The Confederate Flag Stays: Deal With It

As a Confederate descendant who is well read on the history of the War for Southern Independence, I revere the Confederate flag.  It is the flag of my country and my ancestors.  In light of the Charleston murders, we are now seeing a lot of liberals and mainstream Republicans calling for the removal of the flag from public display.

Mitt Romney tweeted that the flag should come down.  He tweets

Take down the #ConfederateFlag at the SC Capitol. To many, it is a symbol of racial hatred. Remove it now to honor #Charleston victims.

I answered him with this:

Saber Point ‏@Stogie2  20m20 minutes ago

@MittRomney I regret voting for you Mitt. The flag stays. Take down the flag of Utah, it's a symbol of a false prophet and polygamy.

And of course, there's "Old Gorey" that many associate with invasion of the South, war on women and children, the genocide of the American Indian, the theft of Hawaii from its Queen and its people, and the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. Oh yes, and it flew over Northern slave ships who brought the slaves to America in the first place.

The point is, a flag means different things to different people. We Confederate descendants do not accept Mitt Romney's definition or our flag, nor that of the Daily Kos, Karl Rove, Jeb Bush or any other cultural bigot who wishes to bully us into accepting their skewed view of history and their narrow, superficial and ignorant opinion of what the flag means.

Here are the motivations of the flag haters:

1. Moral vanity. Nothing pleases a liberal more than asserting his alleged moral superiority over someone else. What is an easier way to pose and posture as a great humanitarian, then to further cultural bigotry against the South?

2. To legitimize the Northern Myth, the huge lie that the North invaded the South to free the slaves because they were just so morally righteous and broad minded and enlightened. The truth is that the North hated blacks, wanted them kept out of the new territories, made laws prohibiting their presence, and planned to deport them all back to Africa or elsewhere. They went to war to force the Southern states back into the Union for economic reasons; slavery had nothing or very little to do with it. An independent South would have free trade and open ports, thus ending the Northern tariff on imported goods. A massive relocation of jobs and revenues would quickly flow from the North to the South. This would have created an economic boom in the South, but would have impoverished the North, who depended on the South continuing to pay 80% of the taxes collected by the federal government, and whose dock workers, shipping companies, railroads, textile mills and warehouses would soon find themselves out of work. Yes, this is all well documented in the newspapers of the time. When asked why he would not simply let the South go, Lincoln exclaimed "Let the South go? Who will pay my tariff?"

3. To legitimize the consolidation of the once sovereign states into subordinate entities inferior to and controlled by the federal government. Today this is effectively being accomplished through federal courts, who overturn state laws and legislate from the bench.

4. To legitimize the federal government's "right" to invade the individual states and make war on their citizens, using force to impose its will. We are continually moving in that direction today.  A nationalized police force is in the works.  Once accomplished, all American states will be effectively occupied by the federal government.

Here's why we will never agree:

Taking down the flag would mean acquiescing to bullies who wish to force their viewpoint on us, a viewpoint that is erroneous, insulting, self-serving and false. It would mean replacing our superior knowledge of history with the superficial myths the flag-haters learned from popular media, Hollywood and Northern-biased textbooks. It would also require us to legitimize the slander that our flag represents racial hatred and is thus a dishonorable symbol.  We will not allow knowledge to be replaced with ignorance, or truth with falsehood.  We will never agree to your slander.

History, or what is alleged to be history, is a major political weapon. The fight over history will largely influence how current and future generations see the Republic: as a collection of sovereign states with the right to self-govern and even secede, or as consolidation of those states into an increasingly oppressive federal tyranny from which there is no refuge, remedy or escape.

Leave our flag alone.