Sen. Graham,
While it goes without saying that you and I are likely to disagree on nearly every relevant socio-political topic, I must start out by saying that I bear you no animosity or ill will, despite your obliviousness and breakdown in common sense following the events in Charleston. I just want to make clear what I feel you do not see.
150 years ago, America looked into the glowing eyes of its own moral bankruptcy. A war was being fought that enabled brothers to slaughter each other, engaging a fundamental breakdown of?American principles and threatening to destroy the nation their grandfathers and great-grandfathers bled and died to build. The Confederate battle flag, the same one South Carolina proudly flies over its capitol, is symbolic of that darkest moment in American history.
That monumental breakdown of principle, and thus the creation of that flag, manifested in response to a social travesty. We can go on and on about state’s rights and oppressive governments, but at the end of the day, Mr. Graham, you and I both know what created the state’s rights argument: slavery and white supremacy. I’m sure we can both agree the practice to be horrifying and a violation not just of human rights, but of American principles at the moment of its sovereignty.
Incidentally, and as I’m sure you are well aware, the church whose walls were spattered with the crimson blood of the innocent on Wednesday is a special church. Denmark Vesey, one of the founders of Emanuel AME in Charleston, planned a revolt against the practice the Confederate battle flag represents. Emanuel AME was burned to the ground, then rebuilt, despite black churches being outlawed.
Since we’re on the topic of symbols, Emanuel AME is about as symbolic to black civil rights as it gets.
The horrors the Confederate battle flag represents created an unprecedented breakdown within the nation. Eleven states, consumed with their traditions of white superiority and African servitude, committed an act of treason when they defied and waged war on the American government. As a military man, and a distinguished one, I would have thought you at least could’ve understood that. Of course, as you told Alisyn Camerota, the Confederate battle flag is “part of who [you] are.”
I get it, Sen. Graham. I really do. Culture is an important part of people’s lives. I’m sure you and I could have enlightening and entertaining conversations about our ethnic histories and the stories handed down by our ancestors. Hell, sir, I’m also Southern. I get tradition. But, sometimes there are remnants of our cultures that must be condemned, despite the heritage that comes with it. To feign ignorance regarding the sins of our fathers and grandfathers is to suffer a severe breakdown in sensibility.
Southern men simply cannot suffer a severe breakdown in sensibility. It is not a very Southern thing to do.
Sen. Graham, I plead with you. I ask for you to recognize the ghosts of the past and help end this conflict. So long as the Confederate battle flag flies, the Civil War is not yet over. So long as that flag exists, so will the modern sympathies associated. So long as that symbol of treason, racism, and bloodshed waves proudly in the sweet Southern winds, people like Dylann Storm Roof will commit themselves to that breakdown of American principle that prompted brothers to spill their own brother’s blood upon the ground.
The same breakdown that nearly destroyed this nation in permanence.
