June 29^th

Pat Buchanan’s column today focuses on the Confederate battle flag and indeed all things symbolizing the Confederacy. Buchanan has never come to terms with the civil rights movement. He famously said that he, “…longed for the days when they had their places and we had ours.” He was speaking, of course, about Washington D.C. watering holes where he might now have to see other than white people.

Now he tries to equate the forgiveness by the relatives of those murdered in Charleston with the riots in other localities where police have murdered black men. The police killed people they had sworn to protect; the Charleston murderer killed people he claimed were taking over the country. Buchanan can’t see the difference between the two; his political and social blinders work just fine to disguise it.

Buchanan seems unhappy that many people see the Confederate flag as a symbol of hate and want it removed. The flag was prominently displayed by the murderer of the Charleston church goers as part of his racist “manifesto.” This Confederate battle flag, now widely used as a symbol of resistance to integration, was not much seen until the Dixiecrats pulled it out of moth balls and paraded it around at the Democratic convention in 1948. They were making a statement against Harry Truman’s desegregating of the armed forces. From then on it became a symbol of resistance to integration, peaking with the SCOTUS decision in Brown vs Board of Education.

Buchanan has now applied his favorite word to this flag battle, “cultural Marxism.” This is aptly defined as a “snarl word” for use when a much more vicious term than political correctness is required. Buchanan gets credit for its development. (It really has nothing to do with Karl Marx as any political scholar can tell you.)

Buchanan cites various southern politicians calling for removal of monuments to heroes of the Confederacy. Everyone from Senator Mitch McConnell –take down the Statue of Jefferson Davis from the Kentucky Capital—to Governor Terry McAuliffe, who, because he wants the battle flag removed from license plates is accused by Buchanan of soon wanting statues of Robert E. Lee removed from Richmond! Say what? From wanting Confederate battle flags removed from car license plates to removing Statues of Robert E. Lee? Buchanan just cannot understand that the Confederate battle flag was, and is, a symbol of resistance to equal rights for blacks and it was used as a symbol by a murderous lunatic to kill nine black worshipers in a church. I don’t recall anyone yelling, “In the name of Robert E. Lee I don’t want my kids going to school with black children!”

Buchanan claims that the “flag is not so much a symbol of hatred as an object of hatred;” it is both of course. Sally Jenkins in her Washington Post Column called the Confederacy treasonous, and it was. Buchanan says that this visceral hatred is manifest in “…equating Washington, Jefferson, John Calhoun, Andrew Jackson and Lee with Hitler’s Third Reich.” But none of these people were revolting against their country in defense of slavery except for Lee and Lee did violate the oath he took when he entered West Point. The people supporting 1960s segregation were not the founding fathers; they were Orval Faubus, Strom Thurmond, George Wallace and Senator Harry F. Byrd of Virginia. This was the group that used the Confederate flag to fight against civil rights. Buchanan doesn’t mention any of  them.