I generally post articles on this site that, hopefully, will be of interest to visitors and readers from all over the world, since I’ve been blessed with friendship by so many folks from other nations. That being said, I’ll let you know up front that this post is primarily addressed to the other citizens of the United States who visit here. However, what I’m saying about the removal of basic rights and freedoms in our nation is something that can be applied to every free nation on this planet. So, hopefully, even those of you who are not my countrymen, will find something here to make you think and/or encourage you to stand up for the rights of everyone in your own nation.

I came across a website last week (Dukes of Hillsboro) that is dedicated to and focused on clarifying and defending the Confederate battle flag and its display in both private and public venues. The group behind the site is also devoted to protecting the honor of those brave men who fought and died on the side of the Confederate States of America during the American Civil War in the 1800’s. That protection includes seeing to it that their bodies are not dug up from their current graves and that their statues are not torn down or removed from public view.

These people are trying to explain that the Confederate battle flag does not currently represent racism or a division of people groups in this country. In fact, there are people of all races involved in this movement. But the flag, to them, represents their own heritage and history –and it honors their forefathers, who fought for what they believed America should represent. The Confederacy’s desire to protect the states’ rights against what they saw as a too-powerful and unfair centralized government was very similar to the desire of the original thirteen colonies as they fought to protect themselves from a too-powerful and unfair ruler across the Atlantic.

Some of the states’ rights the Confederacy fought for were moral and just, and some, to be sure, were quite immoral — specifically the right to own slaves.  (I think it’s worth adding here, however,  that the vast majority of Confederate soldiers who fought that war had never owned slaves in their lives.)  But the point is that they fought that war as Americans — who believed in a nation that was different from the nation the North (the Union) wanted and fought for.  Recognizing that fact, after the war, the United States government acknowledged every Confederate soldier as an American veteran — and has continued to honor those solders as such. The people whose forefathers were among those veterans have a right to fly the battle flag their ancestors fought under, and the constitution of the United States — specifically the Bill of Rights — guarantees them that right as part of their free speech.

Personally, when I see the stand the people at “Dukes of Hillsboro” are taking, I thank God we still have a few people in this nation with some backbone. We’ve almost come to the place where every citizen in this nation has the right to fly whatever flag he wants to fly — except one. Why, even Nazi supporters can fly and carry the Nazi flag all over the place, yet we have some government officials and several hundred other idiots now trying to tell us the people whose heritage includes having fought in the Civil War on the Confederate side do not have the right to fly the flag their forefathers carried bravely into battle.

Moreover, virtually every business that ever sold any items that even hint at being connected with Confederate history or that flag are banning all of those items and their use. There is no excuse for such attitudes or actions, and it’s clear to me — and anyone else with half a brain — that this whole “anti-confederate” movement is nothing but fools leading fools. (It’s the same kind of idiocy that has been displayed in the attempt to re-write Mark Twain’s book Huckleberry Finn to remove all references to racism, and the almost total ban in this country on the showing of Walt Disney’s  movie Song of the South.) We are not helping ourselves by trying to pretend these things are not part of our history. And as part of our history, they are part of us. Some of them, at times, may represent our baser selves, but they also remind us of how much we’ve changed and grown into something better.

As I mentioned in the introduction to this piece, the men who fought in the army of The Confederate States of America are — by law — identified as American veterans. But the point obviously needs to be made over and over in this country in order to beat it into the hard heads of these trouble-makers. The Confederate soldiers were fighting for what they believed America should be — but it was the vision of an America that differed from the vision the Union held. Nevertheless, their ardor and their efforts were genuine, and they committed themselves to pay whatever price it took to try to build that kind of nation instead of the one they believed had betrayed them.

As a result, to this present day, our United States government acknowledges them and honors them as veterans. And now we have some mentally twisted baboons who want to dig up the bodies of these American veterans and move them — and remove every statue of them off any public property. I can’t help but ask: would these baboons be just as willing for their own veteran forefathers’ bodies to be dug up and treated so inhumanely?

The whole attitude is insane. The flag — and the statues of Confederate leaders — have nothing — nothing — to do with racism today. They have to do with our history as a nation and, to a great extent, with heritage. But let’s be honest here: Even if they did have to do with racist ideas — we do still have freedom of speech guaranteed to us by the constitution of this nation. I don’t agree with racially prejudiced speakers, but I will defend to the death their right to say what they believe because I want the right to say what I believe.

Tell me: How much more racist can you get than the Nazi’s who tortured, mutilated, butchered, and murdered tens of thousands of people in an effort to destroy a whole race? Now that, my friend, is pure racism. Yet we allow citizens to fly and carry the Nazi flag whenever they want to — because we call it “freedom of speech.”

And why all this frenzy over the Confederate flag just because some lunatic who shot and killed people in South Carolina was seen in a picture that included a Confederate flag and a gun. What if he had been seen in a Batman uniform with a gun. Would we then have this almost maniacal movement to ban everything connected with Batman?  I don’t think so. And what if he had been pictured with a Nazi flag and a gun?  Would we make laws banning all Nazi flags from being flown and carried in the U.S.  Again, I don’t think so. Something else is at work here.

One news report described the behavior of the chancellor of the University of Missouri, who went berserk when he saw an old picture of some fraternity students holding three flags — the U. S. flag, the Confederate flag, and their own football mascot flag. First he insisted that none of the students in the picture were students from that university. He has now — according to the news story — publicly proclaimed that he will hunt down and investigate every student who was in the picture — which was taken at least three years ago at some fraternity activity.  Heaven help those students. I hope they have all graduated and moved far enough away he can’t find them, because it sounds a little like the Salem witch hunts to me.   Insanity.

But I find myself asking a rather unusual question in the midst of all this hullabaloo. Why would our government officials want to allow Nazi flags to be flapped around, but not Confederate flags? Could it be — now I’m not saying that it is — but you have to admit that it’s a valid question to ask — could it be that the Nazi flags don’t pose the threat to the super liberal centralized government that has taken over the Unites States in the last decade?  Could it be that the Nazi flag — being much more akin to the socialistic, central-government- controlled system that the liberals want — doesn’t frighten the “big-brother” regime that has managed to usurp power to an unconstitutional degree?

And could it be that the Confederate flag — on the other hand — represents the strong belief in states’ rights that were originally so carefully guarded and protected by the careful wording of our constitution — and also represents the willingness of a people to stand up and fight with everything in them to protect those rights and all their other freedoms?

And could it be that such a symbol does pose a threat to that socialistic regime, because it reminds people that it is possible to unite thousands of citizens to fight for their rights by taking on the centralized government that has become their enemy? And could that threat be part of what’s behind this insane move to try to wipe out everything that reminds people that there once was a group of citizens committed enough to take that stand?

I’ve already stated that some of the states’ rights the Confederate states fought for were moral and just, but some were very immoral — specifically the right to own slaves.  But the states’ rights that are being stolen away today — by the socialistic regime that has currently taken control in Washington D.C. — are not in any way connected with immoral actions.

Today, the rights we want to protect have totally moral and just foundations:  We want to safeguard the right of every state to protect its borders, the right of every state to refuse the legalization of abortions, the right of every state to refuse the legalization of gay marriage, the right of every state to refuse to allow the presence of multiplied mosques that represent and propagate a religion that butchers all people who stand against it, and the right of every state to protect the individual rights of her hard-working, innocent businessmen to decide with whom they want to do business.

Quite frankly, right now, when I look at the Confederate flag, I find within my soul a tiny flicker of hope that, just maybe, there will be some of us brave enough to take a stand again — and to do whatever it takes to reclaim the rights of our individual states.  In the eyes of some, that makes me a rebel. And maybe I am. But I’ll gladly wear that label if it identifies me as a U.S. citizen who is grateful enough for the blood-bought freedom this nation has always stood for — grateful enough to be willing to fight every enemy — foreign or domestic — that would destroy that freedom.

It’s time we got real, folks. It’s time we grew up and stopped standing around sucking our thumbs while our nation crumbles around us. It’s time for us to once again stand up for what is right and just in this land. We must stand up for the rights of these people who simply want equal “freedom of speech” rights concerning a flag that means something to them.

Perhaps you don’t agree with people flying the Confederate flag. Well, the wonderful thing about living in this country is that you have total freedom — you have the guaranteed right — to disagree with them and even say so publicly.  And you can do that.  But while you’re disagreeing with them, take a stand to defend their right to fly that flag you don’t agree with. If you do not stand up for their rights now — look out — because some specific rights that you care about will be taken away next!

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Dukes of Hillsboro Website