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George Allen's Flag Desecration
As the Washington Post reports today, the already bitter Virginia Senate race between incumbent George Allen and Democrat Jim Webb is getting downright nasty. Watching his lead dwindle and his 2008 presidential hopes put in peril, the Vietnam-era freeloader Allen is attacking the patriotism of the Vietnam war hero Webb over the former Navy Secretary's refusal to join Allen in backing a constitutional amendment banning flag desecration. Ironically, it is the Confederate Flag George Allen seems most concerned about it.
As Perrspectives detailed back in June of 2005 ("Confederacy of Dunces"), George Allen has been a Confederate flag waving romantic with a deep fixation for the antebellum South throughout his public career:
Allen, who in 2005 co-sponsored a resolution apologizing for the Senate's past use of the filibuster against anti-lynching legislation in the 1920's, displayed a Confederate flag and a noose at his home. While governor of Virginia, Allen declared "Confederate Heritage Month" and branded the NAACP an "extremist group."
In April 2006, Ryan Lizza of the New Republic ("George Allen's Race Problem") provided a devastating portrait of Allen's love affair with Confederate symbols dating to his youth. Before Allen donned his cowboy boots as an "authentic" Virginia Senator, as a Southern California teenager he sported a Confederate flag lapel, "plastered the school with Confederate flags," and may well have painted racist graffiti. As Lizza details, Malibu George Allen became a Dixie lover by choice, suggesting some deep-seated need to express a rebellious identity at best or perhaps some much more profound social pathology at worst.
Unsurprisingly, Allen's lifelong passion for Confederate symbols of secession and treason hasn't stopped him from lambasting the patriotism of Jim Webb. Webb graduated first in his Marine officer class at Quantico and won two Purple Hearts, two Bronze Stars, a Navy Cross and the Silver Star Medal during his stints in Vietnam. Predictably, Allen's campaign manager Dick Wadhams used the flag amendment issue to give Webb the Max Cleland treatment:
"James H. Webb Jr. continues to demonstrate he is totally beholden to the liberal Washington senators who dragged him across the line in the Democratic primary. By announcing his opposition to the flag protection amendment, James H. Webb Jr. puts himself firmly on the side of John Kerry, Ted Kennedy and Charles Schumer."
The Webb campaign was quick to respond, blasting Allen as a Vietnam no-show while Webb was fighting it out in the jungles near Danang:
"Jim Webb served and fought for our flag and what it stands for, while George Felix Allen Jr. chose to cut and run. While Jim Webb and others of George Felix Allen Jr.'s generation were fighting for our freedoms and for our symbols of freedom in Vietnam, George Felix Allen Jr. was playing cowboy at a dude ranch in Nevada."
It's not even Labor Day and the venom and vitriol are already overflowing in the Virginia race. But while George Allen will claim he seeks to protect the American flag Jim Webb fought for, it will be the Confederate flag that remains close to Allen's heart.
—Perrspective
10:06 AM Permalink
That is just unbelievable. When will Americans say no to people like Allen and Saxby Chambliss?
Just as the Nazis were a proxy to carry out the so called catholic church exclusionary principle, although some catholics inside the vatican did help some of the Jews to escape the camps versus others in the vatican helping the Nazis escape to South America, so too does the so call christian right which is neither, act as proxy for its racist church members, most but not all of whom are in the republican party. The true conservatives and liberairans have quiety abdicated their role as sceptics with regard to government intrusion in exchange to hold the levers of power. All of the hatemongers and their so called christian "lock and load" brothers need to crawl back under their rocks.
Allen's comments pissed me off, big time. To vent I made up a few funny t-shirts and am donating 30% of the profit to Jim Webb's campaign. The latest batch are confederate flag themed. I think you'll get a kick of of them.
Here's the link.
http://www.cafepress.com/macacashop
-Mr. Macaca
Allen is indicative of the racist, reichwing Republicans. The guy running for Katherine Harris' congressional seat says blacks can't swim. A female congressional candidate in Ohio recently equate homosexuals with people who practice bestiality.
This is the same group of people who portend to be great moralists and protectors. They are nothing but rabid scoundrels, who deserve the respect of no one, period.
What really bothers me with all this branding of Jim Webb as a leftist traitor is that the Southern Confederates were the real American traitors. They seceeded from the union, knowing it would cause war and drive an already divided America completely apart. And while sociopolitical forces and economic changes prompted the split, they disavowed the founding beliefs of the country because they wanted the right to enslave and beat another race. That is the definition of traitor, and should be viewed as a shameful chapter in Southern history, not commemorated and idolized. So George Allen is a hypocrite who doesn't respect America, as well as those who try to call his BS.
As you've seen on the AP news in recent days, Senator George Allen has many Virginians outraged.
Their Memory A "Political Football"?
Unprovoked and unsolicited, our Virginia Senator Allen's recent comments to educators, and all across America, hit me and many other Virginians very hard, and he hit us right in our hearts.. Not only by what Senator Allen said and how, but what he did not say.
I feel he took Virginia's historic flags of my dead veteran ancestors, whose service protected "family and home" in Virginia when called on by the State, and the Senator wiped his dirty boots with them. Other Virginians have expressed similar feelings in the news. As a veteran of the Viet Nam era, I wish to state that my ancestors have served and fought in each war this country has fought and earlier. They served when called upon, they served Virginia with honor, a few endured as prisoners of war, and a couple died for Virginia. For a United State Senator to give any impression that my ancestors were EVIL fighting under the Confederate flag is outrageous and ugly. Degradation of these Virginia heroes after over 140 years is sinful in my view, and I'd say that it is also ugly to persecute these dead Virginians in the view of any educated society. What kind of people persecute the dead?
Senator Allen seems to have left out the honorable service for Virginia by these heroic men under that flag in his statements before educators. He also seems to have left out the Southern family heritage associated with our historic flags which are respected across racial lines. You can find that to be a fact.
Thankfully, Virginia has many free thinkers that have been able hear and see Senator Allen in action clearly recently. Along with our rich recorded history, Virginians know right from wrong at times like this. I ask all Virginians to please send Senator Allen a clear message in November since it seems he has dug a hole he "stands by" and is in at his own creation..
Thank you for the opportunity to speak freely.
G. Ashleigh Moody, III
Petersburg, Virginia
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