I am going to go against what seems to be the wave of public opinion, including that of prominent Republicans, by urging South Carolina to keep the Confederate flag. I also encourage people to circumvent Amazon.com's and eBay's bans on Confederate flag merchandise by looking for alternate distribution channels. Let somebody other than Amazon and eBay collect the commissions on the sales.
The reason is simple: if we go along with repudiation of the Confederate flag, then (alleged until proven guilty) murderer Dylann Roof wins. We will have allowed him and the Ku Klux Klan on one side, and race hustlers like the Southern Poverty Law Center and Al Sharpton on the other, to hand the Confederate flag over to white supremacists to use as their symbol. There is even conversation about removing the names of Confederate generals such as Robert E. Lee from Army bases. Al Sharpton, of course, supports this agenda, even though he, unlike General Lee, was at least partially responsible for two incidents of racist violence (Crown Heights and Freddy's Fashion Mart).
Robert E. Lee never participated in, much less led, a KKK rally around a black-owned store in a Caucasian neighborhood. He therefore compares very favorably to Al Sharpton, who personally called the owner of Freddy's Fashion Mart a "white interloper" while his followers threatened to set fire to the store, and one finally did. Come to think of it, it would be instructive to determine whether Lee ever used the N-word (even when it was socially acceptable) in contrast to Al Sharpton, who applied it to New York mayor David Dinkins.
Sharpton has also often used colorful language for white people in general and Jews in particular.
