NAACP's ominous campaign to eject the Confederate battle flag has metastasized to "Old Glory"

In the early 1990s, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was in trouble. Tired leadership and scandals had driven the organization into serious debt. It was forced to cut its staff drastically, from 250 to just 50.

Strained for funds, the group suffered another bleeding wound when its board of directors was forced to fire its new executive director, the Rev. Benjamin Chavis. He was caught spending $324,400 of NAACP funds as hush money in a sexual discrimination suit.

Drowning in internal corruption, the NAACP was desperate for a diversion. Its membership had lost interest in the organization's traditional issues; black teenage pregnancy, fatherless families, AIDS, crime, drugs, despair and joblessness.

It needed a hot-button issue that would stir emotions enough to rally the membership and their checkbooks. NAACP leaders found it flying peacefully over government buildings and land in the old Southern states -- the Confederate battle flag, a symbol they claim symbolizes slavery, racism, oppression, and white supremacy.

The NAACP, purportedly a civil rights organization dedicated to tolerance and diversity, expended endless man-hours passing resolution after resolution condemning the display of the Confederate battle flag. It pledged unlimited funds to prevent the flag from being displayed "in or on any public site or space, building, or any emblem."

In one blatantly bigoted resolution, the NAACP, claiming to represent "all Americans and decent people of this country and the world," declared the Confederate flag to be an emblem symbolizing "tyrannical evil" and a "blight upon the universe."

The NAACP has proven itself ignorant of Southern history. Judging from its members' growing obsession with all things Confederate, it appears the group simply hates the South, its white people, its heritage and its symbols.

To Southerners, the Confederate flag has nothing to do with slavery, racism, or white supremacy. It's a cherished symbol memorializing the South's heroic resistance to Northern political dominance. It recalls the proud military heritage of men who defended their families and homes in the South against the North's "Yankee invaders." It's a symbol of Southern heritage and proud traditions.

NAACP attackers argue that since the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) flies the Confederate flag, it is a symbol of hatred, racism and intolerance and, therefore, cannot be allowed.

Most in the KKK do not fly the Confederate battle flag. It was not displayed in KKK demonstrations until the late 1940s. The U.S. flag and the Christian flag are the KKK's flags of choice, and are the ones most often seen at KKK events.

Presidential candidates John McCain, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Edwards, Mitt Romney, Fred Thompson and Rudy Giuliani have joined the NAACP in denouncing the Confederate battle flag and have demanded its removal from all public buildings.

The Rev. Al Sharpton, who ran for president in 2004, said the Confederate flag represents "slavery, lynching, hate, murder, the epitome of an insult."

A curious person can't help but wonder how any of the above mentioned candidates would have acted if they had been president of the United States in 1898 during the Spanish-American War. Would they have rejected the many ex-Confederates who volunteered to serve in the U.S. military against the Spanish? Would they have refused the service of former Confederate Major Gen. Joseph "Fightin' Joe" Wheeler, who distinguished himself fighting the Spanish in Cuba? Wheeler was one of four former Confederate generals to later serve in the U.S. Army as generals. Wheeler commanded Teddy Roosevelt and his Rough Riders.

It's a historical fact that the Confederate battle flag does not and has never represented slavery. Slaves were not brought into this country under the Confederate flag. They were imported in Northern ships sailing under the United States Stars and Stripes.

Out of the 224 years slavery was legal in America, the Confederate battle flag existed during only four of those years. It is a historical fact that Southern soldiers who fought under the Confederate battle flag did not fight to protect slavery; most did not own slaves.

From a Southern population of more than 5 million whites, fewer than 350,000 were slave owners. The Confederates (my ancestors), fought to protect their families and homes.

English ships flying British flags took 5 million blacks from Africa and sold them all over the world. The Dutch, Portuguese, and Spanish did the same. Black Muslim raiders collected many of those slaves out of Africa.

Black Muslims were notorious slavers.

Over the course of 10 centuries, Muslim pirates cruised the African and Mediterranean coastlines, pillaging villages and seizing slaves. The taking of slaves in pre-dawn raids on unsuspecting coastal villages had a high casualty rate. It was typical of Muslim raiders to kill as many of the "non-Muslim" older men and women as possible so the preferred "booty" of only young men, women and children could be collected.

Young non-Muslim women were targeted because of their value as concubines in Islamic markets. Islamic law provides for the sexual interests of Muslim men by allowing them to take as many as four wives at one time and to have as many concubines as their fortunes allow.

Boys, as young as 9 or 10 years old, often were mutilated to create eunuchs who would bring higher prices in Middle East slave markets. Muslim slave traders created "eunuch stations" along major African slave routes so the necessary surgery could be performed. It is estimated that only a small number of the boys subjected to the mutilation survived after the surgery.

In recent years, the NAACP's ominous campaign against the Confederate Stars and Bars battle flag has metastasized into a hate crusade intent not only on destroying as much of the South's Confederate heritage and symbols as possible, but also our nation's Stars and Stripes.

NAACP anti-flag militants are starting to figure out that slavery existed far longer under the Stars and Stripes than under the Stars and Bars. Will they demand the banning of all U.S. flags from our federal and state governments?

Actually, the attacks on Old Glory have already begun.

On June 15, 2001, Fox News hosted a debate on the subject: Does the American flag symbolize freedom or racism? The debate was to focus on Tennessee state Rep. Henri Brooks, who refused to say the Pledge of Allegiance. (The Tennessee state legislature recites the pledge at the beginning of every session.) Brooks, who is black, told Fox news she would not recite the Pledge because, to her, the American flag "represents the former colonies that enslaved our ancestors."

Brooks added, "I believe that just to -- to stand up and salute that flag that waved over the colonies that enslaved us and did all the horrible things that the institution of slavery represented, would be a slap in the face to my ancestors. And I can't do that."

Brooks has a problem with her history. If she is protesting the flag that flew over "the former colonies that enslaved our ancestors," as she claims, then her beef in not with the United States Stars and Stripes. It's with England and the Union Jack of Great Britain.

One of the Fox News panelists was Dr. Julianne Malveaux, an economist, author and commentator. Malveaux, an outspoken liberal black columnist, quickly jumped into the debate, supporting Brooks' anti-pledge stand.

"I respect and admire Representative Brooks. I don't say the Pledge of Allegiance, either. When I hear you say, 'I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America,' and to the division for which it stands, two or three nations. Under whose God? Divisible, clearly, by race, by gender. With liberty for whom? And what is justice? For whom?

"So, I mean, I -- I will stand, and I have stood, and I've even put my hand over my heart because I think I have a little bit less courage than Representative Brooks, and I felt like I don't want to cause a disruption. But my lips can't move. And in fact, my heart beats a little more rapidly when I hear those words because I think of them as nothing but a lie. Just a lie."

In March 2007, Malveaux was appointed president of Bennett College for Women in Greensboro, N.C.

More recently, Barack Hussein Obama, junior United States senator from Illinois and candidate for the Democratic nomination in the 2008 presidential election, was caught on camera with "closed lips," neglecting to place his hand over his heart during the national anthem at Sen. Tom Harkin's steak fry event on Sept. 16, 2007, in Indianola, Iowa.

Obama's father (recently deceased) was a Muslim, as are his grandparents, who reside in Kenya. When Obama was 6, his  Muslim stepfather enrolled him in an Indonesian Muslim school.

Obama is the fifth African-American senator in U.S. history, and the only African-American in the U.S. Senate.

Conservative author and political pundit Ann Coulter summed it up rather quickly when she wrote, "But there is one problem with a total rejection of all things related to slavery: It was the Democratic Party that supported it. The Republican Party was formed for the specific purpose of opposing slavery. I'll start believing the Confederate battle flag hurts somebody's feelings as soon as the existence of the Democratic Party hurts their feelings, too.

"These are the rules -- and pay close attention, because they are completely arbitrary: 'Dixie' is bad because it uses Southern black dialect. Rap music, however, is good, even though it employs a black criminal dialect. The flag under which slavery flourished for almost a century is good. But the flag under which slavery existed for less than a decade is bad. One continent's slavery is good, but another continent's purchasing of those very slaves is bad. And for the final rousing conclusion: The party that supported slavery, leading to the Civil War, is good. But the party that was created expressly to oppose slavery is bad.

"This is pure demagoguery. The only purpose is to breed chaos and hatred, and to keep both blacks and whites off balance."

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