Quote:I keep seeing this argument, but it's non-equivalent.  When you commit genocide under flag, the flag is permanently desecrated.

 

As I said in an earlier post, slavery is evil, but it's not genocide.  And while you were taught Southerners were fighting solely for slavery.  I wasn't.  Please forgive me if I believe what I was taught.  Stealing and murder are both sins, but will you really argue that one isn't worse than the other?

 

Regardless, my stance on Lee's flag rests on 2 foundations:

 

1. Free speech

 

2. Honoring the dead, even if it offends the living.

So... because genocide is worse than slavery we should only say no to Nazi flags, and not to Confederate ones?


Sure, you might have been taught it wasn't about slavery.  Just as people in the middle east are taught that the holocaust is a myth.  So will you forgive them for believing what they were taught?


Free Speech is all fine and good.  Individuals should be able to fly the flag if they want (and people are free to think about them what they want to think as well).  The flag should not be honored by our government.  If an individual wants a confederate, nazi, or even ISIS flag, they should have that right.  Stores however have the right to refuse to sell them.  Why should our government honor a flag of a group that rebelled against it, and failed, especially when to many it's come to be a symbol of racism.Not just for the actions of confederates, but for the actions of other groups as well.  

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