Monuments NO – Confederate Flag YES!!!

Suppressing the hatred of bigotry and racism today is every bit as challenging as it was in 1861 and 1964.  It will take a national resolve to succeed.

Perspective on Civil War monuments has strayed into the Twilight Zone.  Unfortunately, they are viewed as vinegar rather than the sweet honey they actually represent.  It is yet another classic case of demanding our hatreds guide our thinking. 

There is currently a movement to convince us that these monuments somehow support and glorify the ugliness of racism, slavery and the suppression of blacks.  

In reality, what they should represent is America’s unrelenting quest for justice and humanity.  They should remind us that these monuments led to the saving of the union and the Emancipation Proclamation.  They should remind us of our commitment as nation in forbidding selfishness, violence and hatred to dominate the American spirt.  They should remind us of our struggle and success in defeating evil within our own shores.  They should remind us of the greatest we are capable of when we put our will and minds to the task.  These may be, to a degree, very painful reminders of the injustice and horror that once gripped our nation.  That pain should be focused on the forever evil in the waging of war and not on any glorification or injustice in a war lost.  We need to simply recognize they are all part of our historical heritage that needs our constant and forever awareness.  

The same cannot be said of the Confederate flag.

The Confederate flag was, and still is, a symbol of divisiveness, selfishness, greed and unspeakable hatred.  It led the charge of the Civil War and remains symbolic of hatred and the promotion of a reign of terror.   

 

It is impossible to view it without sparking the pain of Fort Sumter that began America’s most savage war.  It can’t be ignored as embodying a violent and vicious demand to tear apart the union of the United States.  It’s impossible to disregard the vicious insistence for the continuation of slavery, unquestionably the greatest inhumanity every inflicted in American – OR - the horrifying cruelty that caused the loss of over 600,000 American lives. 

 

This demonic symbol was also often and proudly displayed long after the Civil War during the “Jim Crow” reign of terror.  When looking at the very heart of that flag one can easily see blacks being whipped and beaten and lynched, along with the burning of black homes and churches.  One sees the faces of Andrew Goodman, James Earl Chaney, and Michael Henry Schwerner all savagely killed in Mississippi in their efforts to establish voting rights for blacks in 1964 while further reminding us that all those guilty of the atrocity were set free by a Mississippi court.

 

Can we really look at that flag and not realize that it, along with the Nazi flag, is proudly and publicly displayed today by the Ku Klux Klan and every other bigoted organization as they spew their hateful venom?  Some of these deranged groups go as far as displaying both flags side by side.  After all, white supremacy doctrine is no different than Hitler’s Aryan/Master race rantings.  It is assured, through 18 months from living in Germany, that a Nazi flag cannot be found proudly or publicly displayed anywhere on German soil.  Yet Mississippi still, to this day, proudly and publicly displays the Confederate flag as part of their state flag. 

There could be no better way to begin current reparations in America than to do what should have been done over 100 years ago.  Time to burn the Confederate flag and finally relegate it to the ash heap of history where it belongs.  For nothing in America runs more contrary to the Gettysburg Address than the Confederate flag.