Quote:Racism, slavery, treason, and anti-American ideals are the things I associate with the confederate flags.


Of their own volition, the confederates made their views on slavery and race known.


This from Alexander Stephens (vice president of the Confederacy) in his "Cornerstone of the Confederacy" speech:


(emphasis added)


Despite what many think, it wasn't about States' rights.


Here is South Carolina's declaration of Secession, in relevant part:


(emphasis added)

South Carolina specifically calls out these states for exercising States' Rights in not enforcing provisions of the Fugitive Slave Act and other Slavery related laws.


This from Mississippi...


(emphasis added)


So we know the principles for which the Confederacy was founded from the Confederates' own words.


What about the flag itself?


We know the "Stars and Bars" was not the official flag of the Confederacy. Nevertheless, we know it was adopted by part of the Confederate army in battle. The Confederacy never repudiated its use by the army who advanced the Confederacy's aims in battle. Its designer, William Thompson, is quoted thusly:



(emphasis supplied)


The Confederacy was defeated and dissolved without ever renouncing the abhorrent principles articulated above.


Other than using Jedi mind tricks known as flat out denial, and meaningless platitudes like "Heritage, not hate," no defenders of the stars and bars and other confederate icons have managed to show a divorcing of the Confederacy or the flags the Confederacy adopted of its own volition from the repugnant and anti American principles upon which it was founded.


There was a reason that flag resurfaced in the midst of the Civil Rights era, in the aftermath of Brown v. Board of Education and similar legislation that ended "Separate but Equal" Jim Crow de jure segregation. The same bigoted intransigence that resulted in the Civil was and Jim Crow led to the Duval County School board naming a high school after Nathan B. Forrest, a Confederate general and founder of the Ku Klux Klan, in addition to raising that flag, in defiance of the mandates from Washington. The same unmitigated racism connected with the flag is the same reason the Ku Klux Klan-of all groups-is rallying to support the Confederate flag in South Carolina later this week.