What other country would the flying of an enemy flag even be seriously considered?
How does this even continue to be an issue? According to the South Carolina attorney general’s office, a Confederate flag on display at the Citadel Military College in Charleston can continue to fly, despite the fact that it’s an enemy flag and anyone flying it should be tried on charges of sedition.
Look at me getting ahead of myself.
In an opinion delivered earlier today, Solicitor General Robert D. Cook wrote that the state’s “Heritage Act”, passed in 2000 (that’s right, in the year 2000, there was still interest in preserving the racist history of South Carolina, under the cover of ‘Heritage’) protects “monuments and memorials honoring the gallantry and sacrifice in this state’s various wars.”
By “Various Wars”, they were almost specifically talking about the Civil War, as the Heritage Act was passed as a compromise that stemmed from flying the Confederate flag over the State House in the capital city of Columbia. Passage of the act into law allowed for the flag to still be flown, just moved to a memorial to the Confederacy elsewhere on the capitol grounds.
Naturally, people were justifiably pissed. For example, Charleston County Councilman Henry Darby threatened to cut funding if the flag remained where it was. “It’s just still as if they are trying to preserve the Confederacy,” he told the Post and Courier newspaper.
Being that it’s South Carolina, while frustrated, no one was particularly surprised about the outcome. It’s sad that in 2014, we have to deal with the specter of hate, divisiveness and racism jutted in front of our faces in the name of protecting “heritage”. The flag is a symbol of treason and sedition at the highest level. It represents a bloody conflict that took the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans and Rebels.
It is one thing to honor the dead, it is something completely different to reopen old wounds for no logical reason. The needs of the living, at this point, far outweigh any desperate grasp at a nostalgia no one driven by common sense could possibly want.
We should never forget the Civil War, why it was fought, how many senseless lives were lost…no, that’s something we should never forget, nor gloss over. But to fly the flag of traitors in front of one of OUR military institutions is both insane and supremely disrespectful to the people of South Carolina for whom such imagery still serves as a scar that will never, ever heal.