The Confederate Flag

This will be a defense of the Confederate flag in the modern (post Civil War) age.   If you’re not a snowflake, read on.

First, some disclaimers.

Battle Flag.  The Interweb is a cesspool of sticklers and nitpickers.   Yes, I know this flag was never the actual flag of the CSA, simply the Battle Flag of the Army of Tennessee.  However, as a practical matter it’s best to describe it as “the Confederate Flag”.   I don’t see anyone flying the actual CSA flags at any point past 1865.

Mr. Union.  I’m originally from Maryland, and now live in Northern Virginia.  My loyalties are now, and always have been, with the Union.  You won’t catch me flying the flag myself.   Note: Virginia these days is very blue.  Both US senators, Mark Warner and Tim Kaine, are Democrats, and though the vote was closer than expected, Hillary Clinton still won Virginia in 2016.  Though last I heard, all those Confederate monuments were still in Richmond – which is still Virginia’s capital.  I’ve been there several times, most notably for swearing into the Virginia Bar in June 1994.

Anyhow, on with the discussion.

Supreme Court.  The US Supreme Court [Matal v. Tan, 582 U.S. ___ (2017)] recently ruled that offensive speech is still protected by the First Amendment.  This is as it should be.  If you want to call people “n**ger”, that’s your business, and your tombstone.  The state can’t prevent you from doing so.   So you have a legal right to fly the flag which cannot be abridged by the Feds, state, or local authorities, including the police.

Reaction.  Don’t be shocked if some people don’t like seeing the CSA flag waved in their faces.  While the police and local authorities may be barred from taking it down, private parties may decide to take matters into their own hands.

What does it stand for?   Part of the issue with this flag is that it was originally associated with the Civil War, in particular the Confederate States of America.   I don’t buy for a New York minute the nonsense that South Carolina and the others seceded over “state’s rights”.  Nonsense.  Bulls**t.  It was slavery, pure and simple, and the ones responsible at the time said so over and over again. 

Of course, as of 2017, slavery is NOT back on the table.  No way, no how.  I haven’t heard anyone even suggesting that, even from the KKK.  It’s not going to happen.   As for secession, I hear that bandied about, depending on what unpopular policy is emerging from the White House or Congress, or whatever federal agency.  Since we have Donald Trump as President, I’d hardly think the former CSA states would be inclined to secede, and they didn’t do so – or even seriously discuss the matter – during 8 years of Bubba or Obama, nor did they do so after Brown vs. Board of Education, or during LBJ’s administration.   Even at the times at which the flag’s use returned to haunt everyone, its original political agenda did not.   So as a practical matter, neither of the major issues associated with the flag’s original use in 1861-65 apply today.  

The worst possible statement the flag could make, brandished by a Klan member, is “damn it, we’re sorry we lost the war, we’re sorry slavery isn’t around anymore, we don’t like having to allow blacks the same rights as us, but the most we can do is simply wave a flag around and bitch about it.”  The more mundane, benevolent, and acceptable use is to simply say, “I’m from the South and I’m proud of it.”

Lynyrd Skynyrd.   Recently Gary Rossington, the sole surviving original member, decided to retire the CSA flag from the band’s array of imagery, both on stage and on other items such as t-shirts.  Mind you, this is very recent.  Even their reunion t-shirts (1991-present) frequently featured the CSA flag.  And of course during the 1970s the flag was prominent in concert, even in places like the UK (though we recall the UK flirted with the idea of supporting the CSA, however briefly and casually, an implausible scenario from a country which had abolished slavery 30 years before and was active in shutting down the slave trade).

But examine this: Over five original albums, Ronnie Van Zant made no mention of (A) the Civil War, (B) seceding from the Union, (C) slavery, (D) Brown vs. Board of Education (try fitting that into lyrics), or (E) any vague noises about supporting white supremacy.  So why were they flying the flag?  Simple Southern Pride, as misplaced as it might be.

Appropriation.   Some may object, “all well and fine to try to switch it from slavery to simple southern pride, but you can’t change what a symbol means that easily.”  Can you?  Let’s look at the swastika.  The Nazis did NOT invent the swastika.  It had been around for centuries.  But in 1920 they decided to use it themselves.  Can it be reclaimed or repurposed?  Probably not a second time.  Part of the problem is that its prior use was so diffuse and vague – what did it stand for, before the Nazis stole it?  Whereas its use by the NSDAP correlates to a specific political agenda – 25 Points – and a discernable movement.  Plus the Nazis were the epitome of evil. 

The premise of appropriating the CSA flag to “southern pride”, I argue, is much stronger.   As noted earlier, its original political agenda is a non-starter today.   Whereas nationalist movements still exist and the spectre of what the Nazis did is still around – and anti-semitism still alive and well – “southern pride” is not nearly as dangerous.  As Skynyrd showed, many display the flag with no racist intent whatsoever. 

It is possible to brandish the CSA flag, ostensibly as a symbol of “southern pride”, when your actual intent is to assert white supremacy.  “Heritage, not hate”, is often said.  The proper reaction is to take it at face value.  Because if no one ever champions secession, slavery, or white supremacy while flying the flag, those concepts will lose their attachment thereto.  As Tim Allen pointed out:  what flag is flying over the post office?  Appomattox, baby. 

Blacks in the South.  Believe it or not, many blacks still live in the South.  Not all of them moved to DC, NY, Chicago or L.A. and became rappers.  And from what I can tell, the blacks who live in the former CSA are very proud of where they’re from.  Do they want to be slaves?  No.  Do they like the Klan?  No.  Do they want burning crosses in their yards?  No.  Do they want to be lynched?  No.  Do they want the same rights as whites?  Damn right they do, and they deserve them, of course.   I don’t fault them for resenting the CSA flag, regardless of whether it’s meant as racist defiance or simply southern pride.   Occasionally I’ll see a black person flying it, but that’s very rare and not the norm.  But insofar as the flag can simply represent southern pride, it can be – and I know it’s tough to think this way – as a symbol for blacks and white in the south together. In fact, if more blacks would fly it themselves, whites would start looking silly if they tried to surreptitiously assert its original agenda; consider this blacks calling their bluff and including themselves in “southern heritage…not hate”.   So it SHOULD be “taken back” from racists and used to bind the South together, in peace, without slavery, without burning crosses or nooses.  “Heritage, not hate”?  Maybe not as stupid as it sounds.

Or maybe I’m just a Union idiot.  

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.