{"id":709,"date":"2008-01-29T20:58:50","date_gmt":"2008-01-30T02:58:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/?p=709"},"modified":"2015-06-22T19:30:09","modified_gmt":"2015-06-23T01:30:09","slug":"the-flag","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/?p=709","title":{"rendered":"The Flag"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Last week, Christopher Hitchens had a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.slate.com\/id\/2182358\/fr\/rss\/\">great<\/a> piece on the confederate flag controversy, pointing out that our lazy media hadn&#8217;t bothered to point out that (a) the confederate flag is not the official state flag of South Carolina; (b) it was flown purely as a defiant gesture against federally-ordered integration.<\/p>\n<p>When I was younger, I defended the flying of the confederate flag, a position I look back on with embarrassment. I supported it for a variety of reasons, mainly the idea that the Civil War &#8220;wasn&#8217;t about slavery&#8221; so why should black people be offended?<\/p>\n<p>What tipped me back was two realizations:<\/p>\n<p>(1) Even if the Civil War wasn&#8217;t &#8220;about&#8221; slavery, the issue was so entrenched with the war, the distinction is academic. Without slavery, there would have been no war.<\/p>\n<p>(2) It doesn&#8217;t matter if blacks&#8217; offense at the Confederate flag is rational or not. The flag is supposed to represent <i>all<\/i> the people of the state. If some fraction finds the flag offensive &#8212; whether their offense is reasonable or not &#8212; it should be changed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last week, Christopher Hitchens had a great piece on the confederate flag controversy, pointing out that our lazy media hadn&#8217;t bothered to point out that (a) the confederate flag is not the official state flag of South Carolina; (b) it was flown purely as a defiant gesture against federally-ordered integration. When I was younger, I &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/?p=709\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">The Flag<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[371,119,370,247],"class_list":["post-709","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-confederate-flag","tag-history","tag-racism","tag-the-south"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2BzKF-br","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/709","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=709"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/709\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6697,"href":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/709\/revisions\/6697"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}