A Confederate Flag Discussion
There has been a lot of discussion recently about the Confederate Flag.
Slavery, regardless of how the slaves were treated, is a violation of human rights. There is revisionist history that indicates Northerners had slaves also; however, in most Northern states slavery was not legal.
Some are saying the Confederate Flag represents the lineage of the Southern family, and the sacrifice of their family members may be how some Southerners have attached meaning to the flag, but that is an evolved meaning. There were several flags flown by Southern armies and the current flag does not represent a flag adopted or used by all Southern armies.
The flag represents a fight against a human evil. I am not saying all Southerners were evil. But I do not say all soldiers in the German Army were evil either, yet no one doubts that the swastika represents an evil.
In the history of the time the Civil War was over the issue of slavery, couched as States rights because of the Missouri compromise. And many of the Southern states saw President Abraham Lincoln as a traitor to the cause of the rights of the Southern states and called for his removal from office and death. The Civil War did not contain much honor in the history of the United States for either side. But let us not use a modern context to define the event.
Following the Civil War, the Knights of the Klu Klux Klan specifically used the Confederate Flag as the symbol of their fight for white supremacy. It is also, along with the swastika, the symbol used by White Supremacist organizations to represent white power and the subjugation of non-whites.
Just because there are more sides to an issue does not mean the other side carries the same weight. Good Vibrations Radio(r) remains committed to the removal of the Confederate Flag, a flag representing an economy built on slave labor, states that seceded from the United States. and the supremacy of whites over non-whites.
In a modern context this flag does not carry honor just because it carries history.
