Tomorrow those folks who want to see the Confederate flag displayed in places regardless of the opinions of local communities or other authorities will be marching in Lexington, Virginia, to protest the decision of that city’s council last September not to have the Confederate flag (in its various forms) fly from city flagpoles attached to streetlights. These folks are known as flaggers.
The flaggers will bring their own provisions so that they won’t contribute to Lexington’s economy. No word on whether they will bring portapotties.
The SCV will have their own protest, but it appears it will be the next day.
Flagging’s real popular among southern nationalists. Note the encouragement from Dr. Michael Hill of the League of the South in the comments. But sometimes the turnout’s not very impressive.
I simply note that many supporters of Confederate heritage were very unhappy that outsiders had anything to do with the lowering of the Confederate Battle Flag from the South Carolina State House (and the boycotts by some groups of South Carolina because of the display of the flag) while they (as outsiders) conduct an economic boycott of the good people of Lexington as they — in this case the “outsiders” — try to tell the people of Lexington what to do.
This inconsistency (some would call it hypocrisy) reminds me of how proslavery forces claimed that states rights protected slavery and that the federal government had no right to interfere with it … except, of course, if the federal government protected slavery (especially through bureaucratic means fashioned especially for that purpose), while overrunning the states rights of northerners in the process (as well as the civil rights of free blacks who might be wrongfully judged to be slaves, given how the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 botched due process for the accused).
I guess these folks are honoring a certain trait in the southern past after all … even if they don’t recognize it. Enjoy Friday the 13th, folks.
Crossroads 