Good riddance to the Stars & Bars

A young boy stood in his back yard, a shaved stick with a homemade flag made out of an old towel featuring a strange eagle design drawn in sharpie was gripped firmly in his left hand, and a cheap plastic sword in his right.

An imaginary line of soldiers stood by on each side, looking over to the brave boy in the center waiting to shout his command.

A wild yell, something the child commander hopes is akin to the Rebel Yell, rings out and the doomed attack streams forward against the imaginary Billy Yanks fortified on the hill above.

Silence is all that’s left after a few moments of the boy faking his own death, and what was left of his brave comrades return to their ghostly realm.

The young boy picks up his homemade flag, his plastic sword and dusts off his Confederate cap, complete with a cheap replica of the stars and bars pasted on top. He returns to the original line, ready to charge up the hill against the shadows at the summit.

That boy was me, many years ago in the backyard in our house in Ringgold near the Chickamauga battlefield.

It’s a mainly pleasant memory from a childhood filled with past scenes of Civil War heritage and history, of thoughts of fighting off Billy Yank from invading the precious soil of Georgia.

Much in my life has changed since those summer days of 1993, when I played the role of Johnny Reb so well. I have learned much more about the history of the war than I knew, as well as the legacy it left in its wake over the past century and a half.

I understand now that the war wasn’t simply over slavery, or state’s rights, but that it was much more complicated than that at every turn. I also see more clearly now the legacy the war left in its wake, even a century and a half later as the stars and bars fly at the state capitol in Columbia, S.C.

A hundred and fifty years after the surrender, the battle flag has come to represent much more than the banner carried into battle by rebels fighting for a lost cause. The battle flag is now a symbol that reminds every person of hate, of night riders and lynchings and awful scenes of violence.

This bad taste in my mouth lingers now that I understand fully my actions as a boy, fighting my own lost cause, on the side that surrendered, by myself as a backyard general of ghosts.

I might have just been playing, but it was part of a cycle that we as a region have perpetuated from the time that Gen. Robert E. Lee signed the terms at Appomattox Courthouse with his Union counterpart and future president, Gen. Ulysses S. Grant.

These battles were fought in courthouses and on city buses, in streets and on backcountry lanes. Thousands of deaths over the generations caused by narrow mindedness and the stubborn clinging to what was always to have been a collosal mistake, have gained no one anything other than heartache and troubles.

I could argue until I’m blue in the face over why this once proud symbol of men who shed blood should be retired forever. Its ties to racist organizations and the fact that neo-nazis in Europe use the stars and bars as a replacement symbol for the swastika is enough to convince me of its need to be abolished.

I think even Gen. Lee would agree with me on this point: the Confederate flag is the banner of a dead nation, one with the short course of a meteor falling from the heavens. Why it is displayed on public property - much less a state capitol that is part of the United States -- baffled me.

The only things we should be flying above the state house, or in national cemeteries, or anywhere in this nation is the star-spangled banner, and the flag of the state itself.

The South of old, the one in which a Confederate nation reigned briefly and tried its hand at continuing a plantation lifeway even after losing a costly war, is no longer. The symbols once held dear in the hearts of men who fought under the fluttering banner on fields with names not long forgotten such as Shiloh, Chickamauga and Kennesaw Mountain are not and will never be forgotten.

What would General Lee make of this madness over a flag, a symbol of hate?

I don’t think he would have approved of the stars and bars flying over the state capitol, or of all the other places people put it today.

A man of dignity, of honor and one who served proudly in the U.S. Army and swore off a military education after leading the southern armies, he would look on the squabbling in the news and the parades of cars and trucks with the Confederate flag waving in the wind as a mockery of the sacrifices his men made for a nation that didn’t survive.

Being proud of where you are from is not a crime, nay it is a good thing. But claiming this coopted symbol of hate and flaunting it in everyone’s face only makes the whole of the south look reactionary and unable to move forward with the rest of the nation into this new century as full partners.

I know not everyone will agree with my stance. I know in fact it will likely upset some people.

I ask only for you to think about this: Does the piece of cloth, the bumper sticker, or the bandana wrapped around your head matter at all if deep down in your heart you love this land we all call home?

I love the South, and hope to live out my days here in this land. I believe that we all are good Americans, patriotic people who only want the best for our country.

This flag is no longer good for our region, our country or this world as a whole. It’s time to give up on this final lost cause.