The banning of the Confederate battle flag infuriates Fred Reed:
Why? Although a Southerner by raising, I would far prefer to live in New York City than in Memphis. Yet I value my boyhood in Virginia and Alabama. My ancestors go back to the house of Burgesses, and I remember long slow summer days on the Rappahannock and in the limestone of Athens, Alabama.
When the federal government and the talking heads want to ban my past — here, permit me to exit momentarily the fraudulent objectivity of literature — I hate the sonsofbitches.
A lot of people quietly hate the sonsofbitches.
To them, to us, the Confederate flag stands for resistance to control from afar, to meddling and instruction from people we detest. It is the flag of “Leave me the hell alone.” And this Washington, Boston, and New York will… not… do.