THAT CONFEDERATE FLAG

On Friday the Confederate ‘Battle” Flag that was flying at the South Carolina Capital was taken down and the flagpole itself removed.

Although this action was long overdue; the reason for its removal is the wrong one.

There is a tendency to alter or rewrite history by destroying all evidence relating to what is desired to forget or deny. This may be for political or religious purposes.

In the past three decades some of the worst have been the destruction of such sites as the Giant Buddhas of Bamyian by the Taliban. In the past few years ISIS has destroyed many historic sites of Shia and Sufi origin that date back well over a thousand years.

In Mosul Nebi Yunus the mosque dedicated to the prophet Jonah was blown up. Palmyra a Roman town and Hatra once a dessert crossroad town of antiquity have been destroyed

ISIS has destroyed well preserved remnants of three capitals of Assyrian Empires that date back to the 8th Century BC. This includes Nineveh-Sennacherib’s, of biblical record, capital as well as Nimrud and Khorsabad from earlier times.

But all such destruction has not been limited to the fundamentalist Islamic forces. The Inquisitors destroyed all the records of the Mayas and other Central and South American Indian cultures as the Spanish conquered them. A treasury of human history was lost forever.

In our own country there is pressure to remove anything that would recall the slavery practice. We have distorted the causes of the Civil War as a fight to preserve slavery by the Southern States and the North’s desire to abolish it. Forgotten was the fact that there were at least four Slave States that remained in the Union and it was not until later in the conflict that Lincoln turned it into a war for abolition.

The fact is the causes for the war were not just economic because the Northern States also benefited from the production of goods made from inexpensive Southern cotton. It was a combination of the preservation of cheap labor, and also the principle of State’s rights against that of a dominant federal government.



It was the latter issue that as reflected in the flying of the Confederate flag in South Carolina in 1964 as a protest against the Civil Rights Act. It was not there as a reminder of slavery. It was flown as a protest against the restriction of a state deciding who can vote. Yes there was a racial issue involved; the ability to prevent blacks from exercising their citizen’s rights to vote.

That is what the flag represented and that is why it should only be a museum item of a relic from a terrible time in our history; not a symbol of objection to a federal law; the law  of the land.

Today there are court cases relating to voter registration or polling booth regulations from at least two states, Texas and North Carolina that have reached the federal district court level. In both cases the hidden agenda is to control the eligible voter’s accessibility.

SCOTUS will most likely hear both during its 2015 session. Although due to injunctions neither may impact on the 2015 elections but since SCOTUS renders its decisions by the end of June the 2016 Presidential elections will be impacted one way or the other.

The issue is of course controlling who can vote.

"A voting rights trial on a 2013 North Carolina law is getting under way, focusing on whether Republican lawmakers illegally weakened minority voters' ability to participate in the political process.
The trial stems from three federal lawsuits, and a judge in Winston-Salem scheduled proceedings to begin Monday. The trial could last two to three weeks.

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The U.S. Justice Department, state NAACP and others sued soon after Gov. Pat McCrory signed the bill approved by the Republican-led General Assembly. The trial will focus on changes that scaled back early voting and prevented counting Election Day ballots cast in incorrect precincts. Supporters say the law improved the integrity of the voting process." 7/16 from news article