Thank you. That's the point I've been making on Rebel Flag threads since '99, but many here can't bring themselves to accept that fact. I tell them the flag, to this native born Southern boy, is a symbol of the region in which I was born and raised, and will always hold dear to my heart, even though I'm now in my adopted home state of Idaho.
As a kid, we all had Confederate flag patches on our jeans jackets, and Confederate flag license plates on our bikes...even my black friends. My little buddy Oscar liked ZZ Top and Skynyrd as much as he liked Parliament Funkadelic. We talked and laughed reciting lines from "Hee Haw" right alongside "Sanford and Son". As our FRiend Smogger said, the flag wasn't an issue until the Orwellian PC Gestapo made it an issue.
I have a sticker that I'd like to put on the bumper of my truck. It depicts the word "Native" as a Confederate flag. Just how does that convey a racist message? It says I'm a native of the South, and that I'm proud of my home region. Southerners may have done some very bad, awful things in the past, but like the rest of the nation, they realized the error of their ways and changed where change was needed. But many feel it necessary to continue punishing the South a century after Reconstruction, and sadly many of those are here on FReep.
Scouts Out! Cavalry Ho!