I don't care much about football, Flap, but this is a pretty good article.
I'm somewhere in the middle, the son of a Southerner raised in the North (Montana, West, actually, but pretty durn North too). My father had some old minie balls he picked up when he was a kid down in Dillon SC, maybe 50 years after they were fired in anger. He had every right to teach me Southern ways, but never did. I've been a Yankee all my life.
When we took a family trip down South, I thought it was strange that the battlefields there had statues of the Southern Generals. Weren't they the bad guys, undeserving of such honor? And weren't those statues an insult to American values? Dad taught that the soil was Southern, the people were Southern, the Generals were Southern, and that's just the way it was.
Now my father is gone, but I see the wisdom in what he taught. That's the way it was. Covering it up or burying it is not going to change that. Should Montana take the pick and shovel off its state flag because mining isn't politically correct anymore? Should California take the word 'Republic' off its flag because it's part of the United States now?
Go through all the state flags and clean 'em up while you're at it. Nothing offensive allowed. Take down the Confederate flag. It never happened. Let the South die.
There was a losing side. There was a wrong side. That's the way it was. We can forget. Or our kids can. But should they? Why should we forget our history just because it offends? |
