Playing politics – and worse — with history
I read a media report that said some of the protesters waving Confederate battle flags at President Obama in Oklahoma earlier this week arrived in vehicles with Texas license plates. Why am I not surprised?
The border crossers hail from a state where political leaders have made Obama-bashing a daily litany. The governor, when he was attorney general, built a political resume suing the president and still brags about it. Texas also is a state where the State Board of Education tried to rewrite history by claiming “states’ rights” as a more significant cause of the Civil War than the real reason – slavery.
The board fictionalized some social study curriculum standards more than four years ago, but the standards are receiving media attention again because they are now showing up in new textbooks. Thank goodness that schoolteachers who know better will have the final say in classrooms.
The Confederate flag wavers, of course, were exercising their constitutional right to cross the Red River and demean themselves. But would they have done so if President Obama were not the first African American to occupy the White House?
Not every defender of the Confederate flag is motivated simply by a sense of “heritage,” folks.
