PRIDE is powerful. It can make one blind and deaf to rationality, and oblivious to those with differing views. Southern pride particularly can be vicious, and has reared its ugly head in Montgomery, Ala. this past weekend.
The League of the South, a group devoted to the preservation of Southern cultural identity, held a rally to support restoring the Confederate battle flag to the Alabama state Capitol, from which it was removed in 1993. The League also has supported the official place of the flag over South Carolina's Statehouse, and plans to hold similar rallies in other states.
The problems with the League's actions are twofold. First, it bases its contentions on an inaccurate picture of history. Second - and partly as a result of the first problem - it is elitist and insensitive to the idea that it is a minority group.
Dr. Michael Hill, President of the League of the South, said during Saturday's rally, "We are not going to allow anyone to take our symbols, demonize them, and tell our children that our ancestors were traitors." (http://www.cnn.com/2000/US/03/04/confederate.rally/index.html)
The historical truth is that Confederate soldiers and leaders were traitors. When a group of American citizens takes up arms in conflict against the United States, they're traitors. Regardless of whether that group consists of 11 individuals or 11 states, waging war against your own country is an act of treason. These traitors had reasons for their actions, but that doesn't make them loyal citizens.
This is not to say that the Union was noble and right and the South base and criminal. History's judgment of a group of traitors depends on whether or not they win.
American revolutionaries in 1776 were traitors; they committed themselves to a violent conflict against Britain. But they won, so they're remembered as heroes. The South lost the war, so the Southern cause was demonized.
The relativism of the label "traitor" is important to note, because it reflects that both sides had the potential to be the bad guy. If Southerners had won, they wouldn't have been remembered as traitors. Instead, they would be brave rebels who freed themselves from the yoke of the oppressive American government.
Hill and his group seem to be responding to the sentiment that the rebels were the bad guys. The problem is, they overcompensate when fighting against this negative image. It would be entirely reasonable to campaign to bring the South's cause to a position of equal prominence - to allow Southern soldiers to be respected and remembered as favorably as Northern ones. Most people recognize that neither side in the Civil War was definitively superior in its motives.
But the League refuses to stop here. They insist on exalting the Southern cause to a lofty perch above all others. They ignore the historical truth that both sides in the Civil War had reasonable justifications for their actions. After almost 150 years, they still think that they were entirely right and everyone else was completely wrong.
From this elitism and refusal to look at history objectively flows the League's second pride-based problem: insensitivity to its minority status.
Hill said at the rally, "Those people who do not like our symbols, we are here today to tell them, 'You need to get used to them. Our symbols are not going away.'" The cloud of pride around Hill's head is too thick for the idea that he doesn't live in the Confederate States of America to penetrate the haze. If Hill were not intoxicated by Southern pride, he might realize the importance of the term "our symbols." The symbols he speaks of are in fact theirs; they aren't everyone else's.
The South stopped being the Confederacy in name a long time ago. It stopped being the Confederacy in spirit - at least for many Southerners - only slightly more recently. Hill doesn't speak for a majority of the South when he advocates the revival of Southernism and the formation of an independent Southern nation.
Surely he has the right to say such things. But he doesn't have the right to force his cause on everyone else. And that's what placing the Confederate flag atop every Southern capitol would be. No minority group has the right to insist that everyone else accept its symbols.
Hill and his group are entitled to express their Southern pride as private citizens. They are not authorized to speak for the rest of us. Only if they convince the entire South to agree with them will state capitols become an appropriate place for the Confederate battle flag. Until that happens, we need not "get used" to their symbols. Hopefully, someone can break through the wall of pride someday to make them understand that.
(Bryan Maxwell is a Cavalier Daily associate editor.)
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