Should We Surrender On The Flag Issue?

Should We Surrender On The Flag Issue?

By C.W. Roden

What I am about to tell you will come as a terrible shock to many of you whom in the last few years have followed my words, but it is with a heart heavy with sadness and regret that I, C.W. Roden ~ The Man Deniers Fear The Most ~ must accept that for the last couple of decades of my life have been wasted defending a terrible lie and engaging in some serious self-deception regarding a flag that I and many Southern-born Americans today honor very dearly. 

Yes, ladies and gentlemen of Dixie, I am afraid I have to turn in my official Flag Defender License and abandon what I have now come to realize is a hopeless and futile cause. 

This is not a decision I have come to lightly, but one made after many years of continued opposition on all sides by the NAACP, the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Anti-Defamation League, various other Left-leaning social groups, a number of Righteous Cause Apologist bloggers, Black Confederate Deniers, scalawags, and other lower individuals of all sorts over the course of two decades of active heritage defense in regards to symbols honored by Southerners including those of Confederate descent. 

You could say that the collective voices of all of these people have finally opened up my heart to the truth of their arguments regarding a certain flag that I now find I cannot bear to name due to the pain of regret I feel. 

For years I have been deaf to the arguments made, turned a blind eye to the pain and suffering caused by the sight of a banner that the worst racists in America flash often as a sign of their intolerance, their bigotry, and their malicious attitudes towards people who are not of their own kind. 

Yes I know some of you will call me a traitor for this -- if not a number of worse and uglier names -- but I have stood against those who condemned this banner for its ugliness and its racism for so long and endured so much from them too. 

Now though, I find that once I really listened to the arguments made by those who oppose this flag, looked into my heart and examined what I found there, I found my own arguments in its defense very much wanting. 

Indeed now find they offend even me, especially in the manner in which I have fought in vain to defend this flag. 

I have argued that those who engaged in the battle against this certain flag that many Southerners hold so dear were the same as those who misuse it as a symbol of racism, if not worse because they knew the "truth" as I saw it and ignored it. 

I have even argued that these same people conspired with these same racists at times to see the struggle to defend this certain flag's good name defeated. 

Before I offer a formal statement of apology, let me tell everyone who is reading this, no matter if they are for or against this certain flag honored by many Southerners today, the arguments made that finally convinced me to open my eyes and my heart to the truth....a truth many of you on this page refuse to hear. 

Let me be the one to lead you to that truth now, and I urge you not to turn your back on it before I finish. 

We have been told that those of us who honor this flag that I now see as representing all of the ugliness and intolerance, in our efforts to glorify this certain banner and the heritage it stands for, do not acknowledge the painful history of this symbol.

We do not acknowledge or recognize the pain it brings to the sight of so many who lived through some of that ugly history.
 

We disregard those feelings in favor of the more self-glorifying view of that flag's history.

We turn a blind eye to the fact that symbols mean things, that in our efforts to live in our own glorified view of history, we subject those who will never view this flag as anything more than a symbol of slavery and racial hatred to almost daily pain and agony of the soul. 

We ignore the fact that this once proud banner is forever stained with the scars of American racism and the defense of African slavery. 

We do not think about the fact that this flag may well have been the last sight that so many last saw as they were lynched by an angry mob of hateful racists for petty offenses. 

We forget that this flag is a symbol of treason to government authority originally. 

We pretend that this once sacred banner has been hijacked by racist groups who support white supremacist bigotry, display it at all of their rallies, and use it as a code to say: "You're not wanted here, go back where you came from" to Americans of color. 

May of us are well content to ignore all of those fact and continue to salute this flag of ignorance and prejudice for all of its good and positive aspects, while at the same time conveniently ignoring the negative aspects and those effected by them on a personal level. 

Well, that's not for me, ladies and gentlemen. 

Not anymore. 

I can no longer pretend that I do not hear the pain in the voices of so many fellow Southerners of color, and fellow descendants of Confederate soldiers who have awakened to the truth: this flag is everything our opposition has claimed for the last 20 - 30 years. 

In fact, here are several photos of that flag being used as described by our opponents. Be warned though, these images are deeply disturbing:

Okay, I honestly hope I did not give some of y'all heart attacks with that, but I do hope that for all of those reading this who oppose efforts to defend and preserve the honor of the Southern Cross of Dixie (the Battle Flag ANV and the Confederate Naval Jack) will recognize the outright ignorance and moral bankruptcy of their many claims regarding the noble banner of the South. 

Remember that all claims made about the Dixie Cross also apply historically and in modern terms to Old Glory itself, a flag many Southerners really do honor as much as the flag of the Southland. In fact, all of the arguments made would apply to the current US flag many times over compared to the Dixie Cross. 

Flags are not inherently evil -- and certainly not Old Glory or the Dixie Cross -- only those who carry them with the intent to intimidate and discriminate can make them so. It is only in the hands of those of us who honor these flags that they mean anything positive at all. It is up to us as Southerners and Americans to continue to defend their honor. 

This blogger pledges to do just that now until the day the Lord calls me home. No argument made by those who accept hatred -- either the hate practiced by the Alt-Right, or the Alt-Left -- will change that fact.