Tampa Boasts of the Largest Confederate Flag

The Sons of Confederate Veterans, after failing to convince the state Legislature that Florida was in desperate need of a new automobile license plate honoring the Confederated States of America and the soldiers who, about 150 years ago, fought to dismember the United States, have erected a giant flagpole and flag at the intersection of two Interstate highways in Tampa. According to reports in the Tampa Tribune and St. Petersburg Times, The pole is over 150 feet in length, counting the section below the ground and the flag, itself, all 1500 square feet of it, flies in the very shadow of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard.

The flag and pole were erected earlier than had been expected in honor of Jefferson Davis' birthday. It is part of a Confederate memorial park on private property and, while many residents of Tampa are upset and tourist attraction operators fear the image it gives the entire area, it's not illegal to have bad taste coupled with a worse knowledge of history.

I have previously written about the Sons of Confederate Veterans, and their continuing efforts to perpetuate the Lost Cause movement. The website of the SCV states its foundation:

"The citizen-soldiers who fought for the Confederacy personified the best qualities of America. The preservation of liberty and freedom was the motivating factor in the South's decision to fight the Second American Revolution. The tenacity with which Confederate soldiers fought underscored their belief in the rights guaranteed by the Constitution. These attributes are the underpinning of our democratic society and represent the foundation on which this nation was built. . . .

"The SCV rejects any groups whose actions tarnish or distort the image of the Confederate soldier or his reasons for fighting.

The "Lost Cause" movement was primarily a literary one. The primary argument of the Confederate apologists in the current era is that defense of states' rights, rather than the preservation of slavery, was the primary cause that led eleven southern states to secede from the Union, precipitating the war. There has always been a literary Lost Cause movement that viewed the War as between noble, heroic southerners against the ignoble north.

The Lost Cause view of the Civil War also influenced Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell and the later film of the same name. There Southerners are noble, heroic figures, living in a romantic and conservative society, who tragically succumbed to an unstoppable, destructive force. Another prominent use of the Lost Cause perspective was in Thomas F. Dixon, Jr.'s 1905 book The Clansman, which became the movie Birth of a Nation. In both the book and the movie, the Ku Klux Klan is portrayed as continuing the noble traditions of the South and the CSA soldier by defending Southern culture in general and Southern womanhood in particular against the depredations and exploitation of freed blacks and Yankee carpetbaggers.

Unfortunately for these apologists who swear that slavery was not the reason for the Civil War, on March 21, 1861, three weeks before the attack on Fort Sumter in South Carolina, a speech was made by Alexander Stephens in Savannah. Mr. Stephens was Vice President of the Confederate States of America and, as such, can be assumed to be speaking with some authority. Among other remarks, Mr. Stephens said:

"The new constitution [i.e., that of the Confederacy] has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution-African slavery as it exists amongst us-the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. . . . The prevailing ideas entertained by . . . the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old constitution, were that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically. . . Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error.

"Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner- stone rests, upon the great truth that the Negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery-subordination to the superior race-is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth. . . ."

And, should there be any further doubt; Article VIII of the Constitution of the Confederate States of America establishes its own twist of the Bill of Rights: "No bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law denying or impairing the right of property in Negro slaves shall be passed."

Enough of history.

The folks who cheer at the sight of the Confederate Battle Flag choose to dismiss the bigotry and prejudices accepted 100 years ago but rejected by rational people. We have just nominated an African-American as a candidate of a major political party for the presidency. This is a moment of which our entire country, Liberal, Conservative, Democrat or Republican should be proud. Do we want to glory in a flag-symbol of our flawed and discarded belief system long rejected?

But the Confederate Memorial supporters say that the average Confederate soldier did not own slaves, he was likely a farmer, a sharecropper or a far-from-wealthy average guy. He did not fight for slavery. To a great extent, this is correct and here the parallel with Vietnam and Iraq is evident.

The rights of slave owners were the reasons for the Civil War. The wealthy and powerful had a real reason to want a split from the central Federal government which was intent on spreading the North's prohibition against slavery in newly created states and in future states. The Confederate leaders were perfectly aware that the average southerner was not going to leave his family, take up arms against fellow-Americans, possibly die or be maimed, all to protect the rights of the wealthy slave-owners to keep their human ..."property." Instead, these powerful and wealthy ..."special interests" fostered the myth that the war was to protect the rights of average citizens of the several states, was designed to save the elegant Southern culture and the romanticism that the masses didn't enjoy but would have liked to. In short, the government of the Confederate States of America manipulated the people, lied to them about the easy victory that was in store and the glorious world that lay ahead. Were the motives and intentions of the CSA government officials well-intentioned? Certainly. Did they want thousands upon thousands of brave soldiers to be killed or injured? Certainly not. The fact remains, however, that the Confederate soldier in the gray uniform was a victim.

Over 40 years ago, the United States was brought into a land war in Vietnam in which we supported a corrupt and unpopular local government for all sorts of reasons that appeared correct to our leaders. Our presidents, Democrat and Republican, played fast and loose with the American public, warning of the ..."inevitable" consequences of allowing the Communists to. After many years and tens of thousands of American lives lost, we left the country and, sure enough, the other side won. The anti-war protests of the late 1960's and early 1970's were unfairly characterized by the people of our government as being anti-troops and attacks on the brave men and women who were fighting in the jungles. The protests were directed at the reasons for the war itself, the rationales raised by the government and treating them as against the soldiers was as dishonest as the reported attack in the Gulf of Tonkin.

Both Senator McCain and Obama agree that the commencement of the Iraqi war was a mistake, although they differ on how and when to extricate ourselves. The Bush Administration had a lofty goal, the introduction of Jeffersonian democracy into the Middle East. It would be an easy task, devoting minimum time, dollars and military personnel; the residents of Iraq, and later, Iran, would welcome our soldiers with flower petals and gratitude. But even that scenario would not be enough to drive the country to war. So a false connection with terrorists, with dangers of nuclear bombs in the hands of Saddam Hussein, weapons of mass destruction, all repeated over and over until they became accepted as true" even sometimes in the minds of the story tellers!

And the people were, again, manipulated; soldiers went off to war and were killed and maimed.

Yes, honor the brave soldiers of the Civil War, North and South. Honor them all by refusing to be drawn into yet another war or a continuation of that one in Iraq. Limit our fight to those who harm or endanger us or our allies.