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.