Waving the Confederate flag?

Close to where I-75 and I-4 meet in Tampa, Florida is a new tourist "attraction" offered by none other than the "patriotic" and "historic" Sons of Confederate Veterans. It is a 20th century Confederate flag the size of an 18-wheeler blowin' in the wind (the flag on the right - photo from MyFox 13, Tampa Bay).

Thirty feet high and fifty feet long, waving from a 139-foot flagpole, and lit up at night, drivers traveling either I-75 or I-4 can watch this atrocity with amazement as they run into each other setting off bursts of smoke and flame to "honor" those folks who thought slavery so important they attacked their government setting off the most horrendous war in U.S. history!

This flag is part of a larger project to fly Confederate flags across the state of Florida known as the Confederate Veterans' Flags Across Florida project, although I don't know why anyone would lay claim to the name "Confederate Veterans" as there are none still living.

Florida, like other southern states, contains a number of inhabitants who are still licking their great-grandfather's wounds. Some of them haven't yet conceded defeat. Lee's surrender was a travesty. It's because of these people Confederate symbols have hung around way too long. The seal of Hillsborough County, where the new truck-size flag will wave, included a Confederate flag until 1994. Hillsborough County sign regulations carried a Confederate flag until 2004. The Confederate flag flew at the state capitol in Tallahassee until the year 2000!


So who are the Sons of Confederate Veterans? It's a national outfit that got started 102 years ago, and claims to be an "historical, patriotic and nonpolitical organization dedicated to ensuring that a true history of the 1861 to 1865 period is preserved." The group, which is open to "male descendants of Confederate veterans, has about 1500 members in Florida and when not flying their flags they are actively promoting a "Confederate Heritage" license plate; so far without success.

Are these "sons" of Confederate veterans worried that flying the Confederate flag might be deemed inappropriate and even racist? Well yes, but they don't give a damn. Doug Dawson, the Florida division commander, says he knows that big ol' flag flying up there 24 hours a day is gonna cause some waves, but "We can't do anything but explain to people what the truth is. If they don't want to accept that, they're closed-minded, and Jesus Christ couldn't change it."

Shore enuf!

It's fairly breathtaking to realize that in some underlying fashion, a number of people wish to fight the Civil War all over again in an attempt to secure a different outcome. Meanwhile, they've dedicated themselves to revising the history of the Civil War. (Notice these Confederate folks don't much care for that term, Civil War. They refer to it as the Rebellion or the War Between the States, when they were treated so badly they were forced to attack the United States government, just, well, you know, to maintain their "honor."

They'll tell you all they wanted to do was go their own way and own their slaves and who the hell did Lincoln and those other Yankees think they were, telling them they had to obey the laws of the land? And how dare the Yankees bring gunboats into southern waters?

It wasn't really about slavery anyway, it was about states' rights, right? Here's what one southern fried redneck had to say about the issue:

"The Confederate flag represents the same principles and values as the original U.S. Betsy Ross flag : Constitutional limited federal government, States rights, Resistance to government tyranny, and Christian values and principles. As America experiments with socialism, secular humanism, and globalism, the Confederate flag is a fitting reminder that Southerners fought to preserve these values and principles. Lincoln and the North fought against the principle of self government. Northern victory changed America from a Constitutional Federal Republic to a Democracy with Socialist leanings. Lincoln and the Northern radicals were the true Rebels. They broke the original Constitution and Bill of Rights. They are guilty of treason."

The writer continues on this revisionist track to finally argue that the Confederate flag represents "a classical civilization with colleges and universities, art and literature, superior statesmen..." blah, blah, blah, so "It deserves to be honored, respected, and remembered just as the classical civilizations of ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome are."


There is no end to the argument. The south began the war to keep its slaves by firing on Fort Sumter in 1862. It was the first and yet, in many ways, the final shot for a section of the country despairing of the fact it's agrarian society was being left behind by the greater northern industrial sector. The states' rights argument was bullshit from the beginning and is bullshit today. The south was going south and thus slavery became the symbol of their refusal to change.


So, at the beginning of the 21st century, 143 years after General Robert E. Lee laid down his arms in surrender, the South rises again in the form of a flag the size of a semi waving in the breeze in Tampa, Florida, a bitter reminder that over one half million dead wasn't enough to resolve the issue in the minds of these descendants of southern sons who marched off to save slavery but ended up merely dying amidst the hellish battles that laid waste to a major portion of what our writer above called a "classical civilization."


Finally, it should be noted that the flag they are waving at the junction of I-75 and I-4 near Tampa is not the "proper" flag. This "rebel" flag never flew over the rebellious states and never represented the rebellious states, aka the illegal and unrecognized Confederate States of America.

The "stars and bars" (shown above left) was the first flag of the rebellion. The second flag, also known as the "battle flag" was a square flag "having the ground red; thereupon a saltier [sic] of blue, bordered with white, and emblazoned with mullets of five-pointed stars, corresponding in number to that of the Confederate States."

There were a number of other Confederate flags down through the years. The one flying in Tampa is a 20th century concoction; a combination of the Battle flag's colors with the Second Navy Jack's design. It is not the Confederate "battle flag"!

If anyone gives a damn.