The real fabric of the stars and bars

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Sept 18, 1995 | by Elizabeth Larson

The nave of the All Saints Chapel at the University of the South was lined with the flags of the Southern states as long as alumni can remember. Among those bedecking the somber walls were some bearing the battle flag of the Confederate States of America. So, when the administration ordered the flags lowered last year, the stage was set for a battle between Southern tradition and modernist redefinition. As if in a bitter reenactment of the Civil War, the struggle would be waged about the meaning and independence of a way of life in the face of outsiders attempting to change it.

The reason given for bringing down the bright banners was to "improve acoustics." But few students were buying that. Among the skeptics was the staff of the Sewanee Legacy, an independent campus publication. The battle over the meaning of the Stars and Bars would fall to a group of students and the First Amendment. They would go on to defend the 130-year-old symbols against political ideologues and their flash-in-the-pan postmodernism. The administration's decision was seen as just another step in a movement to strip the Confederate flag of its meaning as a sign of Southern pride and redefine it as a symbol of Southern racism.

The political attempt to recast traditional Southern symbols concerned Legacy staffers even before the controversy on campus. When Illinois Democrat Carol Moseley-Braun convinced her Senate colleagues to reject the patent-renewal request for the Daughters of the American Revolution's insignia (a wreath circling the Stars and Bars), for example, one black Legacy writer, Nicole Corlew, pounced on the Northerner: "She is forcing African-Americans into a type of 'ideological slavery' by insisting they view the flag as a symbol of prejudice. She fails to understand the other context of the flag as a symbol of Southern culture.... When a [Southerner] sees the Confederate flag, he can taste barbecue with white beans. He can smell magnolia in the air. He can see old men standing on Main Street reading their newspaers and selling their homegrown vegetables."

Communities and schools around the country are involved in heated controversies like this over the meaning and use of historic symbols. The Confederate flag, like the Western Canon, has been the victim of ideological redefinition. The modus operandi is consistent in every case: The purveyors of political correctness invoke imprecations about oppression, intolerance or imperialism, ignoring historical fact in their rush to read the litany of evils. After the bloody revisions, they call for the exorcism of the looming specters of Western thought.

Some words and symbols in this view are so offensive to certain members of society that their utterance or visibility is beyond the protection of the First Amendment. The Confederate flag thus is defined as the banner of the slaveholder and Jim Crow. In contrast, Southerners, like the staff of Legacy, see the Stars and Bars as a reminder of a gentler, nobler way of life. They forget nothing of the past -- right or wrong -- and thus the fragrance of magnolias wafts in the breeze. The Confederate flag is a symbol to many of a time when Robert E. Lee's way of a gentleman was a guiding principle and sexual harassment was an alien concept.

Unfortunately, under the current manipulation of language in the name of "sensitivity" and "redressing past wrongs," symbols become the target and rational debate falls to the wayside. We see here the heavy influence of the hate-speech movement, moved beyond forbidding words to forbidding tradition. Yet, in both cases, the thing being banned is merely a representation of a perceived evil. Even if every Southerner viewed the Confederate flag as a symbol of entrenched racism, would banning the flag do away with bigotry? Of course, such clear thinking is anathema to those assaulting the Confederate flag. The self-styled multiculturalists, ever obeisant to the goddess of diversity, understand nothing of the Southern way of life -- hence their resort to the totalitarian affront of administrative fiat.

Corlew refers to polls that indicate at least a third of Southern blacks agree that the Confederate flag is a symbol worthy of pride. But they are ignored. What they share as true Southerners is a heritage beyond convenient ideology. But political expedience clearly is at work when Moseley-Braun stands on Capitol Hill proclaiming, "For those of us who are African-American, honoring our ancestors meant that we would not renew the design patent for the Confederate flag."

Such profound ignorance could only spread. The Confederate-flag controversy also is heating up in South Carolina, which has seen at least two controversies involving students coming to class in T-shirts printed with the Confederate flag during the last two years. Most recently, eight students in Blackville Middle School were suspended. The youths' shirts were deemed by school officials to be "disruptive." At stake, however, clearly is the principle of liberty: the freedom of Americans to define the symbols they wear, that fly overhead or that represent their organizations.