-By Warner Todd Huston
This week the left has gone off on another one of its meaningless tangents in response to something wholly divorced from their newest crusade. This time they are suddenly all upset about the Confederate flag. Why? Because a killer is seen in a photo with one. So, OK, fine. The left has its wild eyed tangents, we all know. But what is most infuriating about this particular crusade is that morons who claim to be Republicans are also joining in with this silliness. Certainly those who have should be branded traitors to the center right coalition.
Now, let’s get a few historical things straight before we get any further into this slapping down of these useful idiots on the right for being so stupid as to allow the left to–once again–control the entire political narrative. The Confederate flag is no longer an effective symbol of racism. The CS flag is not any more a racist symbol than the US or the British flags.
Of course, while it is true that the CS flag is essentially an anti-US government flag, it isn’t an anti-American flag. It is true that it is a flag that opposed the government of the United States but it never was one that opposed the American ideal. It isn’t an anti-American flag because as far as the Confederates were concerned in 1860 they were being more true to the original intent of the American founders than the US government was. In fact, their CS Constitution is in most ways just a copy of the US Constitution.
With their claim to be giving more deference to the founder’s ideals, the civil war’s “rebels” shared a sentiment with the American patriots from the Revolutionary War. Our founders wanted to separate from Britain because they felt that Britain was no longer acting British and had instead become something inimical to Britishness. The founders felt they were being truer to Britishness than were the British back in the mother country. In like style the Confederates felt they were being more American than the federal government and the Yankees.
But it is also absolutely beyond doubt that the CS government’s flags (the Bonnie Blue flag, the proper Stars and Bars–which isn’t the Southern Cross–the Stainless Banner and the Third National flags) were all essentially racist banners because one of the central tenets upon which the CS government was built was the protection of slavery.
There were several other reasons for the war, mind you, but slavery was foremost. You can make that out as a fact because nearly every secession statement by the southern states issued to explain why they were leaving the union mentions slavery multiple times.
It is also true that for decades after the civil war race-hate groups like the Ku Klux Klan used the Confederate flag as a symbol to push their hate. But they used that old symbol right alongside the US flag the whole time, so there’s that.
But today, the fact is that the number of people who use the Confederate flag as a symbol to further their racism is infinitesimal. The number of real race-hate groups out there are dismissible and small in number. The flag no longer really stands for racism.
The CS flag has become a more benign symbol of history at this point, not a banner used to further racism. Again, yes there are some few people who use that flag for racist ranting. Sure. Just as they use the American flag for the same purpose. But the fact is, outside of wild-eyed liberals who want to use the flag to push their own racist, black-first agenda, few Americans see the CS flag as a banner of hate in America today. Those who do, do so willfully to push a liberal, pro-black liberation agenda, not to push a racist, anti-black one.
Also, if you are going to ban a flag because it flew over a government that sponsored and furthered slavery, the American flag flew over slavery for many decades longer than any Confederate flag. So, you have no logical ground to stand on to want to ban one but not the other. You’d also have to ban the British flag on that level, as well, not to mention most European flags from the time.
So, yes, the flag does stand for history. It is our shared history whether you like it or not. Further more it is a history thoroughly linked to the Democrat Party. And by expunging it from history we whitewash the racist history of the Democrat Party further aiding the far left to rehabilitate themselves and make themselves out to be the “clean” party while they continuously painting the GOP–yes the Party that FOUGHT slavery–as the realracists.
The time to have attacked this flag was in the early 60s and previous. Not today in the 2000s.
And that brings me to the traitors in the Republican ranks who are joining hands with the left to attack the CS flag today.
By joining the left on this, all these useful idiots from the center right are doing is ginning up race hate where there is none, inciting black nationalist and black racist groups–like to so-called “black lives matter” groups and those headed by racebaiters like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton–and causing tensions where there really are none.
But even worse, these fellow travelers on the right are giving the left a winning issue and allowing the extreme left to once again set the political agenda and force the center right to bend to the left’s will.
And the latter is where you are a traitor to the center right if you are following the left’s anti-CS flag playbook. You are aiding the left to paint every Republican as a latent (or even outright) racist. You are handing the left a ready made, winning issue. And you are allowing the left to run the filed of ideas, issues, and policy decisions.
You may as well forget voting for anyone with an “R” by his name if you are just going to let the left set every agenda. And by allowing the left to rule the field of debate you are turning your back on everything in which you claim to believe.
The center right doesn’t need idiots like you. So, just stop pretending to be “conservative” or even “moderate”–and for sure don’t bother calling yourself a Republican–and get over there with the far left where you belong.
Now get off my phone, you jerk.
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
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Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing news, opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that wrote articles on U.S. history for several American history magazines. Huston is a featured writer for Andrew Breitbart’s Breitbart News, and he appears on such sites as RightWingNews.com, CanadaFreePress.com, Wizbang.com, and many, many others. Huston has also appeared on Fox News, Fox Business Network, CNN, and many local TV shows as well as numerous talk radio shows throughout the country.
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