By Craig Andresen – The National Patriot and Right Side Patriots on cprworldwidemedia.net
Did Nikki Haley really cave to political correctness in now agreeing that the Confederate flag be taken down from the South Carolina statehouse?
And why are Conservatives all bent over that flag being taken down?
There are plenty of people out there turning themselves inside out trying to make a case for leaving that flag flying and they’re using the flag’s design to justify it.
I have seen thousands of comments and posts regarding the Confederate flag over the last week or so and many of them are along these lines…“Neither the design nor the content of the flag has anything to do with racism, slavery, hatred or white supremacy. Nothing.”
That of course, is correct…there IS nothing in the DESIGN of the Confederate flag that denotes racism. But…is the design of the rebel flag all there is to it?
Look…I know about the Confederate flag design…
13 stars to represent the original 13 colonies…the field of red signifying the blood spilled 
and the blue “X” from which the stars shine through…representing the southern states desire to be “Xed” out of the union…I get it but…a design is just that…a design.
The real question is…does the connotation of that flag go deeper than the color of its skin?
The Confederate flag flew over some the states that wanted to keep slavery as a way of life. Without slavery, they thought, they simply couldn’t sustain their state’s economies amidst the growing wealth of the northern states and their industrial base and they, the southern states, simply didn’t want to be the cash-cow FOR the northern states.
It is the connection to the southern states during the Civil War that leaves some offended by the Confederate flag but is that enough to have the flag removed from the statehouse grounds?
There are those who say it, the Confederate flag, has long been nothing more than a moniker of southern pride….that over the decades, it has become more a reflection of pop-culture than anything else.
Pride in what exactly?
Pride based in losing that war some 150 years ago? Pride that their states were the last in the nation to treat people as property? Pride in the horrors of slavery…in that dark period of American history?
Southern pride in what? That they have risen above all that or that they will, as some still claim…rise again?
Another quote from a social media thread regarding the removal of the Confederate flag…” “As they say : Lee might have gave up but we never did.”
It’s a piece of cloth some say. It’s our heritage say others. It’s tradition and part of the southern culture are yet other things said in defense of the Confederate flag.
On the other side of the coin are those whose ancestry tells a vastly different story…having been treated worse than livestock…victims of unspeakable brutality…living and dying without so much as the most basic of human rights along with the long and unsteady road to equality after the end of the civil war.
Let’s be honest here…not politically correct but…honest.
My question is why are so many of us…so many Conservatives…so eager to defend the flying of that flag over a statehouse?
It’s not our flag…and by that…I don’t mean the U.S. flag…I mean it is not nor was it ever, a flag that represented our political side of the aisle.
Which political party was it that ran the southern states leading up to the Civil War?
Not the Republicans.
Which political party was in charge of the southern states DURING the Civil War?
Not the Republicans.
Which political party authored the Jim Crow laws AFTER the Civil War?
Not the Republicans.
Which political party was all for segregation and which political party BLOCKED the Civil Right Act from passage when it was first written?
Not the Republicans.
For that matter…which political party WROTE the Civil Rights Act…the act that left southern Dixiecrats in a lather?
Ahhhh…that WAS the Republicans.
For the entire history of the Confederate flag…for as long as that flag stood in battle and for as long as it has flown since the LAST battle of the Civil War…the Confederate flag has been the flag of but ONE political party…the SAME political party that gave birth to the Ku Klux Klan…the Democrat party…the very party that sees nothing whatsoever wrong with the overt racism of groups like the New Black Panther party.
Now tell me again exactly why we, as Conservatives, should be tripping all over ourselves to defend the flying of the Confederate flag?
I’ll tell you why…
It’s called the 1st Amendment and that is the part of our founding document that ensures that we have the right to the freedom of expression and if part of that freedom extends to the burning of the United States flag…it should also damn well extend to the flying of the Confederate flag.
Look all you want, through our founding document and you will never find any section of it where it says we have a right not to be offended and if there are people out there being offended by a practice that hasn’t been employed in this country for the last 150 years…perhaps they have a bigger problem than the Confederate flag.
The South has a lot to be proud of…tight-knit families woven together in a fabric of faith…a care-free attitude of life mixed with southern hospitality…cultural phenomena such as comfort food, music like the blues that rose above the ashes of slavery and a Get-R-Done work ethic that seems limitless.
THAT is the pride the rebel flag represents today.
Then there’s the fact that despite the best efforts of democrats over the past 150 years…the South DID rise above its past and DID find innovative ways TO compete and to win economic sustainability WITHOUT slavery when they had to.
Have you looked at the political landscape lately?
The South is no longer being run by the Dixiecrats…the democrats or by today’s liberals or progressives. Today…the South belongs to the political party of FREEDOM which believes in LIMITED government and self-reliance. Today’s south is PROUDLY Conservative.
For the past 50 years…LIBERALS have tried to falsely label the REPUBLICAN party as the 
party of racism when in reality…HISTORY shows the complete opposite to be true…the ONLY political party in America that has CONSISTENTLY stood FOR racism is the DEMOCRATS and that flag…that CONFEDERATE flag and what it stood for 150 years ago is THEIR legacy…not ours.
Maybe the better question to be asked is, why do the LIBERALS want that Confederate flag removed? Are THEY afraid that somebody will write an article regarding THEIR direct link to the darkest part of American history?
Rest assured that liberals will use the Conservative’s defense of the Confederate flag as fodder for their false narrative that the Republican party is the party of racism…as a deflection of the truth…so it is up to us to set the record straight in more ways than one.
First of all…the Confederate flag was never the flag of the southern nation or of slavery…it WAS a battle flag flown by various individual armies in Virginia.
Next…we, as Conservatives, should choose to defend the Confederate flag on the same exact basis that liberals defend the right to burn the American flag. We should be defending the Confederate flag on the basis that what it symbolizes today is vastly different than what some CLAIM it symbolized in the hands of the democrats 150 years ago.
Plus…if we are to start removing things that offend SOME…based on real or only perceived offense…where does it STOP? For some 85 years…the entire United States was a slave nation, so to speak, and the flag that flew over that early nation was the stars and stripes…not the stars and bars and given the disgust shown to our American flag by liberals…is getting the Confederate flag taken down just their first step in getting our NATION’S flag removed based on the same misguided notion of perceived offense?
It’s not that crazy of a notion considering that students in our schools are being to
ld NOT to wear depictions of the American flag…NOT to have depictions of our actual American flag on their vehicles or on their bikes and in some places…people are being told they are not allowed to FLY an American flag on their property lest others be…OFFENDED…by it.
And finally…which party ended slavery and freed the slaves? Oh yes…that was the REPUBLICAN party.
Taking down the rebel flag will not end racism as racism is not now, nor has it ever been a product OF the rebel flag. Racism is a learned trait, not an inherent trait and it will continue to exist until people learn that skin color is meaningless as a determining factor in a person’s content of character.
I can understand why some black people are offended by that flag but what I cannot understand is why, for the last 50 years, they have continued to vote for the very party to which that flag belonged some 150 years ago…the very party that embraced everything 
they find offensive ABOUT that flag.
If they choose to be offended…let them be offended by that party’s continued enslavement of them for just as they were considered property 150 years ago and used to work the fields…the liberals they vote for today consider them property for no other reason than to work the voting booths.
Racism is not tied to any flag…only to the thoughts and deeds of individuals.
Much ado about nothing.much hate yes northern states have hated on the southern states for 200 years and counting
Much pride in what?? Try this on. How about pride in following your convictions. Southern states felt northern aggression was wrong and fought and died trying to prevent this. We did not simply roll over and say tax us to death with your one sided tarrifs. Yes it’s true many of US take pride in the thought we had enough hair on our arse to resist the northern bullies and their agression
How come you bring treason into your argument? The south had every right to secede from the union. The north had no right to attack them for doing so.
Absolutely correct. If in fact the colonies had known beforehand that they could not remove themselves from this confederation none of them would have joined it. Several northern “states” were the first to ponder secession. That they started a war over that very thing shows the hypocrisy of the northern states. And don’t even get me started on Lincoln, who’s wife’s family owned slaves. Lincoln could not have cared less about the slaves, need I provide quotes? Don’t forget that the Emancipation Proclamation only freed the slaves in the South, not the North.
As a US Army veteran (E-5, Honorable Discharge, and thanks for asking) I support the First Amendment right of _private citizens_ to celebrate treason, slavery, pedophilia or Adolph Hitler on their own property and on their own dime. However, there is an enormous difference between private and public displays.
Taxpayers of America at every level, local, state and federal, should not be forced to pay for public displays of the symbols of anti-American values such as slavery and treason, which is what that hated rag represents, or the emblems of the defeated enemies of our country. We do not erect monuments to the “courage” of the German defenders at Normandy or the Japanese Kamikaze pilots, and we do not fly the swastika or Rising Sun flags on public property.
Removing the stars and bars from public display will not solve racism, but it will end government approval of the symbols of it. A baby step, to be sure, but a necessary step if we are to move forward in eradicating racism.
Your patriotism may vary.
@Repack Rider: “Taxpayers of America at every level, local, state and federal, should not be forced to pay for public displays of the symbols of anti-American values such as slavery and treason, which is what that hated rag represents, or the emblems of the defeated enemies of our country. Your patriotism may vary”. That is YOUR opinion, and nothing else, and you are welcome to it. You may want to research the Assumption Bill, Louisiana Purchase, and the Hartford Convention.( And thanks for asking). I’m not going to do your homework for you. You may remain ignorant if you wish.
Thank you for a very well written and thought provoking article.