Confederate Flag

Megyn Kelly has a great program called The Kelly File on Fox News. She's hard hitting and unafraid to stand up to liberal apologists. I watch her when I can and always enjoy her conservative, tell-it-like-it-is perspective. She also has a blog on which she recently posted a long diatribe against Abraham Lincoln in order to argue in favor of keeping Confederate flags flying. Interestingly enough, I am in agreement with her sentiments about the flag, but she could have made the point without this irrational rag on Lincoln. I've posted her article here as far as it went. It suddenly cut off on the website and I wasn't able to find the finish of it. With it I've posted my rebuttal. Quite frankly, I'm surprised that someone as intelligent and articulate as Kelly would put out something as poorly written as this. It's lengthy, but here it is for your perusal. Let me know what you think. Since this blog apparently doesn't allow for colors I've written my answers in italics so there is no question where my comments begin and end.

POSTED ON JULY 9, 2015 BY MEGYN KELLY
The Confederate Flag Needs To Be Raised, Not Lowered

Ladies and gentlemen, I submit that what we see happening in the United States today is an apt illustration of why the Confederate flag was raised in the first place. What we see materializing before our very eyes is tyranny: tyranny over the freedom of expression, tyranny over the freedom of association, tyranny over the freedom of speech, and tyranny over the freedom of conscience.

Yes, we are seeing tyranny materializing before our eyes, but there is no comparison with what is happening in the United States today with what happened prior to the Civil War. The issue in the early 1800s was cotton and the slave industry used to produce it. The tariff of abominations concerned the trade of cotton overseas, but affected nobody’s freedom. The abolitionist movement in the North agitated to end slavery, but nobody ever denied a southerner freedom of expression, association, speech or conscience. Attempts to help slaves escape through the Underground Railroad were met with the Supreme Court Dred Scott decision forcing all freed slaves caught in the North to be returned to their owners. That is hardly tyranny.

In 1864, Confederate General Patrick Cleburne warned his fellow southerners of the historical consequences should the South lose their war for independence. He was truly a prophet. He said if the South lost, “It means that the history of this heroic struggle will be written by the enemy. That our youth will be trained by Northern school teachers; will learn from Northern school books their version of the war; will be impressed by all of the influences of History and Education to regard our gallant debt as traitors and our maimed veterans as fit subjects for derision.” No truer words were ever spoken.

Yes, truer words have been spoken. Confederate veterans were never subject to derision. They were actually treated with respect at the surrenders. When the war was over veterans on both sides were honored for their valor. Fifty years after Gettysburg at one of the last reunions Union and Confederate veterans sat side by side and shook hands. When the war was over Northern teachers did not invade the South to teach in all their schools. Authors on both sides of the conflict have written plenty of books to argue their case and nobody has prevented southern apologists from being published. The problem in public school education today is that the issue has been too simplified and not well discussed.

History revisionists flooded America’s public schools with Northern propaganda about the people who attempted to secede from the United States, characterizing them as racists, extremists, radicals, hatemongers, traitors, etc. You know, the same way that people in our federal government and news media attempt to characterize Christians, patriots, war veterans, constitutionalists, et al. today.

This is a straw man argument. The liberal attack against Christianity today does not compare with any characterization of southerners as racists, extremists, radicals, hatemongers or traitors. Christians today don’t own slaves. Christians don’t advocate whipping, beating, cutting off toes or any type of violence on rebellious slaves. Christians today are called racist and hatemongers for having scriptural convictions against homosexuality, for opposing abortion, and for opposing the welfare state that is bankrupting the country.

Southerners owned slaves. Southerners whipped, beat, cut off toes, and separated families without any consideration for their feelings. If that isn’t racist and hateful, then nothing is. (Not all slave owners treated their slaves this way; Washington, Jefferson, and Robert E. Lee for example, but many of them did treat their slaves this way.) Slave auctions were humiliating, cruel, horrible events. No Christian today is espousing anything that is in any way like that. To compare the denial of First Amendment rights of Christians today because of their conscientious, religious beliefs, or patriots because of their love of country and the Constitution with the movement to end a hideous, racist practice defended by southerners is farcical.

Folks, please understand that the only people in 1861 who believed that states did NOT have the right to secede were Abraham Lincoln and his radical Republicans. To say that southern states did not have the right to secede from the United States is to say that the thirteen colonies did not have the right to secede from Great Britain. One cannot be right and the other wrong. If one is right, both are right. How can we celebrate our Declaration of Independence in 1776 and then turn around and condemn the Declaration of Independence of the Confederacy in 1861? Talk about hypocrisy!

This paragraph is based on two false assumptions; first, that Lincoln and the Radical Republicans were the only ones denying states the right to secede, and second, that the right to declare independence from England equals the right to secede from the Union. Both do not have to be right, and both are not right.

The Constitution begins, “We the People of the United States, in order to Form a more perfect Union....” It’s not a union if you can walk away from it. There were many who held that argument from 1789 all the way to 1860. The 1830 Webster-Hayne debate over nullification hinged on the right to secede. Webster destroyed Haynes arguments in the debate. He, Henry Clay, and many others were a voice for union for over fifty years, as was John C. Calhoun of South Carolina until it became more convenient for him to switch sides.

The problems of the colonists were myriad. Their free trade overseas was restricted and they were being taxed excessively, and without representation, to pay for the Crown’s foreign wars. British troops were quartered in colonial homes without compensating the owners. They were confiscating weapons and powder, which the colonists desperately needed for their own protection. And as a final insult, in November 1775, the King decreed the Prohibitory Act, which stated that the colonies had been put out from under Crown protection. Essentially, the King set the colonists free, and left an occupying army in their homes. You can read it all in the Declaration of Independence. That’s a far cry from the secessionist argument in 1861. Furthermore, the Declaration acknowledged that all men are created equal, but as Lincoln wrote to Joshua Speed in 1855, it was practically read to say that all men are created equal except for the Negroes. To celebrate the Declaration of Independence while owning slaves or defending the practice of slavery is hypocrisy!

In fact, southern states were not the only states that talked about secession. After the southern states seceded, the State of Maryland fully intended to join them. In September of 1861, Lincoln sent federal troops to the State capital and seized the legislature by force in order to prevent them from voting. Federal provost marshals stood guard at the polls and arrested Democrats and anyone else who believed in secession. A special furlough was granted to Maryland troops so they could go home and vote against secession. Judges who tried to inquire into the phony elections were arrested and thrown into military prisons. There is your great “emancipator,” folks.

The State of Maryland was a border state that sent troops to both sides during the war. It was up for grabs which way the state may have gone if it had voted on secession. If it had gone to the South, Washington City would have been completely surrounded by states in rebellion. That’s the key to Lincoln’s actions. The South had already rebelled. The Battle of Bull Run had already been fought. A war was on. Part of Lincoln’s strategy for winning the war was to hold onto the border states of Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland and Delaware. Maryland’s case was the most precarious, and it had to be done.

The Constitution allows for the suspension of habeas corpus in case of Rebellion or Invasion when the public safety requires it. What do you think the Civil War was? It was a rebellion, and public safety was endangered. The first deaths by hostile action in the war took place on April 19, 1861 when a mob of Confederate sympathizers in Baltimore attacked a Massachusetts militia that was on its way to Washington. The break down of law and order to include murder certainly endangered the public safety.

And before the South seceded, several northern states had also threatened secession. Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island had threatened secession as far back as James Madison’s administration. In addition, the states of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware were threatening secession during the first half of the nineteenth century–long before the southern states even considered such a thing.

More than that, all of New England threatened to secede in 1807 during Jefferson’s administration, at which time John C. Calhoun was one of the most adamant opponents of secession.

People say constantly that Lincoln “saved” the Union. Lincoln didn’t save the Union; he subjugated the Union. There is a huge difference. A union that is not voluntary is not a union. Does a man have a right to force a woman to marry him or to force a woman to stay married to him? In the eyes of God, a union of husband and wife is far superior to a union of states. If God recognizes the right of husbands and wives to separate (and He does), to try and suggest that states do not have the right to lawfully (under Natural and divine right) separate is the most preposterous proposition imaginable.

Wrong. Lincoln did preserve the Union. We are one nation today because of Lincoln. Every state in the Union, Southern, Northern, or Western has the same rights under the Constitution that every other state has. No state or group of states is subjugating any other state or group of states. Yes, the Obama administration and federal bureaucracies are stepping on the rights of the people and the states, but it is an equal opportunity tyranny. Everyone is being oppressed equally. Southern states are not being singled out. (Obviously I’m against this and not defending it!)

In 1789 the Union was voluntary, but this comparison with marriage is another straw man. God didn’t recognize the “right” of anybody to divorce. He only allowed it in cases that involved adultery (Matthew 19:7-9), in other words, because of sin. So if you’re going to play that game, I suggest that the one who was holding and abusing the free rights of men because of their skin color was the partner in sin. In that case, the attempt at a divorce by the South would not have been recognized as legitimate. The point is this is a foolish argument to make. It doesn’t hold water.

People say that Lincoln freed the slaves. Lincoln did NOT free a single slave. But what he did do was enslave free men. His so-called Emancipation Proclamation had NO AUTHORITY in the southern states, as they had separated into another country. Imagine a President today signing a proclamation to free folks in, say, China or Saudi Arabia. He would be laughed out of Washington. Lincoln had no authority over the Confederate States of America, and he knew it.

This is another false argument. I am honestly surprised that Megyn Kelly could be this irrational. Obviously no president would proclaim people free in China or anywhere else. It’s a false comparison. The question here is whether or not the Confederacy was actually an independent nation. The Civil War was in progress, but the North did not recognize it as a legitimate government. Neither did any other nation in the world. The Emancipation Proclamation was a war maneuver. Lincoln turned what had been a war to preserve the Union into a war to end slavery, and by taking that moral high ground no foreign power would recognize the Confederacy.

Do you not find it interesting that Lincoln’s proclamation did NOT free a single slave in the United States, the country in which he DID have authority? That’s right. The Emancipation Proclamation deliberately ignored slavery in the North. Do you not realize that when Lincoln signed his proclamation, there were over 300,000 slaveholders who were fighting in the Union army? Check it out.

One of those northern slaveholders was General (and later U.S. President) Ulysses S. Grant. In fact, he maintained possession of his slaves even after the War Between the States concluded. Recall that his counterpart, Confederate General Robert E. Lee, freed his slaves BEFORE hostilities between North and South ever broke out. When asked why he refused to free his slaves, Grant said: “Good help is hard to find these days.”

It’s hard to answer these two paragraphs without going into a long, tedious recalling of events, but this argument is likewise absurd. Lincoln made his position on slavery clear in the Lincoln-Douglas debates in 1858 and in his Cooper Union speech in 1860. He was against slavery, and opposed to the spread of slavery into the territories and future states. He publicly declared he had no intention of interfering with slavery where it existed because he had no constitutional power to do so. He issued the Emancipation Proclamation as a war measure. In it he declared the slaves in the states still in rebellion to be freed. That he was unable to do anything about it until the states surrendered doesn’t make any difference. He did not free the slaves in the Border States because he wanted to keep them in the Union and was not about to do something to weaken that position. As for checking out slave owners in the north how about some documentation to help us find the information? Most Northern States had abolished slavery long before 1860. So the Emancipation Proclamation didn’t have to address them.

Yes, Lee owned slaves. He got them from his father-in-law. When his father-in-law died in 1856 he freed them. He also said when the war was over that it was a good thing that slavery was ended. Grant also got his slaves from his father-in-law, but he only managed them while he looked after the family farm. They were not his to sell or free. He only owned one himself. He bought a slave named William Jones from his father-in-law. In 1859, at a time when Grant's store failed and he was about to go bankrupt, he set his slave free, even though he desperately could have used the money if he had sold him. Paints a little different picture doesn’t it?

The institution of slavery did not end until the 13th Amendment was ratified on December 6, 1865.

Speaking of the 13th Amendment, did you know that Lincoln authored his own 13th Amendment? It is the only amendment to the Constitution ever proposed by a sitting U.S. President. Here is Lincoln’s proposed amendment: “No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give Congress the power to abolish or interfere within any state with the domestic institutions thereof, including that a person’s held to labor or service by laws of said State.”

You read it right. Lincoln proposed an amendment to the U.S. Constitution PRESERVING the institution of slavery. This proposed amendment was written in March of 1861, a month BEFORE the shots were fired at Fort Sumter, South Carolina.

Once again, Lincoln was doing everything he could to keep the Southern States in the Union. He pled with them over and again to understand he had no plan to interfere with the institution of slavery where it existed. He believed that the intention of the Founding Fathers was to let slavery die out on its own, and in the interest of preserving the Union he was willing to let it happen that way. Let that sink in. Lincoln was a Constitutionalist. He had no plan of treading on the rights of any state, but he did have an oath of office to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution, which at least implies the preservation of the Union. He also made that clear in his First Inaugural Address.

The State of South Carolina was particularly incensed at the tariffs enacted in 1828 and 1832. The Tariff of 1828 was disdainfully called “The Tariff of Abominations” by the State of South Carolina. Accordingly, the South Carolina legislature declared that the tariffs of 1828 and 1832 were “unauthorized by the constitution of the United States.”

Think, folks: why would the southern states secede from the Union over slavery when President Abraham Lincoln had offered an amendment to the Constitution guaranteeing the PRESERVATION of slavery? That makes no sense. If the issue was predominantly slavery, all the South needed to do was to go along with Lincoln; and his proposed 13th Amendment would have permanently preserved slavery among the southern (and northern) states. Does that sound like a body of people who were willing to lose hundreds of thousands of men on the battlefield over saving slavery? What nonsense!

Exactly. That is the question. Why would they do it? It didn’t make any sense. But that’s what happened, and to deny that slavery had anything to do with it is plain ignorance. The entire Southern economy was based on slave labor. The tariffs that were abominations ran the price of cotton up on world markets, which in turn hurt the slave industry. Did you never hear of King Cotton? The cotton crop depended on slaves. High tariffs made it difficult for slave owners to keep their slaves and operate their plantations on slave labor.

Furthermore, after Lincoln was elected, a group of Secessionist Commissioners crisscrossed the South stirring up crowds and legislatures by declaring that Lincoln was going to end slavery and therefore the only option was to secede. They drummed up support for secession and their whole argument was slavery. It was after the war when the Confederate Vice President, Alexander Stephens, made the case that the war was over State’s Rights. It is true. It was about states' rights, but the only right they were willing to fight for was the right to own slaves.

The problem was Lincoln wanted the southern states to pay the Union a 40% tariff on their exports. The South considered this outrageous and refused to pay. By the time hostilities broke out in 1861, the South was paying up to, and perhaps exceeding, 70% of the nation’s taxes. Before the war, the South was very prosperous and productive. And Washington, D.C., kept raising the taxes and tariffs on them. You know, the way Washington, D.C., keeps raising the taxes on prosperous American citizens today.

There is no argument with this point; Washington keeps raising taxes on prosperous Americans today. As for the South paying 70% of the nation’s taxes in 1861, that’s a little hard to swallow. There were 22 million Americans in the North, and only 5 million non-slaves in the South. One fifth of the population paying 70% of the taxes? Documentation?

Before the war the South was prosperous and productive, yes. But what most people don’t realize is that cotton depletes the soil of minerals faster than other cash crops, and by 1860 many in the South were producing less as the soil became less fertile. They were looking for new places to go with their slave labor to plant cotton. That’s why Lincoln’s purpose of preventing the spread of slavery to the territories was anathema to them. Lincoln said he would do nothing about slavery where it existed because he had no constitutional authority to do so. But he did believe he could prevent it from spreading because the intent of the Founders was to let slavery die a slow death on its own. Many, even southerners, believed that in another ten years the institution of slavery would have been too costly and not productive enough to sustain. Lincoln was determined to let that happen. That’s what made the South willing to fight to the death for State's Rights. It all had to do with slavery and it was irrational.

This is much the same story of the way the colonies refused to pay the demanded tariffs of the British Crown–albeit the tariffs of the Crown were MUCH lower than those demanded by Lincoln. Lincoln’s proposed 13th Amendment was an attempt to entice the South into paying the tariffs by being willing to permanently ensconce the institution of slavery into the Constitution. AND THE SOUTH SAID NO!

No, it’s not even close to the same story. The colonists’ complaint was that they were taxed with no one to represent them in Parliament. Remember the battle cry? “No taxation without representation.” The South had Representatives and two Senators from each state in Congress to represent them. There is no comparison.

In addition, the Congressional Record of the United States forever obliterates the notion that the North fought the War Between the States over slavery. Read it for yourself. This resolution was passed unanimously in the U.S. Congress on July 23, 1861: “The War is waged by the government of the United States not in the spirit of conquest or subjugation, nor for the purpose of overthrowing or interfering with the rights or institutions of the states, but to defend and protect the Union.”

What could be clearer? The U.S. Congress declared that the war against the South was NOT an attempt to overthrow or interfere with the “institutions” of the states, but to keep the Union intact (by force). The “institutions” implied most certainly included the institution of slavery.

Hear it loudly and clearly: Lincoln’s war against the South had NOTHING to do with ending slavery–so said the U.S. Congress by unanimous resolution in 1861.

Abraham Lincoln, himself, said it was NEVER his intention to end the institution of slavery. In a letter to Alexander Stevens, who later became the Vice President of the Confederacy, Lincoln wrote this: “Do the people of the South really entertain fears that a Republican administration would directly, or indirectly, interfere with their slaves, or with them, about their slaves? If they do, I wish to assure you, as once a friend, and still, I hope, not an enemy, that there is no cause for such fears. The South would be in no more danger in this respect than it was in the days of Washington.”

Again, what could be clearer? Lincoln, himself, said the southern states had nothing to fear from him in regard to abolishing slavery.

Hear Lincoln again: “If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it.” He also said: “I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the states where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so and I have no inclination to do so.”

So? Granted. That’s not even contested. Lincoln said in his first inaugural that he had a constitutional oath to preserve the Union. Obviously that’s what the North went to war for. Slavery became an issue as a war measure. The South went to war over State’s Rights, or so they said after the war was over. The inescapable truth, however, is that the only State’s Right they were willing to go to war over was the right to slavery. Every other issue they had problems with could have been resolved in Congress. In fact, if they had left well enough alone, the slavery problem would have ended in its own time as the cotton industry became less and less lucrative.

The idea that the Confederate flag (actually, there were five of them) stood for racism, bigotry, hatred, and slavery is just so much hogwash. In fact, if one truly wants to discover who the racist was in 1861, just read the words of Mr. Lincoln.

On August 14, 1862, Abraham Lincoln invited a group of black people to the White House. In his address to them, he told them of his plans to colonize them all back to Africa. Listen to what he told these folks: “Why should the people of your race be colonized and where? Why should they leave this country? This is, perhaps, the first question for proper consideration. You and we are different races. We have between us a broader difference than exists between almost any other two races. Whether it is right or wrong I need not discuss; but this physical difference is a great disadvantage to us both, as I think. Your race suffers very greatly, many of them, by living among us, while ours suffers from your presence. In a word, we suffer on each side. If this is admitted, it affords a reason, at least, why we should be separated. You here are freemen, I suppose? Perhaps you have been long free, or all your lives. Your race is suffering, in my judgment, the greatest wrong inflicted on any people. But even when you cease to be slaves, you are yet far removed from being placed on an equality with the white race. The aspiration of men is to enjoy equality with the best when free, but on this broad continent not a single man of your race is made the equal of a single man of our race.”

Did you hear what Lincoln said? He said that black people would NEVER be equal with white people–even if they all obtained their freedom from slavery. If that isn’t a racist statement, I’ve never heard one.

That’s just plain unfair and it’s unreasonable. The majority of white people in the nation likely were not in favor of citizenship for the freedmen. The point Lincoln was trying to make was simply that because they lacked education and opportunity, and since racial prejudice would still be high when they were freed, they would not be on an equal standing with white people. They would be at a disadvantage when they were free. They would suddenly not have a place to live, and they would have no money to sustain them, and since the vast majority of them were still in the racist South they would likely have a hard time getting employment.

Lincoln’s statement above is not isolated. In Charleston, Illinois, in 1858, Lincoln said in a speech: “I am not, nor have ever been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races. I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races from living together on social or political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white.”

Again, I think Lincoln was just trying to face the reality of the times. It says nothing about him being a racist.

Ladies and gentlemen, in his own words, Abraham Lincoln declared himself to be a white supremacist. Why don’t our history books and news media tell the American people the truth about Lincoln and about the War Between the States?

Well, at this point this diatribe against Lincoln is becoming irrational as well as audacious. The end result of the war, regardless of how Lincoln prosecuted it, preserved the Union, which was his primary goal, and a secondary benefit was that it freed the slaves. To smear Lincoln as a white supremacist when 395,000 families in the South owned 3.9 million slaves, and included such stalwarts of hatred as Bedford Forest, who founded the Ku Klux Klan, is yellow journalism at its best and far below the standard of excellence we have come to expect from Megyn Kelly.

It’s simple: if people would study the meanings and history of the flag, symbols, and statues of the Confederacy and Confederate leaders, they might begin to awaken to the tyrannical policies of Washington, D.C., that precluded southern independence–policies that have only escalated since the defeat of the Confederacy–and they might have a notion to again resist.

They could more likely come to this conclusion by studying the Constitution and taking note of how it is being trampled on by Obama.

By the time Lincoln penned his Emancipation Proclamation, the war had been going on for two years without resolution. In fact, the North was losing the war. Even though the South was outmanned and out-equipped, the genius of the southern generals and fighting acumen of the southern men had put the northern armies on their heels. Many people in the North never saw the legitimacy of Lincoln’s war in the first place, and many of them actively campaigned against it. These people were affectionately called “Copperheads” by people in the South.

Lincoln penned his proclamation 17 months after Ft. Sumter and issued it three months later. Northern fighting men had as much acumen as southern soldiers; they just didn’t have good leadership early in the war, at least not in the East.

I urge you to watch Ron Maxwell’s accurate depiction of those people in the North who favored the southern cause as depicted in his motion picture, “Copperhead.” For that matter, I consider his movie “Gods And Generals” to be the greatest “Civil War” movie ever made. It is the most accurate and fairest depiction of Confederate General Thomas Jonathan “Stonewall” Jackson ever produced. In my opinion, actor Stephen Lang should have received an Oscar for his performance as General Jackson. But, can you imagine?

I’ve seen God’s and Generals and I agree. It is excellent.

That’s another thing: the war fought from 1861 to 1865 was NOT a “civil war.” Civil war suggests two sides fighting for control of the same capital and country. The South didn’t want to take over Washington, D.C., no more than their forebears wanted to take over London. They wanted to separate from Washington, D.C., just as America’s Founding Fathers wanted to separate from Great Britain. The proper names for that war are either, “The War Between the States” or, “The War of Southern Independence,” or, more fittingly, “The War of Northern Aggression.”

True, it was not by strict definition a “civil war,” but Kelly seems to forget that the South fired the first shot. A more fitting name might be “The War of Southern Rebellion.”

Had the South wanted to take over Washington, D.C., they could have done so with the very first battle of the “Civil War.” When Lincoln ordered federal troops to invade Virginia in the First Battle of Manassas (called the “First Battle …

Well, what I’ve seen of this email makes me want to see the rest of it, but this is as far as it goes and I can't find the rest of it, so I’ll have to stop. I do find it interesting, however, that those who defend the racist slave policy of the South often refer to Bull Run as the first battle of the war. The first battle took place at Ft. Sumpter when a ragtag southern army under the command of Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard attacked the Federal installation. The first shot was fired by a South Carolina firebrand representative named Edmund Ruffin.

To tell you the truth I’m disappointed at this rant by Megyn Kelly. She pulls out all the plugs to sound just like a liberal journalist and make a revisionist historical argument by slamming Lincoln and Grant as white supremacist racists, while saying nothing about the hundreds of thousands of slave owners including nearly everybody in the Confederate government. That’s the same tactic leftists use when they blame Christians for the Crusades and immediately blame every terrorist act on right-wing extremists while giving a pass to Muslim terrorists. And for what? To call for the raising of the Confederate flag? She could have done that without this tirade.

Ironically, I agree with Kelly that we ought not lower Confederate flags. Taking them down is a symbolic gesture that accomplishes nothing but drive racism and encourage more foolishness from simple-minded people who have nothing better to do than be offended. The Confederate flag exists as a reminder of a period of time in our history and it hurts nothing and nobody.