"My own personal feeling is that the Confederate flag no longer has a place flying any time, anywhere in our great nation," says Dick 'Gebhardt', D-MO. Well, my own personal feeling is that dickheads like Gebhardt need to keep their fucking hands off my pay check. But something tells me that won't happen.

It's bad enough that there is a huge historical revisionist movement out there, but now idiots like Gebhardt and former Georgia Governor, Roy Barnes are using the issues for political gain. The big issue now is Confederate flags, but later it will turn to Confederate monuments, holidays, and possibly even burial sites.

Despite what they would have you believe, Lincoln was no saint, and the Civil War was not about slavery. While slavery was a divisive issue, it was not at the core of what the Civil War was about. Southern states fled the union because they felt under-represented in Congress, and oppressed by the industrious northern states. Northern states had the power in Washington, and southern issues were not being properly addressed. Slavery obviously was an issue, mainly because the southern economy depended on it. However, it was this polarization and industry vs. farming mentality that was responsible for the secession. It was also largely what caused the Commonwealth of Virginia to separate into two states.

The southern states naturally felt that seceding from the Union and forming their own nation, the Confederate States of America, was the right thing to do. After all, this was pretty much what the American Colonies did to England less than 100 years earlier. Lincoln however, vowed to preserve the Union, and invaded the southern states. In doing so, he plunged the nation into a Civil War that cost over 600,000 American lives.

Whether or not the Civil War was about slavery is still debated even today. To many northerners, it was about slavery. However to most southerners, it was about defending your land from an oppressive government.

This is best illustrated by the fact that very few southerners owned slaves. Some figures put it at 45,000 southern planters owning more than half of the nation's slave population. Given this fact, it is difficult to believe that a call to arms simply to preserve slavery would have been answered by very many people.

While Lincoln's role in freeing the slaves was instrumental, it is not as grandiose as many scholars would lead you to believe. What Lincoln did was use the issue of slavery to help end the war. His motivations were not moral so much as they were calculated. In fact, Lincoln didn't really free the slaves so much as they freed themselves. When Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, he only freed Confederate slaves. Those slaves owned by slave states that remained in the Union were deliberately left out of the Proclamation.

The Proclamation was largely symbolic for two reasons. First, Congress had already written legislation prior to the 1863 Proclamation that 'freed' the Confederate slaves. However, neither the Emancipation Proclamation, nor the Congressional legislation legally applied due to the fact that the Confederacy was an independent sovereignty, and technically no longer part of the Union. The laws applied to the Confederacy no more than the U.S. Constitution applies to Canada.

What Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation did do, was it motivated southern slaves to flee to the north, and wreaked havoc on the south. Slaves that fled were either offered protection in northern free states, or by the U.S. Army that was invading the Confederate lands.

What many people don't understand is that even today, many southerners identify with their Confederate roots and southern heritage. Removal of their emblems and monuments is a slap in the face to every southern soldier that died defending his land. These weren't slave owners protecting the interest of slavery, they were Virginians, Carolinians, and Mississippians defending their land from an attacking northern army.

One of today's modern arguments against symbols like the Confederate flag, is that it is a symbol of hatred and racism. This is due in part to ignorant fools in the KKK and other racist organizations who commonly soil the image of the Confederacy to spread their racist ideas and hatred. However, they also use the Bible and a cross, but I don't hear anyone asking to ban those.

Meanwhile, politicians like Dick Gebhardt continue to use issues like this to keep people divided. They propagate lies and ideas of ignorant hatred in search of political gain. By fostering the Us vs. Them mentality, they are able to cash in politically at the ballot box. They use the same play book for Black vs. White, Rich vs. Poor, and Haves vs. Have Nots. Consider that the Civil War was 140 years ago, and politicians are still bringing it up, even today, all the while saying, 'Vote for me'.