After yet another mass shooting by a young male on psycho-pharmaceutical drugs, this one in a beloved sanctuary, the oldest of its kind in the US, a church that has survived slavery, Jim Crow and hands-up-don’t-shoot, it is really time to ask the politically incorrect question why my fellow citizens from the South continue to fly the confederate flag.
The confederate flag was, and still is, a flag of treason.
Many of my fellow citizens get all warm and teary-eyed over treason??? Really? That’s sobering.
The stars and bars represents division, hatred, us-against-them, and the senseless death of scores of thousands of Americans who slugged it out in horrific fashion over four years more than 150 years ago in a war concluded in the blink of an eye at Appomattox court house in VA. Note that at the South’s surrender, General Ulysses S. Grant treated his counterpart, General Robert E. Lee, with dignity and respect, allowing him to keep his gun, his horse and his head. In many other nations, and perhaps even if this outcome had been reversed, the losers would have been executed, Nuremberg style. As it was, Grant ordered his army to salute Lee as he rode away. He did this in a noble attempt to heal the gaping hole torn in America’s heart by that unspeakable war.
In an editorial earlier this week, David Brooks points out that Robert E. Lee, that sacred son of the South, was a traitor to his nation. Yes, he was kindly and smart and, most importantly to Southerners, well-mannered, but he was also the valedictorian of his West Point class who swore an oath to protect and uphold the Constitution of the US.
Spoiler alert – he didn’t.
In fact, while 40% of his Virginian classmates honored their oaths and fought for the Union, kindly old Robert E. Lee decided to war on them instead.
My great-great grandfather was one of those murdered during the Civil War (and no, it is not called the War of Northern Aggression, as the Southerners like to refer to it). A teenage soldier who had emigrated from Germany, William Schulz enlisted in an all-German speaking US army regiment out of Albany NY, was taken prisoner at the siege of Petersburg and died of starvation 18 months later at the infamous Andersonville POW camp in Georgia. He was just 19 when he died. He never saw his only child.
For the Southern states to weave the symbol of treason into their state flags and license plates is nothing more than petty-ass, passive-aggressive silliness.
The South lost the war. They rejoined the Union. Time for them to cowboy up and get with the program.
Brooks is so right in his piece. He says that the signals that society sends to its children through its preference for certain symbols are subliminal and therefore very powerful.
Allegiance to that flag symbolizes an acceptance of racism and apartheid. Simple as that.
It’s so heartbreaking that the cold-blooded murder of those welcoming and loving parishioners who had come together to pray should be the tipping point on this terrible subject. The screwed up punk loner who murdered them was encouraged by his culture’s tacit belief in white supremacy, a concept that is on the wrong side of history.
In honor of William Schulz and all nine murdered at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal church in Charleston, SC, I call on our Southern brethren to finally own this one.
Dump the flag of treason once and for all and leave it in a museum where it belongs.