Every once in a while a Confederate heritage advocate makes a revealing admission. Such was the case yesterday. Here it is:
In short, the flags in the chapel (and, by implication, the flags flying along I-95 and outside the VMFA) really aren’t about honoring the past … but about placating and pleasing the present. It’s not about the people who are remembered and honored, but about the people doing the remembering and honoring.
No wonder some folks take these matters so personally. It’s not about heritage after all. It’s certainly not about history. It’s about themselves, their feelings, their beliefs. It is not about the dead, but the living. It’s not about the sacrifices made by people in the past, it’s about how people today want to present themselves, what they want to support, what they want to believe. In short, the Virginia Flaggers are all about the Virginia Flaggers.
Told you so. But we welcome the admission that we were right all along.
Crossroads 
It has all the hallmarks of a religion: gods and demigods, places of worship, evocative symbols, sacred texts, a creation myth, zealous fervor, an uncritical acceptance of scripture, and a conviction that they are being suppressed.
Yeah you guy, stop bothering those Flaggers with things like facts and history and let them get back to trying to scare, “skeer” Yankees and African Americans out of their neighborhoods and their schools with their flag. “If you don’t like it leave.” I believe is their motto.
Maybe. But someone seems to have put the skeer on certain prominent Flaggers who have fallen silent and are invisible.
Hmm — don’t believe entirely silent when one can post anonymously as “The Virginia. Flaggers” or “Jefferson Davis” or “Mildred Lewis Rutherford” — or draft commentary to go over the rotating signature of minions who otherwise have trouble with spelling or syntax. Or hide behind an administrator who lives in another state. Or do “Flashback” postings of oneself standing before a prominent cultural institute technically honor the June 2012 promise to not to make appearances–hence lending ongoing support to demonize the place. No, not entirely invisible or silent. She’s been — I mean, looks like Someone’s been quite active all along!
The fact remains that Susan Hathaway is unwilling to make the same sacrifices she celebrates in her Confederate heroes. There are limits to what she will do to “restore the honor.”
I agree with one thing in there – it is for the living that we do these things… like removing symbols of slavery and the fight to keep it forever.
I disagree with the characterization of those who disagree with them. Putting aside feelings for Lee as a slaveholder and one who waged war against the United States, I admire him for his postwar conduct; particularly his brilliant management at the university (see Flood’s book Lee: The Last Years). They don’t see that removing those negative symbols opens people up to accepting rehabilitation of Lee’s image (rather the opposite of dishonoring him).
I generally agree with what you say here. Lee himself was a pretty decent chap, and he deserves a place in history that is somewhere between the Lost Cause minor deity level and that assigned him by my Yankee ancestors who hated him as a traitor who kept the war going on far longer than they thought it should have.
The motive to dishonor Lee? Apparently deciding to honor someone less than before is tantamount to dishonor. (And that assumes that replacing replica flags with an original flag is less honor.)