McCain Silent on Confederate Flag Flap in Florida?
As the so-called Sons of the Confederacy no doubt let loose with a rebel yell over their display of the world's largest confederate flag outside Tampa, John McCain has apparently been silent. Given his own sad experience of gymnastic flip-flops over the Stars and Bars since 2000, his reticence is understandable.
Unlike the flying of the confederate flag over the South Carolina state house, the Florida display occurs on private property near the junction of two interstate highways. Yet the issue remains tricky for McCain, given his on-again/off-again pandering to his party's neo-Confederate wing during the 2000 primaries.
Back in April 2000, McCain admitted his flirtation with the Confederate flag-waving crowd in South Carolina was an unprincipled mistake, hardly the stuff of straight talk:
"I feared that if I answered honestly, I could not win the South Carolina primary. So, I chose to compromise my principles. I broke my promise to always tell the truth."
Then in January 2008, McCain again claimed to Katie Couric of CBS News that his dishonesty over the Confederate flag 8 years ago was the exception to his supposed maverick rule:
"I knew it was a symbol that was offensive to so many people. And afterwards, I went back and apologized. But it was needless to say, by saying that I wouldn't have anything to do with an issue like that was an act of cowardice."
Ultimately, American citizens using private property to fly a banner offensive to the vast majority of their fellow citizens likely won't rise to a make-or-break issue in national presidential politics. (The Tampa Bay Business Journal did ask its readers if the Sons of the Confederacy flag would adversely impact the region's economy.)
No, the episode will probably merely serve as fodder for the Colbert Report (video here). That, and a reminder to Americans that on this as on so many issues, John McCain is no rebel.
The writer of this article is either a liar, or is deliberately misrepresenting the facts.
"a banner offensive to the vast majority of their fellow citizens" simply is not true. Quite the opposite in fact.
While the vast majority are moral cowards and will not make a stand on behalf of the flag and the concept of American liberty it represents, as the Founding Fathers delivered to us, there are some hundreds of thousands who have made a stand in its defence.
Millions upon millions of Americans silently support the flag and the liberty-loving ideals it represents.
Let the writer of the article know this!
The proper name for the group flying the Confederate Soldiers Flag at that Confederate Veterans Memorial Park in Tampa is: the Sons of Confederate Veterans. Please be more accurate in the future.
This particular flag site is part of a larger project called Flags Across Florida, which has several sites already, including another along I-75 near the Georgia border. It is to be hoped that soon such memorials and Confederate Flags flying on private property in public view will become famiiar, welcome, and honored features of the civic landscape.