. The Confederates were more likely to say family history had a role in how they picked their side.

“We portray Confederates because they were the underdogs and they had all the odds stacked against them,” said Bill Adams, known as “Pork Pie,” an engineer from southern Michigan who has been playing a Confederate soldier for the past 35 years. “The politics that caused the war, we don’t even care about.”

Some Confederate re-enactors, including Kenny Glass, 46, an emergency medical technician from Selma, Alabama, said that slavery had little to do with Southern secession, an assertion that is at odds with historical scholarship.

“I’ve been called a racist, a bigot, everything you could think of in the world when people find out I do this,” Glass said. “I tell them they need to learn their history. It wasn’t fought over slavery. It was fought over Southern rights, that’s just the way I see it.”

Don King, a Confederate re-enactor who grew up in North Carolina and now lives near Sykesville, Maryland, disagreed. The South fought the war because of slavery, he said, but “you can’t fight a battle with only one side.”

“Think of what a ‘Star Wars’ movie would be without the Empire,” he said. “Just because you’re acting on one side doesn’t mean you embrace their historical beliefs.”

Part of the problem is that the historical beliefs have modern day implications. Scrutiny of Civil War re-enacting from outside — as well as introspection and concern about its future on the inside — reached a fever pitch after the violence last year in Charlottesville, Virginia. But it built along with protests in many cities that demanded the removal of Confederate statues and monuments from state grounds, spurred by the murder of nine black worshippers in South Charleston, South Carolina, by white supremacist Dylann Roof.

Recently, threats against re-enactors have disrupted several events. In October, police in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia discovered a suspicious device — possibly a pipe bomb — amid the concession stands at the annual Cedar Creek re-enactment. A month later, a threat was made against participants in a parade that commemorates Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.

Those incidents cast a shadow over Gettysburg this year. Word trickled out that Cedar Creek had been canceled entirely, and while the reason was not stated, many thought it was obvious.

“Who would mess with Civil War re-enactors?” said Downes, the retired machinist from Cleveland. “We’re just a bunch of nut cases running around playing cowboys and Indians.”

After a skirmish Saturday afternoon, Downes was in a melancholic mood. He said that problems with the heat were forcing him to consider retirement.

Lighting his pipe in the shade of the general’s tent, he reminisced on nearly four decades of re-enacting, saying it provided an outlet and escape. “This is so fulfilling,” he said. “It carries over.”

“Historically, I’m way too old to be doing anything like this,” he said. “A lot of the people I re-enacted with have either crossed over the river are just too old.”

His wife tagged along for years, portraying a camp washerwoman, but she finally caught what Downes called “a severe case of common sense” about a decade ago. “I’ve got friends whose knees are gone, who’ve got bad backs. You just keep coming out for the friendships,” he said.

Like other re-enacting units, his group finds itself back in Gettysburg and other battlefield towns with some regularity. They occasionally set up camp on National Park Service land to serve as a living history exhibit, and they also meet up during the winter to practice drills.

Afterward, the troops may head to a local bar for a cold beer, and they’ve learned to leave their costumes on. Without their Union insignia, “no women are coming up and asking to take their picture with us,” Keefer said with a wry smile.

“Without these uniforms,” he said, “we’re just a bunch of middle-aged schlubs.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

source http://www.newssplashy.com/2018/07/opinion-decline-of-civil-war-re-enactor_30.html

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