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Is or Was the Confederate Flag a Symbol of Slavery and Oppression? And if it still is, then, to whom?

by Victor John Serge

 


For the past two weeks, the liberal media have been steadily punching holes in the defensive system of the republican presidential candidates with the ram of the naphthalene issue of a confederate flag that is still quivering over the state building of South Carolina. And even John McCain, who has never before read his speeches in public, stumbled about this issue and was forced by the press to read a statement that was precooked by his staffers. Time and again McCain has been putting "freedom" as the fundamental principal from which he has boldly inferred the resolutions of multitude of other issues, including the issue of what to do with that Cuban boy, whose mother drowned, trying to escape from Castro's oppressive communistic regime. And I am wondering why it is so difficult to apply the fundamental principal of freedom to such a naphthalene issue as the confederate flag over a state building? What is special about this issue that even the best republican presidential aspirants could not handle it spontaneously?

On one hand, McCain admitted that the flag was a symbol of slavery; on the other hand, he asserts that it is a heritage of the South Carolinians who must resolve the flag issue without the external pressure of the presidential candidates. The rest of the republican candidates took nearly identical positions on the flag issue, except Alan Keys, who, as a black, understandably must accentuate the relics of slavery. So, why do the liberals smell something fishy in the ambidextrous republican response and continue hammering them with the question? It is very simple… because a shallow answer or an answer that is not brought to the logical end allows the liberals to use it as a mean in achieving their ends.

We know that their ends are to save the present level of influence in the federal bureaucracy and, if the republicans will give them a chance, to extend it further. And we know that they are masters in Clintonese and will not hesitate to inject the race-card into the presidential race, which allows them to be the leaders of emotionally disturbed non-thinkers. To root out the liberal’s fang or, at least, to decontaminate the presidential battlefield, the republicans must to elaborate on this issue and put it to rest once and for all.

By definition, a ‘flag’ is a standard or a banner that marks distinction, or rank, or nationality, and that conveys messages. Some 140 years ago, in South Carolina, the old confederate flag had been about the second American nation that would allow the state-members to resolve the slavery issue by themselves. The Northerners, by force, asserted that each State and its citizens could not resolve that issue as if they were a separate and sovereign entity. After winning a civil war, the Northerners forced upon the Southerners their own imperial ideal of freedom and social organization, which was clearly superior than that of those locally-minded Southerners.

However, because this imperial ideal came in the South not through the ballot box, but on the tips of bayonets, some of the seventh generation of those Southerners who actually fought in the civil war still suspect that some of the seventh generation of Northerners treat them as inferior people. Moreover, after introduction of the liberal New Deal program, the incursions of the imperial bureaucracy into the domain of the state bureaucracy are constantly increasing, if not by size then by quality; and that further draws the resistance of local people and their governments to "outsiders" and "carpetbaggers."

There is always a smart-ass in a crowd, who is well versed in Clintonese, and he may think that the confederate flag does not bear the same meaning of far-fetched posterity as it used to bear for their rustic ancestors. He might understand the views of the modern Southerners who suspect the modern Northerners as having a superiority complex. And he may reasonably suspect the Northern liberals in trying to prolong the fading subconscious resistance of those "non-submissive" and "stubborn" Southerners, forcing this issue again and again until their tactics 'to divide and conquer' succeeds and they would brand the republicans as the racists. Then, he may cry out -- let it be, let the non-violent and non-intrusive freedom to heal the wounds, which were made with the bayonets, and the problem will peacefully fade away in due time. Force it again, and you will reap thousands of Wacoes and Ruby Red Ridges.

Blood... blood... blood is what the liberals crave. Blood is the best glue that criminals have been using from Moses’ times to anoint each other in a carpet-bagging union. And that is precisely why they are provoking us. Therefore, we should not cave in, but expose those blood-thirsty suckers on every corner and every street until they give up questioning our allegiance to the Union, which the Founders looked to as a tool of freedom, not of oppression.


1/16/00


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Victor J. Serge created this page and revised it on 04/13/03