By Nathan Barton

The Southern Cross Flag is (according to millions of people) a symbol of hate and racism.  (This is NOT the “Stars and Bars” which was the original national flag of the Confederate States of America, nor any of the other national flags of the Southron Confederacy, but was used as one of the Naval Ensigns and (in the standard heraldic square form) as the battle flag of the Army of Northern Virginia (which is what was flown by the South Carolina statehouse.)  What was painted on the top of the General Lee (Dukes of Hazard) and waved at NASCAR and Country music concerts is the Confederate States Navy’s Naval Ensign.  Whatever it really is, the rectangular flag is inevitably called the CSA Flag or Confederate Flag.  In this essay, I shall call it the “Southern Cross.”

Apparently, the US House of Representative has banned the Southern Cross flag in federal cemeteries, according to Fox News, including historical federal cemeteries in the “Deep South” and apparently even at places like veterans and other national cemeteries in the north. The first vote was the 7^th of July after a brief debate on a measure funding the National Park Service, which maintains 14 national cemeteries, most of which contain graves of Civil War soldiers. The proposal by California Democrat Jared Huffman would block the Park Service from allowing private groups to decorate the graves of southern soldiers with “Confederate flags” in states that commemorate Confederate Memorial Day. As Steve Trinward noted, “Do they really want to start that war all over? Or have we now become completely “Sovietized” with regard to history?”  But since then, the House has demonstrated (yet again) its total disarray and inability to do anything productive by squabbling over various issues, including banning the Mississippi state flag (which has a Southern Cross in its canton) from the Capitol, and backing the stupid National Park Service policy of not allowing CSA flags to be sold on their property.  This is as much about the idiocy of Congress as it is about hatred displayed towards a symbol of regional pride and opposition to tyrannical federal actions. (Bizarrely enough, during the brief debate, a New Jersey Representative had a “teaching aid” a poster of what he called the Confederate Flag (the Southern Cross flag) but with seventeen stars: the original only had 13, so I wonder just what the remaining four states are?  He also was holding the poster upside down: the stars were pointing down.  Perhaps that was intended to be insulting, or a sign of distress on his part?)

As reported by RRND, meanwhile, of course, on the 10^th, the idiot politicians in South Carolina followed up on the bill to remove the Confederate flag from a historical memorial on the statehouse grounds, after the House voted 93-7 on the measure and the spineless governor signed it on Thursday. More idiots cheered as South Carolina demonstrated its complete subjugation to FedGov power and to political correctness.  This commentary discussed “What happens after the Confederate flag comes down?” Our Future Blog by Terrance Heath said in part, “South Carolina senate’s vote to remove the Confederate battle flag is an important first step towards honestly addressing our shared history, and the ways its legacy still haunts us 150 years after the end of the Civil War. The South Carolina senate voted 36 to 3 to banish the flag from state capitol grounds.”  Exactly HOW is banning a symbol “an important first step” – it does not do anything but REMOVE the issue from our shared history and from the knowledge of future generations (if it is allowed to stand).

Another commentary is an example of the exact kind of stupidity and ignorance that the bans promote. “Our neo-Confederacy,” a column found in In These Times written by Salim Muwakkil, states in part “It is an irony that the symbol of the old Confederacy has become the most prominent victim of the June 17 massacre in Charleston, S.C., rather than the three men and six women who were slaughtered at church. After photos surfaced of the shooter posing with the flag, a bipartisan chorus of politicians, including at least a dozen Southern Republicans, denounced the flag’s display on state grounds and license plates. Though the Stars and Bars served as the battle flag for the Confederate Army, it only became a totem of the South in opposition to the integrationist push of the 1950s and 1960s, when it was adopted by the Dixiecrats: Southern Democrats repelled by their party’s embrace of civil rights.” Steve Trinward was right that the commentary will “sure make you think a bit” but what I thought was NOT whether his position was right or not, but how incredible it is that people like Muwakkil can get away with lies about history, and how apparently the correct response to the so-called “hatred and racism and murderous” concept they attribute to the Southern Cross is MORE hatred and racism and a call for violence if not actual murder.  Note: Among other things, the truth is that the flag was raised at the South Carolina statehouse in 1961, as part of the 100^th anniversary of the War between the States, and left in place in 1965: yes, some saw it as part of a stand against desegregation (which had been banned in 1956, after the famous Montgomery bus boycott of 1955, and was further squashed by use of troops in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1957: years before the flag went up.  Yet repeatedly over the last two weeks, I have heard “news broadcasters” as well as commentators outright lie about the facts.)

Mama’s Note: News broadcasters and commentators lied? Tell me it isn’t so… Of course they lie, all the time, about everything. That’s their job now… How many people, even in the ordinary walks of life, always tell the truth anyway? If they even know the truth to start with? And, since most people don’t think about that much, or demand the truth if they do… it is understandable that “news” outlets and commentators answer to their corporate masters first.