-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.
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If You Are A Republican Who is All Balled Up About the Confederate Flag, You are a Traitor”