The Confederate Flag and Racial Strife

A lunatic goes on a shooting binge and murders nine humble Christians in a church, and it's the flag's fault.  I suppose the 9-11 terrorist attacks were Boeing's fault too. The correlation of the killings with the flag is an example of the twisted logic of the left. Because racists fly the flag, the flag is racist. That is the worse sort of inductive reasoning.

Here is a major news flash;  racists also fly the American flag. Lots of disreputable outfits like to wrap themselves in Old Glory; it is a sort of fig leaf for their twisted views.

I have known a few real racists, and they would be racists if the flag never existed. I also have known a lot of people who like to fly the flag, use flag decals, or flag license plates. They absolutely mean no harm and are simply expressing regional pride.

Let's get the skunk up on the table; the north won the war. Big deal, if the U.S. went to war with Mexico, guess who would win. A country with three times the population, ten times the manufacturing capacity, and one hundred times the shipbuilding capacity goes to war in earnest with the smaller of the two, guess who will win nine times out of ten. The larger country only loses if it quits and goes home, as we did in Vietnam.

So the north wins, and it seems that some northerners just cannot stop dancing in the end zone over it. It is a fact that the south has been the object of scorn and ridicule for generations mainly because it lost the war. I find it pretty ridiculous that people who had absolutely no connection with the Civil War should gloat over the south's defeat. I once had a Canadian who had moved to the U.S. say, "You shouldn't have ticked us off," or something like that, in relation to the war. A Canadian for crying out loud. This is a small example of the mind numbing ignorance of the history of the war, an ignorance shared by the vast majority of Americans.

Some southerners have such a resentment for that sort of treatment, that they fly the flag as a kind of defiant raised fist at gloating northerners. It has nothing to do with race. Others, such as CW re-enactors and heritage groups, use the flag as a symbol of respect for their forebears who fought hard and bravely on the side of the south. So where is the crime in that?

The vast majority of the popular media, academia, and government, have jumped on the bandwagon to "ban the flag." A completely worthless exercise in self-gratification which will do precisely nothing to improve race relations. Hello, earth to flag banners, it will make NO difference, and may only exacerbate the problem. There is in fact now a hardening of some people on the issue. They feel every nut case group in the country can fly their weird flags with not a peep from anyone, and yet they cannot fly a flag that they revere.

The leap of logic taken by so many on this issue makes them look absolutely ridiculous. Their pandering sophistry is disingenuous at best and purely malicious at worst. Time to learn some history and practice some tolerance, something the left has preached for years but somehow rarely practices.


Confederate flag, racial strife, the South, Civil War

Confederate Flag Debate

First of all, let's clarify that the flag flying beside the State House in Columbia, SC is NOT the flag of the CSA. It is a battle flag, usually flown by regiments in the Army of Northern Virginia and other Confederate armies as a guidon for troops to follow in battle.

The flag has been appropriated by the scurrilous purveyors of racial hatred, much to the chagrin of honest people concerned with the brave heritage of the men who fought for the South. There were no slaves transported from Africa under the battle flag. The flag of St. Andrew's Cross was a flag flown in battle, pure and simple.

Because the racist haters fly the flag, it has been besmirched and a stain put upon the honor of the good men who fought under it. Most of them owned no slaves, nor even cared about the issue. They fought because their country - their state - had been invaded. Before the war, one referred to their own state as their country. The U.S. was a union of sovereign states, not a nation divided into provinces. The world was a very different place and to impugn those people one hundred and fifty years later is as pernicious as it is presumptuous.

We need better education in this country about the Civil War and its causes, the men who fought it, and the brutal and bitter aftermath. I deal with that subject in my new novel, Season of the Crow. The sanitized and politically correct history taught these days does a serious disservice to the young and the old. It is high time to focus on the hard cold facts, and less on political or social agendas.

Amazon Author Page

Here is the link to my Amazon author page, which just went live.

Barry Yelton Amazon Author Page

The Kingdom of Light

Somewhere in that infinite unknowable Mind

came a thought

from eternity to eternity it came

and was spoken

and that which dwelt in majestic quiescence

became

in a roar

of flame

of wind

of water

of the solid earth.

Until there was being

where before

was only knowing.

And the small ones

weak and fearful

look up and see

with eyes of faith

across millennia.

And we watch still

from a fishbowl

the mysterious, moving, Majesty

beyond

with awe and transcendent wonder

as we mark our days

and pass our years

until we join

in discarnate reunion

there

where 

the universe

intersects the infinite.

Season of the Crow is here!

The book is now published and up on Amazon.com in the Kindle edition. The paperback edition will be available soon.

Happy Reading!

Season of the Crow is coming soon!

My new book, Season of the Crow, a sequel to Scarecrow in Gray, should hit the market within thirty days. Below is a draft of the cover art:

I am very excited about it and I believe our readers will enjoy the story line, cast of characters, and the resolution.

It will be on Amazon (hopefully) within thirty days.

Banning Religion From Public View

An article I wrote back in 2006:

There has been a great deal of discussion in the media recently about the celebration of Christmas in the public domain.  Some have asserted that displays of the Nativity scene and symbols such as the cross are religious and therefore have no place on public property because of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the Constitution.

The Establishment/Free Exercise clause of the First Amendment to the Constitution states, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”  It is a two pronged statement that prohibits an official state religion, like the Church of England, while clearly upholding the right to religious practice and expression. The anti-religionists give the broadest interpretation to the Establishment Clause, while the Free Exercise component is viewed in the narrowest possible way.

If federal, state or local governments were setting up churches or other places of worship and encouraging or mandating people to worship at the state church a religion would have been established.  However allowing private groups or individuals, including churches, temples or mosques, to utilize public spaces for gatherings or religious displays should be no more considered the establishment of religion than permitting a fifth grade art exhibit depicting “Mother Earth” on Earth Day. 

To believe that such exhibits violate the Establishment Clause is to take such a broad interpretation of it as to strain credulity. The intent of the framers relative to the scope of the clause is evident since the same First Congress that proposed the Bill of Rights also opened its legislative day with prayer and voted to apportion federal dollars to establish Christian missions in the Indian lands.

In my opinion, those earnest worshipers of the Establishment Clause, who on other issues often look upon the Constitution as a “living, breathing document,” are less concerned with the government establishing a religion than they are with marginalizing those who actually have one.

The ACLU, which was established by a Marxist, amazingly seems to battle even the most benign expressions of faith in the public square, such as The Boy Scouts use of a public park, while at the same time vigorously defending the rights of organizations such as NAMBLA, which advocates and promotes the vilest crimes imaginable, citing “free speech.” I suppose the warm waters of free speech end at the shoreline of religious expression. Hypocrisy never had a more shining avatar.

There is not simply a “War on Christmas” taking place in our country. There is a more fundamental conflict of values in progress with underlying agendas on both sides. The groups and individuals that TV commentator Bill O’Reilly refers to as “secular progressives” are aggressively trying to remove all expressions of faith from all public venues.

They want “under God” removed from the Pledge of Allegiance. They want “In God We Trust” removed from our currency.  They want crèches, the Ten Commandments, and Christian crosses removed from every public space. In short they want any evidence of religious faith confined strictly to private property.

Why should we care about this “culture war?” We should care because by marginalizing Christianity in particular, the secular progressives will move a step closer to their dream of an America without God, Who demands certain behavioral norms that inconveniently conflict with the laissez faire moral attitudes of 21^st century America. The ACLU and other radical “progressive” organizations want to manipulate what America sees and hears while maintaining their imagined status as defenders of “free speech.”

They know that if you marginalize God by confining religious expression to private property you limit and diminish the message. By limiting the message, your secular progressive message has less competition in the public marketplace of ideas. They don’t want children to see a Nativity scene on a courthouse lawn and be curious about the Child in the manger.

Once you limit religion to the private sector, then you have less resistance to your goal of a Godless, faithless, libertine America where the only behavior not tolerated is the expression of faith in God. Nothing else explains the rabidity with which the secular agenda is being pursued today, after over two hundred years of mostly peaceful coexistence of government and religion in our country.  

The imaginary “wall of separation” between religion and government does not mandate that religion be shoved out of public life. It simply means what Jefferson and the other framers intended and that is the prohibition of formal state religion - nothing more.

The soothing words of those who see no problem banishing God from public life, whether it is a cross on public property or the act of wishing someone Merry Christmas at the mall, are calculated to make the average American believe that all is well and that there is really no problem with keeping religious expression strictly in the private arena.

They even try to foist upon us the canard that somehow public expression of religious faith “cheapens and demeans” that faith. Institutions like the ACLU and their fellow travelers, such as George Soros, don’t spend tens of millions of dollars every year fighting public religious expression and traditional values for nothing. They are cleverly hiding their true intent, hoping that the apathetic majority won’t notice – until it is too late.

The Season of The Crow is coming soon!

I am very pleased and excited to announce that my publisher has finished the edits of my new book and it should be released by the end of March!  Here is a brief synopsis:

           In the dark days following the Civil War, a family of freed slaves makes an epic journey to find refuge in the North Carolina mountains. They form an unlikely alliance with a former Confederate soldier and his family to battle a vicious band of night riding terrorists.

            A seesaw war rages between the former Confederate and his allies and the nigh triders culminating in a deadly battle on a rocky mountainside. The turmoil of a nation’s bitterest conflict spills over into the postwar years as blacks and whites alike struggle to survive a seething cauldron of hatred and violence.

The book serves as a sequel to Scarecrow in Gray, but stands on its own as an exciting tale, with some twists and turns as well as gritty action and heart rending episodes. It follows the post war fictional life of  Francis and Harriet Yelton and their friends. Set in western North Carolina, the book is steeped in the grim reality of reconstruction. It is clearly the best work this writer has done and I am excited to bring it to the reading public.

Cheers,

Barry