{"id":949,"date":"2009-08-05T12:27:00","date_gmt":"2009-08-05T16:27:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2009\/08\/05\/burn-that-flag\/"},"modified":"2009-08-05T12:27:00","modified_gmt":"2009-08-05T16:27:00","slug":"burn-that-flag","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2009\/08\/05\/burn-that-flag\/","title":{"rendered":"Burn that flag"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>
I was sitting at an outdoor restaurant a week or so ago and a van rolled by with a prominent Confederate flag stuck to its backside.<\/p>\n

Call me thin-skinned, but I bristled. I feel a fume of indignation at the sight of that flag whenever I see it on t-shirts or headbands or bumper stickers.<\/p>\n

It’s not that I have anything against the South. The Confederate flag has nothing whatsoever to do with that region of the country in its modern form.<\/p>\n

Nor do I have a problem with states’ rights. Frankly, I think the notion of 50 state-level experiments in democracy is brilliant.<\/p>\n

No, my problem with the Confederate flag is that it is unpatriotic.<\/p>\n

Whatever their motivations (more on that in a moment) politicians and soldiers in the South committed treason.<\/p>\n

They betrayed their oaths to our Constitution and our military. They attacked our United States Army, collaborating with foreign powers to do so.<\/p>\n

By the time the war was done more than 350,000 loyal Union soldiers were dead.<\/p>\n

Put simply, the Confederacy abandoned democratic principles and tried to shatter our Republic through force of arms and terrorism<\/p>\n

It puts Timothy McVeigh and Osama bin Laden to shame.<\/p>\n

Yes, in those days, many Americans saw things differently. They were Virginians or New Yorkers first; their loyalty to our nation was secondary.<\/p>\n

And many couldn’t see that the institutions of slavery were savage, evil and reprehensible beyond all rationalization.<\/p>\n

But more than a century after the Civil War, people who bear the Confederate flag should know better.<\/p>\n

They claim to be patriotic, law-abiding Americans. They claim to reject the racism and brutality of the pre-Civil War South.<\/p>\n

I say nonsense.<\/p>\n

These days, it’s illegal in Germany to hoist a Nazi flag. I don’t support that kind of official censorship.<\/p>\n

But I can see absolutely no moral difference between a Swastika and a Confederate flag.<\/p>\n

One society used industrial methods to enslave and exterminate Jews; the other used industrial methods to enslave and exterminate Africans.<\/p>\n

Fortunately, there are plenty of symbols available for people who want to show that they disapprove of an over-powerful Federal government.<\/p>\n

There are plenty of ways for people to show their regional pride or simply to broadcast their fondness for cussed rebelliousness.<\/p>\n

Hoist a Don’t Tread On Me flag. Wear a Harley t-shirt. Whatever.<\/p>\n

But don’t fly under the colors of a movement that killed hundreds of thousands of American soldiers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was sitting at an outdoor restaurant a week or so ago and a van […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/949"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=949"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/949\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}