Argument
"Since the Ku Klux Klan fly the Confederate flag, it has become a symbol of hatred, racism and intolerance. We cannot let our state (or school or whatever) project an image of racism by flying a Confederate battle flag or something that contains the Confederate battle flag."

First, many in the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) do not fly the Confederate battle flag. In fact, only a small number actually use a Confederate flag. However, we are told that KKK bylaws require the U.S. flag and the Christian flag to be present at every event. Most people are not aware that the largest KKK membership is in the North and it has been that way since the early 1900s. Mr. Boyd Lewis, a Klan expert who spoke at DeKalb College in Atlanta, states that at the height of Klan power, "Indiana had the largest Klan population with over 2 million members between 1915-1916," (71). Most KKK groups prefer to use a U.S. flag or a Christian flag, yet oddly enough, no one is calling for the permanent censorship of those symbols!

Americans have been programmed, by the liberal media, into believing that the KKK is only a "Southern Thing" and that only Southern symbols must pay for the Klan's transgressions. A free-lance photographer and friend once related with frustration at how the newspapers never buy or use his photographs if they show the Klan carrying a U.S. flag. "They only want to use the photographs that show a Confederate flag." Based on the magnitude of media bias that would have us believe the Confederate flag and the Klan go hand-in-hand, although incorrect, it is understandable why people have the perceptions they do. However, those perceptions are based on false information, and it is the perception that must be changed, not the symbol that has been victimized by the perception.

At one time, man had the perception that the earth was flat. This was because his eyes were giving his brain false information, which was also fed by the many stories told and retold by sailors at sea. However, once we acquired accurate geographical information, we were forced to change our perception and accept the fact that the earth was not flat, but round. We must likewise change our false perceptions of Confederate symbols as being symbols of the Klan, when it truth, they are not.

Second, the use of a symbol by a person or group, does not convey the characteristics of that person or group to that symbol. For example, Malcolm X and the nation of Islam were indisputably, the black equivalent of David Duke and the Klan. Both lived and preached racial hatred. Both claimed to have found religion and converted. If the Confederate flag symbolizes the Klan's white racism against blacks, then we must interpret the "X" of Malcolm X, emblazoned on the clothes of many black consumers, as being symbolic of Malcolm X's black racism against whites. Intolerance of one symbol insures the intolerance of the other.

Bibliography:
71. The DeKalb Collegian, May 17, 1995, vol 8, issue 17.