As far as war memorials . . . Have you visited sites in Western Europe, including Germany, where German Soldiers killed in battle are buried? Have you seen any swasticas, or WWII German flags there? Nope, that didn't happen. Not on identified grave sites, not on memorials for the unknown, not on the monuments at those sites.
Let me start by saying that I'm perfectly fine with them removing the flag from the SC Capitol building. It's hard to define that the timing of the Confederate Battle's appearance on that lawn as something other than rooted in a "screw you" to the Desegregation movement. But, I disagree with your analogy of the display of that flag to those of The Third Reich. Such flags are not absent in Germany because of some sense of decency, but by laws (passed with the influence of the victors in the war) out of a desire to try and stamp out any remaining pockets of German Nationalism after the war's end as the Nazi party and any imagery associated with it were made illegal. Such bans in other EU countries were more an understandable reaction to the harms inflected on them by those marching under that flag. Such issues with the Confederacy were a little more tricky as it was an internal conflict and the "They" where part of "Us". There was not the sort of vilification of the Confederacy that was aimed at the Nazis, nor should there have been. This notion is famously encapsulated by Abraham Lincoln's "Better angles of our nature" quote made in an effort to fend off the conflict:
"We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature."
The move to not demonize the Confederacy post-war started at Appomattox Court House, with notably mild surrender terms that Lee said would "have a very happy effect on my army." Lincoln was smart enough to know that while the Confederacy was on the wrong sides of the issues that triggered the war, vilification after-the-fact wasn't going to help matters once the shooting stopped.
While I agree that reversing things like the display of the battle flag on the Capitol lawn in SC, with documented roots as a counter-reaction to the Civil Rights Movement, are worth consideration, I think other anti-Confederacy reactionism is WAY off base. Barring the sale of items predominately bearing the flag at places like the Gettysburg Visitor's Center? Really? Barring that one may be placed on the grave of a Confederate soldier? Really?
But this is moving past the flag itself too. This news item really upset me:
Birmingham city officials take steps to remove Confederate monument at Linn Park This has nothing to do with the flag. It's nothing more than an attempt to purge history. I was born, and live, in a part of the country where our larger cities name their parks "Lincoln" and "Grant". My direct-paternal 3rd great grandfather was part of Sherman's March and died of small pox in Savannah after completing that trek to the sea. One of my wife's great-grandfathers (not 3rd or 2nd, but first) was part of a Kentucky Confederate cavalry unit (being a schizophrenic State whose citizens fought on both sides) who was part of Morgan's Raiders that was captured trying to re-cross the Ohio River after a raid into that state and spent a few years as a POW in Camp Douglas outside of Chicago (not far from today's Grant Park) that was known as the North's "Andersonville". I've found out these facts from the genealogy work that I have done in recent years.
But had my wife's great grandfather perished as a result of attempting to flee his Union pursuers at Buffington Island, Ohio, or been one of the estimated 6,000+ POW prisoners that had died at Camp Douglas due to disease, starvation, or exposure... I don't think for a minute that the deaths of either one of these two men would have been more or less worthy of memorialization than the other.
Should this Confederate memorial, located in Chicago, marking what's considered that largest mass grave in the Western Hemisphere, be likewise removed because some might be offended by it?
