The “Fly the Confederate Flag” legislation, which is often erroneously called the “Compromise to Take Down The Flag,” was passed in 2000. This legislation perpetuates the Civil War. The bill that I encourage people to support, H-3588, ends the Civil War and calls for annual celebrations of the historic day, May 10, 1865, when our country reunited.
Has anything happened in the USA since 2000 that might make us finally want to put the Civil War behind us? Has anything happened that might make us want to say that, you know, maybe we shouldn’t be flying a Confederate flag where our state laws are made? That maybe we should only fly the flag of our state and the flag of our nation?
When the terrorists attacked our country on 9/11/2001, we united as a people yet again. People flew the Stars and Stripes, our USA flag, everywhere. But in South Carolina, we still flew (and still fly today) a Confederate flag where our state laws are made.
When we were attacked on 9/11, things changed all over the world. The Irish Republican Army (IRA) announced that they would decommission all of their weapons. Shane Harrison, BBC Dublin correspondent, explained that 9/11 was a major reason why, and he said further, “It is now clear many in the IRA leadership do not want to be caught on the wrong side of history.”
Yet we still fly the Confederate Battle Flag, a weapon of the Confederacy, where our state laws are made. We should decommission this Confederate flag. We should take it down from the flagpole on the Statehouse grounds.
We went to war in Afghanistan and in Iraq. Our soldiers are in harm’s way. They fight for our country, each for their own state and together for all our states. As New York Senator Hillary Clinton said, “I think about how many South Carolinians have served in our military and who are serving today under our flag and I believe that we should have one flag that we all pay honor to, as I know that most people in South Carolina do every single day.”
Senator Hillary Clinton knows how to listen to the people and how to tell the people what she has learned from listening. That’s what got her elected in New York, and that’s what led her to her eloquent statement above. Her statement is her reflection of what she’s heard people say in South Carolina. She’s heard from South Carolinians, and she knows that the majority want to take down the Confederate flag.
In the War in Iraq, our soldiers defeated the country’s military and captured the leader. In the Civil War, Robert E. Lee surrendered and Jefferson Davis was captured. In Iraq, our military and our state department, and well-connected contractors, have been performing reconstruction work. After the Civil War, our military and the U.S. Congress, and scalawags and carpetbaggers, performed reconstruction work in the southern states.
People in the Sons of Confederate Veterans like to talk on and on about the horrors of the Civil War and the horrors of Reconstruction. Why they do this, I don’t know. But, if they were to help us all learn the lessons of the Civil War and the lessons of Reconstruction so that we could apply those lessons to the wars of today, well, that would help a lot.
When I was protesting yesterday, a gentleman told me that the USA flag was a flag of occupation, that the nation of South Carolina was being occupied by the USA. I felt as if I had been transported to Iraq and was being yelled at by an insurgent. My accoster seemed extremely upset, and I got a little worried about what he was going to do, but he just walked away.
Arizona Senator John McCain, who is a veteran who knows about the military and tells it like it is, said that the Confederate soldiers “fought to sever the union of our great nation, a cause that would have terribly harmed America, perhaps irreparably….” He further said that the Confederate soldiers “fought on the wrong side of American history.”
The Confederacy was defeated, and no Confederate flag should fly where our state laws are made. We need to put the Civil War in the past so that we can learn the lessons of that time period and apply them to today. That’s why we study history, to learn so that we don’t repeat mistakes.
2 Comments
February 13, 2008 at 3:20 pm
I’m trying to say that when we can put the past squarely in the past, we can compare and contrast all sorts of things. And we can learn from studying the similarities and the differences. And we can apply that new knowledge to new situations.
I’m not trying to say that anybody or any group is equivalent to any other person or group. I’m not even saying that the number of similarities between any persons or groups is greater than the number of differences.
I’m simply saying that we’ll do a lot better job at learning from our past if we actually put it in our past.
Our soldiers are currently in harm’s way. We owe it to them to learn from history as much as we can, as quickly as we can, so we can figure out how we can help them.
Thank you.
March 29, 2008 at 9:20 am
The war’s over. We lost.
Time to move on.