It just doesn’t scan: If you love the Confederate flag, you’re supposed to want the GOVERNMENT to fly it to support your political agenda!? But why do you love the Confederate flag?
What the Confederate flag represents is the bond between soldiers who were forced to serve the Confederacy and to fight against the United States of America. That’s a sacred bond. Flying it to serve a political cause such as fighting against property taxes or fighting for white supremacy is heinous.
Let’s remember what happened in the Civil War period. President Lincoln described the war’s occurrence in his Second Inaugural Address:
“On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it, all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, urgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war—seeking to dissolve the Union and divide effects by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish, and the war came.”
The “urgent agents” used their influence on those leading the southern states to make war by seceding from the United States of America. And the Confederate soldiers? They did their duty. Their states called upon them to fight, and they answered the call. They answered the call.
What should they have done? Refused to obey their state? Well, some did join the Union army. In general, I find the choice to join the Confederate army to be heroic and the choice to join the Union army to be extra-heroic. And in specific, I find the choice of Gen. Robert E. Lee to lead the Confederate’s Army of Northern Virginia to be one of the most heroic choices.
Gen. Robert E. Lee focused on military strategy and actions within the chain of command, as overseen by the civilian authority of the southern states. His honorable leadership kept the chain of command in tact through the war and through his surrender at Appomattox. Thus, his soldiers served with honor, as he did. And when he surrendered, his soldiers did too.
I think about the Confederate soldiers. They want their service and sacrifice to be sold out for fighting for white supremacy or lower property taxes!? Are you kidding me? They fought to serve their respective states. They fought for duty and honor in a bloody and horrific war. They didn’t fight about any political agenda.
Look, taking down the flag does not mean that the flag never did and never will stand for something good. That’s ridiculous. Taking down the flag returns it to the Confederate soldiers who carried it. It’s their flag, not the state of South Carolina’s. South Carolina has a beautiful flag that we fly proudly.
In the current location, the flying of the Confederate flag is extremely confusing. Why does it fly out in front of the State House? It’s near the Confederate Soldier Monument, but yet it’s quite separate from it. The Confederate soldier has his back turned away from the flag, and he appears to be rejecting it.
I really have only one thing to say about how the GOVERNMENT has taken the Confederate flag away from the honorable Confederate soldier. He rejects our state government’s action to fly the Confederate flag. I concur.
