The Conferate officers considered themselves citizens of their state first, (as did most Notherners), with the federal government dealing only in matters of defense, foriegn affairs, border and immigration enforcement, and the postal system.
Regardless of what they considered themsleves, any officer that had served in the US Army had taken an oath "to bear true faith and allegiance to
the United States of America" - Not his state, his city or his neighborhood. It only became "to support the Constitution" in 1862, as the government wondered (and justifiably so considering the number of officers that had commited treason) about the loyalty of the remaining officers, and decided to get real specific.
The Civil War was SOOOOO much about slavery that General Robert E. Lee, a man whose own moral beliefs forbade him from owning slaves, TURNED DOWN the chance to lead the Union Army, and instead decided to lead the army of Northern Virginia and protect his homeland.
And that proves what, precisely? There are a lot of people that say 'my <insert cause here> right or wrong'. Because Lee didn't believe in slavery doesn't mean that he wouldn't/didn't fight to preserve it, anymore than the fact that I, detesting Nazis, wouldn't fight to preserve their rights.
Lincoln freed no more slaves than I did. The emancipation proclimation freed slaves in rebelling states. Now, unless you don't know what an oxymoron is, you cannot free a slave in a rebelling state. It's rebelling. It does not listen to you nor do you hold any power over it.
Again, the fact that the law was ignored means nothing. Just because a robber is holding you hostage in a store doesn't mean that laws passed in the larger world outside don't exist because the police don't have the ability to enforce them in that area at that exact moment.
Slaves were darn near the whole issue, except for that whole States' rights thing.
And the main right that the southern states wanted was the right to buy and sell people. What other 'right' was the south concerned about? Legalized gambling? Road construction? Abortion? What other right did they want? If they were so concerned about states rights how come the Confederate Constitution included no provision for legal secession (yet it contained explicit protection of the institution of slavery), and actually gave the national government more power than the US government had at the time?
I'll be waiting for you to start burning your flags, Boats and Junyo.
You'll be waiting a long time. Just because someone wraps themselves in an American flag doesn't mean that they represent everything what that flag stands for. However, the people defending the CSA here
are attempting to justify what it stood for. We've heard that slavery wasn't so bad, and that Lincoln was a criminal, and you've pointed out that Robert E. Lee didn't own slaves. None of that, not one point of it, changes the fact that the CSA was built, at it's core, on treating people as property. And all of the justifications just show that people support that. There is a fundamental difference between someone appropriating a symbol unjustly, like a racist who claims to love America (except for the brown, yellow, and red parts) and 'proves' it by waving a flag, and a person who furiously defends the core principles of the entity that a flag symbolizes.
So move or don't go to the gun show.
And now, these people have been allowed to dictate my actions, and very possibly cost me money. Which makes the "have no effect on me" thing moot.
I'm not talking about banning Nazis, and wouldn't be in favor of it. I'm saying they're not there handing out "How to be a Nazi" flyers. They're there because business is good. That says something. I'd like to believe that it doesn't say anything bad (...but apparently, I would've been better off as a asset on a plantation than as a free citizen, so what do I know?) If nobody was buying from them they'd stop showing up. Obviously people want what they sell, and for good or ill that reflect on all of us.
