A People Without Honor

Back in my days as a graduate student at the University of South Carolina, I and some fellow graduate students were involved tangentially, very tangentially, in the great Confederate flag debate in Columbia, SC.  During the 1990s the  Confederate flag flew over the capitol in Columbia, SC. 

Various civil rights groups began to snipe at the flag, viewing it as a symbol of oppression, and demanding its removal from the capitol.   Not all folks associated with the civil rights movement held this view.  Andrew Young for one saw any debate over Confederate symbols as a great distraction from addressing the very real problems of violent crime, drug use, and failing schools afflicting African-Americans.  The majority of African Americans surveyed at the time cared not a whit for Johnny Reb’s flag one way or the other.  But after a long decade of agitation and supportive media coverage the Left was able to effect the flag’s removal from the Capitol. 

A great compromise, or more accurately a series of compromises were struck from 1990 to 2000 whereby a monument to the contributions of African-Americans to the state of South Carolina was placed on state house grounds, the Confederate naval jack came down from the Capitol building, and a Confederate flag was placed next to the Confederate soldier monument on state house grounds.  Like all compromises, none of us were completely happy with the outcome on  either side of the issue, but compromises by their nature are things with which we can live.  And those of us who had fought for the flag in print and word could, at the end of the day, live with this one. We are Americans after all, and one of the cultural traits of Americans is our genius for compromise.

Not so the Left.