After attacks, many Southerners fly different flag

Until recently, if you saw a red, white and blue flag sticker on a Southern pickup truck, odds were good that it was a Confederate flag.

In the wake of the terrorist attacks, the once-prominent symbol beloved by both unreconstructed Southern partisans and Civil War buffs has been swamped in a wave of national unity.

American flags are popping up on cars, outside homes and businesses - and even on horse-drawn carriages in the city where the Civil War started.

In Charleston, unlike New York or California, the Stars and Stripes can often be seen displayed beside the controversial Confederate battle flag.

One local bumper sticker even has a message for Osama Bin Laden's terrorist network, "Terrorists: Your soul is the devil's and your butt's America's."

Another depicts both the U.S. and the Confederate battle flag and says "red-blooded American."

Area flag merchants say sales of Confederate flags have remained steady even as sales of U.S flags have increased.

"My American flag sales have increased 100-fold," Gary Shelton, president of 1abcstore.com in St. Simons, Ga., said. His Confederate flag sales are about the same.While it might strike some as inconsistent to fly the flag created by people who wanted to dissolve the United States next to the American flag during a time of national crisis, many in the region do not see it that way, says political science Professor Bill Moore of the College of Charleston.

"In general, I don't feel Southerners see it as inconsistent. You do have a few ultra-nationalists who would still like to secede from the Union. However, most of those who maintain a strong identity with the Confederate flag incorporate it into a historical context," he said.

In the Southerner's view, loyalty to the historical South is not necessarily incompatible with contemporary values as Americans, Moore said.

"Collectively, Southerners do tend to be stronger supporters of the military than their non-Southern counterparts and value a military career more," he said.

Also, because of limited immigration into the region and less exposure to different cultures, Southerners can be more parochial and suspicious of foreign populations than other Americans, and are thus more likely to support action on behalf of American interests abroad, he said.

Sen. Glenn McConnell is one of the brokers of the compromise that brought the Confederate flag down from the Statehouse dome to a monument on the Capitol grounds in 2000, and owns a Confederate memorabilia shop in North Charleston.

McConnell's sales of Confederate flags have continued and are unaffected by the terrorist attacks. He says he flies both an American flag and a Confederate flag and sees no inconsistency in his actions.

"We see it as a patriotic emblem of our ancestors, but the nation's moved on since then. We think our ancestors stood up for a Constitutional principle that was still considered an option back then - the issue of whether states can secede from the Union - and the issue was resolved on the battlefield. We had an unpleasant disagreement amongst ourselves, and it was settled. So now, if you punch at the United States, you've struck at all of us," he said.

Some Confederate flag supporters do embrace the flag as a separatist symbol. Before the attacks, neo-Confederate messages, like Southern independence, were said to be gaining traction, especially in the angry wake of several regional controversies. Debates about the removal of the flag from the South Carolina Statehouse, the changing of the Georgia state flag and a contentious vote on the Mississippi state flag riled Southern partisans and fans of Southern history alike.

In 1997, Michael Hill, president of the League of the South, wrote in one of his publications that "the American flag has, in fits and starts, come to stand for a corrupt central regime that increasingly visits upon its citizen-subjects expropriations that would have driven our ancestors to active resistance."

Hill said he considers himself an American, and he claims that Southerners are more American than people from other regions. He said the Confederate flag is the flag that truly represents states' rights and a Constitutional government.

On the other hand, the Sons of Confederate Veterans, a group that also has been on the forefront in the battles over the public display of the Confederate flag, took a much different position.

After the attacks, the SCV's national commander-in-chief, Ed Deason, immediately issued a statement on behalf of its 30,000 members expressing sympathy and support of President Bush, Congress and the government and affirmed its intentions to "join all patriotic Americans."

That move is harmonious with the organization's mission, spokeswoman Lynda Moreau said.

"We were chartered over 100 years ago as a patriotic and benevolent organization. Our mission is to defend the good name of the Confederate soldier. The SCV does not advocate secession," she said.

Many of its current members are veterans who fought in the armed forces during wartime.

"They fought for this country, and they stand behind it. That doesn't mean they honor the Confederate flag any less. They honor both," she said.

The Rev. Joe Darby of the Morris Avenue Missionary Baptist Church in Charleston, who is first vice president of the state National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, views the issue differently. The NAACP continues its efforts to boycott the state because of the location of the flag on the Statehouse grounds and will raise it, as well as other issues, again in the next legislative session.

To Darby, the Confederate flag is a symbol of disunity in a time when the nation's citizens should come together.

"We need to be unified at a time like this. While I don't think everyone who flies it (the battle flag) is a member of a hate group, I would not fly it. When I see it, I see a symbol of white, antebellum unity. That leaves me out of the picture," he said.

Darby acknowledges that there are South Carolinians who see no conflict in flying both flags.

"What do I think when I see both flags flying together? I guess I rejoice that we live in a country where people can hold strange views," he said.

Since the Civil War, major events such as the terrorist attacks have moved Southerners toward a stronger view of themselves as Americans first and Southerners second, even if they created some subconscious tugs between regional and national loyalties along the way, writes Charles Reagan Wilson in his 1980 book "Baptized in Blood: The Religion of the Lost Cause, 1865-1920."

"The Spanish American War and World War II provided the perfect backdrop for Southern ministers to identify again with the values of the American nation," he writes.

"In 1917 the raising of Old Glory on Jefferson Davis Parkway in New Orleans became a symbolic event marking renewed patriotism. Ministers even wrote poems praising the flag, although acceptance of the prime symbol of national unity created a tension with continuing adoration for the equally potent Confederate battle flag," Wilson writes.

One Southern writer of the time, according to Wilson, suggested "that Southerners should still 'consecrate in our hearts our old battle flag of the Southern Cross'," but that it should be honored not as '"a political symbol, but as the consecrated emblem of a heroic epoch.'"

Until May, the Old South Carriage Company downtown displayed three flags, the United States flag, the state flag and the Confederate flag. However, the flags were stolen on Mother's Day weekend and have not yet been replaced, manager Kay Motley said. When they are replaced, one flag will still represent the Confederacy, but it will be another, less controversial flag, she said.

The company currently displays an American flag inside its barn and quickly put American flags on its carriages after the terrorist attacks.

"We're proud of our Southern heritage. Our company is named Old South, but we are patriotic enough to add American flags to our carriages at a time like this," Motley said.

My word, I ah have nevah seen the "War of Northern Agression" abbreviated before...it seems somewhat disrespectful.

I too, fly both flags.

Three flags here in Texas (not counting my Scotland), two of which flew on the Southern side. The family was mostly in Mississippi at that time but stretched from Virginia to Texas. The drunkard Sherman destroyed (in current dollars) millions of $$ of my family's property (Ellis Family; Twenty-five families of the South.)

Dear Dr. Pepper,

I would like to tell you a story. I lived in West Africa about twenty years ago. During one election for members of parliament, the incumbent decided that he wished to remain in power. Therefore, he and his wife, on election day, showed up at the poll early in the morning. They stood at the door and shot down any person who had the courage to step forward in order to place a ballot into the box. Nine folks died that day. They managed to be returned unopposed The ruling political party eventually removed the minister from his position, though he never went to jail for his crimes.

In that same country, if you so much as breathed a word against the ruling party and it got back to those rulers, you would be damned. You could be out of a job, or house, you could be put in prison, or even be murdered. I personally knew of one man, a top government bank officer, who, one day, felt too ill to go to the office. His family had gone shopping. Upon their return, he was found at the bottom of the mountain upon which his lovely house was perched. Shoved over the veranda. He got the notion that the government was not being fair with its citizens, and obviously spoke it to the wrong person.

. There is no grander nation where liberty is available to ALL! If you are so helpless that you think your civil rights are determined by a flag having dimensions somewhere in the neighborhood of 4'x6', you are in sad shape. Even Europe is the pits, compared to America. You have got your freedom. If you don't take advantage of it and do with it what you want, that is your fault, not the fault of anyone who displays a confederat flag on his pick up.

"I fly both flags .... Stars and Stripes because I AM an American FIRST ... I fly the stars and Bars cause I believe in states rights tempered with a SMALL federal government"

Get real. All the Stars And Stripes is is the flag under which Klinton perjured himself, Lyndon Johnson caused 58,000 GIs to die with his Gulf Of Tonkin "incident" that was a hoax - and the flag under which IRS bureaucrats threatened to prosecute my elderly middle-class mother unless she promptly paid $700+ in back taxes she never owed (they later admitted) in another of their snafus while Klinton was taxing naive native-born "Americans" like you to come up with $2 billion per year for restoring welfare for aliens.

The flag I salute daily at my home is the St. Andrew's Cross (Confederate Battle Flag) - and I think of myself as a citizen of an incipient sovereign nation here in Red Nation, just as a Quebec nationalist thinks of himself as a Quebecois and not a "Canadian."

First of all calling the Civil War the "War on Northern Aggression is akin to the Nazis calling WWII the War of the Allies Aggression. It is sick and belittles Lincoln, Grant and every Union Soldier. Secondly, there were many causes of the Civil War such as Slavery, the 10th Amendment and the conflict between Industrial and Agrarian economies were among them.

Germany was the aggressor, just like the North (bad analogy)pick another.

It's not sick...Lincoln belittled himself on the slavery issue and the war. It is appropriate that Lincoln had a legend as a fence rail splitter, because he was certainly all over the fence on the slavery issue.

Grant belittled himself throughout life and was a drunk and total failure up until he was tapped by Lincoln. His greatest asset was Sherman, who was the closest thing the north had to an Osama Bin Laden type. He burned, looted and terrorized innocent civilians, something Lee refused to do or allow. This makes you proud?

The Union soldiers were brave, and worthy. I would never belittle them they are my brothers. They were just on the wrong side, that's all.

Aah, another liberal socialist infiltrator heard from.

Hey Listen, I was raised in New Orleans and live in George Bush's Texas. I am by no means a liberal but I do feel that in popular culture the Stars & Bars represent the slavery and segregation of the South. And in doing so the Stars & Bars can only keep minorities away from he Republican Party. However, if you want to be in a party that supports slavery and opposes the Civil Rights Movement than you should leave the GOP.

Son, you may as well shut up. Your talking points were written for you by the CPUSA and handed to the NAACP, which is and always has been a communist front organization.

Here's the point of the article: Southerners defend this country and fight in all the wars.

Here's another point: Ever since 1865, Southerners have answered the call to arms in every war and have carried the starry cross into battle with them for the USA.

You sound like a communist. I suggest that you find another forum where people use such PC language as "african american" and accuse patriotic Americans of being Nazis.

The ANV battleflag is not a national flag. It's a battleflag, period. It's a central part of the warrior tradition of a large contingent of the US armed forces. You aren't going to stop the battleflag from going into battle in this war either. Young Southern men are already getting it tattooed on their upper arms. It's an American thing, boy. You couldn't be expected to understand it.

However, if you want to be in a party that supports slavery and opposes the Civil Rights Movement than you should leave the GOP.

You leave it ! It is the SOUTHERN CONSERVATIVE boys that keep this party from sinking into to the elite country club sunset. We are not racist, just realists... blacks voted 90% democratic. They are for the most part, culturally liberal. George says he is going to give us the Hispanic vote. It is a more realistic goal, they don't want reparations. Hell... they don't even want Texas back.

However, most Southerners with Stars & Bars on their pick-up truck mud flaps would not know the difference between the U.S Constitution and a Wal-Mart Receipt.
And now the amazing Dr. Pepper will divine from bumper stickers the innermost beliefs of the owners of the bumpers despite the myriad of meanings, geneologies, origins and intentions of said bumper owners. Dr. Pepper knows and sees all! (Good Lord, what will he/she come up with from that goofy red chicken?)
;^)
O2

I suggest that you find another forum where people use such PC language as "african american"

Yes, George W. Bush and I use the term "African American."

What term to you use?

If you post the term you use to refer to African Americans will it get pulled because it is offensive?

By the way I am just a Republican that believes that as long as Conservatives wave the Stars & Bars African Americans will continue to vote Democratic.

It wouldn't matter if conservatives waved the African flag they are going to vote DEMOCRAT (there is NOTHING democratic about them) anyway.

BTW, I have NEVER owned a Confederate flag and I was born in the SOUTH. You have NO CLUE about my heart nor my head. Calling southerners racist only proves that you're a bigot without a brain.

[By the way, I am just a Republican]

Why am I not surprised? Another GOP socialist continuing the proud GOP tradition of feigning concern for "african americans" and bashing the people who saved that thoroughly rotten, duplicitous party from minority status, the Southern conservatives.

Get a clue. Black people have very long memories. They remember being abandoned and betrayed by the GOP to face the wrath of their fellow Southerners who they had betrayed at the behest of the carpetbaggers. Black folks are stuck on the socialist democrats now. They have seen that the GOP's hallmark is the systematic betrayal of whatever constituency they have been able to attract by subterfuge. The white Southerners are waking up to GOP duplicity, too, but we're not going to the democrats.

The GOP is socialist. They're just very unsuccessful at implementing their socialism, whereas the democratic socialists at least manage to hand over payoffs.

I have changed my mind about your presence on FR. I hope you stay around here for a long time. You're the perfect example of a GOP socialist.

Aaah, so Geedub says "african american". I guess you think he's a Southern conservative. That's a hoot. GW was born in Connecticut to two liberal northern parents. He's a liberal.

I refer to black Americans as Americans, or as black folks. You can ask my wife about how offensive my language is. She's an American, descended from African slaves. I call her "Honey" and refer to her mother as "Ma". She and my daughter are both the lovliest shade of brown. BTW, if you say "african american" around my wife, she'll laugh at you and call you a liberal. Of course, she would be right as she usually is.

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