Well Done: Rebuttal to Editor of Shawnee News-Star, Don Clark: Re: Sons Of Confederate Veterans Rally

Kent Bush; Editor
Shawnee News-Star

Sir,

It doesn’t trouble me you didn’t cover the Sons Of Confederate Veterans Rally.  As you say, it’s your paper.  I do find it rather peculiar you devoted so much space justifying your choice.  I believe if you did the same with every piece of news you didn’t print your paper would be filled only with excuses.  To quote Shakespeare you “protest too much, methinks”

What does alarm me is your unjust and unprincipled argument for not covering it.  You claim your decision was “based on my belief the Confederate Battle Flag is a symbol of racially based hate” and your “core beliefs” therefore prevented you from covering the rally.  If you are as principled as you profess then your “core beliefs” must surely dictate that you not cover stories involving the US Flag and Christian Cross as both have much longer and bloodier histories with any offense you dare level at the Confederate Battle Flag.

Speaking of your black child you claim you are “not willing to further normalize any banner that people would deem him inferior.”  How then do you reconcile your “core belief” with the fact it was the US flag, not the Confederate Battle Flag, which presided over the Supreme Court in 1857 that ruled blacks were not citizens and had no rights.  It was the US Flag which presided over the Supreme Court in 1896 that ruled segregation was constitutional.  It was the US Flag that presided over the infamous Tuskegee syphilis experiments. It was the US Flag that flew over a segregated US military until 1947 and a segregated US public schools system until 1954.  And last year when Hilary Clinton denounced what she called the “systemic racism in our criminal justice system” she was not talking about the Confederate criminal justice system.   But you teach your child it is the Confederate Battle Flag that is the symbol of racial hatred!

You call the Confederate Battle Flag a “symbol of racially based hate” but the KKK didn’t hijack the Confederate Battle Flag until about 1950.  According to the Tuskegee Institute, there have been 4,742 lynchings in the US.  According to that same source, 99.8% of those lynching, in other words all but 13, occurred before 1950.  Prior to that, the KKK swore their one and only flag was the US flag, a fact incontestably verified by the presence of only the US Flag in their membership manuals, literature and events photos.  Go find every photo and video of KKK events you can and compare the number of US and Confederate Battle Flags.  Start with the KKK rallies in Kokomo IN (that’s right Indiana not Mississippi) in1923 attended by 200,000 Klansmen and in Washington DC in 1925.  You won’t find a single Confederate Battle Flag at either.  What you will find is more US flags at just these two rallies than Confederate Battle Flags at all other Klan rallies combined!  But you teach your child it is the Confederate Battle Flag that is the symbol of racial hatred!

And let’s not forget, the Confederate Battle Flag is a military flag and therefore apolitical.  It enslaved no one.  The US Flag, on the other hand, is the symbol of the US government which legalized and protected 136 million man-years of slavery over a period of 75 years.  Likewise, it was the US Flag, not Confederate Battle Flag that presided over Native American policy, like the Indian Removal Act (1830), which decimated Native populations by as much as 90%.  But you teach your child it is the Confederate Battle Flag that is the symbol of racial hatred.

In a similar manner, it can be demonstrated the sins of the Confederate Battle Flag pale in comparison to those perpetrated under the Christian Cross.  The exact number of victims from 700 years of Christian Crusades, Inquisitions and witch hunts is known only to God, but on 20 August 1191, Christian Crusaders killed some 5,000 men, women and children; more than all the lynchings in the entire history of the US.  Also, the Christian Cross is the most dominate and continuously used symbol of the KKK.  They’ve always asserted their “core belief” is Christian.  Look at their robes, past and present, almost all are adorned with a Cross.  And let’s not forget those burning Crosses.  How many beatings and lynchings have they illuminated?  But you teach your child it is the Confederate Battle Flag that is the symbol of racial hatred!

Perhaps it is best you did not cover the rally.  There was hatred and bigotry there.   It was brought there by protestors so blinded and enslaved by political correctness they can’t see the facts.  Adopting the tactics of the KKK, some hid their faces under masks while others stooped to derogatory names and malicious insults clearly intended to injure.  On the other side were the Confederate Battle Flag supporters, gathered peacefully and respectfully to honor the noblest of human qualities, devotion duty, courage, sacrifice and love of family.  It might be difficult to reconcile to your readers that reality with your “core beliefs.”  It would be even more difficult to explain to ones child that the former group was good and represented fairness and the latter group was bad and represented hate.  Yes, I can see why you didn’t put yourself in that position.

It is only a hopelessly arbitrary and hypocritical sense of justice that can condemn the Confederate Battle Flag when other cherished symbols are guilty of far more numerous and egregious misdeeds.  Obviously, it is not out of any “core beliefs” the Confederate Battle Flag is hated and censored but a choice and a very malignant and prejudicial one at that.  Anyone who claims there is some benign principle in the inquisition against the Confederate Battle Flag…well, the emperor has no clothes.   Even worse, those that so cravenly surrender the Confederate Battle Flag to hate groups give aid and comfort to very forces of hate they claim to oppose.  If you truly wish to further neutralize and consign to obscurity the forces of hate, do not empower them this way!  I say join us in repudiating and denying the use of this powerful symbol for any wicked purpose just as we do with the US Flag and Christian Cross. 

Rex Cash; Lt Commander
Oklahoma Division

Sons Of Confederate Veterans