Rebel Rebel Your Face Is A Mess

This week marks the 150th anniversary of the start of the American Civil War.  This tragic conflict cost our nation more than 600,000 lives, millions of dollars in treasure, thousands more emotionally ruined lives and  a cultural wound between north and south that a century and a half later is still not completely healed.  What we got in return were the words and deeds of America's greatest President, the renewed opportunity to become a whole nation again and millions of Americans began to earn their freedom after years of enslavement.

The Civil War was about dozens of complicated issues, and the issue of states' rights was certainly among them.  But it would be utterly foolish to say the war was not primarily about slavery.  The right to own slaves, to sell slaves and to allow states first entering the union to participate openly in the slave trade were the basic issues that led to the call to war.  Any attempt to try and paint a different genesis for the war is historically and factually incorrect.  Most historians agree that the driving event that led directly to the Civil War was a failed slave revolt led by abolitionist John Brown.  Every state that seceded from the Union and joined the Confederacy was a slave owning state.  If the South had won the war, slavery would have become the rule of law throughout its dominion.

Somehow, even in an age when we have an African-American president, there are those who try to pass off the rebel flag, that good-ole gloried symbol of the Confederacy, as something symbolizing everything great and good in the rebellion, and not as an outward symbol of slavery.  No matter what good or great deeds and men one finds on the side of the Rebs - and there are truly a great many - the Confederate flag is a symbol of human bondage for profit.

Claiming that the Rebel flag is a symbol of states rights and southern heritage is akin to flying a Nazi Swastika over your home and explaining to your neighbors that you really just love Beethoven and schnitzels a lot.  It may mean that you love Beethoven, but it also looks as though you condoned, nay endorsed, the murder of millions of Jews.  Its symbolism is greater than your personal interpretation of it and if you fly the rebel flag you announce that you believe in the South as it was prior to 1865; virulently racist and immersed in an economy driven by the profit derived from slave labor.

Perhaps even more staggering is the rampant and constant use of the Rebel flag in places where it is simply oxymoronic.  Because of its status as a symbol of our national legacy, the Confederate stars and bars is often seen completely outside of its historical context.  Frequently when driving on the highway one can spot a truck with a Dixie flag on the left bumper and an American flag on the right.  These two things are at complete odds with one another.  Don't you get it!?!  They cannot both exist at the same time.  That's what Lincoln was talking about when he said a house divided against itself cannot stand.  He was talking about your freaking truck in 2011 - you dumbass.  Do you have another car with a Red Sox sticker on one side and a Yankees sticker on the other?

Cultural legacy and regional history are sacred things and I don't mean to piss on them.  That being said, the war is over and the flag that the Confederacy left behind still means awful and painful things.  If you're going to fly it, you had best understand what it means and what you're saying to the people who see you flying it.  It says you're a would-be slave holder who no longer wishes to live in the United States of America.  If you don't want to broadcast that message, then take it off your car, van, boat, truck, wagon, trailer, motorcycle, home or business.  Take it down because that is what really means, even if it reminds you of America's rebel spirit or a Lynryd Skynyrd show you went to back in high school.

The American flag is a rebel flag too.  It symbolizes a nation built on an armed revolution and a country that fought with itself for four awful years and still invited the South back in to its family when the war was finally over.  Perhaps flying that flag is the better way to pay a tribute to your legacy and more importantly to commemorate the terrible conflict that began 150 years ago his week.  Another option might be, to paraphrase Thumper from the film Bambi, to suggest that "If you can't fly a nice flag, then don't fly one at all."