Originally Posted by
Tee
Treason: violation of allegiance toward one's country or sovereign, especially the betrayal of one's country by waging war against it or by consciously and purposely acting to aid its enemies.
All week long, like every other week, I have listened to WGTK Talk Radio. Of course the consuming topic of conversation was the Confederate flag issue....which, in case no one else has noticed, was a virtual non-issue in NC, SC, Alabama, Mississippi, or anywhere else in the United States of America prior to that horrific Wednesday night in Charleston. It was a non issue with Amazon, WalMart, Ebay, Sears, Apple. A non-issue with Democrats, a non-issue with Republicans, a non-issue with Independants. It was a non-issue at the University of South Carolina, The Citadel, The College of Charleston.
The Confederate flag was nothing more then than what it is now. A flag. It didn't represent hate and racism to any of the above mentioned retailers, states or colleges or with any of the aforementioned political parties.
And then all of a sudden it BECAME an issue. Nothing changed about the flag. It took on no new meaning after that Wednesday than it had before that Wednesday. If that flag IS a symbol of racism and hate and evil and treason (as I have listen to AD NAUSEAM all week) NOW, then it was a symbol of racism and hate and evil and treason THEN and not a single one of you bandwagon riding, holier than thou, white guilt ridden people were taking to Facebook before to decry its very existence, to pontificate on its evil, to boycott, or anything else to try and obliterate it from history. Rather many of you embraced a cause celebre and took advantage to soapbox and grand stand and while doing that many of you have deeply offended many of us. Deeply, deeply offended MANY of us. And for you Southerners who have jumped on that bandwagon, you're only telling on yourselves when you decry it, you're telling people what it means to you...like a neon sign.
Now I'm not going to waste anyone's time calling attention to the OBVIOUS logic that ANY object can be made to represent ANY intention, good, evil or indifferent. Such as the US flag being THE flag of the KKK and the Aryan Nation. Or the swastika being co opted by Nazi Germany, but in fact is a 5000 year old symbol that meant "good will" in Sanskrit.
But just as innocent symbols can be made to represent ugly intentions, objects used to represent ugly intentions can be made innocent. And regardless of WHY that flag was created, to uphold slavery, to demand states' rights, to defend our Southern states, that is not what it represents today. Not by any stretch of the imagination.
And for the record, I don't own one, I don't intend to ever own one and I am fine with it coming down and going either into a museum or on ground maintained by private trust or public donations. What I am not ok with is the knee-jerk reaction by the politicians in this state, the domino effect happening in other Southern states and the fact that this sweeping action WILL NOT stop with the flag being removed or vanity plates being revoked.
This tide of ethnocentrism will result in the removal of statues, street names, public school names, monuments and memorials to a culture that BELONGS TO US. Don't poke a 150 year old sleeping dragon.
Those of you calling us Southerners treasonous and evil like I've listened to all damned week, I refer you to my first paragraph and The Revolutionary War.
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