To that say "it's heritage not hate"

Down here in Florida, where a bunch of people confirmed they will keep flying the largest "Stars and Bars" in the nation, I have heard every excuse for that flag.

http://www.tampabay.com/news/humaninterest/confederate-flag-may-stay-aloft/795495

Go ahead and say there were many things about the North that were unsavory, I will agree.

Go ahead and say that many in the sweatshops were worked to the bone, and that many New York bankers were as evil as the Southern Plantation Owners, you are right.

However, none of that will separate SLAVERY from the reasons that flag was flown, none.

You can make a soup with the cleanest water, best spices, best meats and veggies, but dump cyanide in the bowl, and you will not want to eat it. For all those virtues of the South that the Morris Berman's praise, for all the music, cooking , literature and charms, there is no way to separate the issue of SLAVERY to that of the Confederacy. When you salute that flag, you saulute the effort to own slaves, period.

So you great grandpa was too poor to own slaves, never thought of owning them, and fought because we has "invaded." First, he was invaded my the same United States that helped HIS grandpa steal the land from the Indians, Spanish and French. There would be no Dixie if soldiers from places like New York, Massachusetts and Vermont did not fight and die for the right of your ancestors to take your land, first from the Native Americans, then the English and French, then the Mexicans. Texas might very well be Northern Mexico, and Louisiana a Northern Haiti, if that Federal government that is railed against did not act. Let's go further though, let's say those men in the gray uniforms were just poor people in over their head, afraid that the North would use a noble cause to loot them dry, which, as any Iraqi can tell you, was not that much of a stretch.

Well,they did not have to empower the Confederacy to speak in their name, and they sure did not have to glorify the cause after the war, especially since all that was gained was the loss of life of many poor men and women who the rich hid behind. And their descendants damned well could have stopped Nathan Bedford Forrest in his tracks when he made the KKK, and they could have stopped Bob Jones when he helped revive the KKK. Let's be honest, the KKK, as much as you may denounce them, is really the Civil War begin fought by those that ignored Appomattox, so frankly, asking us to get over it is hard when blood is still red, wet and flowing.

Honor the fact that your ancestors died thinking that they had no choice, but do not dare give that flag the air of a "noble cause." It is, was, and will be about the right to turn people into chattel, and to use a think like skin color as the catalyst for that. I will not spit on your ancestor's graves, but do not DARE ask us to lay flowers.