ENSLAVING YOUR BROTHER IS CHRISTIAN THING TO DO?

By Juan Montoya
I didn't know what to think when I read Harlingen's Christopher brush's letter to the editor of the Brownsville Herald defending the Confederacy.
In particular, Brush defended the symbolism and motive behind what he claims is the Christianity and martyrdom behind the rebel battle flag. For that matter, Brush says that all symbolism associated with the confederacy is a treasured legacy of the South based upon the highest moral and civilized principles of not only the South, but of the entire country as well.
At first I was agog to think that anyone in our times would defend southern ideology on Christian principles. Then I was angry that someone could actually believe what they were writing and that they expected the rest of us to even consider adhering to that line of thought.
Then I got pissed.

What Brush advance, in a nutshell, said was that the rebel battle flag originated with the Christian martyrdom of Andre, Simon (Peter's) brother, who was killed by the Romans in Greece for preaching His word. Andrew chafed at the bit at being a vassal of the Roman empire and its idolatry. The progression, says, went on to Scottish King Angus in his struggle against the Northumbrians, a precursor to the English nation. Angus, apparently, chafed under the bit at at being a vassal to a superior English king.
That's the standard, Brush says, which led the Cross of Andrew (saltire) being adopted as the battle banner for the Army of Norther Virginia and the other Confederacy armies when they waged a civil war against the Union.
The logic (or illogic) Brush advances is that the southern states were merely defending the most "treasured ideas of the U.S. Constitution and the authors of the Constitution. "it represents individual from tyranny of a centralized government, the exact things the Constitution says was supposed keep America free from.
"The Texans before us found it worthy to make the ultimate sacrifice for it. Don't we owe it to them?," he asks.
Let me be blunt.
The battle flag of the Confederate armies was a symbol of the people in a region which had – as a spiritual foundation of its economic base –  the tacit acceptance of all good southern whites that they were superior to their black bothers. As such, they felt free to enslave them, to treat human beings as property, and to maintain them in a position of subservience and servitude.
Under the guise of a civilized (and self-serving) Christian dogma, they justified justify tearing a crying child from his weeping mother's bosom at a slave auction, flogging a salve who chafed under the bit (like Andrew and Angus), and keeping an entire people in a tenuous economic and social state that was dependent on the slaveowners' goodwill on pain of death.
You cannot sugar-coat slavery. In fact, the introduction of sugar cane to the plantations of the New World, and later, Louisiana, was only possible because black slave labor made it economically feasible. Slavery was the precursor of modern-day outsourcing to use slave labor to make your products competitive with your adversaries.
This is not a legacy, an image, or a heritage what we should glorify or emulate. What is there to honor about men who died in battle defending their (erroneous, it turns out)) God-given right to enslave their brethren? Does that sound like a worthy Christian ideal to you? Should we adore the standard they took with them to their most-deserved and appropriate defeat?
"Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth," the Good Word says in Exodus.

And the rebel battle flag is just that, a graven image that is based upon one of the most foul, most vile, systems ever devised by men to foist upon their fellow men. To hold it as a badge of honor is to spit upon the graves of those men whose lives were taken by these wayward renegades who called themselves the Confederate States of America.

As I said, before, first surprise, then anger, then revulsion. Let's try charity now.

There are many things we admire in Southern culture. It's hard to find a more hospitable, genteel, hardworking, church-going  folk. They share their homes, their food and wherewithal without thinking twice. And the region's ability to rise materially above its defeat is a lesson in basic survival. 

But not all that existed in the past is worth retaining. There is no longer any south or north. There are blacks, whites, reds, browns and yellows. There's just all of U..S.  

Mr. Brush: Don't remain a slave to the past because the rest of us have to live with you in the present.

Que batalla con ustedes!