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. 

How NOT To Protest National Anthem Protesters With Flags

Last night someone sent me the following YouTube video titled: Police Abuse, Civil Rights Violation at Urbandale High School 10/14/16. This incident happened over the weekend. 

The video shows the aftermath of a lone Iowa man, one Mr. Scott Greene, using both the United States flag and the Dixie Cross flag (Confederate battle flag) to protest those high school players and fans who were themselves taken part in the odious kneeling protest of the US National Anthem made famous by NFL player Colin Kapernick. Mr. Greene was arrested by local police for non-compliance when he refused to leave. 

Now I only know that those were the details behind the video based on other news outlets. The video itself only shows the events that took place once Mr. Greene was escorted from the stadium.

Mr. Greene "protesting" National Anthem protesters -- and being a pain in the ass to everyone else.
(Photo courtesy of YouTube)

In his video Mr. Greene claims that his rights to protest were violated, that he had a right to be there and protest. That he was assaulted by the police because they took hold of him and escorted him from the stadium following his loud disturbing lone-wolf protest. 

Apparently he also felt that waving the US and Dixie Cross banners during the National Anthem was an appropriate form of protesting against what he sees as an act of disrespect by "African-American people" using his own words.  

Now allow me to explain, using good ole Southern Fried Common Sense, just why Mr. Greene is totally full of shit.

Let me begin by stating for the record that I do not support those sports players and fans who kneel in protest when the Star Spangled Banner is played before sporting events. 

Do I think those who protest have legitimate grievances? To some small degree yes, I do. I am no supporter of police brutality, but I have seen no significant evidence that police officers in the United States make a point of targeting non-white Americans, or kill them in police shooting in larger numbers than white Americans. Quite the contrary in fact based on the actual numbers and statistics.

I am also no supporter of the Black Lives Matter movement because I believe that a number of those involved are not there to promote seeking justice, but rather to promote anarchy and disunity under the guise of social justice. 

This blogger believes that every live matters and has equal worth. That every life deserve the same consideration regardless of race, class, or religious affiliation.

I also believe very strongly that the vast majority of police officers in America are good men and women who preform a wonderful and often thankless job of protecting and defending people from violent criminals. I support these outstanding men and women.  

Sure there are those very few who abuse that authority and commit terrible acts of injustice against the people they are sworn to protect for whatever reason, but such people do not represent the whole of any American police force in any significant way. 

Certainly not everyone would agree with that, and there certainly there are various reasons for such negative perceptions of the police in poor inner city neighborhoods. I also agree that those are things that need to be worked on with people of goodwill on both sides leading the way.  

All of that being said, I do not agree that dropping to one knee and doing a "reverse Tebow" is the way to go about drawing positive attention to that cause. 

Protesting the US National Anthem is a shameful act of disrespect to the men and women who serve and protect American lives, not just as police officers in uniform, but also as firefighters, first responders, and yes as US military veterans both active duty and otherwise.

I have read some pretty disgusting stories about football players, cheerleaders and students at various high schools and colleges actually dropping the knee and being disrespectful to US military veterans -- sometimes aged and disabled ones -- in disgusting acts of petulant entitlement. 

That athletes would use their positions to promote such disrespect, even in the name of an allegedly worthy cause, is even more outrageous. 

Certainly this is worth protesting, but not the way Mr. Greene did. 

What he did was wave two honorable American banners -- the flag of our nation and a living Southern symbol -- in a loud, obnoxious protest to attack people, specifically Black Americans. This in spite of the fact that not all of the National Anthem protesters to date have been non-whites, far from it in point of fact. 

The fact that he choose to use a Dixie Cross (battle flag) -- a Southern banner -- in Iowa, which is in fact a Northern State, as part of his protest is likewise suspicious. Meaning that his misuse of the Dixie Cross in his protest was likely designed to intimidate, or deliberately outrage black American high school students and family members present at the stadium for the game.

A small investigation on my part has also found that Mr. Greene is neither a member of a legitimate Confederate heritage organization, nor a transplanted Southerner. I suspected this would not be the case.

Mr. Greene is another example of a racial antagonist deliberately misusing the US and Southern banners as weapons to promote hatred -- all the while using the guise of outrage over the protesting of The Star Spangled Banner as justification for his actions.

Unlike the cases in Mississippi where students were arrested at Old Miss games for displaying the State Flag of Mississippi, which still bears the Dixie Cross symbol; the case in Iowa was not a matter of protesting a discriminatory policy designed to marginalize and discriminate against Southerners who honor that flag. It was an act of legitimate intimidation designed by a malcontent -- Mr Greene -- to deliberate target and attack a group of people who (rightly or wrongly) have the right to protest, even if one disagrees with the manner of said protest. 

In this case the police were right to arrest Mr. Greene for his failure to comply. He was using the flags to intimidate and to create unnecessary malice reflected badly on the community as a whole, and committed more deliberate disruption in ways far worse than the protesters of the National Anthem ever could achieve. 

I would also like to take the time to offer my apologies for those people who were subject to this outrageous act. If any of them are reading this, I pray they accept the word of this blogger that the actions of Mr. Greene and people like him do not reflect on millions of Southerners and Americans of Confederate descent of all races and creeds who honor the Dixie Cross banner in positive context as a living Southern symbol. I also pray they do not come away with a bad view of Old Glory because of the act of one malcontent.

Now I am not against the use of the Dixie Cross as a symbol of protest, though I do not agree that the first prinicple use of that flag should be for that purpose. As a symbol of Southern identity and Confederate heritage, its first use is as a memorial symbol for the Confederate dead. Its secondary use is as a symbol of Southern pride and the solidarity of Confederate descendants. Protesting acts of Confederaphobic hatred is the distant third.

To use either the US flag or the Dixie Cross as a symbol of deliberate intimidation -- in this case against non-white people -- is an act of hatred and evil. It is an abomination and disrespect to every modern-day Southerner, no matter their skin color. Particularly outrageous to those of us who have Confederate ancestry and condemn such actions.

And it is for the latter reason that the Yankee misappropriator of the Dixie Cross, Mr. Greene, earns the Dipshit of the Month Award.

If one wants to really protest athletes who want to disrespect our national anthem and, by extension, men and women in uniform; then I would suggest just walking out of the games. Not paying to see them. Not supporting them. Not supporting schools and organizations that permit such actions. 

Certainly those actions are far more effective and speak far louder in expressing disappointment and disgust; far most so than waving flags, or even taking a knee and looking like a moron in the process.