For a moment can we put aside the question of whether the Confederate battle flag is racist, or offensive on those grounds, to ask whether it is offensive on other grounds?

Mr. Hitchens touched on this briefly when suggesting that flying the flag is an insult to the sacrifice of the scores of thousands of Unionists (Southern loyalists among them) who died to preserve the country (and later, to emancipate four and a half million slaves).

During the Civil War Northerners, Unionists and Loyalists often called the Confederates what they were: rebels. It was an insurrectionist government which made war upon the United States of America. (And remember, the South fired the first shot.)

Mr. Hitchens points out that the resurgence in popularity the battle flag has enjoyed began in the 1960s as a symbol of open defiance against the Civil Rights movement. Whether the flag was always a symbol of racism is, as a cursory review of the discussion thread will illustrate, open to debate - but the flag certainly always was, and always will be, a symbol of open defiance against the United States government.

In other words, treason.

Doesn't this offend anyone else?

On a side note, I've always found it curious when Southerners claim that the flag is a symbol of their proud heritage. I could see how this was true a hundred years ago, when veterans were still alive, or even in the following decades when their children or grandchildren made up the bulk of the populace. But those times have past.

Nowadays I find it hard to swallow that anyone can get rich and solemn pride from four years of misguided violent rebellion against their government. What about the other 228 years - shouldn't that trump a government founded on the cornerstone of slavery, without which no issue over 'state's right' would certainly have ever provoked secession or war?

Most people feel pride in being American. There would be no U.S. of A. if people hadn't rebelled against their government, a move many people felt was misguided. Just sayin'.

Defiance of the government is one thing, treason something else. There's a wacko who posts here and there that questioning baby bush's judgement on Iraq is treason. (There's a war, on, see, even though we've defeated the enemy and installed a puppet government). Here in America, we are free to defy our government - we call it an election. We value the loyal opposition. Some of us disagree with each other. That's not treason.

Yank It:

For a moment can we put aside the question of whether the Confederate battle flag is racist, or offensive on those grounds, to ask whether it is offensive on other grounds? Mr. Hitchens touched on this briefly when suggesting that flying the flag is an insult to the sacrifice of the scores of thousands of Unionists (Southern loyalists among them) who died to preserve the country (and later, to emancipate four and a half million slaves). During the Civil War Northerners, Unionists and Loyalists often called the Confederates what they were: rebels. It was an insurrectionist government which made war upon the United States of America.

For the southern states to be engaged in "treason," they would have to be rebelling against a country they were part of. Most of the Deep South had withdrawn from the Union well before Ft. Sumter. Although their right to do so was challenged in the North, there was no legal determination or precedent as to the legality of their secession, which remains, to this day, an unresolved legal question. In other words, those of you, like Hitchens, who call the Confederates "traitors" are talking out of turn both legally and historically.

I'll grant that there's something to that argument, but far less than you make it sound. The states that 'seceded' and formed governments got about as much recognition from the Federal government as did, say, the insurrectionists during the Whiskey Rebellion or John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry, for that matter. There was a question of constitutionality, with a clear trend on the side of illegality and treason. Historically speaking, the right to secede was not merely 'challenged' in the North: it was settled nearly a generation beforehand with the nullification crisis (which was a prededent as to the legality of their secession, which the nation as a whole rejected.) It was also raised again during the prelude to the compromise of 1850, when again the federal government declared armed insurrection against the state to be treason. In short, it was hardly an unresolved question, and it is disingenuous to suggest that it remains one today - legally or historically speaking. Lastly - whether they 'declared' so or not - the citizens of the Confederacy were actually legal citizens of states in rebellion until the newly formed state was granted recognition from other governments, which it never was. Legally speaking, the Confederate had never withdrew from the Union, but only rebelled against it; and it was never a properly independence recognized government.

I agree that questioning President Bush's policies is not treason. However, I don't see how that relates to anything in my previous post.

It seems to me that you are saying there is no difference between a North Carolinian voting for the Lincoln opposition candidates in the 1860 election and a South Carolinian who fired a cannon at a Federal fortification in 1861.