Maybe this flag should come down as well

Every day now, and on every side, we are hearing calls and demands for the Confederate flag to be removed. Companies like Amazon and Walmart have removed it and all products showing it from their offerings. One video game even removed it from a Civil War game. A protester took it upon herself to remove it from its pole at the State Capitol in Columbia. People are outdoing each other in their displays of “righteous indignation” over this flag.

In addition to this, I have heard calls to go further – rename all buildings, streets, cities, parks that bear the names of Confederate era heroes and remove all statues of the same. After all, they were all slave owning, violently racist men, without an ounce of honor. I recently read an article written by a Robert Lee, whose great, great, great grandfather was Robert E. Lee, in which he expressed the “great guilt” he felt being related to such a monster.

I’m wondering if they are going far enough. Should they think about removing all flags and memorials associated with slavery and racism? This would include the American flag.

Consider:

• Slavery in America was not restricted to the South. (Slavery did not even originate in the South, it is almost as old as the human race itself.) Did you know that all of the original thirteen colonies were slave states? All of them.

• George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were slave owners. Washington freed his slaves, but only at his death. Jefferson fathered children with his slaves.

• In the years preceding the war of northern aggression there were states admitted to the Union as “slave states.”

• After the North won the war, they sent carpetbaggers to the South to rape and pillage while their military heroes went out West. And what did they do out there? They were part of the genocidal campaign against those pesky Indians. The policy of the US was to round up them Indians and place them on reservations if they were cooperative, otherwise to wipe the buggers out.

• A legitimate Monarch of an internationally recognized kingdom was arrested by a band of Marines and held under house arrest the rest of her life and this kingdom "claimed" by the United States (Hawai'i).

All of this and more under the banner of the American flag. I would think that for this “righteous indignation” to be consistent they would turn on this banner too, as well as all streets and cities and states that bear the names of those two villainous, racist, slave-owning guys, Washington and Jefferson.

But that won’t happen. Besides, we know that once the Confederate flag comes down and is no longer allowed to be displayed anywhere by anyone, all racism will cease. It’s a known fact that there are no racial problems or tensions in cities and states where the Confederate flag is not flown or displayed.

remember, history is written by the victor