Wednesday, June 24, 2015

Is the Confederate Flag the Problem?

At the moment, the talking-head pundits have decided that the Confederate flag is the reason for racial animosity in the United States.  Do they really believe that if Walmart had banned the sale of Confederate flags, it would have prevented Dylann Roof from killing those nine people in Charleston?  If Walmart and other gun shops were more restrictive in selling guns, that might have made a difference, but Confederate flags would have made no difference.

If Dylann Roof had been a member of some organized militia where the flag was an integral part of military training, then I might have thought that there was some peripheral connection.  But he was a lone, unhappy gunman, just like those who have carried out multiple killings in American schools, theaters, and other churches.  This was not an organized attack carried out in military style under a flag representing the group.  This was a sick man who should never have been sold a gun.  Those who attack the flag rather than gun violence devalue to lives of those he killed.  America doesn’t care about those nine any more than it cared about the children killed in Newtown, the movie goers in Aurora, the Columbine victims, or any of the dozens of people who are killed weekly by gun violence, most of them black men killed by other black men.

What the campaign does do is try to equate Confederate veterans with SS prison guards at Auschwitz.  It gives non-Southerners a reason to hate Southerners, but the haters of the South pour gasoline on the fires of race hatred.  They feel good about it, because they can characterize Southerners as “evil” and hence deserving of hatred.

I don’t think the Civil War soldiers saw it that way, although some may have.  I think the Confederacy was seen as a defeated army, but a respected one.  Each side knew that at certain times and places the other side had fought bravely and well.  They may not have liked each other, but I doubt that many would have described the men they fought against as “evil,” except in cases where they were evil by mistreating prisoners, mistreating civilians, etc.  Of course, there are no more Civil War veterans left to say what they really felt, but published reflections on the war don’t dwell on either side being “evil.”  Certainly Lincoln and Lee were men of high ideals, and the South would probably have fared better after the war if another lone crazy man, John Wilkes Booth, had not assassinated Lincoln.

When only one percent of Americans serve in the military today, it means that 99 percent don’t really understand what war and military service are like.  There is a tendency among the 99% to think that any war and any soldier is evil, because as they say, “War is hell.”  But at some time in its existence almost every great nation has had to fight to continue to survive.  I have often wondered what it would have been like to be forced to serve as a humble private in the German army, fight under horrible conditions on the Russian front, and then come home to Germany in a defeated army.  One difference was that after World War II, one of the victors, the United States, organized a huge relief effort, the Marshall Plan, to help Germany.  Nothing like that would happen today where there is only hatred directed at the losing Confederate army, although the Confederate soldiers fellow Americans.

Monday, June 22, 2015

Bye-Bye Confederate Flag

The Supreme Court decision turns out to have been no assault on the Confederate flag compared to what has happened after the killings in Charleston.  I don't really care so much whether South Carolina removes the flag from the capitol grounds.  I am distressed that the shootings have made the flag into a symbol of evil, which is what I wanted least of all.  The opponents are attacking the flag on the grounds that it represents racism and evil, the very things I did not want it to represent.  So, like the rest of the old South, the flag is "gone with the wind."  Although there was slavery in the South, there was also a genteel. polite, dignified way of life that is lots in the hatred and vitriol of today's society.  While there were a lot of slaves who hated their masters, I don't think they all did.  It was definitely not an equal relationship, but despite the social discrimination, I'm sure that in many cases the slaves were the stronger partners when the whites and blacks all lived and worked together.
I am worried that because of the strength of the backlash against the old South, there will be a backlash against the Founding Fathers, many of whom were slave owners from Virginia.  In the long term this will tend to undermine the Constitutional rule of law.  The US will gradually become a different country.  Many people will think it is better, but old guys like me will probably not think so, depending on what it turns into.

If slavery is so bad, what do the Jews say about Abraham, the founder of Judaism, who owned slavers an had a son by one of his slaves, Hagar, which made his wife so jealous that she made him send Hagar and his son into the desert, where they would have died if they had not been saved by a miracle?  Times change, but I don't think that Jews are going to renounce their religion because Abraham owned slaves.

There are many people who hate the Bible because it, at least the Old Testament, accepts the practice of slavery, but there are also many people who love the Bible despite that.  Similarly, with the old South, you can love the good parts, without loving the bad parts.

Thursday, June 18, 2015

Disappointing Supreme Court Decision on Confederate Flag Tag

I was disappointed with the Supreme Court's decision Walker v. Texas Division, Sons of Confederate Veterans, reported in the New York Times.  I really don't care about the Confederate flag on the Texas license plate so much.  I am mainly concerned about the its ratification of the idea that the Confederate battle flag is some sort of hate symbol, like the swastika.  I am  more disappointed in the Texas decision to bar the flag than by the Supreme Court decision approving it.

Apparently because of the unfavorable associations with the Confederate battle flag, the Sons of Confederate Veterans mainly use the Confederate national flag, which has thick horizontal stripes and  a field in the upper left, much like the United States' flag.  That's okay, but most people don't recognize it as a symbol of the Confederacy.  It could be a state flag, or some organization's flag.  So, the problem with the battle flag is the association with the Confederacy, and its implication that the South is evil.

Today's murder of nine people at an African-American church in Charleston, as reported in the NYT,  did not help.  It's hard to say what would lead to an abnormal act like that.  Southern discrimination against blacks over the years may have contributed, but that would have been irrelevant to the theater shooting in Aurora, Colorado, to the school shooting in Connecticut, or to the original school shooting in Columbine, for example.  They were all just senseless violence.  All of the shooters were probably unstable for reasons that may never be known.  There have been many episodes of police mistreatment of blacks recently, but they have occurred in the north and the south, South Carolina and New York, Maryland and Missouri, as well as other places.  All of these shootings may have more to do with the widespread prevalence of guns in America, which means continual threats to police, and a more general predilection for violence than exists in Europe, for example.  In any case, I don't think there is a clear link to something especially evil about the South.

Southerners whose ancestors fought in the Civil War should be able to commemorate their service.  Despite slavery, thee were many good things about the old South.  American society seems determined to make it seem evil.  I hope there will be some support for the good that it embodied, although it appears that there will be fewer and fewer people who have the heritage and inclination to do so.