Banning Cultural Symbols Not the Answer to Racist Terrorism

The racist-terrorist who killed 9 exemplary members of the Black congregation in Charleston deserves the death penalty if an insanity plea doesn’t spare him. But banning the Confederate flag is a ludicrous response.

There are innumerable cultural flags, ensigns, religious symbols and artifacts that are offensive to both sane and mentally unstable people. Ban them all? What next, the U.S. Flag, Cross, Star of David, Rainbow Flag, Islamic flags? ISIS destroys historical artifacts offensive to those terrorists. Americans should not ban, destroy, censor or isolate symbols. Some stores now ban the Confederate flag, but still sell Nazi and Communist symbols.

Slavery was just one of many causes of the Civil War. Slaveholders and people supporting and opposing slavery fought on both the Confederate and Union sides. Most Southerners did not own slaves. Many fought because they perceived the Confederacy as sovereign and were resisting a Northern invasion. Lincoln’s first wartime goal was saving the Union. The Emancipation Proclamation was a belated geo-political response that freed slaves in Confederate but not Union territory.

If slave-holding historical entities should be banned, how about the Democrat Party, the party of the Confederacy, slavery, KKK, and segregation? The Democrat Jefferson-Jackson Day Dinner, Jefferson Memorial. and Washington Monument?

Flags don’t kill people. People do. More needs to be done to identify, isolate and treat potentially violent people. Not cultural censorship.