I attended a meeting of a local Sons of Confederate Veterans group. I have been a descendant of a Confederate veteran for a long time, but had never done anything official about it. I was moved to do something when the NYT ran an article reporting that Texas would not allow the Sons of Confederate Veterans to have a vanity license tag with the Confederate flag on it. I never cared much about flying the Confederate flag, but I always considered it part of my heritage. When I went to college I took a flag with me to hang on the wall in Illinois, and it turned out that my roommate frpm California had been demonstrating for civil rights in the South. We worked out some arrangement under which I hung it somewhere he couldn't see it.
Although some people see it as a symbol of racism and oppression, it also memorializes the sacrifices of those Southerners who fought under it. My main beef with those who object to the flag is that they imply that my great-grandfather was a bad man simply because he fought for the South in the Civil War. I don't think that he was. He was born in Iowa, married a girl from New York, and never owned slaves. But he loved his fellow Southerners and the South after he adopted it as his home. I think I should be allowed to pay tribute to him as part of my right to free speech, if nothing else, although I think it is a part of American history, and it should not be swept under the carpet.
A number of the people who hate the Confederate flag also hate the founding fathers of the United States who came from the South, like Jefferson, Washington, and Madison. I see the possibility of a strong push to modify the Constitution to make the Untied States more politically correct, but in fact what this is likely to mean is that the oppressed will become the oppressors, and justice will still be lacking. What is needed is a little politeness and common sense on both sides.
