Are complaints about using the Southern Flag justified? How can people fail to see the rich fidelity to their Christian Heritage? What cause do people have in tearing down the symbols of this rich heritage?

To answer these questions I ask the readers of this post to consider the history of Reconstruction and the establishment of the Jim Crow laws.

https://www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/black-codes-and-jim-crow-laws/

Whole History

How can Southern respect the flag and not accept responsibility for how and when it was used after Reconstruction? In Germany there’s a plaque in front of every house whose previous Jewish residents died in concentration camps There is no attempt to whitewash history.

Southerners want to remember only a part of their history. When in fact had they accepted integration and prosecuted KKK members, all this controversy would not have happened. And how much more would their economy grown had they paid black workers the same as whites?

The Evidence

https://www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/black-codes-and-jim-crow-laws/

https://www.history.com/news/how-the-u-s-got-so-many-confederate-monuments

http://www1.assumption.edu/ahc/raceriots/

Why Does It Matter?

It’s interesting to me that it’s Conservatives that seem to repeat the classical liberal motif that every man is an island – that history doesn’t shape who we are today. Follow any family though generations and you’ll see that history does repeat or shapes what comes after.

Capitol Riot

When you look at pictures of the Capitol Riot and see the Southern Flag, do you see order or disorder? What does the flag represent at that point? It represents that only individuals count. Individuals can exercise their rights over that of others; that is freedom. A “right” that was stifled during Reconstruction is now given full vent.

Being concerned about the rights of others has become “Socialism”. I’ll agree there’s government overreach; but before that, were there individual rights for all? I think demonstrably NO.

Equal Opportunity

I would suggest that we recognize exploitation when we see it and work on free market regulations that provide protection for individual rights and guard against the hegemony that circumvents those rights. And this hegemony occurs when we fail to watch the backs of our neighbors, black white, or brown.

From https://flexbooks.ck12.org/ comes the following quote. And just 2 paragraphs before this we were reminded of the phrase “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”. The persecution of people seeking these rights for blacks during Reconstruction was openly displayed and sanctioned by State and local governments.

The quote: ‘But the founders also believed that liberty could not exist unless the people exercised civic virtues.  Exercising personal virtues and civic values would promote and ensure the happiness of society as a whole. George Mason said in the 1776 Virginia Declaration of Rights that “No free government, or the blessings of liberty, can be preserved to any people but by a firm adherence in justice, moderation, temperance, frugality, and virtue and by a frequent recurrence to fundamental principles.” This means that in order for self-government to work, individuals must actively govern and restrain their own personal behavior.’

The abuses occurred under the banner of the Southern flag and robbed African Americans of the ability to generate generational wealth for 100 years. Will they be given the opportunities to do so by 2021? Or will so-called “conservatives” continue to blame them of failing because of their supposed vices and refuse to insure equal opportunity as was done during Jim Crow (and the Southern Flag)!

jef4revive

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