What we cannot be proud of is our roots in the Confederate States of America. Pride in the Confederacy is irresponsible, it is dangerous, and it is dishonest. Lay aside the revisionist history you were fed in the sixth grade, and open a book. Southern historian Gordon Rhea can lay it out for you right now:
“The battle flag was never adopted by the Confederate Congress, never flew over any state capitols during the Confederacy, and was never officially used by Confederate veterans’ groups. The flag probably would have been relegated to Civil War museums if it had not been resurrected by the resurgent KKK and used by Southern Dixiecrats during the 1948 presidential election.
White Supremacists Without Borders
The end of white rule in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and South Africa, they believe, foreshadowed an apocalyptic future for all white people: a “white genocide” that must be stopped before it’s too late. To support this view, they cite the murders of white farmers in South Africa since the end of apartheid.
.. In recent years, extremists have distilled the notion of white genocide to “the mantra,” parts of which show up on billboards throughout the South, as well as in Internet chat rooms. It proclaims “Diversity = White Genocide” and “Diversity Means Chasing Down the Last White Person,” blaming multiculturalism for undermining the “white race.”
Republicans Tread Carefully in Criticism of Confederate Flag
Mr. Romney took a similar position when he ran in South Carolina’s primary in 2008. But Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas, who was the runner-up in that contest and is a candidate again in 2016, suggested at the time that no one from outside the state should dictate what South Carolina did with the flag. That position, which Mr. Huckabee reiterated Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” is similar to the posture that both George W. Bush and Senator John McCain took in the 2000 nominating race, which Mr. Bush won.
Slavery’s Long Shadow
Its authors — who are not, by the way, especially liberal — explored a number of hypotheses, but eventually concluded that race is central, because in America programs that help the needy are all too often seen as programs that help Those People: “Within the United States, race is the single most important predictor of support for welfare. America’s troubled race relations are clearly a major reason for the absence of an American welfare state.”
.. And what do these states have in common? Mainly, a history of slaveholding: Only one former member of the Confederacy has expanded Medicaid, and while a few Northern states are also part of the movement, more than 80 percent of the population in Medicaid-refusing America lives in states that practiced slavery before the Civil War.
And it’s not just health reform: a history of slavery is a strong predictor of everything from gun control (or rather its absence), to low minimum wages and hostility to unions, to tax policy.