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based entirely on lies. But the perception itself is honest. People honestly believe the flag stands
for racism and slavery. And they are right to be offended by racism and slavery.
So should the Confederate battle flag come down?
Should we submit ourselves to the ignorance of the larger populace? Its not a rhetorical question.
It may seem trivial, but we succumb to the ignorance of the populace all the time. For instance,
have you ever seen a sign that said Caution: Flammable. Flammable is a fairly modern linguistic
invention, and it is one of the more ignorant verbal contraptions ever created. Everything is
technically flammable, in the sense that you can apply a flame to pretty much anything. The
question is not whether something is flammable. The real question of any import is whether
something is inflammable, meaning: is it able to be inflamed? Combustible substances and
liquids used to carry the label inflammable, but the larger populace, because of rank ignorance,
assumed that inflammable meant cannot be set on fire. And it was at least causing confusion.
Apparently it was also posing a real and actual danger to the ignorant. Some heartless people
would say, Who cares? Let the idiots die if they dont know English well enough to smoke their
cigarettes elsewhere. But society at large said that we should change our language in order to
protect the ignorant.
Similarly, it may be time we drop the Confederate battle flag. Trying to explain its true heritage is
as futile as giving an etymology lesson to a person who just set himself on fire. All this
inflammatory (or should I say flammatory) talk about the Confederate battle flag should stop. Its
merely a symbol of a thing, not the thing itself. You may think the Confederate flag stands for
heritage and home. Many of your neighbors think it stands for a heritage of hate. When they ask
you to take it down, they arent necessarily denying your heritage or your home. At least, thats
not what theyre trying to do. They think your symbol stands for something else, and its that
something else they wont stand for. Perhaps the best path for us now is to do our best to educate
others, while showing through our deference to them that our true motivation has nothing to do
with hateor the wrong kind of pride.