It is a fact that between the Yankee occupation and crooked judges my family lost over 90% of their land and considerable other assets in the 19th century, but I never had it to lose. It really doesn't affect me one way or the other. What I have I built from the ground up, thousands of miles from my childhood home.
What I do have is an historical heritage that goes back well before the Revolutionary War, and the only way that can be taken from me is to be slathered with the revisionist obscurity currently perpetrated by those who would rewrite history to find themselves blameless of any wrongdoing whatsoever and contend that the only reason for the War Between the States was the driving desire of one group of people to enslave another. What poppycock!
I find it even worse that that expunging hatred is taken out not on the political banner of that short-lived nation, but on the battle flag under which a multitude fought and often died defending things they found to be worth fighting for, from their homes to the guy next to them.
Like another group of people, they pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor for their cause.
The only difference is that they lost.
It is no secret that the victors write the history books, but it is utter nonsense to even pretend that their viewpoint will not villify the defeated.
Hence, the enablement of a group of people who contend that the reason they cannot get their feces consolidated lies rooted in events which were before the lives of any of them, and that shifting of blame is displayed in their abject hatred of a piece of fabric.
If all the battle flags of the Confederacy were rounded up and burned, the statues torn down and crushed or hauled off for scrap, the last vestige of mention of any of the troops, from the lowliest recruit to the generals expunged from the nation's history, it would not make one whit of difference in the achievements or accomplishments of the allegedly agrieved group, and any honest person would admit as much. It is just another excuse, and in its absence there would be another found by those who refuse to achieve on their own.
My ancestors were butchered by the south who, if the south had had any morals at all, would have ended slavery themselves.