Your editorial (Aug. 9) about the Confederate battle flag was disturbing and quite inconsistent.
You do acknowledge the battle flag as a tribute to the brave soldiers who fought for the Confederacy. Yet you seem to go out of your way to put forth the position that because the flag has been embraced by the Ku Klux Klan and other hate groups we should, somehow, forget its noble past and shamefully put it away like “dirty laundry.”
Might I remind you that the Klan, in its rallies, also carries the United States flag. I also would remind you that slavery existed in the United States for more than 70 years before there was a Confederate States of America, and that not all the slaves lived in the South. It was northern economic and shipping interests that were responsible for the vast majority of the slave trade.
By your reasoning, we should also take down the flag of the United States and fold it up like dirty laundry because slavery was alive and well in this nation under its banner. In all fairness, why not at least be consistent in passing around your selective guilt for the institution of slavery?
