The kid on the school bus seat next to me was scratchily drawing on his binder with one of those newfangled Bic pens made of clear plastic. Like a lot of us, he was probably the son of a World War II vet. What was he drawing? Big swastikas. I, on the other hand, liked to draw sailing ships that flew the Jolly Roger, i.e., the skull-and-crossbones emblem of pirates. A couple of girls in my grade liked to draw pretty horses. Girls.
The girls doubtless really liked horses. But for young guys like myself to draw symbols of menace and evil didn’t mean we really endorsed what those symbols represented. It was our way of being naughty, to be a little bad and rebellious.
I think that for many that has been part of the appeal of the Confederate battle flag: as a symbol of defiance against the powers that be, the establishment. But as an oft-thumped book says, there comes a time to put away childish things. And that time is obviously now, as the controversial swath of cloth is being removed from South Carolina’s capitol grounds and in other public places in states across the South, and dropped by retailers across the country.
It was petulant in the first place for the Confederate flag to be raised on government property. It could never be divorced from its original role, to aid soldiers in a war whose ultimate goal was maintaining the brutal subjugation of millions of people. The idea that the banner represented the pride and heritage of the South was grafted on later, just as the lie that states' rights was the core issue of the Civil War developed only years after the event in a revisionist justification for it.
What about the valor of the soldiers who died under it and for it? Shouldn’t that be honored and celebrated? I can only answer that soldiers throughout history have died for bad causes, and the “lost cause” of the South was certainly one of them. The swastika was not held on to, or revived, by a defeated nation as a symbol of the “courage” of the soldiers who gave their lives for its cause. We don’t honor bank robbers and other outlaws, at least in traditional ways, for whatever daring they display.
They may get a song written about them. And there have been songs and literature and films about the men and women of the South during the Civil War who supported the Confederacy. Their tribulations are recognized, without being saluted.
However, flying a banner to express pride isn’t inherently bad, in fact, the opposite. What is needed for the South is one that’s not freighted with the idea of violent oppression. As I’ve written here before, I suggest that a new flag be designed to represent the rich heritage of the South. And I’ve created a prototype (see above) of what I would like to see it contain. To me the great tradition of the South will always be more Elvis, Otis Redding, Mark Twain and Flannery O’Connor than Stonewall Jackson, Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis. Thus the primary symbols of my proposed new banner are a guitar crossed with a fountain pen. As a decorative element, there are magnolia blossoms arrayed on the flag’s borders.
Since I’m not from the South, it might be seen as cultural carpetbagging for me to propose a design for a flag about southern heritage. But it should be remembered that the composer of the song that became the anthem of the South was a northerner, Daniel Decatur Emmett. The song was “Dixie.”
