One Man’s Reply

From: cliftonpalmermclendon@yahoo.com

Confederate Flag: Pride Or Prejudice?

KTBS

http://www.ktbs.com/news/27709996/detail.html

Anyone who seeks a flag used by those who would oppress people based on their ethnicity needs to look no farther than the thirteen-stripe United States flag.

Under that flag, many thousands of Africans were transported to slavery in the New World. No Confederate-flagged ship ever made a slaving-run.

Under that flag, atrocities were committed against noncombatant civilians during the 1860s — atrocities to rank with those committed by the Germans and Japanese during World War II. No Confederate unit ever committed atrocities against noncombatants.

Under that flag, Ulysses S. Grant issued General Order No. 11, expelling all Jews from parts of Tennessee, Mississippi, and Kentucky. The Confederate States of America never practiced anti-Semitism. To the
contrary — the Confederate forces included Jewish officers and enlisted men, and from the beginning, the Confederate cabinet included Judah Philip Benjamin, a Jew. (The first Jewish US cabinet member, Oscar
Straus, served under Theodore Roosevelt.)

Under that flag, Native Americans/Indians were cheated, forcibly removed from their ancestral lands, and massacred wholesale. Native Americans/Indians received no such treatment at Confederate hands. To
the contrary — Native Americans/Indians played a vital role in the Confederate Army. General Stand Watie, a Cherokee, was the last Confederate general to sign a cease-fire with the US Army.

Under that flag, American citizens in the 1940s were forcibly removed from their homes and herded into concentration camps solely because their ancestors had been born in Japan. The Confederate States of
America never put anyone into a concentration camp based on his parents’ ethnicity.

That flag is the favored flag of the Ku Kluxers. See http://pointsouth.com/csanet/kkk.htm for pictures.

So — far more objections can be raised to the thirteen-stripe United States flag than to any Confederate flag, yet nobody is calling for its removal, so let the less-objectionable flag fly.

Clifton Palmer McLendon