Flags, National Anthems Quotes
Those landlords who had killed peasants were sometimes executed as prior to the Peasant Uprising, there was no law enforcement against landlords in rural areas like Hunan. In 1927 there was a Peasant Uprising in the Hunan Province of China. Young Mau went there and wrote a report. Many years later when Mao was a major revolutionary leader, the landlords were often executed and not just humiliated.
Ironically, the fascist organizations that did form in America did just that. The American Firsters claimed patriotism motivated them to support Hitler and Father Coughlin and his fascist movement was his own version of Christianity—one which the Roman Catholic Church was so opposed to that they prohibited him from appearing on the radio with his virulent preaching. He was one of several who “hijacked” American Christianity not unlike the way radical Muslims would later in the century hijack Islam.
The 3rd verse is rarely sung because of its reference to the then existing and generally accepted system of indentured servitude and slavery.
This classic quotation illustrates several things. First, the degree of racism that existed in 1944 in West Virginia. Second, not how young Robert Byrd immediately leaped from the possibility of integrating our fighting forces to interracial sex. That has been typical of white racism in America—a preoccupation with race and sex. Last, Byrd who became a member of the KKK, completely changed his mind over the year and ended up supporting the things that, as a youth were worse than the demise of the nation. He matured and grew on the race issue as much of the country did and ended as a strong supporter of equality and civil rights—including affirmative action.
HF 2598*/SF 2411/CH 391
Referring to the political emphasis on family values:
In the midst of the Battle of Sevastopol in the Crimean War, Tolstoy was actually a young lieutenant. At a point in the battle a truce was called between the French and the Russians so that they could each collect their dead and wounded. Then the fighting resumed.
In 1989 the Chicago Institute of the arts exhibited a controversial work where the American flag was draped on the floor that appeared to invite patrons to walk on it. The Senator introduced a bill making it a crime to display the American flag: