But in a few weeks
people will be dressing up in Confederate uniforms and waving the Confederate
flag at Gettysburg, and everybody thinks it’s just a quaint hobby, like stamp
collecting.
So why don’t we see the
Confederates and the Nazis on the same moral plane? Why do we sell Confederate
battle flags at the mall, hang them from houses (and trailers), hang them from
the gun racks in trucks, put the flag on bikinis, coffee mugs, shirts, bumper
stickers, belt buckles, sunglasses, shower curtains, bandannas, wallets, knives,
ties, hats, blankets, dinner plates, iPhone cases, jewelry, whole stores
devoted to selling CSA flag swag -- while a Nazi flag can essentially end your
social life forever? Ever see swastika merchandising anywhere?
Slave owners who flew
that Confederate flag in the 19th century established a record of
behavior and treatment that was morally indistinguishable from that of Hitler,
treating an entire class of people as rubbish to be consumed and discarded at
the pleasure of other human beings. Sending hundreds of sailing ships on a
dangerous trip across the ocean, so that slavers could enter the African
jungles and towns for the specific purpose of kidnapping twelve million
innocent people and destroying their lives. Mistreating them so egregiously
aboard ship that more than a million slaves died even before reaching shore. Leaving
behind a legacy of economic devastation and broken families in Africa.
And on the Atlantic
shores, establishing a written doctrine that slaves should be given harsh
discipline, made to feel inferior, made to live in fear, and kept uneducated,
helpless and dependent. The constant threat of violence as the only tool that
could impel slaves to perform hard labor for long hours. Punishing slaves by
castration, shackling, hanging, cutting out eyes and tongues; decapitation,
cutting off ears, slitting noses, knocking out teeth, beating, scalding,
flaying, amputation, burning, branding and imprisonment. Whipping slaves
frequently, and sometimes rubbing turpentine, gravel and pepper in their wounds.
Punishment with guns, knives, sticks, dogs and farm tools. Punishment by
putting spiked collars and bells on slave’s necks for months. Performing
medical experiments on slaves. Depriving slaves of food and doctors. Forcing
such long work days of hard labor that finally Maryland imposed a limit of 15
hours per day.
Needless to say this was
all supported by the obsessive efforts of government and the force of law, just
like Nazi Germany: laws banning the education of slaves and imposing up to 39
lashes for a slave learning to read; punishing slave owners for not punishing
runaways; laws treating slaves as legal nonpersons except when they committed
crimes; denying slaves a jury trial; and rarely enforcing laws protecting
slaves. Virginia codes banned slaves from self-defense even when attacked;
arguably the worst of all were the Carolina codes forbidding slaves to leave
their plantation, imposing the death penalty for runaways, searching slave
quarters for contraband, banning slaves from planting their own food or wearing
decent clothes, banning slaves from working as clerks, and restricting the
freeing of slaves.
The worst impact fell
upon women and families: enthusiastically sending white men into rape black
women, while castrating or executing black men who had sex with white women; killing
the women who resist rape; rape for stock-breeding purposes; girls sold into
prostitution; breaking up families for profit or punishment; punishment of
black men by raping or selling their wives while they watched; selling the
black sons of white fathers into slavery; and the rape of male slaves by male
masters, which is ironic since the sons of these masters now hate gays with a
passion.
Under this system,
millions were killed, maimed, whipped, imprisoned, raped, worked to death,
separated from their spouses and children, prostituted. Not for ten years like
Hitler, but for two hundred years. Entire generations destroyed; all
connections to their home culture suppressed.
Another 600,000 died in
the war to end slavery, and hundreds of thousands more were wounded, maimed,
unable to work or support their families – after the war, the leading industry
in the state of Mississippi was the manufacture of artificial limbs. An entire
generation, black and white, devastated. An entire nation impoverished. Southern
men with blood on their hands.
Some folks just don’t
want to remember what that flag really means. Or they want to deny it.
Have they even learned
their lesson? At least today’s Germans have the good manners to hang their
heads in shame whenever their Nazi past is mentioned. But southerners?
“SOUTHERN PRIDE! That war had nothing to do
with slaves – we were defending our rights! And we’re gonna keep flying that
flag too, just so those colored folks know how we still really feel!”
And they really do feel
that way. They insist on flying the Confederate flag over the state capitol in
South Carolina, 150 years after the Confederacy ceased to exist. Four states
incorporate all or part of the Confederate flags in their state flags: a
Mississippi referendum on keeping the Confederate part of their state flag
passed two to one – and since the state is only 59 percent white, that
essentially means that the pro-flag vote among white people was unanimous. The
Georgia governor who wanted to shrink the size of the Confederate part of the
state flag – not to get rid of it, but just to shrink it -- was thrown out of
office. Five states passed laws making it illegal to desecrate or even show
contempt toward the Confederate flag. Eleven states allow drivers to get
Confederate flags put on their license plates. The United Daughters of the
Confederacy even wrote a pledge to the Confederate flag, just like the pledge
to the American flag – 150 years after the war, they still pledge allegiance to
the Confederate dream, while still claiming they are loyal to the United States.
These people are hell-bent on never letting go of the dream. Clinging bitterly
to it.
They clearly haven’t
learned their lesson – their hate for blacks burns as hot as ever, a century
and a half later, and it has expanded to include Mexicans, gays, Muslims,
northerners, liberals, women who don’t know their place, and anyone who
questions their outlook on life. They wish they could go back in time and fight
the war over again – they wish their “way of life” reigned supreme again. And
now they want their fear, hate and intolerance to dominate national policy –
gays, abortion, criminal justice, drug laws, programs for the poor,
immigration....
These people can rejoin
civilization, on the day when they look back on the 19th century
with shame, not with pride. Until that day…no.
Northerners don’t do
stuff like this. Northerners essentially ignore the civil war, with the
exception of a few uniform-fetishist reenactors. Northerners also played a
central role in helping to win a much more recent conflict, World War II, but
they don’t go parading around in battle helmets dressed like Patton’s tank drivers,
singing the Marseillaise. They know that war is long over too. But for
southerners, the civil war is never over. The battle is still raging on. With
their tiny crazed minority, they still seek to impose their will, their
policies, and their “values” on the whole country.
So why don’t we treat
these flag-toting rednecks with the same contempt we give to the whackaloons
who wish Hitler had won the war? Why are the Nuremburg laws against the Jews
different from the Carolina codes against the slaves? Were these people morally
superior to the Nazis, simply because Hitler managed to ruin more lives more
quickly, by being more efficient and systematic with modern technology? Do the
Confederates get a free pass because they kept their slaves alive only so long
as they could extract every last ounce of labor out of their bodies, instead of
gassing them the minute they got their hands on them? Are they superior to Hitler
because they only managed to murder two or three million, instead of six
million? Do they get a mulligan because today they pretend to believe in
America and freedom and equality?
PS that Confederate flag
they sell at the store, isn’t even the real Confederate flag. It’s the battle
flag of the Army of Tennessee, which got their asses kicked in every campaign
they fought. It was also used for a while by the Confederate Navy, a ragtag
nautical embarrassment that achieved little other than wasting Jeff Davis’
money.
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