“The South will rise again?” Not likely.
We drove down to Atlanta this weekend to experience the worship services at Buckhead Church and North Point Community Church. Our model is somewhat similar, and our leadership team went down to learn as much as possible in 12 hours. More on that in a different post. I’m still processing some of it.
On the way down, we naturally passed several redneck stores…er…stores selling “The South will rise again” paraphernalia and propaganda. One of the stores, however, surprised me. In most cases, the only thing you see representing the South is the “Southern Cross”. They act like that’s the only flag to have flown over the Confederate States. This store, however, flew a Stars and Bars alongside the Southern Cross. They actually understood a little bit of history. I was genuinely surprised.
The Southern Cross has become a symbol of hate. I understand that a lot of southerners claim they fly it because of “heritage” and “pride.” More on that later. Racists in the South took over the Southern Cross as their symbol of hatred against non-whites. The association with racial hatred with that symbol has become so strong that you cannot disassociate the two anymore. If you really want to fly a Confederate flag as a symbol of “heritage,” fly something other than the Southern Cross. If you flew a CSA flag without the Southern Cross on it, I think few people would actually say anything about it because their history teachers didn’t bother to teach that there was more than one flag for the Confederate States.
Why would you want to fly the Confederate flag anyway? If you are genuinely flying it because of pride in your heritage, what are you trying to say? After all, the Southerners were rebels…insurgents…traitors. Doesn’t flying a flag from a rebellion imply your support for rebellion today? What message are you conveying by displaying it, if that’s not the case? Flying that flag is protected under freedom of expression, but why even bother?
I can understand many of the reasons the South seceded (there were many more than slavery…it didn’t become the main issue until Abraham Lincoln made it an issue midway through the war to keep Britain out of the war). I might even be sympathetic to some of them. My views on the legitimacy of the CSA’s rebellion, however, has changed over the years. It appears that the South wanted to return to the system of government under the Articles of Confederation. Those Articles did not work. That’s why we have the Constitution today. Why go back to something that doesn’t work?
Perhaps war was inevitable. Yes, there was an arrogance in the North that could not be reconciled through politics. The Civil War, however, is a dark point in our nation’s history. Is it really something we want to take pride in?
Don’t get me wrong – I love Civil War history. I love reading about it and visiting the battlefields. It is amazing to me, though, when people talk around here like the war is still going on.
What do I know? I’m just a carpetbagger.
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At this point it seems like a lot of people use the Civil War as an excuse. They want to blame something that happened 150 years ago for the loss of an easier way of life. I’m not sure that way of life existed for very many people in the first place. Even before the war, an awful lot of people lived in poverty so that a few could live on fancy plantations.
by the way, that was from me.