Reared Southern: A Condition of Heritage | Eastern North Carolina Now

Real Southerners will never disavow their Confederate heritage.

    I make no apologies here: I am a Southerner as a condition of birth and by lineage - both parents were Southerners. Needless to mention, but I shall do so to drive the point home, my childhood was one where we (my brother and I) were taught to respect our heritage - that we were Southerners, Confederates, Rebels by our birthright, but Americans first. We were not raised as racists, by the standards of those days, but I'm sure there was some latent cultural indoctrination learned; however, by the time I graduated from high school, after the turbulent sixties, any vestiges of prejudice were fairly washed clean of any racist stain from my eternal ego. Still, even after any generational shift of social awareness, I never lost my deep understanding of that ingrained pride of my Southern heritage.

    The South, where my youth was stretched between northeastern North Carolina and south-central Georgia, was a magical place of: hot summers, pristine beaches, well mannered people, small farms of tobacco fields - hot as Hell - and those farm values, football played very well, and the history of our Forefathers. Forefathers, who were: America's best presidents, pre-1860; our best generals since our nation's birth; those that produced the overwhelming best of American music, by a huge disparity; a disproportionate number of great writers; a People of romantic charm that were born both of careless ignorance and the gift of extreme intelligence. The South was then, and remains now, in some rarer places, a remarkable place of an incredible history and spectacular beauty. It will always be my home.

    After the manifested evil of the Charleston murders by a deranged racist White boy, from Columbia, Americans, from across our nation have been challenged to denounce the Confederate battle flag, The Stars and Bars of the former Confederate States of America, as a symbol of 'Hate', and that all vestiges of its placement on public property, and all sense of the proprietary of this emblematic flag, as a symbol of regional pride, be stripped from its People's present and future sensibilities; therefore forgotten as the 'representative emblem of a time of fantastic regional embarrassment, then and now'. Currently, South Carolina governor Nikki Haley has called for the removal of the battle flag of the CSA from their state Capital.

    For my part, I choose not to denounce and not to forget, and if I had a Confederate States of America flag, I would never remove it, as is my 1st Amendment right of free speech. While the Stars and Bars is a symbol of 'Hate' for those that do hate as a predisposed psychosis, the battle flag of my Forefathers will not be forgotten, and will be a symbol for which it was intended - a rallying point in the battle for state's rights against the backdrop of Northern aggression.

    For those Democrats, who will manage the 2016 general election with an emphasis on Racism, rather than one of the other three or four issues that these ultra Liberals marginally understand within their 'Group-think' paradigm, you have no power over my principled behavior, or my individual vote, or my reasoned ability to argue your unlimited limits of real understanding of real issues.

    For all those Republicans, who wish to engender the Liberal's respect, if not their votes, or just head off an issue that would incur the Democrats' overt political wrath over an unwinnable issue - the respect of the Stars and Bars - I humbly beseech thee to 'grow a pair'. Maybe Texas presidential candidate, Senator Ted Cruz, has the correct approach by properly proffering the CSA flag issue is a state issue to govern as they see fit as to what action, if any, regarding the future of this historic purpose.

    Regardless of the future of the Stars and Bars, I pray that the sacrifice and heritage of good men, as Southerners and American patriots, who bravely headed the call to protect their homeland after the North sought to invade their respective states, will not be distorted by those that do not have the prevailing intellect, or the presence of mind, to fathom what existed in these ancient patriots' hearts, irrespective of how misguided it may seem now. These Confederate patriots were my ancestors, and at some societal cost, I will continue to respect their sacrifice, and I will defend their memory, and, moreover, I challenge all politicians to jump off the headlong train of instant public opinion to respect the reality of these Southern patriots' historic sacrifice to the call of community duty, of cultural honor.

I grew up with the mournful refrain of this Southern anthem, here below by The Band, which may mean as much to me as the anthem "Dixie" did to my Southern Forefathers. It is a sad romantic notion to love a futile thing, an idea, but there it is.


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