Nazis, art, and flags

I am a Northerner. I was born and raised in Michigan, and I have lived in just two states: Michigan and Indiana. I've spent maybe a total of 60 days in my life in the South, mostly in Florida and Georgia. When the Younces arrived from Germany in South Carolina in the 1780s, they came without much of anything at all, and they certainly didn't own slaves. As a matter of fact, they were Brethren ministers opposed to the slave trade. Many from the second generation, including my forefathers, moved North to Ohio. I married a Hoosier whose family history does dip down into a border state, Kentucky, before her mother was born. In terms of pedigree, with the exception of the Northern colonial descendants, I'm as pedigree a Yank as there are.

In terms of racism, it is a somewhat difficult thing to talk about one's own record. It always comes across as so defensive, so forced. But, I'll say it clearly anyways: I'm no racist. It's cliche, but I've "had several black friends" and any one of them would tell you that I'm not racist. I've done volunteer work at a camp for troubled African-American boys, I've spent a week at a time on "home missions" trips repairing houses in predominantly African-American neighborhoods, and my denomination was one of the most anti-slavery churches of its day. I'll go toe-to-toe with anyone who suggests that I am somehow racist.

But, I am still offended when someone desecrates the Confederate Battle Flag.

I understand some of the outrage among portions of the African-American community over the Confederate flag. To some degree, you could compare it to how the German Jews must have felt under the Nazi flag. Still, I don't believe that this is a good comparison. The Confederate flag, in one form or another, only flew between secession and the end of the Civil War. It doesn't represent the oppression of the African-American under slavery, any more than the U.S. flag represents slavery - after all, slavery was implicitly recognized by the Constitution. (I'm fully aware that there are radicalized elements in the African-American community that would like to do away with the U.S. flag for that reason, but these voices are, thankfully, few and far between).

The confederate battle flag, rather, represents, in the eyes of the South, the oppression of the South by the Federal government, and the struggle of the South against that oppression. As such, it is no coincidence that Hillary wants the Confederate flag removed from the South Carolina statehouse: more federal oppression.

Yeah, slavery was wrong. It was a moral evil that was, thankfully, wiped from our nation's landscape. But the way that it happened was through Federal oppression of the Southern states, and that was just as wrong. Tying the ideals of the Confederacy only to slavery, or suggesting that the Confederate battle flag should somehow be lynched, is to distort history. It is to miss the one remaining lesson of the Civil War that still faces us today: the Federal government does not have the right to citizens to states how they run their own lives. Of course the liberals want us to connect the Confederate flag with slavery; to connect it with government oppression would only reveal their true agenda.