WalMart, Amazon, etc., are free to sell whatever legal items they do or don’t want to sell. So long as the government doesn’t ban this variety of speech, then what they do is their business. My guess is that the Chinese will start making them and selling them on the internet. They don’t care — profit is profit.
My personal sense is that veterans of a conflict hold dear items of their wartime experience. That flag was important to Confederate vets for years, and then their kids, grandkids, and great grandkids after them. They all might have had some sense of the battlefield meaning placed on it by those original veterans. For example, many think Abe Lincoln honored all the dead in his Gettysburg address.
There aren’t many who have some family memories remaining of those who actually fought in the conflict, but to the extent that is their motivation for that rebel flag, then more power to them.
Other than that, I really don’t assign much credibility to those who appropriate military symbols for their personal vendettas or self-indulgences. I would consider that similar to ‘stolen valor’. I remember a craze for wearing German iron crosses when I was young. However ‘cool’ it might have been, it was disconnected from the military valor that it at one time represented when presented to those who’d fought Napoleon. And then it was appropriated by the WWI Kaiser and the WWII nutcase, so it changed from a ‘participation in conflict’ award into something representing affinity with conquest.
If someone wants to sell it, fine. If they want to wear it, fine. That’s just free speech. For me, they don’t have the background nor experiences to justify it.
to me it is more about states’ rights. that is a viable concept - even more so now. i do buy that the battle flag is being used to divide - maybe there should be a contest for a symbol of the New South. strictly Southern of course. symbols are powerful things.
The battle flag of the Imperial Japanese Navy is sold everywhere and holy cow, the Japanese ethnically cleansed as much of southeast Asia (the Orient) as was humanly possible in their time.