Dean's World

First of all, I swear to God, The Queen and I absolutely did not collude on this. I was at work on break last night, and she was at home, when she wrote this post: Are We In Danger Of Becoming A Theocracy?

I don't entirely agree with her position, but I have to think something must be in the air. She was responding to still another blogger on the same subject.

Meanwhile, Tim over at the always-excellent "Crack the Bell" weblog raises the issue of the following flag, also referred to as the St. Andrew's Cross:

First off, you should read Tim's piece, which raises the issues this flag brings up very well. You can click right here to read it. I disavow none of it. None of it at all.

When I wrote my article on flags, I almost mentioned this particular flag. But I knew that if I did so, it would raise a host of distracting and thorny issues. Those outside of the United States probably have no great interest in that particular flag, but many Americans have quite adrenaline-inducing reactions to it. I sort of hoped to avoid the issue, but being an American by birth (and southern by the grace of God), I guess I have no choice.

So first, I will say: Yes, that is indeed known as Saint Andrew's Cross. Those who designed it called it that. Quite probably because so many of them were of Scottish and Irish ancestry.

That flag is more commonly known as the "Confederate flag" or simply "the rebel flag." During what America calls her Great Civil War, fought between 1861 and 1865, this flag represented the cessesionist states. And yes, without doubt, it was an explicitely Christian symbol. Then again, many of those who fought against it viewed it as a violation of their Christian values.

I am troubled by bringing this flag up. My problem with it is not its background as a Christian symbol--it was--but rather that it injects the politics of mid-19th century America into the international politics of the early 21st.

I would ask Tim, for example, if he really believes that the people of Scotland, or even the people of Jamaica, would like to be associated with this rebel flag?

But deeper than that, I'll make a personal statement: I have both Yankee and Rebel roots. I do. Furthermore, I feel them both deeply. Whatever you think of me, it's just the truth: I relate to both Union and Confederate thinking on a very fundamental level.

What should you make of that? Well, honestly, what can you make of it?

I can tell you that the Esmays, whose lineage I can trace all the way back to the late 1700s, were always yankees. I can point to the names of my Esmay ancestors who fought in the civil war, and they all fought for President Lincoln. Yes, all of them. If you search through civil war records of those who served, you'll find a few Esmays. They all fought for--and some died for--the Union.

Yet in my matrilineal lines, there may have been those who fought for Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee. To be honest with you, I would not be in the least bit ashamed of that, even though I believe slavery is one of the most vile blights on the (very lengthy) list of mankind's sins (as Robert E. Lee also believed). I would not be ashamed. Why should I be?

Those people were not me. But more than that: Were not there Germans who fought under Hitler who served with valor and distinction? Was Rommel truly a villain? Was every soldier who fought under Stalin in the war against Hitler to be despised? Was every soldier who served under Custer a monster? Was every Japanese officer who served under Tojo a dishonorable scumbag?

When General Lee finally surrendered to General Grant, and America's great civil war ended, President Lincoln declared that the nation must heal itself. He proclaimed that all those who had fought on the part of the south should be treated with honor and dignity. "With malice toward none, with charity toward all," we should go about the business of binding the nation's wounds. Yes, the unconscionable business of slavery--which more than 80% of the soldiers who fought for the confederacy had never been a part of--was ended. But now it was time for our brothers who fought against each other to forgive each other.

And so it was ended--as it should have been ended. In the intervening decades, the men who had fought in that war--whether they had worn blue or grey, whether they had served Lincoln or Davis, Grant or Lee--viewed each other as brethren, and honored each other. They considered themselves to have been a part of what they called "the Great Army of the Republic." No matter whose side they had fought on, they all knew they were part of it, and that it was over, and that they forgave each other.

And the evil institution of slavery, which most of the men who fought for the South never really cared much about--since most of them were way too poor to have ever owned slaves in the first place--was ended.

Yet today, very sadly, some want to renew the image of those stars and bars, that flag that flew over the Confederate States of America, and to fight over it still. Yet here is the funny part, as I see it:

There are now two camps who today invoke that symbol to their own ends. And both, quite frankly, are dishonoring its memory.

First there are those stupid and belligerent racists--some southerners, but some perverse northerners whose ancestors never had any part in it--who raise it as a symbol of "white power," of "putting the nigger in his place," of Jim Crow, and even (laughably) of "the south shall rise again."

But I must tell you there is a second group that seeks to attack this symbol of long-dead honor: those who seek, in their own arrogance, to assert their moral superiority.

In all honestly, and from the bottom of my heart: I grew up in Texas and spent a good part of my youth in Virginia. That being the case, I was exposed many times as a child to the Rebel Flag. And I tell you without the slightest evasion that as a child I never once--never once, ever--associated the image of that rebel flag, that St. Andrew's Cross, with hatred for black people, or an urge to restore slavery.

Never. Not even once. Ever.

Furthermore, I know many people--atheists, Christians, apatheists, even Jews, who look upon that symbol of the confederacy and think no such things. Rather, they think something that Abraham Lincoln himself would have agreed with: "that is a symbol of men who fought and suffered and sometimes died, honorably and well in many cases, for a cause that they believed in but was ultimately wrong. We can honor their sacrifice without endorsing all they believed."

Many people would be content to leave it at that.

I wish more were.