Couldn't agree more; but it seems people like you and I need to educate people the true history of that flag - IT WAS FLOWN BY DEMORATS, the Party that has NEVER apologized for slavery!
Just yesterday, I was talking to a guy at work who is well educated by the government school system and he thought the flag was a Republican flag.
***SIGH***
Long Yankee screed coming, sorry in advance.
As far as a lot of these people are concerned, the democrats were the good guys back then, you see they think the parties magically switched sides at some fairly recent date. And the civil war wasn’t about the slave masters who controlled the Southern states desperately trying to hold on to their power and use the government to promote their personal economic interest, it was about “freedom” from “that oppressive Yankee tyrant Lincoln”.
Because you see their ancestors were Confederate soldiers and their precious ancestors just had to have been fighting on the side of the angels, so therefore the battle flag of a government in violent rebellion against the lawfully elected United States government is a good thing. End of story, their great great great great great grandpappy fought under that flag so that flag is good.
The CSA was formed after they couldn’t handle losing an election, their army of conscripts who were forced to join (guess White people could be slaves too) fought for the interests of a few rich a-holes who felt the federal government should be used to promote their right to own people they kidnapped, not preserve it mind you, promote it, expand it, because the North was willing to take a federal abolition of slavery OFF THE TABLE permanently via a constitutional amendment, which they felt was unnecessary anyway because they believed it was a state matter. But that wasn’t good enough, see the Northern states didn’t like having to round up escaped kidnap victims and send them back South, see the cherished “state’s rights” didn’t matter to the Southern leaders when it was the rights of free Northern states.
Northerners didn’t want slavery expanded into the new western states so the slave masters could keep their voting share in the Senate. When the Supreme Court, in it’s worst decision in the first century of it’s existence, said that Congress had no power to prohibit slavery in any territory, the masters cheered. The slave masters wanted the federal government to do their bidding. A new President and Congress less willing to do their bidding=”oppression”.
So that flag is a good thing, a symbol of freedom from an oppressive government. If they want to believe that fantasy, FINE by me, like I said they can fly the flag on their own property, they can post pictures of it online, they can put bumper stickers on their vehicles, they can wear t-shirts, they can watch unedited “Dukes of Hazard” dvds.
What they can’t do is tell the rest of us that we aren’t allowed not to like that flag and to insist it doesn’t belong on public property, that we aren’t allowed to believe that Lincoln was a good guy, that we aren’t allowed to override their personal wishes as to whether that flag should fly on government property if there are more of us than their are of them. What they can’t do is tell Blacks they have no right to detest that flag of the army that fought for the rich jerks who used to own their ancestors.
Now that the duly elected GOP state Government of South Carolina has decided to take the flag down, these people that claim to hold the rights of state governments supreme should accept that decision. They are free to fly it front of their houses. And they are free to not vote for someone who voted to take it down. If they can elect a pro-flag legislature they can put it back up, welcome to democracy. Until then they should accept they are in the minority.