Grace that demanded a response
Washington Post Writers Group Politically, because doing so would cause something of an insurrection. And culturally, because Americans cherish — cling to, as Obama once had it — their guns as a symbol of freedom. You can largely ban guns in Canada where the founding document gives the purpose of confederation as the achievement of “peace, order and good government.” Harder to disarm a nation whose founding purpose is “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
With gun control going nowhere, the psychic national need post-Charleston to nonetheless do something took a remarkable direction: banishment of the Confederate flag, starting with the one flying on the grounds of the statehouse in Columbia, then spreading like wildfire to consume Confederate flags, symbols and statues everywhere.
Logically, the connection is tenuous. Yes, Roof poses with the Confederate flag, among other symbols of racism, on his website. But does anyone imagine that if the South Carolina flag had been relegated to a museum, the massacre would not have occurred?
Politically, the murders created a unique moment. Gov. Nikki Haley was surely sincere in calling for the flag’s removal. But she also understood the massacre had created a moment when the usual proConfederate flag feeling — and, surely, expressions of it — would be largely suppressed, presenting the opportunity to achieve something otherwise politically unachievable.
But there’s a deeper reason for this rush to move Confederate symbols from the public square to the museum. The trigger was not just the massacre, but even more tellingly, the breathtaking display of nobility and spiritual generosity by the victims’ relatives. Within 48 hours of the murder of their loved ones, they spoke of redemption and reconciliation and even forgiveness of the killer himself. It was an astonishingly moving expression of Christian charity.
Such grace demands a response. In a fascinating dynamic, it created a feeling of moral obligation to reciprocate in some way. The flag was not material to the crime itself, but its connection to the underlying race history behind the crime suggested its removal from the statehouse grounds — whatever the endlessly debated merits of the case — could serve as a reciprocal gesture of reconciliation.
The result was a microcosm of — and a historical lesson in — the moral force of the original civil rights movement, whose genius was to understand the effect that combating evil with good, violence with grace would have on a fundamentally decent American nation.
America was indeed moved. The result was the civil rights acts. The issue today is no longer legal equality. It is more a matter of sorting through historical memory.
The Confederate flags would ultimately have come down. That is a good thing. They are now coming down in a rush. The haste may turn out to be problematic.
We will probably overshoot, as we are wont to do. Perhaps we can learn from Arlington National Cemetery, founded by the victorious Union to bury its dead. There, Section 16 contains the remains of hundreds of Confederate soldiers grouped around a modest, moving monument to their devotion to “duty as they understood it” — a gesture by the Union of soldierly respect, without any concession regarding the taintedness of their cause.
Or shall we uproot them as well?