They are. And Che, of course.
Polls on the Flag
We've heard a lot about what the media, business, and political classes think about the flag issue. What we haven't heard about is what the people of South Carolina think. The last time this issue was decided it was done by a deeply contentious debate in which both sides argued their positions forcefully, and when compromise was finally reached they locked it in with a guarantee that it would only be altered if there was a 2/3rds majority vote in favor.
It looks like we're close to that.
It looks like we're close to that.
Am I right that this is the first major poll taken since the beginning of Flagmania last week?... The crosstabs unfortunately don’t break down the numbers by region and race. It’s useful to know what white Americans and black Americans think, and it’s useful to know what southerners think compared to people from other regions. But there’s no way to tell how white southerners differ from black southerners on this subject, apart from a tidbit that YouGov discloses in its summary: White southerners continue to tilt heavily in favor of seeing the flag as a symbol of southern pride rather than racism, 53/20. Among black Americans generally (not just southerners), the split on the same question is … 3/70.I don't know what a 'major poll' is, but there's another one more focused on South Carolina that's posted in the last day.
Sixty percent of likely voters surveyed by Rassmussen Reports said the flag should not be displayed at the South Carolina capitol, while 21 percent said it should. Eighteen percent are undecided.... A plurality of Republican voters (46 percent) said the flag should not fly at the statehouse, and a majority (76 percent) of Democrats agree. Although the majority of likely voters agree the flag should not fly there, they are split on whether it is a symbol of Southern heritage (43 percent) or hatred (39 percent).... Party lines also correlate with differing interpretations of what the Confederate flag represents. A majority of Republicans (64 percent) said it represents Southern heritage, while a majority of Democrats (57 percent) said it is a symbol of hatred.That sounds like an adequate apology for the Republican majority legislature to go ahead with it. It's a complete concession by one side of the old debate, however: not a new compromise, but a surrender of the position. I hope this is received as I am sure it is intended: as a gift of something precious to the conceding side, intended to show honor and respect for the victims of the recent shooting, and to their community which has responded so gracefully.
Banhammer
You may have seen Ed Driscoll making fun of a movement to question what liberals will ban next, given the week's successes. Upworthy responds with a list of fast food places you 'aren't allowed' to eat at any more, along with explanations of why not.
Papa John's -- because their founder was critical of the ACA. Sonic -- because they don't pay minimum wage, leaving their wait staff to rely on tips. Wendy's -- which actually pays above minimum wage, but not enough above, and they don't allow tips. Chick-Fil-A! "OMIGOD, you guys, you can absolutely never, ever, ever eat at Chick-fil-A."
If we can't drive people who disagree with us politically into abject economic poverty -- so that they can be forced into line, by having to choose between starving and making themselves subject to the corporate discipline of a responsible company like Walmart (wait! When did Walmart stop being the enemy of everything good? This is really new, right? But Hillary Clinton has an important attachment to it in her past, so...) -- if we can't do that, how will we ever achieve justice?
Papa John's -- because their founder was critical of the ACA. Sonic -- because they don't pay minimum wage, leaving their wait staff to rely on tips. Wendy's -- which actually pays above minimum wage, but not enough above, and they don't allow tips. Chick-Fil-A! "OMIGOD, you guys, you can absolutely never, ever, ever eat at Chick-fil-A."
If we can't drive people who disagree with us politically into abject economic poverty -- so that they can be forced into line, by having to choose between starving and making themselves subject to the corporate discipline of a responsible company like Walmart (wait! When did Walmart stop being the enemy of everything good? This is really new, right? But Hillary Clinton has an important attachment to it in her past, so...) -- if we can't do that, how will we ever achieve justice?
"A Shot to the Heart"
An Army Ranger responds to Charleston, with reflections also on the loss of friends in the wars.
A Flag That Should Definitely Be Changed
England selects a banner for its Women's World Cup team.
Totally inappropriate content warning, but it's seriously an official banner.
Totally inappropriate content warning, but it's seriously an official banner.
Overturning Revolutions
In keeping with the discussion around Tex's post, a story from Russia:
Vladimir Putin 'wants' to reinstate the Russian royal family and move them into an ancient palace once occupied by the last Tsar Nicholas II.Since this whole 'revolution against royalty' thing is so associated with disaster, I suppose it makes a kind of sense. The Soviet disaster was far worse than any of ours, and from the Russian perspective, that's the high point of subsequent history. Perhaps they'll adopt the old Russian flag, which is better looking than their French-Revolution-inspired tricolor.
The move proposed by Vladimir Petrov, a law maker from Putin's party, has prompted speculation that it has the Russian leader's direct approval.... The legislator has written letters to the heirs of the Romanov dynasty, which ruled the country for two centuries before the abdication of last Tsar Nicholas II ahead of two revolutions in 1917.... Petrov has written to Grand Duchess Maria Vladimirovna and Prince Dimitri Romanovich urging them to return to Russia to become symbols of national culture in order to "revive the spiritual power of Russian people".
The leaked letter read: "Throughout the history of its reign, the Imperial dynasty of the Romanovs was one of the pillars of Russia's sovereignty."
The country now "goes through a difficult process of restoring the country's greatness and returning its global influence" and "members of the Romanov House cannot stay aloof from the processes taking place in Russia now at such an important historical moment".
.svg){kind=link}
Millstones
The worst thing about slavery was, well, slavery. A distant second bad thing was that in the mid-19th century, Americans with deep convictions about dual sovereignty and limitations on federal power picked slavery as the ideal test case. As a result, the lesson generations of Americans took from their struggle was that, if you give some people too much sovereignty, they'll use it to perpetuate horrifying schemes like slavery, thus undermining their supposed allegiance to the concept of freedom. Ergo, maybe this freedom experiment has gone too far.
One of the best ways to lose your freedom is to abuse it. It's never a natural or foregone conclusion. As Walter Hudson said today,
One of the best ways to lose your freedom is to abuse it. It's never a natural or foregone conclusion. As Walter Hudson said today,
Therefore, when I look at the Confederate battle flag as a black libertarian, I see tragedy for all parties concerned. I see the history of racism and human indignity which motivates the current debate. But I also see the loss of state sovereignty which compromised the Founding Fathers vision for republican government. To the extent people choose to fly the Confederate flag in honor of that latter heritage, I can’t fault them.
That said, let’s be clear why state sovereignty was lost. It was lost because the southern states delegitimized it.
No running for the shadows
One of the things I like most about Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is that he doesn't let media cycles spook him off of the stands he's taken on principle. This week he signed two new gunowner-rights bills into law.
Supreme Court upholds Obamacare subsidies
Hijabs
For what it's worth, I heard a version of this argument from a Human Terrain Team social scientist who happened to be female. She put on a hijab to go out and talk to Muslim women in Iraq. What most surprised her, she told me, was the way in which it stopped soldiers from treating her as a sexual being. It's a strange fact, since it's just a piece of cloth, but for whatever reason covering the hair and head somehow disconnected the sex drive even in young soldiers long deployed at war and forbidden other avenues of sexual relief.
So maybe there's something to it. Perhaps a symbol, under the right circumstances, doesn't have to mean what we ordinarily expect it to mean. Perhaps a lot has to do, as she says, with the choice of the person who wields it.
In any case, the social scientist I knew kind of liked the effect. She didn't wear it otherwise, probably because everyone would have thought it a bit weird. But she did like the effect it had on the young soldiers around her.
So maybe there's something to it. Perhaps a symbol, under the right circumstances, doesn't have to mean what we ordinarily expect it to mean. Perhaps a lot has to do, as she says, with the choice of the person who wields it.
In any case, the social scientist I knew kind of liked the effect. She didn't wear it otherwise, probably because everyone would have thought it a bit weird. But she did like the effect it had on the young soldiers around her.
To Speak Like A Man
Jim Webb, though a Southerner and a man whose family has strong Confederate roots, adopted a modest and respectful posture in his comment on the flag matters. William Kristol, himself a Lincoln and Sherman man -- a very decent guy and a serious thinker, whom I met in Jerusalem and who might even have been thinking of our conversation in his limited defense today -- found Webb's comment to be refreshingly adult. He mentions Lincoln's second inaugural: "With malice toward none, with charity for all." I notice Webb did not undertake a vigorous defense of the flag, nor call for it to remain in place. Rather, he calls for calm, reflection, and mutual understanding. Allahpundit says it is enough to disqualify him, should he be serious about running for the Democratic nomination. Hopefully not. It is welcome, sober, and proper. The resolution of the disposition of the flag can be discussed in time, he seems to say: what matters now is to be respectful, to remember our brotherhood.
Perhaps not by accident he also published a short story today, which comes out of his time in Vietnam. It begins with a child asking his grandfather a question on the way to church. It's a question only a child should ask: did you ever kill a man?
Perhaps not by accident he also published a short story today, which comes out of his time in Vietnam. It begins with a child asking his grandfather a question on the way to church. It's a question only a child should ask: did you ever kill a man?
“We’ll talk about it on the lake.” He attempted a joke. “I grew up with Ernest Hemingway. And Hemingway said you aren’t supposed to feel bad about it.”The discussion in the story quickly turns philosophical, which suggests a ground for Webb's -- and Lincoln's -- call for an absence of malice and a focus on charity. It is a seriousness of mind entirely refreshing at the present hour. It reminds me, once again, of why I often wish for veterans of proven valor more often to seek public office.
“Who is Ernest Hemingway?”
“Some writer who never killed anybody. Except himself.”
Liberty By Law
In the run-up to my sister's wedding and the trip around it, I somehow allowed it to slip my mind that we were passing the 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta.
But, to give it its full name, Magna Carta Libertatum (my italics - I don't think they had 'em back then) gets it the right way round. It was in some respects a happy accident. In 1215, a bunch of chippy barons were getting fed up with King John. In those days, in such circumstances, the malcontents would usually replace the sovereign with a pliable prince who'd be more attentive to their grievances. But, having no such prince to hand, the barons were forced to be more inventive, and so they wound up replacing the King with an idea, and the most important idea of all - that even the King is subject to the law.
On this 800th anniversary, that's a lesson worth re-learning. Restraints on state power are increasingly unfashionable among the heirs to Magna Carta: in America, King Barack decides when he wakes up of a morning what clauses of ObamaCare or US immigration law he's willing to observe or waive according to royal whim; his heir, Queen Hillary, operates on the principle that laws are for the other 300 million Americans, not her. In the birthplace of Magna Carta, a few miles from that meadow at Runnymede, David Cameron's constabulary leans on newsagents to cough up the names and addresses of troublesome citizens who've committed the crime of purchasing Charlie Hebdo.
The symbolism was almost too perfect when Mr Cameron went on TV with David Letterman, and was obliged to admit that he had no idea what the words "Magna Carta" meant. Magna Carta Libertatum: The Great Charter of Liberties.
Taxation Without Representation
Just as the House called a vote on Fast Track authority as the Charleston shooting became the focus of everyone's attention, it cleared the Senate's procedural barriers while no one is looking. We still don't know what it is our elected leaders are giving the President authority to do, but the last real chance to stop it (whatever it is) will be the up or down vote on the treaty. However, because of the Fast Track authority, that will be a simple majority vote -- not the two-thirds majority normally required to approve a major treaty.
This is not unique. On the Iran deal, Congress managed to work the system out so that a mere one-third of either chamber will suffice to approve whatever the President signs. Yet what little we have heard about this deal indicates that it involves a surrender of major sections of American sovereignty to foreign institutions over which voters have no control. It is taxation without representation, in other words: a betrayal of the very last, and very first, principle for which our Revolution was fought.
The last vote will doubtless also occur as a surprise rush during a crisis that attracts Americans' attention elsewhere. We need to spread the word and make sure people's attention is focused on this issue, and that they are ready to deal with it at whatever black midnight it is rushed to the floor. This vote will be the last chance.
This is not unique. On the Iran deal, Congress managed to work the system out so that a mere one-third of either chamber will suffice to approve whatever the President signs. Yet what little we have heard about this deal indicates that it involves a surrender of major sections of American sovereignty to foreign institutions over which voters have no control. It is taxation without representation, in other words: a betrayal of the very last, and very first, principle for which our Revolution was fought.
Everyone wants more ‘global cooperation’ but no one wants to let Big Pharma stamp out generic drugs or let Big Tobacco tell us how they’ll label their products. And no one wants some secretive global tribunal telling a state legislature how to govern. If there’s an easier case to make, I’ve never seen it. You may ask why every Democrat in Congress doesn’t make it, but we’ve gone over that. Whether they’re in thrall to their donors, their consultants, their leaders or their ambitions, whoever or whatever holds them back, they just can’t do it.The Republicans, on the other hand, have been full-throttle in support of this, with the honorable exception of Jeff Sessions from Alabama. 'Whether they're in thrall to their donors, their consultants, their leaders or their ambitions,' the Republican party has worked harder than anyone except the President to betray the Founders and surrender American sovereignty to foreign courts.
The last vote will doubtless also occur as a surprise rush during a crisis that attracts Americans' attention elsewhere. We need to spread the word and make sure people's attention is focused on this issue, and that they are ready to deal with it at whatever black midnight it is rushed to the floor. This vote will be the last chance.
Against the Iran Deal
A surprising unity of opinion, from the right to the left, is that the Iran deal is dangerous. It offers us nothing in return for offering them everything they wanted, including cutting edge nuclear technology.
What a legacy this would leave.
What a legacy this would leave.
Apotheosis
Death to the General Lee.
It's a beautiful sentiment. We'll just kill the whole damn thing.
Funny thing about this particular aspect. The Dukes of Hazzard was never about the issues of race. It did have a tie back to the postwar Southern mythology, though. Boss Hogg was an emblem for those Democrats, especially like Joseph Emerson Brown, who screwed up the war politically and then profited off its aftermath by aligning themselves with the northern banks ("carpetbaggers") who turned the South into a colonial economy. Enforcing a destructive cotton monoculture, they reduced free farmers into sharecroppers or tenet farmers, and extracted wealth to New York in a manner exactly similar to the colonial economics afflicting much of Latin America at the time. It also destroyed the soil, as cotton is a hugely destructive crop if farmed year after year without a break. But you had to farm it, year after year, to get the loans they would otherwise not offer.
It's not for no reason that Alabama is the home to the only statue ever raised in praise of an insect. The boll weevil did what no human could do in sixty years: it broke the back of cotton monoculture and all its allied evils. It was the beginning of a new birth, after sixty years of incredibly punishing descent into poverty at the hands of the colonial masters.
Once that sort of story was important to the left, but they have forgotten.
Anticolonialism is still a major feature of the same left that is driving this particular moment. They don't see the irony here because they don't know enough about the history to see it. Yet the Duke Boys were far more an expression of authentic American anti-colonialism than ever of racism or -- good Lord -- of "treason."
UPDATE: James Taranto, of all people:
"It does feel a bit like the collapse of Eastern European communism in 1989, although one doesn’t want to overstate the analogy."
Indeed, one wouldn't want to do that.
It's a beautiful sentiment. We'll just kill the whole damn thing.
Funny thing about this particular aspect. The Dukes of Hazzard was never about the issues of race. It did have a tie back to the postwar Southern mythology, though. Boss Hogg was an emblem for those Democrats, especially like Joseph Emerson Brown, who screwed up the war politically and then profited off its aftermath by aligning themselves with the northern banks ("carpetbaggers") who turned the South into a colonial economy. Enforcing a destructive cotton monoculture, they reduced free farmers into sharecroppers or tenet farmers, and extracted wealth to New York in a manner exactly similar to the colonial economics afflicting much of Latin America at the time. It also destroyed the soil, as cotton is a hugely destructive crop if farmed year after year without a break. But you had to farm it, year after year, to get the loans they would otherwise not offer.
It's not for no reason that Alabama is the home to the only statue ever raised in praise of an insect. The boll weevil did what no human could do in sixty years: it broke the back of cotton monoculture and all its allied evils. It was the beginning of a new birth, after sixty years of incredibly punishing descent into poverty at the hands of the colonial masters.
Once that sort of story was important to the left, but they have forgotten.
Anticolonialism is still a major feature of the same left that is driving this particular moment. They don't see the irony here because they don't know enough about the history to see it. Yet the Duke Boys were far more an expression of authentic American anti-colonialism than ever of racism or -- good Lord -- of "treason."
UPDATE: James Taranto, of all people:
"It does feel a bit like the collapse of Eastern European communism in 1989, although one doesn’t want to overstate the analogy."
Indeed, one wouldn't want to do that.
The Russian Bear and... Texas??
Politico has a strange story. I suppose it's a trick worthy of an old-school KGB guy like Putin to stoke secessionist feeling in an enemy nation, but it's a little surprising to find that anyone in Texas would go along with it once it was openly Russian support they were receiving.
Nor is Texas the lone region for which Russia has cast secessionist support since the Crimean seizure. Venice, Scotland, Catalonia—the Russian media have voiced fervent support for secession in all these Western allies. (Of course, Moscow’s mantra—secession for thee, but not for me—means you’d be hard-pressed to find any Russian official offering support for Siberian, Tatar, or Chechen independence.) “Since the destabilization of the West is on Russia’s agenda, they may try to reach out to the U.S. separatists,” Anton Shekhovtsov, a researcher on Moscow’s links to far-right movements in Europe, told me. Russia wants a “deepening of social divisions in the American society, destabilizing the internal political life.”Good news! That seems to be right at the top of our own agenda.
Folklorist, Heal Thyself
A fellow named John E. Price -- who describes himself as "a folklorist and doctoral candidate in American Studies," as well as "an award-winning lecturer in American Studies and Communications" -- has penned a contribution to the debate on the Confederate flag with the nuanced title "Yes, You're a Racist -- and a Traitor."
I don't really want to debate the merits of the Confederate flag right now. I think what's really important is showing brotherhood at a time when there have been multiple attacks, not just the infamous one, on black churches in the last week. I'm going to go through the exercise purely in the hope that it will help with that project, by giving reason to believe that most of the ordinary people who like the Confederate flag are not motivated by racism or hatred. That misperception may be alienating. If the proper work of the moment is brotherhood, it might be helpful to increase understanding.
Myself, I don't fly the Confederate flag. This is not because I personally view it as a symbol of racism, but out of respect for black Southerners I might meet for whom it is. I once turned down membership in a local motorcycle club -- a fun, family-oriented group that rides locally -- because their patch featured a Confederate flag (as well as an American flag and an eagle). None of them intended that to be threatening or off-putting to anyone. It was just part of a collection of patriotic symbols, an expression of regional as well as national patriotism. Patriotism, not treason.
It's silly to describe people flying the Confederate flag as "traitors" as if they themselves were waging war on the government. It's a serious question whether the battle flag is even a symbol of treason: the victors in the war prosecuted almost no one on that charge, and not people who fought under that flag but Northerners who took steps against their government without formally joining the rebellion. A thoughtful historian might question whether there's something about the American project itself, begun in rebellion against a sitting government to whose authority the authors had long submitted, that licenses revolution under certain circumstances. To be a traitor to the American project might sometimes better be done by submitting to authority than by resisting it. As historian William C. Davis explores at length, the founders of the Confederacy clearly saw themselves as the immediate heirs of Washington, Jefferson, and other Founding Fathers (many also slave-owners, who also wrote special protections for slavery into their constitution). One condemns them at some peril of condemning the American project itself, in which case it is hard to assert a ground on which loyalty to the American government is praiseworthy. This is especially true since the North did not undertake the war with the mission of destroying slavery, even if the South undertook the war to preserve it.
But those are questions for historians and philosophers. A folklorist should be interested in folklore, and what characterizes folklore is the way that symbols and meanings change over time. The original meaning of the symbol is beside the point. The fact that the generation that lost the Civil War rallied around it for honorable reasons after the war is beside the point. Those people have been dead for a hundred years. The question in folklore is: what do people mean by it today?
If you are a white Southerner of 60 or 70 years old, you came of age during the battles over segregation. For you, the flag's meaning is that it was about support for segregation, and you remember a South in which your parents' generation supported that policy so strongly that they drove every government official out of office who wasn't openly and vocally committed to it. But your generation was the first generation that questioned that policy. You went to schools that were being integrated. If you went into government, like the sheriff interviewed by VS Naipaul in his book A Turn in the South, you were the generation that turned things around. Unlike the sheriff at Selma, Sheriff Walraven used his deputies and volunteers to protect the civil rights marchers from the Klan -- and he did it while wearing the 1956 Georgia flag, Confederate battle flag and all, on his uniform's shoulder. That flag is his flag as much as it is anybody else's.
If instead you are 40 years old (and more than half of Americans are 40 or under), you were a child when one of the most popular television shows for children was The Dukes of Hazzard. That's probably your first association with the flag. The battles of segregation were already over before you ever became a schoolchild. If you were born in the South, you grew up with the flags adopted during the segregation battle long after that particular meaning had ceased to be important. The flags were just on the poles, without comment, except that they were the flags of home. So your basic associations as a child were a playful, cheerful television show without any trace of hate or racism, and home. As you grew up, if you grew up in the South, you learned about Lynyrd Skynyrd, who flew the flag as they sang "Sweet Home Alabama." There are references to the struggle over segregation in the song, but they are coded, and if you don't study the history you'll never know they are there.
If instead you are 20 years, even that stuff is ancient history. You might have seen The Dukes of Hazzard in syndication; otherwise, it is a not-very-great movie you probably didn't see. Classic rock stations are on the radio everywhere in America, so you probably know the Skynyrd song. Until you get old enough to encounter the stuff in history classes, you probably don't know anything else about the flag except that there was a war once, and this was the flag people from your home fought under. You see it around sometimes, and if you travel out of the South you don't see it.
What these people mean by the flag has nothing to do with racism, and certainly nothing to do with treason. Far from having waged war against their country, they're disproportionately likely to have fought war for the country: the South provides 40% of the volunteer military.
They're probably guilty of being insensitive. (But so is the guy who labels people 'traitors' on the basis of a protected act of free speech he hasn't bothered to understand.) They may instead be guilty of being ignorant, to the degree that they haven't studied the history and learned to consider the past associations of the symbol. There are a few who are guilty of racism, and who have sought out the flag to try to carry that meaning forward. Yet a committed racist like the Charleston killer could find no one to join him in his program: no skinheads, he wrote mournfully, and no Klan. I myself, living in rural Georgia, haven't seen anyone in a Klan uniform in decades. I assume you could search them out with effort, but they have vanished from the everyday texture of the South.
We haven't yet seen the outcome of the debate in South Carolina and Mississippi on the flag. In Georgia, our debate began with Democratic Governor Zell Miller trying (and failing) to remove the battle flag in the 1990s, and his Republican successor succeeding. The fact that we've elected political leadership that would attempt such a debate -- and conservative leaders, in the South -- ought to encourage even those for whom the flag has powerful and negative associations only. Racism is a very great evil, the worst evil brought by the Modern age, but it has lost a great deal of its strength. People for whom the flag has no negative associations, for whom it is nothing but a flag of home, are willing to consider setting it aside out of respect for the feelings of others. However the debate ends, that alone should be taken as a sign of increasing brotherhood between black and white Southerners. That is surely a good thing.
I don't really want to debate the merits of the Confederate flag right now. I think what's really important is showing brotherhood at a time when there have been multiple attacks, not just the infamous one, on black churches in the last week. I'm going to go through the exercise purely in the hope that it will help with that project, by giving reason to believe that most of the ordinary people who like the Confederate flag are not motivated by racism or hatred. That misperception may be alienating. If the proper work of the moment is brotherhood, it might be helpful to increase understanding.
Myself, I don't fly the Confederate flag. This is not because I personally view it as a symbol of racism, but out of respect for black Southerners I might meet for whom it is. I once turned down membership in a local motorcycle club -- a fun, family-oriented group that rides locally -- because their patch featured a Confederate flag (as well as an American flag and an eagle). None of them intended that to be threatening or off-putting to anyone. It was just part of a collection of patriotic symbols, an expression of regional as well as national patriotism. Patriotism, not treason.
It's silly to describe people flying the Confederate flag as "traitors" as if they themselves were waging war on the government. It's a serious question whether the battle flag is even a symbol of treason: the victors in the war prosecuted almost no one on that charge, and not people who fought under that flag but Northerners who took steps against their government without formally joining the rebellion. A thoughtful historian might question whether there's something about the American project itself, begun in rebellion against a sitting government to whose authority the authors had long submitted, that licenses revolution under certain circumstances. To be a traitor to the American project might sometimes better be done by submitting to authority than by resisting it. As historian William C. Davis explores at length, the founders of the Confederacy clearly saw themselves as the immediate heirs of Washington, Jefferson, and other Founding Fathers (many also slave-owners, who also wrote special protections for slavery into their constitution). One condemns them at some peril of condemning the American project itself, in which case it is hard to assert a ground on which loyalty to the American government is praiseworthy. This is especially true since the North did not undertake the war with the mission of destroying slavery, even if the South undertook the war to preserve it.
But those are questions for historians and philosophers. A folklorist should be interested in folklore, and what characterizes folklore is the way that symbols and meanings change over time. The original meaning of the symbol is beside the point. The fact that the generation that lost the Civil War rallied around it for honorable reasons after the war is beside the point. Those people have been dead for a hundred years. The question in folklore is: what do people mean by it today?
If you are a white Southerner of 60 or 70 years old, you came of age during the battles over segregation. For you, the flag's meaning is that it was about support for segregation, and you remember a South in which your parents' generation supported that policy so strongly that they drove every government official out of office who wasn't openly and vocally committed to it. But your generation was the first generation that questioned that policy. You went to schools that were being integrated. If you went into government, like the sheriff interviewed by VS Naipaul in his book A Turn in the South, you were the generation that turned things around. Unlike the sheriff at Selma, Sheriff Walraven used his deputies and volunteers to protect the civil rights marchers from the Klan -- and he did it while wearing the 1956 Georgia flag, Confederate battle flag and all, on his uniform's shoulder. That flag is his flag as much as it is anybody else's.
If instead you are 40 years old (and more than half of Americans are 40 or under), you were a child when one of the most popular television shows for children was The Dukes of Hazzard. That's probably your first association with the flag. The battles of segregation were already over before you ever became a schoolchild. If you were born in the South, you grew up with the flags adopted during the segregation battle long after that particular meaning had ceased to be important. The flags were just on the poles, without comment, except that they were the flags of home. So your basic associations as a child were a playful, cheerful television show without any trace of hate or racism, and home. As you grew up, if you grew up in the South, you learned about Lynyrd Skynyrd, who flew the flag as they sang "Sweet Home Alabama." There are references to the struggle over segregation in the song, but they are coded, and if you don't study the history you'll never know they are there.
If instead you are 20 years, even that stuff is ancient history. You might have seen The Dukes of Hazzard in syndication; otherwise, it is a not-very-great movie you probably didn't see. Classic rock stations are on the radio everywhere in America, so you probably know the Skynyrd song. Until you get old enough to encounter the stuff in history classes, you probably don't know anything else about the flag except that there was a war once, and this was the flag people from your home fought under. You see it around sometimes, and if you travel out of the South you don't see it.
What these people mean by the flag has nothing to do with racism, and certainly nothing to do with treason. Far from having waged war against their country, they're disproportionately likely to have fought war for the country: the South provides 40% of the volunteer military.
They're probably guilty of being insensitive. (But so is the guy who labels people 'traitors' on the basis of a protected act of free speech he hasn't bothered to understand.) They may instead be guilty of being ignorant, to the degree that they haven't studied the history and learned to consider the past associations of the symbol. There are a few who are guilty of racism, and who have sought out the flag to try to carry that meaning forward. Yet a committed racist like the Charleston killer could find no one to join him in his program: no skinheads, he wrote mournfully, and no Klan. I myself, living in rural Georgia, haven't seen anyone in a Klan uniform in decades. I assume you could search them out with effort, but they have vanished from the everyday texture of the South.
We haven't yet seen the outcome of the debate in South Carolina and Mississippi on the flag. In Georgia, our debate began with Democratic Governor Zell Miller trying (and failing) to remove the battle flag in the 1990s, and his Republican successor succeeding. The fact that we've elected political leadership that would attempt such a debate -- and conservative leaders, in the South -- ought to encourage even those for whom the flag has powerful and negative associations only. Racism is a very great evil, the worst evil brought by the Modern age, but it has lost a great deal of its strength. People for whom the flag has no negative associations, for whom it is nothing but a flag of home, are willing to consider setting it aside out of respect for the feelings of others. However the debate ends, that alone should be taken as a sign of increasing brotherhood between black and white Southerners. That is surely a good thing.
The Bandidos' Attorney Speaks
According to RUMINT, there were very few Bandidos at the shootout in Waco. They were the victims, strictly speaking, just because they were so few and were therefore set upon. Their attorney has put out a statement.
[T}he Bandidos demand that all video evidence and autopsy reports be released immediately to clear up the damaging misinformation that is running wild.This last bit counters RUMINT, which has suggested heretofore that the Cossacks fired some rounds, and the police fired the rest. The Bandidos seem to be confessing to firing at least some rounds, albeit in self-defense.
The following is true and correct:
1) The Bandidos were at the Twin Peaks restaurant to attend an organized political meeting and nothing else. A regional meeting for the Texas Confederation of Clubs and Independents (a bona fide political organization centered on Constitutional rights) was scheduled, and a prominent member of the Bandidos was the key-note speaker at the meeting. This Bandido key-note speaker was to report on the National Coalition of Motorcyclist event that occurred weeks earlier. Because COCI members from across the state were expected to attend this special meeting, it was purposefully scheduled in Waco, TX, a central city between Austin and Dallas.
2) The Bandidos have no knowledge of any other meeting. The Bandidos are aware that members of other motorcycle clubs are claiming that there were plans to meet with the Bandidos in Waco, TX on May 17, 2015. This claim is not true.
3) All weapons in possession of members the Bandidos were legally owned and carried.
4) Members of the Bandidos were not aggressors, did not start the altercation, did not strike first, were not the first to pull weapons, and were not the first to use weapons. The majority of the Bandidos took cover, and all involvement in the altercation by members of the Bandidos was in self-defense. Texas law allows people to defend themselves with the same amount of force that is exerted against them, and a few members of the Bandidos acted in accordance with these laws. In fact, members of the Bandidos involved in the incident did not even have time or opportunity to get off of their motorcycles before police came in.
"Reality Seems Determined to Put the Onion out of Business"
So says Sarah Hoyt, also due a hat tip for the last post. She's right. It's been a very bad year for reality.
Don Qwhotie?
Never could get into the book myself. It's about mocking the best thing in the world, although I'm told that if you stick with it it gets better: the fools brought on board in the early part become increasingly attached to the thing worth upholding at any cost, though the Don who held it so high finally loses heart. Stories about losing heart in such men break mine, for they are so easy to believe. It is the worst danger of the world, that you might cease to believe in the things worth dying for.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)