Confederate Flag and Statues   2017-31

 I have been thinking about the flag and statue issue in the U.S. lately.

The confederate flag is a symbol. A symbol of a lost cause. It has other meanings as well, for many people in this great land of the United States…     

“The Confederate battle flag was never adopted by the Confederate Congress, never flew over any state capitols during the Confederacy, and was never officially used by Confederate veterans’ groups. The flag probably would have been relegated to Civil War museums if it had not been resurrected by the resurgent KKK. Supporters have labeled attempts to display the flag as an exercise of free speech, which it is, although a bad one.

On May 19, 2016, the United States House of Representatives voted to ban the display of Confederate flags on flagpoles at Veterans Administration cemeteries, by a 265-159 vote. The ban was contained in an amendment (House Amendment 592, 114th Congress) to House bill 2822, an appropriations bill. The author of the amendment was California congressman Jared Huffman, who stated that the flag represented “racism, slavery and division. Per Wikipedia”

You can show it, but it also shows something about YOU. What? Don’t really know what, because you might be a very nice person and to suggest you are not is not for me to state. It is, today, an archaic symbol, used by some for many reasons.

I lived in the south for many years and found out some interesting things about the people of the south.

Most are decent, law-abiding, and gracious people. Many would do anything for me when I asked or even if I did not ask. Many went to church regularly and believed in God, Jesus Christ and the Holly Spirit and showed this by doing Christian things as an everyday thing to do.

I do know that by showing this flag is telling me you have beliefs of some sorts. For a lost cause of the past or a challenge of the now or future, that is up to you to say. I do know it is offensive to many because of the past and the Civil War. My great-great grandfather fought and was wounded in the Civil War for the North, and in a way, your showing the flag is telling me you don’t care about what he did or what happened.

That is a shame in a general way, but you can continue to fly this symbol because you have a right entitled to you by the U.S. Constitution to do so, even though it is a disgrace to do so in my mind.

As such, the statues that have been erected during the Jim Crow era that was enforcing racial segregation and in the 1950’s were done so in retaliation to the things happening then. They are a symbol of slavery not heroes for a lost cause. Itis probably time for them to end up in a museum or a junk yard. If any have a problem with this, that is your problem not mine. 

Den Betts