{"id":54196,"date":"2015-07-07T12:00:26","date_gmt":"2015-07-07T17:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=54196"},"modified":"2015-07-07T06:36:18","modified_gmt":"2015-07-07T11:36:18","slug":"beat-the-retreat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=54196","title":{"rendered":"Beat The Retreat"},"content":{"rendered":"

I understand the “Heritage” rationale for displaying the Confederate flag. \u00a0Southerners wish to\u00a0commemorate the sacrifice if their fighting men, many of whom died fighting for what they believed was a just cause.<\/p>\n

I understand that. I understand the First Amendment protects that view. \u00a0And I believe the move to suppress the Confederate flag over “racism” is yet another example of our society \u2013 or an intensely privileged, and overprivileged, part of it \u2013 seizing on trite, surface- y symbolism to “send a message” about a big, complicated issue.<\/p>\n

“Messages” are easy; changing hearts and minds\u00a0is hard, time-consuming, and usually fruitless in the short term.<\/p>\n

So I get why people want to fly the Confederate flag. \u00a0And as far as it goes, I support them.<\/p>\n

But I’m not going to fly it myself.<\/p>\n

Still Smell The Gunpowder: \u00a0<\/strong>I’ve heard a few Minnesotans point out that they’d eschew the Confederate flag because of the many Minnesotans who died fighting against the Confederacy – most notably the First Minnesota<\/a> at Gettysburg. \u00a0That’s fine – and not my reason; of my eight great-grandparents’ families, only two had arrived in the US before 1865, and they were from Ohio. \u00a0And the war is, in fact, over.<\/p>\n

Squandered:<\/strong>\u00a0 I choose to eschew the Confederate flag\u00a0because they squandered a vital right and power in defending an evil institution.<\/p>\n

The bloody war fought to defend slavery [1] served as the lead-in to the gutting of the 10th amendment, and trashing of one of the most important rights of a civil society \u2013 the right to free association. It led to the elevation of the idea that preserving the union was the single most supreme virtue.<\/p>\n

Think about it; if the power and intrusiveness of the federal government were at one time \u00a0limited by the knowledge that states could pack up and go away, Do \u00a0you think the feds would be a lot more restrained than they are? Absolutely \u2013 and that would be A very good thing.<\/p>\n

For staking these vital \u2013 and irreplaceable \u2013 liberties on the defense of slavery, alone, it’s time to junk the Confederate flag.<\/p>\n

[1] Yes, it was all about slavery. \u00a0All the proximate causes of the war traced back to slavery. \u00a0The economic war was a war between industrialism and slavery. \u00a0The constitutional issue was over the treatment of…slavery. \u00a0Lincoln sought to preserve the union, which was splitting up over…causes that all traced back to slavery. \u00a0It’s really not even an argument.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I understand the “Heritage” rationale for displaying the Confederate flag. \u00a0Southerners wish to\u00a0commemorate the sacrifice if their fighting men, many of whom died fighting for what they believed was a just cause. I understand that. I understand the First Amendment protects that view. \u00a0And I believe the move to suppress the Confederate flag over “racism” […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-54196","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ebony-and-ivory","category-pc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54196","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=54196"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54196\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54200,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54196\/revisions\/54200"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=54196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=54196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=54196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}