True that symbols don't mean anything unless we give them meaning, but sometimes others do that for us and our feelings, pro, con, or neutral don't mean a whole lot if the symbol is widely accepted as having a meaning. Would anyone really feel comfortable wearing a swastika these days as an ancient good luck sign or whatever it was (I've seen it on old southern Asian artifacts; don't claim to know it all)? Of course not because the whole world associates it with Nazis. And I know, I know personally, that there are decent people here and elsewhere for whom the correctly identified Confederate battle flag does mean something to them that has nothing to do with slavery; I had a great great grandfather who rode away to that stupid war and was never heard from again. But what do you think it means to the camouflaged guys who have window-size decals of it on their pickups? What do you think it means to David Duke and his Klan buddies? What do you think it means to skinheads here and abroad (I've seen Czech skinheads waving this flag)? Of course, it means the same thing that it means to black Americans and all of us who hate the crime of slavery that was defended by some (probably not in the hearts of all, I pray not in the heart of my ancestor, who never owned a slave) under its colors. This flag is very well known as the wartime symbol of a culture that was and is wonderful in a lot of ways, but it did practice slavery, and it has not been long enough since then for us to forget.

Two other thoughts: I was hired several times years ago to play music at events that included Civil War re-enactments, some of them at ante-bellum plantation houses like Boone Hall north of Charleston. It occurred to me there that my own ancestors, of French and Scots-Irish and God knows what other origin, would never have been allowed to rest on the front porch of that house; they like most southerners who died, did so fighting for the interests of rich aristocrats who cared not shit for them. Which leads to thought #2, which I firmly have believed for a long time, that the Civil War was about the stupidest cause that anybody ever decided to die for, and we're still fighting the damn thing in South Carolina, largely because of ignorance of history, on which we have no monopoly.

That flag went up over our capitol in 1961, to "celebrate" the centennial of the beginning of the war. I just wish to God that we could put this behind us.

Incidentally, there is a group in Charleston that did put out a lot of T-shirts and other products with the same flag redone in green, black, and yellow. The significance of it was lost on most. Just as most of my students lost interest in Malcolm X when he quit hating white people.

Back to you, Chet