That is naive. The Southern states were less free in 1850, in 1900, in 1950. Who is to say that in 2050, you or your children might not regret leaving?
What I'm getting at is that group freedom to live under whatever laws the group can make and individual liberty aren't always and automatically the same thing.
Freedom, despite the rhetoric of the current administration, is not the natural state. It is the state that requires the most effort to sustain. One weapon, one extremely important weapon, in that fight is the ability to unilaterally leave a political union. The denial of that right is the true invitation to tyranny.
The problem is that parts of the world with the longest or strongest traditions of secession or armed resistance aren't always the freest, let alone the safest or happiest. A country that has a revolution every generation or that is always threatened or riven by secession would look more like a less developed country of Latin America, Africa, or the Middle East, than a modern western nation.
Why isn't the Flag less "offensive" today since we are farther from the event?
One reason is its use by campaigners against civil rights, both in the past and the present. Another is the revival of a modern secessionist "the South was right" movement. To be sure a third reason is the fact that civil rights organizations are scrambling for a new issue to mobilize donors and members, but you can't try to open old wounds, as today's confederates do and claim that others should treat them as closed.
Answer is PC attempts to stamp out all forms of descent from the reigning orthodoxy. The South has always represented the biggest obstacle (region wise) to their grand design.
Maybe, but plenty of groups that wants to do things that outrage international opinion claim that they are making the last stand against big brother. The Serbs did it, Smith's Rhodesia did it, Mugabe's Zimbabwe does it. I don't want to argue who was right or wrong in these conflicts. I just want to suggest that this sort of rhetoric is something that ought to be examined more closely. Not everybody who claims to be against modern "orthodoxy" is wrong, but neither are they all right, and the "line in the sand" rhetoric obscures the questions that people ought to ask about such movements and militants.
The fighting Rebel spirit that animated secession, has frustrated all their efforts at Reconstruction. (Unfortunately immigration both foreign and Yankee [Wait, that is the same thing.] and that great homogenizer, the media, is succeeding where other efforts have failed. It is doing what Sherman never could.) I will go to my grave fighting that.
What about seeing the positive side of Reconstruction? I can understand that's probably anathema or heresy to you. But to look at things objectively, were those who worked in Reconstruction worse than antebellum slaveowners? Were they more contemptable or further from what we believe today than the Klansmen and others who fought against them. Justice is a two-way street. If you want some recognition for the virtues of the Confederates and withhold it from their opponents, you won't get what you're asking for.
And if you still malign the biracial governments of Reconstruction days and celebrate the return to power of White elites, it also goes a long way to understanding why people don't trust you. You can't say that you're still going to fight the old fights, and not expect people to take you at your word.