It's a Great Day in South Carolina

[Nope]

I watched the ceremony to take it down this morning but I wish that I could have been there. Were any of our SC members there?

[Minimalist]

Americans love symbolic gestures....  flags, different-colored ribbons, prayer.

Saves them from having to do anything useful.

[Crossless2.0]

Americans love symbolic gestures....  flags, different-colored ribbons, prayer.

Saves them from having to do anything useful.

Sad but true.

Let's not forget my favorite American indulgence in doing nothing in the hopes that it will yield meaningful results: cutting taxes whenever possible to magically increase government revenue.

[Minimalist]

Tear down that flag!

[Mister Agenda]

Mainly that folks don't have to see that flag waiving in front of the State House at the intersection of Main and Gervais. That's not nothin'.

Symbolic actions are useful sometimes. But at the end of they day, they're still only symbolic.

Symbols are ideas. Racism is an idea, too. Seeing racism reinforced by the government display of racist symbols is encouraging to the oppressor and discouraging to the oppressed. This is a battle that takes place first in the minds of the people, and symbols can be very powerful in people's minds. I'm not sure 'only' is the best word under the circumstances. Maybe you have to live in South Carolina to appreciate what an important step this is.

[Mister Agenda]

I watched the ceremony to take it down this morning but I wish that I could have been there. Were any of our SC members there?

Only from a distance. Wish I'd brought binoculars. I'm not good at estimating numbers, but there were a LOT of people there.

[Jenny A]

People who fly the Confederate Flag justify it as Southern history, or as the flag of general rebellion.   The kids in the Duke's of Hazard, a 70 TV show flew it from their car while out smarting the Sheriff over and over.  And I guess that really was general rebellion.  But more often then it should be it's merely racist.  

But the only real history it has is post civil war, because that thing isn't the Confederate Flag, and southerns who call it that, don't know their own history:

These were in rapid succession the first two Confederate Flags:

   


The second looked too much like surrender, so they added a bar on the right:




Occassionally you'll hear it called the Confederate Battle Flag.  But it wasn't really the Confederate Battle flag either.  It's the wrong shape.  Here's the battle flag:




What it actually is, is the Confederate Naval flag:



As the Civil War was mostly a ground war, it's not the flag that veterans looked at nostalgically.  It is a 20th Century Southern protest flag, not a Civil War flag.  And equal protection and civil rights are some of what is being protested.  It had no business on a capital flag pole ever.