Thank you for your support in this matter. I include all the South when I write due to the hardships suffered by most Southerners and the lost of life was not just felt here in Texas. My last "rant" was deleted because I got a bit from a Kevin who said I was ranting. In my view, if your a Southern person, you do rant when your on a topic that needs some clearing of the air.

I found out many years ago, just because an official says one thing doesn't make it true. Good example I left in the deleted message was the time when the President Kennedy said we were not involved in training Cubans. But then the Bay of Pigs happened and Oops, we find it started before Kennedy got into office. Just because someone says something and it its put into print, doesn't make it so. And we should question everyone and everything our government does!

This is a hard fact of history, and a study after WWII. They wanted to find out why Germany followed the mad man into hell. They took two people with one in one room and another in another room. The first person saw them hook the second person up to wires. Then the first person was lead into a room with a mic, and control knobs. He was told everything would be O.K. He was told to read questions into the mic to the other person and if they answered wrong....give them a little shot. Gigg'em as the Aggies would say. After each wrong answer, they were to turn the knob up which had markings with higher numbers. What each number did was to light up a few more lights in the other room. The second person seeing those lights were to slowly start to act like he was being shocked by stronger and stronger shocks. Well, to make a long story short, this wasn't the only test they did, and they ended in the early 1970's. What did they find out? In an average town in the U.S., as long as there was someone with power saying we need to do something for the country, there were enough people to run a death camp 24-7, 365!

This is why we need to get the history out there. This is why we need teachers who don't just go through the motions of teaching out of text books that say our poop don't stink. If you had read some of the diaries and journals I have read, you would know the fun the Yankees were having with our ladies. How many Blacks were beaten up and some killed by the Yankees. The robbing, the murders, the looting, burning, and rape are there. And they did it for....what? Union? Nope, they did it because they could.

The South did not fight for slavery and the North's main aim wasn't to free the slave. You don't free anyone if the South wins. Which means the number one goal of the North was to take a gun and force the South back into the Union. We after all was the North's colony. We furnished the raw goods, they turned them into finished goods and sold them back to us at high prices. If that isn't a colony system, then I don't know what one is.

So I do get out of the time line but history does repeat and some examples are clearer then others, yet they still apply to the 1860's. We need all the facts before all the people of this country. Then and only then will the rebel flag be put to rest. Until it joins the other flags of this land, in the honor it once had, we are being robbed of our past and that includes the past of the "freemen." Leaving anyone out is racist to that group or person. And official or not, service rendered is service rendered. There is no other way to look at it.

Your Obedient Servant,
Bert Hile

P.S. the song "I'm a Good Old Rebel" comes to mind....if your wondering what I am thinking.