States Rush to Banish the Confederate Flag

This is going to be viewed as a huge victory for the radical left.

At WaPo, "Once politically sacrosanct, Confederate flag moves toward an end":

After the killings in Charleston, the rush is on to banish the Confederate flag http://t.co/eCS5fBewX5

— Washington Post (@washingtonpost) June 24, 2015

After decades of bitter debate over whether the Confederate battle flag is a proud symbol of regional heritage or a shameful emblem of this nation’s most grievous sins, the argument may finally be moving toward an end.

South Carolina is leading the way for other states, as it considers removing the flag from its capitol grounds in the wake of a horrific racial hate crime.

The historical poignancy is heavy and resonant, given that the killings last week of nine African Americans took place in a church basement just a few miles from where the first shots of the Civil War were exchanged in 1861. Photos that have since surfaced of the accused killer, Dylann Roof, show him posing with the Confederate flag.

The banner was long considered politically sacrosanct in the South, at least among conservative whites. It now appears that a rush is on to banish it, along with other images that evoke the Confederacy and sow racial divisiveness.

“It’s a baby step of progress, but we had to step through the blood of nine dead people,” said former College of Charleston president Alex Sanders, a longtime critic of the flag.

On Tuesday, Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) said his state will quit issuing license plates with the insignia and replace those already on the road. Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam and North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory, both Republicans, also said they want to get rid of such license plates in their states.

And in Mississippi, the top Republican in the state House of Representatives, Philip Gunn, has called for the Confederate battle cross to be removed from the upper left corner of his state’s flag. As recently as 2001, Mississippi voters weighed in by more than 2 to 1 to retain the rebel badge as the dominant feature of their flag.

Meanwhile, businesses are moving quickly to remove the symbol from their inventory. In the space of less than 24 hours, retailing giants Wal-Mart, Sears, eBay and Amazon.com all announced that they would no longer sell Confederate-themed merchandise. Valley Forge Flag, a leading flagmaker, said it will cease to make the banner...

Other flagmakers will step up to meet the demand, but now more than ever brandishing this flag is going to foment a harsh backlash. Folks like my old friend Stogie at Saberpoint are going to be digging in for their final stand.

Continue reading, in any case.