‘It’s time to quit rallying around a flag that divides.’
Drive-By-Truckers bandleader Patterson Hood penned this in The New York Times just as the Confederate battle flag was set to come down over the South Carolina state capitol on Friday:
“If we want to truly honor our Southern forefathers, we should do it by moving on from the symbols and prejudices of their time and building on the diversity, the art and the literary traditions we’ve inherited from them. It’s time to study and learn about who we are and where we came from while finding a way forward without the baggage of our ancestors’ fears and superstitions.”
Former Virginia Tech professor William Davis agrees that the flag was the wrong symbol to tout the full range of Southern history. But by all means, he writes in The Wall Street Journal, don’t banish Confederate memorials altogether. Their historical legacies need to be fully understood for future generations:
“In the end, Americans cannot afford to forget the Confederacy. It is a good thing that the Confederacy failed—not least because a permanently divided America would have had neither the strength nor the worldliness to confront the next century’s totalitarian menaces. But the Confederate experience also teaches lessons about Americans themselves—about how they have reacted in crisis, about matters beyond just bravery and sacrifice that constitute the bedrock of our national being.”
. . . . . . . .
“American democracy is ever-changing, a constantly evolving work in progress. We shall be fortunate if it remains ever thus, but we need to remember our entire past in all its dimensions to inform the process and keep it alive. Ossification is the first step on the road to extinction for great ideas.”