We are pretending that a part of our history never existed. Yeah, I understand the stigma attached to the flag, and feel that for all intents and purposes, it shouldn't be flown high in certain places. But if it is up in a strictly historical sense, I can't agree with the total eradication of the flag in question.
This country was built with blood. I grew up with a false sense of our nation's history. I was told the bullshit story that we came to this land and ate turkey with the Indians, and it was all happy. When I grew an interest to dig deeper and found out how our history with the native people actually went down, I was shocked and appalled.
The issue with slavery was mostly glossed over as well. I was taught about Civil Rights, but I didn't get any of the key details. I learned more about Civil Rights and slavery through my own will to learn outside of school.
Look, every religious or political symbol can be considered hateful or offensive depending on whose point of view you take. All we hear about the Civil War is the glossed over red and blue of it. We don't hear about the sheer brutality and the stand points of both sides. It wasn't 100% about slavery. I had family that fought on both sides, and it was one of the most brutal wars we've ever been apart of. People think Isis and Al Qaeda are something to fear, but nobody kills Americans better than Americans.
We need to stop making revisions to history to make ourselves look better. Our flaws should be permanent scars to be a stark reminder of who we have been and could be again at any point. It wouldn't take much for this country to fight at that level again.
If you believe in freedom, you can't tell a person they can't fly a flag, because you don't like it. It's an American right to hate within the law. There is a whole lot out there that offends me, but I won't do anything about it, as long as it isn't physically hurting me.
I have said it more than a hundred times. Tolerance is a double-edged sword, and you can't cherry pick things you can tolerate. I don't care if it is a stark reminder of something painful to you. If we eradicated everything that offended somebody, we'd have to blow the planet up.