More on the flag
Sunday’s paper held many well-reasoned letters concerning the “Confederate battle flag.” If everyone would put emotion aside and look at the big picture, there would be a reasonable compromise found, one that would satisfy everybody. Everybody, that is, except those who are bound and determined to be offended by something, anything, everything, nothing, just as long as they can have “hurt feelings.” Personally, I like Rufus Ward’s suggestion.
This whole thing has gotten way out of hand. Someone in Charlotte, N.C., decided she had waited long enough for the state, the government, to “do something” about a piece of cloth that “offended her so much for so long,” so she defaced a monument, a crime. When we decide the law doesn’t matter anymore, we have anarchy. If you think any law is wrong or bad, work to change it through the proper channels. Violate even a “bad law” (in your opinion) and you are just a common criminal.
I have just one thought I’d like to toss out to everyone who is “offended” by this flag. Please consider this carefully, if you can. I would be just as happy if slavery had never appeared on the shores of the New World, but it did. European slave traders bought captives from African tribes and transported them to other countries, including Colonial America.
There men from one area of Africa married women from other areas of Africa, producing children that would never have been born. So, if you claim slaves in your ancestry, remember that if slavery hadn’t existed here, neither would you. Be thankful that slavery did exist, and that it ended. Don’t go ballistic because the flag of the South was taken and misused by racist, hate groups to lend credence to their activities.
Get over your ore-conceived notions about what happened or didn’t happen under slavery. Use a little common sense, if you can, and I believe that most, even die-hard flag-haters, will stop hating a symbol and start hating those who deserve to be hated.
Cameron Triplett
Brooksville
The Dispatch Editorial Board is made up of publisher Peter Imes, columnist Slim Smith, managing editor Zack Plair and senior newsroom staff.
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