REQUIEM FOR AN HONORABLE SYMBOL OF BATTLEFIED COURAGE
(wrongfully usurped by hate-mongers and vilified by would-be revisionists of history…)

South Carolina’s legislature did the proper thing by voting to remove the battle flag of the Confederacy from its capitol grounds. We would like to think that it did so not just because of extreme public outcry, but, as an example of conciliatory reciprocity to the spirit of forgiveness displayed by the families of the Charleston atrocity.

It is time to set aside such remaining residues of that most terrible moment of our history …our Civil War…which nearly destroyed this nation, and scarred its people for generations, to this day. But to do that it has to be done with the same magnanimous respect that General Grant and his troops displayed towards General Lee and his troops when they surrendered at Appomatox; and, as was further shone between surviving Union and Confederate veterans of Gettysburg at their annual memorial gatherings there. That need of reconciliation and unity as a nation was further emphasized by President Lincoln, in his plans to heal our nation from that ordeal.

Unfortunately, forces of hatred, bigotry, and intolerance, both North and South, corrupted and defiled all subsequent efforts to abide by those dreams and hopes for the future redemption of our nation as a true society of liberty and equality for all…and they remain among us today. Whether these are extremists still holding irrational illusions of “white power”, or those who demonize and vilify all those who fought, bled, and died, under that banner, and just as irrationally seek to remove their memory from our history…both are wrong-headed in their perspectives.

Many of us today are descendants of families torn apart by that terrible conflict. We all have ancestors who fought on both sides of it, and even have some who were never able to reconcile their differences about it, so, none of us can presume superiority or purity of our heritages over that of any others. Warts and all, we are of the same family, kin to saints, sinners, and some bordering on sheer evil, and that’s the reality of our history.

Meanwhile, let this be a proper requiem for an honorable symbol of battlefield courage, not one wrongfully usurped by hate-mongers, and now vilified by would-be revisionists of our history.

CENTURION