Confederate flag best remembered as racist provocation and emblem of totalitarian values

National Post ^ | June 30, 2015 | Colby Cosh

[rickmichaels]

Does anyone else find it odd that the latest U.S. mass-killing rampage somehow morphed almost immediately into a controversy over a flag? Even the push-button liberal machine for promoting gun control, which usually kicks into gear very quickly after events like the nine murders at the Emanuel African Methodist Church in Charleston, S.C., briefly got distracted this time before eventually finding its feet.

America is in an unusually race-sensitive mode right now, even by its own standards, and one is inclined to suspect that the so-called “Confederate flag” took over the discussion largely because of the recent Civil War consciousness-raising by Ta-Nehisi Coates, who is the big star amongst black American intellectuals at the moment. Coates has been, as much out of curiosity as anything — there is no non-clichéd way to say this — forcing a nation to confront its deep past in unfamiliar ways.

The U.S. Civil War is the definitive piece of unfinished historical business and the recurring cultural presence of the Confederate flag is a pretty good indicator of that. It is still pretty strange for a flag debate to arise from a mass murder. The killer who shot up a church meeting was attached to that flag, but, like many solitary Internet race theorists who hanker to become men of action, he would have worn, and did wear, any emblem that was capable of making anti-racists uncomfortable. If the Confederate flag is driven out of sight in American society tomorrow, the real-life trolls will come up with something else, a subtler, more adaptable visual code, the next day.

[mbarker12474]

Here is another good flag:

[Mollypitcher1]

DESCRIPTION:
Virginia’s official state flag was adopted in 1861. The state’s seal was placed on the flag at the start of America’s Civil War in 1861.

The flag has a deep blue background with a white circle in the center. The seal in the center features the words “VIRGINIA,” and “SIC SEMPER TYRANNIS” (Latin for “thus always to tyrants”).

Depicting the state’s motto on the flag is the goddess Virtue (who is holding a sword and a spear). She has defeated a tyrant, who is lying on the ground, and is holding a chain and a scourge (a whip). To the right is the tyrant’s fallen crown.

Virtue symbolizes Virginia and the tyrant symbolizes Britain. Red Virginia creepers and green leaves surround the scene.

Obviously, mbarker, you choose to affix your own meaning to the flag of Virginia, without bothering to EDUCATE yourself as to its TRUE meaning. I see no connection between the goddess VIRTUE subjugating the tyrannical Britain(symbolized by chain, whip, and CROWN, and your attempted and ill conceived affiliation with slavery in the south.
America broke the chains of slavery of Great Britain. That is ALL this State Flag symbolizes.
Perhaps you would have preferred that Great Britain would have prevailed? Careful, your extremism is showing.

[mbarker12474]

Hunh?

I see Liberty stomping on Tyranny, which is what you and me and others see expressed (more or less) in the Confederate flag.

Direct your venom away from me please, and on to more appropriate places and persons who aren’t sympathetic to your perspective re the Confederate flag. As I am.

[Mollypitcher1]

“The Goddess VIRTUE stomping on Tyranny.”

Now you call my refuting your claims as “Venom.” My, how indoctrinated can you get! I point out your errors and you call my remarks venomous. Pacifism has destroyed more than one country. I do not intend to be polite to those who wish to destroy my country nor to be patient with those who cannot see the destruction that is going on all around them. In a nutshell, I do not believe in P.C. Your entire attitude paints you as a Liberal, i.e. a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Stop using the Battle Flag of the Army of Northern Virginia and the Virginia State Flag as whipping points in yur agenda.