“If enough people start walking around with Mexican or German or Japanese or Soviet flags on their clothing, the rest of us are going to wonder what’s going on and what’s wrong with you.”
It can hardly be the problem of the wearer that there are idiots who can’t differentiate between symbols from other countries and symbols of American history.
And who exactly is “the rest of us?” The enlightened ones like you?
Isn't the standard Lost Causer position that the confederacy WAS another country?
My point was: if you wear symbols like that you can't accuse other people of not getting over the past.
Wearing a contemporary German or Japanese flag might just be a symbol of ethnic pride. Wearing something with a Nazi or Soviet or Viet Cong flag, or the Imperial Japanese battle flag would indicate that you have some problem with how things turned out or what America did or is.
And the Confederate battle flag? Is it just some kind of neutral symbol from American history?
Well, first of all, not so long as there are people who loudly claim that the war turned out the wrong way. At least some of the rest of us are bound to take such a shirt as symbolic of sedition or subversion.
Secondly, for a long time we did take the CBF as a benign symbol of regional pride. That was back in the days when it was also a symbol of segregation, and that association has also stuck for a lot of people, to the point where the CBF doesn't look so innocent.
Third, when you consider that Confederate symbols are associated with a war in which more Americans lost their lives than in our other wars with Mexico or Germany or Japan, you can understand why some people may still be sensitive about it.
And the US flag? Is that also a symbol of the carnage of the Civil War? Well if you want the 35-star version emblazoned with "Death to Traitors" or "Union or Death" it is. But the national banner has had 150 years to develop other associations. It's as much a symbol of all of us now as the French tricolor -- once the hated symbol of the Jacobins and Napoleon -- has become the symbol of the entire French nation.
Some countries can kind of chuckle about past civil wars. Britain's like that. Nobody today is wholly a cavalier or wholly a roundhead. Everybody recognizes a little bit of both in who they are and how things turned out (Ireland's a whole lot different on that score).
But some countries have wounds that are too recent and too deep. I think we're somewhere in between. Closer to the British than to the Spanish, but still somewhere in the middle. That probably has more to do with how things were 50 years ago than 150, but there's still some sensitivity there.
And who exactly is “the rest of us?” The enlightened ones like you?
Normal people who aren't carrying around a 150 year grudge.
I'm not saying most people are going to be horrified or shocked or angered by the Confederate flag on clothing, but they may think you're a little bit off. Like if you were wearing a shirt with a pop culture slogan on it. A little more than that. But less than if you were wearing Nazi or Soviet emblems.