I guess you could make that argument in that it originally represented thirteen States turning against America and waging war against what they intended to be their former country. And if the Confederacy had been successful in that war, that interpretation might carry more weight, although I tend to think that there'd have been a reunification of some sort, and sooner rather than later.
But the Confederacy lost, America didn't split, and the Confederate battle flag has become a cultural symbol meaning a number of things, but most important among them a piece of American history reminding us of the lessons the Civil War era teaches. Slavery happened; the Confederacy happened; the Civil War happened; ditto Reconstruction and Jim Crow and the KKK and "American apartheid". It's part of our history as a nation and people, and one we should never forget, the better not to repeat it.
And some people want to ban and erase that history AND its lessons because their special snowflake sensibilities make a mockery of the privations their ancestors endured:
An African-American federal judge deciding whether to ban Mississippi's State flag said its Confederate emblem is "anti-American" because it represents those who fought to leave the United States.
But U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves didn't say in Jackson on Tuesday whether he will fully consider a lawsuit that seeks to eliminate the flag as a State symbol, the Associated Press reported.
He didn't really have to, now did he?
Reeves heard more than three hours of arguments about motions in the lawsuit that Carlos Moore, an African-American attorney from Grenada, Mississippi, filed against the State. Moore is asking Reeves to declare the flag an unconstitutional relic of slavery.
<sigh> "Unconstitutional" how, exactly? Slavery is unconstitutional because it was banned by the Thirteenth Amendment. If you believe, as Moore obviously does, that the Confederate battle flag symbolizes slavery....so what? The First Amendment still protects it as free expression. And Mississippi, as a State with Original Authority, can have any damn flag that it wants and the federal government has no enumerated authority to dictate to them otherwise. If Moore doesn't like Mississippi's flag, let him move to my State, whose flag....
....has a white, European slaveholder smack in the middle of it that he'd want to ban even more.
How about Kansas?
No, that's got a white guy in the seal, too.
Iowa?
Yeah, that should work. No white guys, no stars & bars, and the bird is a hawk, not an eagle. Heck, if you change the blue sidebar to green, it'd kind of look like the Mexican flag....
....so that should make Moore happy, right? Other than being outnumbered by white devils by a 27-1 margin. Oh, well, there goes the neighborhood.
Here's his "unconstitutional angle," by the way:
Moore argued that under the U.S. Supreme Court decision last summer that effectively [impos]ed s[odo]marriage nationwide, a majority of justices found the Constitution protects a fundamental right of dignity. Moore argued the State flag violates his dignity and that of other African-Americans.
"I'm nobody's second-class citizen, and I don't appreciate being treated as such," Moore said.
Nobody said you were a "second-class citizen," Carlos. Nor does a damned flag. And subjective "dignity" is not a criterion of determining constitutionality.
The bottom line is, Carlos Moore doesn't like this flag....
....and in a sane world he would refuse to salute it and more the hell on.
But that's not the world in which we live, so I'm fully expectant that Judge Reeves will order the State of Mississippi to replace its flag with this one....
....immediately.
Thank God the Magnolia State is in the Fifth Circuit, since we can't count on the SCOTUS anymore.
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