The Confederate Flag

God forbid I choose a relevant topic.   I just came back from Albany, and the Museum of New York loves to tell us how New York was the most important state for the Union (although they admit that as a percentage of its population, Vermont sent more soldiers to fight).  Part of a mural in the New York State Capital Building shows Union troops fighting Confederates, who are brandishing – guess what??? – the Confederate battle flag.  Let’s see if the furor will have workers erecting scaffolding in Albany to erase the offending image. 

Now, about the Confederate Battle Flag (hereinafter, “CBF”, please do not think I’m referring to the Brazilian Football Federation).  Yes, I know that it was never the actual flag of the CSA and was more like a military flag or naval ensign.  Though if you look at the actual “Stars and Bars” you can see what Georgia did:  it took advantage of the fact that most people only know the CBF and don’t recognize the actual flag of the CSA when they see it.

Let’s start by saying this is still a free country.  Any private individual should be free to express himself (or herself) with a CBF.  Fly it on your porch, from your pickup, or emblazon it on the top of your ’68-70 Dodge Charger.  Private sellers are free to stop selling it, and I imagine those which continue to sell it will laugh all the way to the bank.

Whether it’s included on the state flag (e.g. Mississippi) or flying on the state capital (South Carolina) should be up to the voters of that state to determine.   If they’re proud and want to give the rest of the country the middle finger, by all means vote to keep it.  If they’re ashamed, vote against it.  It’s that simple.

“OMG, what does it mean?”  I can understand those who sole purpose in showing the CBF is “southern pride”, which might not even necessarily be “white pride.”  I can see black people in the South as being proud of being from the South – they didn’t all move up to NYC or LA after 1865.  I find it hard to believe, though, that blacks would want to demonstrate “southern pride” by flying this flag.  And I can’t blame them for associating this flag with the Confederacy and its values. 

By the way: please, please, please shut up about “state’s rights”.  The only state’s right the Confederacy had any interest in defending was its “peculiar institution”.  So yes, the Civil War WAS about slavery, not state’s rights.  Does that mean flying the CBF is an explicit endorsement of slavery?  Not necessarily, but let me draw a potential parallel.

The battle flag of the Third Reich (above middle) is still available for sale.  It copied the old imperial German battle flag but changed the basic color from white to red and substituted the swastika in the center left in place of the imperial German eagle.  For that matter, you can probably still buy the flag of Nazi Germany:  red with the white circle and black swastika.  Instantly recognizable, as you might well imagine. 

Fly them, and then make the following claim.  “I don’t support or condone Nazi Germany, national socialism, totalitarianism, anti-Semitism, or any of the values of Nazi Germany.  I simply wish to show pride in the military prowess of the Wehrmacht (Heer, Luftwaffe, Kriegsmarine) and Waffen SS, as well as esteemed German generals like Erwin Rommel or Heinz Guderian.   That’s all.”   See how many people accept that argument.  React with shock and horror when Jewish people condemn you.  “They’re missing the point I’m trying to make!”  Uh, yeah.

Having said that, I do believe the “southern pride” argument is not that weak, and here’s why. Circa 2015 I can’t imagine that any appreciable percentage of people flying the CBF sincerely wish to (A) bring back slavery or (B) secede from the US.   Such goals were unrealistic back in the late nineteenth century when the Ku Klux Klan was born, and are no more realistic today than they were then.  Apart from angry voices in the wilderness, vague and empty threats of secession barked out on the Internet or Facebook, no one seriously proposes either of them.  So it would be a mistake to attribute this agenda to anyone waving the CBF in 2015.

There’s also a fair amount of defiance involved.  We’re a plural society.  “America” doesn’t necessarily mean one particular group.  Whites from the South don’t relate to New Yorkers, gangsters from Chicago, hipsters from Seattle, or trendy types in California.  Each subset of our country wants the right to be proud of their particular niche in American society. 

Does flying any such flag count as “fighting words” or “shouting ‘FIRE’ in a crowded theater”, which might merit some form of content-based regulation to keep the peace and avoid bloodshed and riots?   That would have to depend on the circumstances, but probably not.  The courts have protected the Klan’s right to march, as well as “Illinois Nazis” (free from being plowed off a bridge by a Mount Prospect, IL former cop car?) to march and express their values, as unpopular as they are.   So most likely the rights probably stand with the CSA/Nazi crowd on this one. 

Here’s another idea.  In Harry Turtledove’s Timeline 191 series, the South wins the Civil War (the War of Secession, as it’s called), wins a subsequent Second Mexican War in 1881, but then loses World War I.  The US, allied with Imperial Germany, wins that war.  The Nazi Party never materializes, but an analogous party erupts in the defeated Confederate States: the Freedom Party.  This party takes the Confederate Battle Flag and reverses the colors, so it's a red cross on a blue field (above right).    You could fly that flag instead (assuming anyone sells it – it’s a purely fictional flag) but be warned.  In the stories, the Freedom Party took power in 1934 and started World War II in 1941 in the United States, invading Ohio from Kentucky and battling Pittsburgh.  However, the regime also began annihilating its blacks in concentration camps.  Does this sound familiar?   Even the Confederacy never tried doing that.  So a Freedom Party flag could be more provocative than a Confederate Battle Flag.  

Even so, the First Amendment protects free speech and freedom of expression, and that may include language we don’t like or agree with, or images we find offensive.  As a Union sympathizer, however, I will not be flying a CSA flag anytime soon.  Maybe I need a 35-state Union flag on the roof of my ’09 Charger.