Via Ezra Klein, Jamie Kirchick delivers what me be the single best explanation I've ever seen on the problem with the Confederate flag:
Rudy Giuliani, who recently said that he would have backed efforts to keep Terri Schiavo "alive," has now declared, before a swooning crowd at the Alabama state capitol, that he believes that the decision to fly the Confederate flag on state property ought be "left to the states."
The Confederacy was, should Giuliani need any reminder, from the firing on Fort Sumter, an act of treason against the United States. Never mind the crime against humanity that the Confederacy was formed to protect or the lives that were lost in order to defeat that treason. Of course, an individual who wants to fly the Confederate flag or put its likeness on the back of his pick-up truck is perfectly permitted to do so, just as one can legally fly a Nazi flag outside his house or goose-step around his neighborhood wearing a swastika. But the same freedom of expression should not apply to government institutions (in this case, state legislators and the public property in which they conduct their legislative business).
Treason and human bondage: that is the real meaning, and the only real meaning, of the Confederate flag. Not culture or tradition. Treason and human bondage. It was, after all, the official flag of an unlawful government that this nation went to war to defeat. Like the American flag, it represents a specific nation, a specific government, and a specific set of ideals.
Should an individual choose to fly that flag, it is of course their right. Just as, I would argue, it is their right to burn the very same flag should they so desire. But what an individual does is very different than what a state government chooses to do. That's true of any state government, but on this issue it is particularly true when it is the government of a Southern state that is involved. South Carolina, the state so often involved in this issue, was the first state to secede from the Union back in late 1860. Several months later, it was also the site where the opening shots of the war were fired, a war that eventually led to the deaths of over half a million people.
This flag represents that history. It came from a very specific historical circumstance, one in which "states' rights" isn't an abstract and undefinable concept. When South Carolina first flew that flag, it was an act of treason. When it flies it today, it is a reminder of that act. Why is that so hard for people to understand?
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