Advance or retreat

A Confederate flag in a Christmas parade?

The idea that a Christmas parade ought to be a venue for waving a Confederate flag is so self-evidently incongruous with the spirit of the season it’s shocking anyone even suggests it.

On the one hand there’s generosity, hope, love, charity toward others. On the other is an outdated banner of a four-year rebellion against the United States that opposed the concept that all are created equal, that liberty and justice for all ought to mean what it says. In 2021, its display is symbolic of hatred and racism.

When the radio starts playing “It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas,” who in the world responds by dusting off the Stars and Bars or the so-called Southern Cross? Since the Civil War that divided the nation with bloodshed, the Confederate battle flag seems like it’s the gift that just keeps giving — and by that, we mean taking.

Other than documenting the history of the 1860s and its critical impact on the development of the nation, the flag has no beneficial contemporary contribution to make. But travel around Arkansas even a little and it becomes clear by its display there are a number among the state’s population who believe that flag today represents them more than the Star-Spangled Banner does.

The Sons of the Southern Cross is a Van Buren-based nonprofit group whose members say it was founded to preserve Southern heritage. The group hopes to build a privately owned Confederate memorial on Interstate 40 “highly visible when you enter and leave the Southern States of America,” its website explains. The land, the group says, could become a new home for many of the Confederate monuments taken down in different states.

The group last week sued the city of Van Buren and Mayor Joe Hurst, alleging in U.S. District Court that the mayor’s effort to keep a Confederate flag out of the community’s 2020 Christmas parade was unconstitutional as a matter of free speech. The annual event is sponsored by the community organization Old Town Van Buren.

The organization’s rules for the 2020 parade said “No flags, other than the American flag, or any discriminatory items, sayings, etc., should be present on your float. This parade is about CHRISTMAS.”

Christmas parades are popular community events, so they naturally attract — indeed, they invite — organizations within the community to take part. Most promote their organizations or their businesses and include fairly tame Yuletide messages.

It should come as a shock to no one, though, that a Confederate representation in 2020 would be viewed as having something less than Christmas or community spirit.

But, there is, thankfully, such a thing as free speech in the United States. The First Amendment protects the right of Americans to express themselves without government intrusion in most situations.

Sounds simple, right? But it doesn’t always turn out that way. A court case will hinge on how involved government is in decisions that limit someone’s speech and whether the venue represents a public forum in which there’s an obligation to allow any and all perspectives to be expressed.

Many communities leave parades to private organizations, which have more leeway within constitutional boundaries to dictate which messages or imagery they want to be associated with.

Then there are the questions for a plaintiff organization about how far they’re willing to go to force their viewpoint into a beloved community event. If a Southern heritage organization successfully defends a free speech right to include a Confederate flag in a community Christmas parade, will the community celebrate that victory if, next Christmas, a fascist organization wants to fly a flag with a swastika on it? Or if there’s a group that wants to avail itself of the right to include a pagan idol or deity, such as Baphomet, in the celebration?

How much of that does it take before a Christmas parade displays very little about generosity, hope, love, charity and the spirit surrounding Christmas observances?

As First Amendment advocates, we certainly reject any unconstitutional government intrusion in free expression. A federal judge will apparently now determine whether that happened in Van Buren.

But it will simply be a matter of public opinion as to whether the Sons of the Southern Cross are doing the community right by demanding a right to celebrate the Confederacy in the midst of the community’s Christmas observances.

As for us, we’d rather see holiday decorations of red, green and white than symbols of the Blue and Gray.