With the recent murders of 9 members of Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church, political correctness in this once great nation of ours has gone to new lows of insanity. Tragic as the murders of the 9 members of the church were, they are no justification for the sudden collective insanity of political correctness that followed. Yes, Dylann Roof was a racist, as he also was obviously mentally disturbed. His crime was a crime against humanity, nothing less. Yet because there was a photo of him taken with the Confederate Battle flag, suddenly the attention has turned to the flag itself instead of towards racism, mental illness, and yes even gun control. Addressing those issues would go a long way towards preventing horrific crimes like this. Banning the Confederate Flag will do nothing towards preventing crimes like this.

People have mixed emotions about the Confederate Flag, and I understand both sides of those emotions. Maybe it is time to take the Confederate Flag down from government buildings. But that wasn’t enough for those suffering from incurable political correctness. Suddenly, not only are there calls to remove the flag from government grounds, but also for banning the manufacture and sale of Confederate flags. Now you cannot have a cake baked by Walmart that has a Confederate flag. Walmart is even melting rings that have the Confederate flag on them that were ordered before this controversy even erupted. The NAACP is calling for the removal of all Confederate memorials, even going so far as to call for the destruction of the Confederate Memorial at Stone Mountain and removal of Confederate bodies from cemeteries. I live within a stones throw of Portsmouth, Virginia, where City Council members are calling for the destruction or removal of the Confederate Memorial in Portsmouth. The City does not even own the memorial nor the grounds upon which it was built and is willing to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to remove it. This from a city that if financially strapped.  I could go on and on about more instances of insane calls for the complete eradication of all vestiges of Confederate history.

To what end would all of this be for? How would it benefit society or our country to censor and rewrite our own history? All countries have dark periods in their history. But you don’t just erase history as if it had never happened. You learn from your history and try to improve on your history. Our country, under the U.S. flag, attempted genocide against Native Americans. Our country, under the U.S. flag, interred U.S. citizens illegally during WWII. Should we attempt to eradicate all vestiges of those histories too?

Italy has many ruins from the Roman Empire, which enslaved millions. Yet they have no intentions of bulldozing any of them. Egypt has many ruins from the Egyptian Empire, which also enslaved millions. Again, they have no intentions of bulldozing any of them. In fact, the only people I know who are actively trying to eradicate history by literally bulldozing and demolishing remnants from the past belong to a terrorist organization called Islamic State in Syria. Are we to follow their example instead of the examples of Italy and Egypt? Has our country gone that far down the road of political correctness that it leads to mindless, needless destruction of our own culture and history?

Again, we have National Parks that commemorate great battles of the Civil War. Are they to be destroyed also? I can tell you one thing, it is going to take a monumental effort to eradicate the thousands, if not tens of thousands, of memorials to the Confederate dead from our tragic Civil war. They are everywhere in the South. It will cost tens of millions of dollars that will be far better spent on other things like poverty, crime, hunger, homelessness, etc.

The actions of one man do not represent the good people of the South. To most in the South the Confederate Flag does not commemorate hatred, but heritage. Your right to be offended stops with my first amendment rights. If we banned everything that offended someone, we would no longer be the land of the free and the home of the brave, but instead the land of the easily offended and home of the intolerant. Love the Confederate Flag or hate the Confederate Flag, this is still a free country. Where does this political correctness end? Next up, the American Flag? It’s already happening.