Editor, Gazette-Journal:

I want to agree with Mr. Crowe (“Thought police,” Dec. 29 Readers Write) that many, especially the SCV, see the Battle Flag of the Army of Northern Virginia as representing their cultural heritage. While I didn’t disparage the SCV, the point here is that the cultural heritage that the flag represents is one of human enslavement.

As Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens said, “… the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition.” Stephens said that white supremacy was the cornerstone of the Confederate nation. Had the Confederacy succeeded in its war of succession, statues of Robert E. Lee and the Confederate flag, the “Stars and Bars” or its successors (but not necessarily the Battle Flag), would be as acceptable in the Confederacy as statues of George Washington and the American flag are in the United States.

The South chose to start a war of sec...