Why is the Confederate Battle flag so important when it can appear to be so innocuous?
It is a symbol and symbols represent ideas.
One idea is about heritage. To honor the idea that this flag used by ancestors who defended their way of life is understandable. But there is little room for doubt that what Confederates were fighting for represented the divine superiority of the white race, or rather the inferiority of the colored. This attitude of racial dominance sits at the heart of southern consciousness as the proud mark of a people who internally cannot be vanquished even in defeat.
We could psychoanalyze that immigrant descendants displaced by post feudal English lords have an inheritable propensity to orient themselves as land owners. This behavior of ownership is a major theme in agricultural society for to farm you must have things which can include other human beings.
Recently, TV Land has pulled reruns of Dukes of Hazzard in light of the recent uproar over the Confederate flag, which is emblazoned on the roof of the show’s iconic General Lee 1969 Dodge Charger, The Hollywood Reporter has confirmed.
“In a interview with THR, Dukes of Hazzard star John Schneider defended the series’ use of the flag. “Labeling anyone who has the flag a ‘racist’ seems unfair to those who are clearly ‘never meanin’ no harm,'” he said. His co-star Ben ‘Cooter’ Jones has also come out in defense of the flag, saying it represents the “indomitable spirit of independence.”
“independence.”
Southerner’s are not ‘American’s’ from the southern region but rather they more closely identify as descendants of the Confederate rebels who still will not yield to the Yankees. Identifying the northern states as a foreign power to build and maintain the ‘us and them’ mentality that has existed ever since the surrender at Appomattox. These Southerners will maintain that even with formal surrender of the political institution will not deter the movement of their separate cultural institution where race as well as gender is not to be intermingled in accordance with Scripture.
Ridiculous you say, no one’s still fighting the Civil War except historical reenactors.
If you ever meet someone from the south who truly identifies themselves as being from the south you will notice how they identify themselves with the south. “We do things different around here”, “this land has been our land for generations” are common assertions that represent this non compliance with mainstream American consciousness, with ‘Yankee ways’.
The Reconstruction was hijacked by the powerful elite that allowed the racist attitudes to remain in the form of Jim Crow laws. It was an unspoken understanding among southerners that the war had not defeated them and the ‘symbol’ of that pride is the Confederate Battle Flag that signifies how the “battle” continues.
As the saying goes “the South will rise again”.
To try and understand this attitude we should consider that America is generally a nation of rebels from monarchy and the rule of kings. So when one identifies their personal struggles with the southern culture they join in what appears to be fundamentally an American value. But there is a price for this ready-made philosophy of life in the overwhelming influence of religious traditions.
Rural areas typically have little access to educational resources and the Bible can be used as rudimentary system of community organization and guidance through its use of authority driven narratives. Using such concepts however Southerner’s tend to segregate themselves from the mainstream principle of cultural authority resting in the will of the people and not in the divine.
To argue that the will of the people may be to use divine guidance instead still negates the core concept of self-determination free from the religious persecution of church dogma.
In the same respect a nation cannot be united under two flags or two different concepts of freedom.
The Grasshopper 
