South Carolina’s Example

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Governor Haley of South Carolina, in calling in the wake of the murders at Charleston for the removal of the Confederate flag from the grounds of the state capitol, has taken a courageous step. It would be so at any juncture, but all the more so at the start of a presidential election in which she may yet figure and in which her party will need all the help it can get in the Palmetto state. All the better, too, that the governor was flanked by of the state’s senators, Lindsey Graham and Timothy Scott.

It comes at an exceptionally affecting national moment. It is hard to imagine that there are one in a thousand Americans who have not been moved by the expression of love that the people of South Carolina have extended to the congregation of the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church. It would be enough were it simply a matter of condoling neighbors in the wake of the murders committed at the church. But given the history of South Carolina and the racism of the killer, it adds up to a historic moment.

Governor Haley made a point of acknowledging that not all those who see in the Confederate flag a symbol of southern patriotism are racists. She was equally forthright in acknowledging the offense the flag gives to so many others. After all, iterations of the treasonous tatter were flown by a confederacy that encompassed much of the slave empire. Millions in South Carolina and the rest of Dixie are horrified at the flag. Not to mention the offense it gives to those states that stood loyally with the Union cause.

Today the Democrats are trying to palm off the idea that the Confederate Flag is largely a cause of Republicans. No doubt the Republicans have waffled on this issue. Senator McCain got entangled in the confederate flag as recently as the 2008 election, and George W. Bush, too, though he wouldn’t fly it over the capital at Austin. But so did the Democrats, including such figures as Governor Dean, the Vermont leftist who said as recently as a decade ago that he wanted to be the candidate of “the guys with Confederate flags in their pickup trucks.”

If there is enough blame to go around in regard to the failure to retire the flag of the confederacy, there is much for America to be proud of in the way the country has come together in the wake of the murders of nine persons at the Emanuel AME church. Its members — and the families of those slain last week — have shown such dignity and devotion in the face of this crime. It would be a great thing if they and the political leaders whom they have stirred could inspire the general assembly of South Carolina to rise to the example that they have set.


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