About your editorial in favor of Suppressing Southern History – Commentary by Philip Gallanders

Webmaster's Note: This commentary is in response to an editorial published in the Augusta Chronicle 9/24/04. It is posted below and viewable at this URL: http://www.augustachronicle.com/stories/092404/edi_2100727.shtml.

I read your editorial in which you defend Mayor Young's surrender to PC and external pressures brought to bear by some out-of-state conventioneers. You claim, perhaps correctly, that the craven order by Mayor Young to lower the flag and attempt to blot out history was taken in agreement with others of the Augusta community.

That may well be, but those others you refer to, are only those who are trying to count up how much money they will be able to garner from the visiting conventioneers from South Carolina. They have motives that are self-interestedly venal at the first and the last. They do not speak for the community, only for their bottom lines.

The members of the So. Carolina NAA(L)CP have already painted themselves into a corner where they are unable to stay at home while having their convention. Now, they bring their hate on the road into your state and your community. Sadly, your so-called leadership caves in to their demands and so now, they bring their divisive, revisionist, racist demands into your community. Naturally, not wanting to be taken for racists, your PC leaders cave in to their demands. It is clear that the mandarins who control Augusta politics and business communities have round heels, are easily brow-beaten and have no spine

How shameful, how venal, how progressively PC, how cowardly, how contemptible. Let us hope that the dollars these demanding conventioneers bring into your community, outweigh the anger and the political flak that will occur as a result.

With regards to the point you raised about how it is too late to defend the flag, I would raise 2 counters to your argument.

1) The KKK is in reality a vanishingly small group today, with perhaps 40% of their membership actually FBI moles. The KKK reached their high point of influence in the 1920s when they had delegations from 40+ states present at the democratic conventions of 1924 & 1928. Pictures of their huge marches during that time, showed that ONLY the US flag was carried, not the CSA flag. This is verifiable, historic fact.

During their long decline into complete un-importance, some of these idiots have waved the CSA flag as well as the USA flag. However, I put it to you that the actions of tens of hating people, cannot serve as a counter weight to the acts of tens of thousands of people who love their heritage and respect their history. To conflate the two as co-equal is completely wrong, not to mention, completely intellectually dishonest. You have constructed a straw man to argue against, but the straw man does not exist in reality.

2) The active assault on the flags of the CSA and all things that respect and honor Southern Heritage, began in the early 1990's. This attack actually conforms to the plan set forth by the NAA(L)CP who were looking around for a reason to stay in existence. They needed a cause to point to, that would give to them seemingly, a raison d'etre. Therefore, until the attacks began, the Southern Heritage movement had no reason to defend their icons. That attack has been opened and so, too, now the defense is in the trenches.

The first NAA(L)CP assault on the flags of the CSA, was in Mississippi. This attack failed of its purpose, when the vox populi decided that they really DID want to keep their history. This vox populi by the way, included a large minority of the overall black vote, who decided that what they thought about their state, their history and heritage was worth much more than the puffed up, divisive and racist attacks by carpet baggers who came into Mississippi claiming to speak for all the black folks there. The result of that plebiscite shoved the lies back into the teeth of the NAA(L)CP and their fellow travelers.

Learning from their mistake, the NAA(L)CP decided that their future actions would be to push their ideas WITHOUT allowing the use of open, clear and free plebiscites. Not for these activists is the idea that the preference of the people should be sought.

Thus, they changed the focus of their attacks to zero in on the round-heel politicians who are always pandering for votes. They also decided to make use of their bully pulpit to call for economic boycotts of this company, or that state. Now they engage in pure power politics without any care or concern for the public will in the matters. Sadly, their targets, the political minions in their sights, generally cave in.

Now, it is the turn of those same round-heeled political minions, to suffer the flaggings and opprobrium of their offended fellow citizens. We who honor Southern heritage and history and ALL the icons that best represent that heritage and history, will not go quietly into the dark.

We will not allow out of town carpetbaggers and local scalawags, to suppress our history, our culture and our pride, without giving them such a problem as they will know that they have been in a fight.

Feel free to publish these thoughts in your paper.

Philip Gallanders lives in Lomita, California.

Related Links
Augusta Mayor flagged after Riverwalk inspection - Billy Bearden
Augusta Monument Desecration - Frank Gillispie

Augusta Taliban Clears Riverwalk - Parody

Augusta Chronicle Editorial Staff 9/24/04 Sadly, the divisive Confederate flag issue is raising its ugly head again in our community. A lot of Southern heritage lovers are upset with Mayor Bob Young's order to take the flag down from the Riverwalk Augusta flag display. As a number of our letters to the editor indicate, the heritage people feel betrayed and hurt at the flag's removal. This newspaper bows to no one in regard to respecting the virtues and verities of the Old South, but obviously there are negatives there too. And it's the negatives to which the mayor was responding when he ordered the flag's take-down. He didn't remove it just because local NAACP leader Charles Smith asked him to, though the request did prompt Young to consult with others before making his decision. City commissioners of both races, and leaders in the business and hospitality communities, all agreed it should go. It was a local decision made by local leaders, not just the mayor. And they're right, especially with South Carolina's NAACP holding its annual convention in Augusta next month precisely because the civil rights organization is boycotting its own state for prominently displaying the Confederate flag on the Capitol grounds in Columbia. Whether one agrees with the South Carolina boycott is not the point. The point is, Augustans should not welcome conventioneers to our community and then display symbols that offend them. The Confederate flag flying prominently on the Riverwalk would surely offend South Carolina's NAACP. So why insult them? Whether the heritage people like it or not, more than just the NAACP takes offense at the Confederate flag. It offends other citizens too, and not all of them are black. Some are white. Flaggers, as the flag's defenders are known, didn't defend their flag until African-Americans began to criticize it. By then it was too late; they should have sprung to the flag's defense when racist groups like the KKK began appropriating it for their own propaganda use. Why keep flying a symbol that large numbers of Americans dislike? Symbols should unite people, not divide them. Besides, the Confederate flag is only being removed from a Riverwalk display, not from Dixie history. Confederate flags that were actually a part of the War Between the States will continue to fly at the Augusta Museum of History. No one's suggesting they be taken down. The richness of Confederate history does not depend on a piece of cloth waving in the wind. Nor should anyone be as offended at the absence of such a controversial symbol as opponents are at its presence. --From the Friday, September 24, 2004 printed edition of the Augusta Chronicle www.augustachronicle.com/stories/092404/edi_2100727.shtml