Incident at an Antique Store

[LincolnToddFan]

[My ancestors fought for that flag and for the constitutionality it represented - it did NOT then or now represent the KKK or any other subversive organization - that mind-set, if you will, was perpetuated upon the flag by subversives who have therefore ruined it's meaning]// quote

I have been thinking hard about this statement by BettyO because it's a point of view I never considered, and I think it's very important. When the leaders of the Confederacy adopted the Stars and Bars it had not yet been co-opted by the Ku Klux Klan to mean something much darker, much more twisted than just States rights and Constitutional liberty(their view of it at least). It had not yet been associated with visions of cross burnings, lynching and violence.

But that is exactly what did happen. And while I genuinely sympathize with people like Betty and Laurie who see the flag as the banner under which their ancestors went into war to fight for the land they lived on against the Northern invader, I also know that the Stars and Bars was one of the last things that victims of the KKK saw before they were lynched by them. What should be an emblem of unsullied regional pride-kind of the way I feel about my beloved black, white, red and gray OSU football jersey-has become something much more sinister for many people.

And it is through no fault of Southerners who do not identify with Klan philosophy or beliefs.