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« on: December 06, 2011, 05:18:00 pm »
No, the Civil War was about slavery. Abraham Lincoln was elected, was anti-slavery, and so the South seceded. Didn't have a damn thing to do with states' rights. At least at the national level. Why the men who fought did so, that's another story. Some of the Southerners may have fought to save slavery, some for their state, others for some other reason.
That said, the Confederate flag doesn't mean what most Northerners think it means anymore. Speaking from the perspective of an urban Northerner who used to assume that anyone with a Confederate flag is a hick, it really is just a symbol of Southern pride to most people. I learned that after just a week in Tennessee on a spring break training trip for rowing. There were very nice, very pro-America, non-racist people down there who had Confederate flags out. When asked why, they said it's their way of showing pride in their Southern culture, and the South definitely has its own culture.
Then again, some people ruin it. Like the guy I saw whose bumper sticker was a Confederate flag with the words "SEND MORE YANKS THEY'RE TASTY" emblazoned on it.