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No harm in giving someone the facts, SW, nor in being civil when possible. What they do with them is up to them, and admittedly a significant proportion ignore them.

But how, FRiend, are we to fight the tide of undeserved sentiment otherwise?

Chaucer said, "Murder will out", and eventually, the truth will shine through. Cannot we bear that standard in a battle of wits and words, armed with the facts, when so many gave so much more in defense of their beloved homes, their families, and all they held good, when most owned no slaves?

It is the Yankees and race baiters who have tried to make the battle flag a symbol of slavery, even though it was not. It was a distinctive banner men fought and died under, and as such deserves our respect and at least a fair examination of why those men fought and died, not some miserable and racist carriacture.

If we allow our history to remain distorted, unchallenged, then truly our ancestors fought in vain.

We will win the reasonable and intelligent people over to at least examining the facts only by being reasonable and intelligent.

Even now, the issues of treating parts of this country like some third world to be exploited are evident in the casual and condescending disdain which is reserved by the more urbane for their more rural brethren, and many of the seminal political issues of this day are divided along those lines.

We ignore that at our collective peril.