Plumbing the Depths of Ignorance

Some of the controversy about the KKK / battle flag of the Army of Northern Virginia is based on god knows what. In a nearby town in my liberal county, a young fellow, saying he is nonpartisan, has raised the KKK flag to demonstrate his rights under the First Amendment.  From what I can tell, this man is not a racist or white supremacist. He's a Civil War reenactor who wears the Union (or American) uniform. I'm uninformed, but I'm guessing that the reenactment movement teaches that both sides of the Civil War, no matter how evil their cause, were equally admirable. General Grant did not agree. He thought that the South fought extremely well but for the worst cause possible.

Our local flag raiser seems to be too unschooled to have read that the battle flag was not the flag of the Confederate States. He's too out of touch with facts to understand that the KKK adopted the Virginia battle flag in the last century and made it popular. He doesn't seem to grasp how a KKK flag or a Nazi flag might offend people. Of course the First Amendment gives him the right to fly on private property his own choice of flag, no matter how foolish. (I'm glad he doesn't live across the street from me.)