The New Civil War
Robert Schlesinger
24 July 2015
... Start with the Confederate flag. At around the same time that South Carolina state legislators were voting to bring it down in Charleston, U.S. House "Democrats offered amendments to an appropriations bill to block the laying of Confederate flags at federal cemeteries and to ban them from gift shops and concession stands," as the New York Times recounted this week.
Let's pause a moment and consider: This is the flag under which soldiers fought in an armed attempt to dismember the United States – and in the name of owning other human beings as chattel at that. So I don't think it's unreasonable to think that the federal government shouldn't commemorate the movement that marked the greatest existential threat this nation has faced in its history. (And while we're at it, the federal government should also end the practice of naming Army bases after generals who led a treasonous attempt to dismantle the country.)
Anyway, the Democratic amendments were adopted with little notice, prompting a group of mostly Southern Republicans to offer a new amendment allowing the flag to be displayed in federal cemeteries on Confederate Memorial Day (seriously, there's such a thing ... except in Texas, where they celebrate Confederate Heroes Day – on Martin Luther King Jr. Day). The problem they encountered, which is really rather illustrative of how our government operates these days, is that, per the Times, the GOP "did not have the votes for that amendment – but also did not have the votes for their spending bill without it – [so] Republicans pulled the underlying bill from the floor, effectively shutting down the House appropriations process."
That's right, the process of funding the government for the next fiscal year has ground to a halt because 150 years after the Civil War ended lingering Lost Cause dead-enders can't let go of the flag (which didn't even become a cherished cultural thing until segregationists were casting about for a rallying symbol a few decades ago) ...
http://www.usnews.com/news/the-report/articles/2015/07/24/the-new-civil-war-the-confederate-flag-religious-liberty-and-gay-marriage
