Plenty of people have shared their opinions on the rebel flag this week so I figured I'd chime in. I've never been a big fan of the flag and have always viewed it as a symbol of hatred and treason. Thus, you won't be surprised to find out I am glad various states have been removing the flag from their capital grounds. Ideally it would be removed from the Mississippi state flag as well.

While white people, on average, don't view the flag as a symbol of racism - it is one - or else 75% of all southern black people wouldn't disagree with them. It is, also, to me a symbol of treason. Everyone who fought under that banner fought against the US. People like Robert E. Lee, especially the leaders, were traitors. Lee was a graduate of West Point - and he took his knowledge and skills and used them to kill American soldiers. If you don't think Lee was a traitor let me share with you the official definition of treason from Article III Section 3 of the US Constitution:

"Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort."

It is hard for me to imagine a good argument for keeping up a symbol for racism and traitorous behavior on a state capital ground. I also have a lot of trouble when I see state funds spent on memorials for the leaders of the confederate army. If any US Army General at any other point in history had betrayed his country and attacked it we would not have memorials for them paid for with tax dollars. It just wouldn't happen. I don't have a problem with misguided citizens spending their own money on memorials but I don't think our government should be doing anything to glorify people who fought to create a new country in order to preserve the institution of slavery.

I am told the flag is about Heritage but not Hate. Sadly, that is a confused romanticized ideal. The heritage of slavery is a heritage of hate. Our entire nation is guilty of the sins of slavery; we should be working to continue to fix the long shadow slavery cast on the nation instead of attempting to celebrate the flag. If you don't think the civil war was about slavery then you should read the various articles of secession the states filed. Here is South Carolinas; it's boring but worth the read you'll notice, however, that slavery is a pretty big topic through S. Carolina's reasoning for seceding.

However, there are some places where I think the recent rush to remove the flag doesn't make any sense. One such place is Gettysburg National Park. It is a park in Pennsylvania specifically set aside to educate people about the civil war; specifically the battle at Gettysburg. The confederate flag has historical context there and removing it from the gift store there makes no sense to me.

Likewise, the Apple App store removed all games that include the confederate flag - including civil war themed games (before re-instating some). That makes no sense and we risk censoring our own history by ignoring reality in order to make sure nobody is ever offended at the site of the flag. We need to be offended sometimes. We need to remember how badly we've screwed up in the past. We don't need to celebrate it but we certainly can't afford to forget it.

So go ahead and remove the flag from capitals, remove memorials glorifying traitors to our country, rename city streets and military bases. But don't remove the heritage of hate from our consciousnesses. The Civil War happened, Slavery happened, Jim Crow happened and we can't just sweep all of that under a rug and pretend it didn't.