Posted on 07/01/2015 7:31:12 PM PDT by jfd1776
I often wear a suit or sport coat, which means that I have a lapel on which to wear a lapel pin.
As an American, I often wear an American flag pin, but I do frequently wear others… sometimes a “Celebrate Freedom” pin from a veterans group, sometimes a “little feet” pin from a pro-life group, sometimes a campaign button for whoever I’m supporting that election season.
In addition, I sometimes wear a pin celebrating my ethnicity. I’m Italian, Irish, Scotch-Irish, Austrian, and German. I happen to identify mostly with the Italian and Irish aspects of my heritage, so it’s not unusual to see me wearing a sweatshirt bearing an Italian flag, a T-shirt bearing a shamrock, or a sportcoat with an Italian flag or Irish flag in the lapel.
The news of the day features an all-out national full-court press against the Stars and Bars, the official flag of the Confederate States of America, a traitorous organization that attempted to secede from the Union, leading to a civil war. It has been generally accepted by America’s elite, America’s punditry, and the consumers of the MainStream Media that the Stars and Bars represents the expansionist pro-slavery political position of the Democrat Party of the 19th Century, and that it also represents that same foundational undercurrent of anti-black bigotry today.
Since the Republican Party was the first to launch an assault against the Stars and Bars, back in 1861, one could make a good case for the Republicans just staying out of this argument, and letting the Democrats who are proud of their racist history fight it out with the Democrats who are unaware of it, and let the chips fall where they may… perhaps while enjoying popcorn, hot dogs and beer, like the spectators at a boxing arena where both fighters are viewed as jerks.
But there are Constitutional and ethical aspects, even in this case, that merit the Right at least paying some attention, and perhaps reminding the belligerents of the ground rules, as a referee must, whenever one fighter hits his opponent below the belt. Since that’s about the only way Democrats fight nowadays, if we agree to be the refs, we’ll be awfully busy.
The Meaning of a Symbol
In 1899, famed English poet Rudyard Kipling published his classic “Barrack Room Ballads and Departmental Ditties.” I grew up reading this wonderful collection of poetry written from the perspective of a British soldier, on the aging first edition copy in my Dad’s library. The green hardcover of this classic bears an image dating to ancient Sumeria; Kipling’s publishers chose it because of its relevance to the Subcontinent where Kipling gained so much of its inspiration. I turn the book upside down today, so that people don’t question what they would assume to be a Nazi symbol on it. Yes indeed, the symbol on this 1899 book is the same one that the Nazis adopted as their “swastika” thirty years later.
Many symbols have multiple meanings, whether acknowledged or not. Think of how many different schools have named their teams the Wildcats or Cougars, or how many share the same school colors. Maybe some are more popular than others, so you have better odds of guessing right, but there’s always the chance that someone else uses a different meaning than you anticipated.
There are people who wear the Irish flag to celebrate the brutal terrorists of the bloodthirsty, socialist IRA. There are people who wear it to support some Irish soccer team. And yes, there have been those who wear the Irish colors to identify with an “Irish mafia” of crooked 20th century Democrat politicians in Chicago or New York. The Irish colors do mean all this, to them… but not to me.
When I wear my Irish flag pin or its colors, I do it to celebrate my late mother’s family history, to celebrate the great folk music of Ireland, and to identify with the great Irish Catholic tradition. Nobody who knows me would assume anything different.
By the same token, the Italian flag, and the little horn pendant (the cornicello, our version of Ireland’s shamrock), can mean many things. The little horn is worn by the superstitious to protect against “the evil eye”… the colors could be worn to identify with Italy’s crazy politics today, or with Italy’s socialist revolutionary politics in the mid-19th century.
But am I identifying with Garibaldi’s Red Shirts or Mazzini’s Risorgimento, every time I don the red, white and green? Certainly not. I’m just identifying with the country of my grandfather, the beautiful boot-shaped peninsula that serves as both the cradle of western civilization and the epicenter of the Renaissance.
When I wear the red, white and green, I’m not denying or sublimating my American citizenship. I’m just expressing pride in the great Italian-American 20th century singers like Jerry Vale and Vic Damone, the great chefs like Marcella Hazan and Biba Caggiano, the architecture of Rome, the art of Florence.
And I would argue that it’s the same with most descendants of American immigrants; we champion the good in our heritage, and we conveniently forget about the bad. We Italians side with our historical countrymen who overthrew Mussolini, not with the fool socialists who elected him. We Irishmen side with the farmer, teacher, pub owner, and country priest of the Emerald Isle, not with the brawlers or bombers, or the captain’s bagman at city hall. This is just being human.
The Stars and Bars
And so it is with the Confederate Flag. It was once the official flag of a rival nation that set itself up to carry forward only a part of the Founding Fathers’ legacy, and not the right part.
Our Founding Fathers – the members of the Continental Congress, and the Delegates to the Constitutional Convention – almost to a man, aimed for limited government that would jealously protect each state from an intrusive national government, and that would simultaneously protect individual citizens from the heavy hand of all government.
The majority of our Founders – yes, even the southern ones – desperately wanted to see an end to the flaws of their time, the greatest of which was slavery. They could ban importation, they could enable states to choose to ban slavery within their borders, but they could not ban the practice outright, nationwide. They tried to set the stage for later manumission, but simply could not afford to do it at the time.
Unfortunately, over the decades that followed, the party of the Jeffersonians doubled down and warped the philosophy of the Founders. By the days of Andrew Jackson’s presidency, slavery had practically become a sacrament to their party. They warped the idea of “states’ rights” from being a broad protection from an intrusive national government to being a celebration of their “right” to own slaves.
As the Democratic Party grew ever stronger as the pro-slavery party, it managed to crush its rivals, who were the truer heirs of the Founders’ philosophy. First the anti-slavery Federalists, then the anti-slavery Whigs, fell at their hands, until finally the anti-slavery Republicans arose in the 1850s. The effort of the Republicans – not even to wholly stop slavery on a dime, but at least to stop slavery’s continued expansion into new territories and new states – horrified the Democrats until finally, in 1860, with the election of northern Republican Abraham Lincoln to the presidency, the south united to form a CSA and secede… choosing the Stars and Bars, based on the Cross of St. Andrew, as one of their key banners.
But despite the generalities listed above – which are as true as any generality can be, but are still not true of everyone on either side at the time – the fact remains that there were some southerners who fought with the South who were not slaveowners.
There were even some who fought with the South who opposed slavery… but they stood with the South on the general issue of fighting the growth of an unconstitutionally intrusive national government… or they stood with their fellow Southerners solely out of neighborly brotherhood. A Virginian stands with the Virginians, a Georgian stands with the Georgians.
I would argue that to take it that far is to go too far, indeed. But it is true, and we should acknowledge it; there were some Southerners at the time, who fought with the South, who were even anti-slavery.
So if someone bears the Stars and Bars today, who’s to say what his reason is, unless he volunteers it? When I wear an Italian flag, you don’t assume I support the Mafia. When I wear a shamrock, you don’t assume I support the IRA’s bombings of Parliament, Canary Wharf, or the London Hilton. You give me the benefit of the doubt, and assume (rightly) that’s it’s just a symbol of Italian or Irish pride.
Why don’t we do the same for southerners who celebrate the Stars and Bars? Slavery in America has been over for 150 years. There’s a great deal more to Southern heritage than just the stain of slavery, just as there's a great deal more to my Italian heritage than the election of Mussolini or the wickedness of the Mob.
Southerners are rightly proud of their cooking – of barbecued pork and fried chicken, of limited state governments and low taxes. They are rightly proud of automobile factories and rose growers, of country music and the oil business, of heroic historical figures and DisneyWorld, of world-class cities, seaports, and universities. To many a Southerner, these are best symbolized by raising the standard of the Stars and Bars.
Yes, it’s hard for a northerner to imagine erasing the Civil War and the history of slavery from that flag. We northerners think of them as a single unit – slavery, the Civil War, and the Stars and Bars. But it’s not entirely fair. There were actually several flags of the CSA; this being the third official one. And if a descendent of soldiers or officers who fought for the CSA wants to think of the positives of that flag rather than the negatives, how hard is that to understand or accept, unless you’re actually gunning for them, looking hard under every rock for an excuse to judge and hate the person sporting it?
Public Policy
The question of the day, however, is two-fold: not only “should we hate those who champion that flag”… but also, “what should the law do about it?”
This should be an easy question for the party of liberty, so if I may propose to speak for the conservative movement, I will say this:
Private property is sacrosanct in a free country. Any private citizen should be able to display his flag – whether it be the flag of Ireland, Italy, or the CSA – on his own property, on his own lapel, in his store window or on the gun rack of his truck. He should not fear his government confiscating or banning it; he should not fear a fellow citizen destroying or stealing it without the criminal justice system coming to the aid of the property owner.
And no, this is not just because of the freedom of political speech, guaranteed in the First Amendment. It is because of our fundamental right to private property, one of the foremost natural rights that governments exist to protect.
Should a public building fly the Confederate flag, however? That’s quite another question. Government institutions should think long and hard before displaying the flag of an enemy, even if that enemy is long since vanquished.
We defeated Italy, Germany, Great Britain, and plenty of other nations, in war after war since our Founding, but that doesn’t stop us from flying their flags – at a subsidiary position to the U.S. flag, of course – at embassies, schools, and other places where paying them respect is appropriate.
The flag of the CSA is different, because the CSA rose up in rebellion directly against us, but then, if the British could forgive us for rising up against them, perhaps we can try to be as magnanimous about our own south. It HAS been one and a half centuries, after all. Perhaps it’s time we learned to forgive.
Besides, to be as draconian as the modern Left is demanding – removing the Confederate flag from Civil War battlefields where it’s only on display for historical flavor – is simply ridiculous.
The key question, then, isn’t what the flag really stands for, because it can legitimately stand for several things, and it isn’t whether a government has a right to display it, because each level of government has its own degree of sovereignty, and has the right to make such choices itself, short of honoring a current enemy or a current rebellion (again, it’s been 150 years).
The key question must be WHY.
Why are we focusing on the Confederate flag, a museum piece for all intents and purposes, right now?
With 93 million people outside the work force, with a world economy on the brink and our own national debt climbing every year, with the entire economic and social agenda of the Left visibly collapsing under the weight of the undeniable proof of its failure, from Obamacare to global warming hysteria, why on earth is anyone wasting their breath on the question of whether a free country should “allow” anyone to display the Stars and Bars?
It is a distraction, that’s all. The modern American Left has learned the way to win advancements – the most destructive advancements possible – in the modern world of the soundbite and the 24-hour news cycle.
They come up with an issue of the day – gay marriage or the Stars and Bars or whether insurance should be forced to cover a $10/month birth control prescription – just so they can set the agenda. Fluff like this dominates the news, distracting a suffering nation from the fact that our cities are the homicide capitals of the world, the fact that students are being graduated from college without prospect of employment, the fact that people approach retirement age with a fear of coming poverty replacing the anticipation of rest that they had always thought they deserved.
In this context, do the Stars and Bars matter at all? Not to me. And frankly, not to any of us. The politics of the Stars and Bars is historical, not current.
But the ANTI- Stars and Bars crowd – the people dominating headlines, press conferences and demonstrations, shouting for its removal from the public square – oh yes, they matter. The opposition is relevant indeed.
Because the opposition to the Stars and Bars is the crowd responsible for our nation’s current economic, cultural, and international downturns, and they need to be defeated, once and for all - not at the flagpole, but at the polling place – if this nation is to survive.
Copyright 2015 John F. Di Leo
John F. Di Leo is a Chicago-based international trade compliance instructor and transportation expert. He has never owned a “Stars and Bars” flag or lapel pin, and is occasionally overheard to say, in libertarian fits of pique, that “The North was right on slavery, and the South was right on everything else.” His columns are regularly found in Illinois Review.
Permission is hereby granted to forward freely, provided it is uncut and the byline and IR URL are included. Follow John F. Di Leo on Facebook or LinkedIn, or on Twitter at #johnfdileo or his own website at www.johnfdileo.com.
I would love to see more of this. But I also would love to see more people put a nativity set in their yard. If every Christian put a nativity set in their yard, it would overwhelm that one nativity set that is taken off government property. I also think neighbors next door to the government building should volunteer to put it in their yard. The same can happen to the Confederate Flag....put it everywhere in Alabama, Mississippi, South Carolina and Texas. That would show people more then complaining about a flag on a Court House. We fight wrong.
Bttt.
This is the best essay on this topic I have read to date, and FR has been loaded with this topic.
Excellent article.
Oh dear. Next they’ll be making it illegal to burn your own cross on your own property. Nah, liberty will never be so trashed, will it?
Best article yet. Thanks for posting.
The county where I live had a crèche in the courthouse square last Christmas. Donated by a local family. American Humanists rolled into town, threatened to sue. County judges, residents stood our ground. Lynch V Donnelly already decided this. The crèche stayed. Will be back next year.
You’re equating flying a Confederate flag with burning a cross? The former was the flag of the Confederate States; the latter a specific symbol of the KKK. You’re equating one with the other?
Methinks he was being sardonic. Or sarcastic. It’s the liberals who equate the flag with the KKK.
On the other hand, if gays can force a baker to bake a cake for a gay wedding, what’s to stop a klanner from forcing a carpenter to produce a cross to be burnt at a klan rally?
The DOJ. There is no longer equal protection under the law, regardless.
Besides, you don't have to be a carpenter to nail two boards together.
I am referring to a case where a guy burned a cross on his own property and it was deemed illegal. So there might be precedent for criminalizing flying the stars on bars on one’s own property. In the eyes of the perpetually offended, both acts are, well, offensive.
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