Yeah, why is everybody so mad at the South? So mad, in fact, that you can’t even display a historical relic without getting grief. Well, no I’m not actually talking about the Rebel Flag. For one thing, the flag which is displayed today was never displayed by a Confederate army or governing agency. The historical flag was square. Ok, not a big difference, but still. This was, also, a flag of war. There was another flag that was the civic flag. The flag of peace.
There was something, however, about that bastardized Rebel Flag that meant something to us when we were kids. Playing in the woods, re-enacting a charge that we would only much later learn was led by General Pickett (to a disastrous end) we became one screaming, dirty group of boys. Along with the sweet tea, fried chicken, deviled eggs, and old people in the shade, the games we played were a part of who we were. And the flag we wove made us rebels.
But the flag we wove was also carried by people who did not play. They beat and hurled insults at kids we went to school with. I never asked, but I am sure my classmates had a much different view of the flag I flew. It’s not their fault for speaking about it. It was the rednecks that stole my flag.
It’s not the last to be threatened by hostile takeover. The first time a company of Marines boarded a Continental Navy ship to aid in the capturing of British vessels, its members carried a yellow flag emblazoned with a timber rattler and the words “Don’t Tread On Me.” It was a symbol of a new world which would not be repressed by the old. It is a legacy of our earliest military legacies and of the rebels we all once were.
Until the Tea Party stole our flag. Along with it, they want to claim our history. But our history is not one of withdrawal from the political process. It is not a shirking of our collective responsibilities. It is instead an affirmation that we do not require the oversight of a monarch to properly govern the affairs of our state. This is a proposition as yet unproven.