TURNING UNITY INTO DIVISION AFTER CHARLESTON (THE NEW CIVIL WAR)

 When the vicious criminal Dylann Roof was arrested on June 18, 2015 for murdering 9 innocent persons in Charleston, SC, he told police that his intention was to start a race war.

His atrocious act had just the opposite effect.  It brought Americans together in sympathy and support for the families of the murdered victims.  I was inspired to see Democrats and Republicans, blacks and whites,  rally in universal support of these suffering families.  Of the criminal I thought, you may have destroyed innocent families - but your despicable act shows that Americans are too caring, too rational and too compassionate to follow your deranged dream. You have united people as nothing else could have done.

Then, the politicians stepped in to destroy the unity and outpouring of support that followed the tragedy.  They created needless division, almost on purpose, it seemed.  It seems that they chose to re-fight the Civil War, or to open the first shots of the New Civil War, which is an ideological war or cultural war.

In the irrational rush to blame someone other than the criminal, politicians quickly turned victory into defeat. Removing the Confederate flag from the South Carolina capitol would have been, to most, a rational act of sensitivity.  But among the absurd demands that followed, no rationalization can be made:

• ban video games about the Civil War
• censor old TV shows like the Dukes of Hazzard (just a redneck show)
• ban Gone with the Wind and hundreds of similar movies
• remove flags from museums (it actually happened in Alabama)
• pull down markers at historic places
• Eradicate the memory of all historically significant soldiers (sometimes called "heroes") who fought for the South 150 years ago.
• Make it a crime to display a Confederate flag on an old soldier's grave*
• Make sure retailers don't sell any "Confederate merchandise," including birthday cakes with a Confederate flag on them
• Equovacate anything Southern with racism and hatred.

In the ensuing Confederaphobia madness, a national retailer was documented selling a cake with an Al-Queda flag after refusing to make one with a Confederate flag on it.  It was an ignorant mistake; however, it demonstrates the infractory extreme to which modern man will go, trying to always be politically correct, to avoid any possible offense to anyone.

It also challenges the common sense of our irrational national mood:  Do we fear the confederate flag more than we fear global terrorism, the coming Iranian nuclear bomb, the security of our technological infrastructure or the massive war crimes of Isis?  Apparently, for the moment at least, we do.  

 "The first misguided shots of the Civil War were fired at Charleston in 1861.  The first shots of the New Civil War were fired at Charleston in 2015. Discord was quickly called upon to replace unity... The only possible purpose...the redistribution of political power.

 The knee jerk reaction of politicians and the Black Congressional Caucus, fueled by a willing media, tore down all the unity and goodwill that followed the tragedy in Charleston.  They tore it down by declaring Civil War against the South, all of its culture (not just the flag) and firing the first misguided shots in the New Civil War.  What's to be gained?

The only thing to be gained is a redistribution of political power.  And toward that end, no amount of strife, grief or regression of civil liberty is too high a price to pay.

  "Do we fear the confederate flag more than we fear global terrorism, the coming Iranian nuclear bomb, the security of our technological infrastructure, unsustainable federal debt or the massive war crimes of Isis?  Apparently, for the moment at least, we do."

Is America's real enemy today the Confederate flag or the old southern Confederacy?  Or do we have more important enemies to worry about?

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 *We have to wonder how First Amendment protection would be adjudicated in a Supreme Court case in the matter concerning the display of Confederate flags on graves, even on federal property, such as cemeteries inside federal reservations.  It might be argued that one does not relinquish his First Amendment right to free expression simply because he steps onto federal property or has a relative buried within a federal cemetery.  As the Supreme Court observed in 2011, "if there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable."