A More Perfect Union

I have Confederate ancestors (at least on one side of my family).  They enlisted in a Texas volunteer cavalry unit in 1862 and served in the Red River campaign.  As far as I know, they had nothing to do with slavery; they were wagon drivers and cowboys, recent immigrants from Alsace.  

I suspect that they had more allegiance to the Texas flag than to the C.S.A.  Still, they were Confederates. 

I honor them and respect them. I’m not ashamed of my ties to them.  They no doubt thought that they were fighting for liberty and freedom—but it was the freedom to dehumanize and exploit other human beings. They fought on the side of evil.

So I can understand some of the sentiment behind those who want to continue to display the Confederate battle flag.  There is much to admire about Southern culture and history.  But it, and the flag that some use to symbolize it, is fatally tainted by the original sin of slavery and, in addition, by the legacy of over a century of institutional, brutal oppression since the war ended.  And it must be noted that the Confederate flag is also a symbol of treason.  One simply cannot be a patriotic American and, at the same time, cling to allegiance to the banner of a failed rebellion.

Okay, fine.  So I’m a Yankee (and full disclosure:  the other side of my family has ancestors who fought for the Union.)  And everything I’ve written so far sounds like the typical Yankee arguments against the display of that flag.

So rally ‘round the Stars and Stripes, right?

Well, wait just a bit.

Old Glory is not without its bloody blemishes. Remember the Trail of Tears and Wounded Knee?  The conquest of the richest parts of Mexico in a one-sided, unjust war?  The massacres of entire villages during the Philippine Insurgency and the Moro Rebellion?  The incarceration of Japanese-Americans during World War II?  My Lai?  The Stars and Stripes has flown over ethnic cleansing, genocide and atrocities as well.

And yet we proudly display it—and we should.  On every possible occasion.

What’s the difference?

One represents only the past, a past that must be remembered but also rejected.  The other represents the past as well but also, most important, a vision of the future, a promise. There have been plenty of violations of that promise, but they are violations, disgraces, crimes—not the institutionalized oppression the Confederate flag was designed to preserve and promote. One commemorates what was—and what must never be again. The other symbolizes what can be. 

From the very beginning, we set ourselves a goal.  John Winthrop expressed it aboard the ship Arbella in 1630 as the Puritans prepared to land in the New World:  For we must consider that we shall be as a City upon a hill.  The eyes of all people are upon us.  Soe that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so ause him to withdraw his present help from us, we shall be made a story and a byword throughout the world.

Of course, his vision of the perfect commonwealth was a rigid, unforgiving theocracy, and his Puritans promptly set about exterminating the Pequots.  But the idea was planted:  we are not a particular geography, but an idea.  We aren’t there yet, and maybe never will be, but we’re a work in progress.  We set ourselves up to be an example to the rest of the world, so we simply aren’t entitled to behave in the ways that other civilizations do.  As Martin Luther King, Jr. put it in his “I Have A Dream” speech, In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds.

I’ll frankly confess:  I’m a liberal.  Somehow, in the past few decades, the idea got established that the American flag is the property of the Right.  If it is, it’s no better than the Confederate flag because it honors not just the good but also the shameful.  But I own it too, and I display it proudly, because it symbolizes a future, a vision that must be pursued, even if it never completely comes to be.