Monday, February 8, 2021

Confederate Flag in the Capitol

The furor over the Confederate flag being carried by one of the invaders of the US Capitol is overblown.  Many more invaders were carrying American flags and using them as weapons, compared with one individual apparently walking quietly through the halls with a Confederate flag.  The man with the Confederate flag should not have been there, but it looks like his offense was considerably less than many of those with American flags.  Nevertheless, the Confederate flag photo has been highlighted because commentators believe it represents some kind of evil, like a Nazi swastika.  This is unjustified. 

The men who fought under the Confederate flag did not kill blacks; they killed white men fighting for the Union army.  Some black men fought for the Union and were killed along with their white colleagues, but that had nothing to do with their race.  To imply by comparisons with Nazi paraphernalia that the Confederate flag is a symbol of genocide is simply wrong.  It was a battle flag like those that troops have carried in war for thousands of years. 

Some may argue that the flag became a symbol of oppression and Jim Crow segregation after the war, but this was a misuse of the flag and not a true representation of what it stands for.  If you look at violence committed by the Ku Klux Klan and other racist groups, you will probably find the Christian cross used as a symbol as often as the Confederate flag.  Should the cross be banned like the Confederate flag?  Should the American flag be banned because the rioters in the Capitol carried it during their rampage? 

The attack on the Confederate flag by liberals and Democrats has other motives, based on their own ethnic hatreds.  They want to destroy Southern white people as a political force, and the Confederate flag is a good symbol for their campaign of disparagement and disenfranchisement.  They have reopened the wounds of the Civil War and want to destroy the South this time around.  They believe Lincoln was too soft; they think he should have been more like Hitler and decimated and enpoverished the Southern white population, so that it would never have recovered from the war.  There should have been no “Reconstruction” after the war.  There should have been continued destruction.  They want destruction now. 

The decision to refight the Civil War has been made by the liberals and Democrats.  The disastrous Trump presidency was a reaction to their attack on ordinary white people across the nation, not just in the South.  Biden has not been a leader in this fight like Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer have been.  We will see if he gets dragged into it by them and their allies.  Trump’s impeachment may shed some light on what lies ahead.  Trump clearly urged insurrection, but it is not clear that impeachment is the remedy for what he did.  It is clear that it is part of the effort to destroy those Trump supporters whom the Democrats bitterly hate. 

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