There is this dirty little secret in America that many are unaware of because we are taught the Civil War was a black and white war against slavery. It clearly was not. It was a war about states rights, and when you start looking at the real history of the Civil War, you realize Abraham Lincoln was not a defender of freedom an many ways, including slavery (read his Inaugural Address and his letter to Horace Greeley.) It was a war against unfair taxation as northern states attempted to tax southern states at a higher rate in an effort to continue slavery using a redistribution of wealth scheme.
The Confederate Flag is not a symbol of slavery. It never was. No slave ship ever sailed to the southern states with the Confederate flag hoisted above its sails. Likewise, the Confederate Constitution banned the slave trade. Still, in this effort to attach the 10th Amendment to slavery, the Confederate Flag is under attack again, and South Carolina governor Nikki Haley has come to its defense.
South Carolina Republican Gov. Nikki Haley said she has no intention of removing the Confederate flag that flies beside the Statehouse, despite the head of the NAACP calling it a “contradiction” for Haley, an ethnic minority, to allow the flag to fly.
The Confederate flag has flown beside the South Carolina Statehouse since 2000. Gov. Nikki Haley rejected NAACP President Benjamin Jealous' call Monday to remove it.
NAACP President Benjamin Jealous called on Haley to remove the flag during an NAACP conference in Los Angeles on Monday, comparing African American slavery and segregation to the oppression Haley’s ancestors in India faced under British colonialism.
“Perhaps one of the most perplexing examples of the contradictions in this moment in history is that Nikki Haley, South Carolina’s first governor of color, continues to fly the Confederate flag in front of her state’s Capitol,” Jealous said. “Given the similarities between our struggles to end slavery and segregation, and her ancestors’ struggle to end British colonialism and oppression in India, my question to Governor Haley is one that Dr. King often asked himself: What would Gandhi do?”
Haley’s spokesman, Rob Godfrey, said the governor has no intention of renewing the flag debate, which has come under fire before from the NAACP and others who say the flag represents slavery and white supremacy.
“More than a decade ago, under the leadership of a Democratic governor, South Carolinians — Republican and Democrat, black and white — came to a compromise position on the Confederate flag,” Godfrey said. “Many people were uncomfortable with that compromise, but it addressed a sensitive subject in a way that South Carolina as a whole could accept. We don’t expect people from outside the state to understand that dynamic, but revisiting that issue is not part of the governor’s agenda.
According to South Carolina newspaper the State, the flag has flown on the north end of the Statehouse near a monument to Confederate soldiers since 2000. It was placed there as part of a legislative compromise to remove it from the Statehouse dome.
Bravo Gov.Haley
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