Let There Be No Wavering Over Not Waving This Flag

The Latin expression Dum Spiro, Spero stands for “While I Breathe, I Hope.” One could conceivably interpret this in any number of ways, but to maintain optimism for the entirety of one’s life would surely be a logical translation of this wise phrase.

It is the state motto of South Carolina, and a grand one as these things go. Exactly why a state has need of a motto is a different matter entirely--California’s, for those who have forgotten or never knew, is Eureka (“I Have Found It!”)--but if a belief in what one’s region represents is meaningful at all, then an emblem of hope being run up a flagpole is something one would probably salute.

Next month, the leading contenders to become the land of the free’s next president will travel to South Carolina for a pivotal primary election there. As they cheerfully serve pancakes from behind the counters of Calhoun County coffee shops, or make Charleston chitchat, or stump the state from Sassafras Mountain near the northern border to the southernmost tip of Hilton Head, they will speak out to Americans on what they believe in and why they merit support and respect.

And if any dare tread near the Capitol building in Columbia, they will be asked about the contemptible flag of the Confederacy that waves above it, and whether they pledge allegiance to any region for which this flag still stands.

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In late December of this year, South Carolina will observe--not celebrate, we trust--the 140th anniversary of its decision not to be a United State. It was the very first territory to double-cross the union and the founding fathers thereof, doing so just shy of four months before the 1861 bombardment of Fort Sumter, which began the War Between the States.

At the heart and soul of South Carolina’s secession was a feeling, worth fighting and dying for, that all Americans were absolutely not equal, no matter what the federal government decreed. So it is tragicomic when certain South Carolinians point to constitutional rights in their justification to fly any flag they please from the same stanchion as the Stars and Stripes, since that very document meant so little to their patriotic pride when the Dixie flag was originally sewn.

You can’t have it both ways, waving a banner of solidarity while simultaneously flying one of defiance.

Something on the order of 50,000 protesters assembled in Columbia’s streets on Jan. 17 of this year, trying to get it through some of South Carolina’s thickest skulls, lo these many years later, that a Confederate flag is not simply a symbol of heritage, but a symbol of disgrace. It is an insignia of the South’s greatest dishonor, its insistence that white meant right, that, on the basis of pigmentation, human beings could be bought and sold like barnyard creatures and farm implements.

When South Carolina was readmitted to this sovereignty in 1868, its officials swore to uphold the laws and principles of the land. Bygones were allowed to be bygones. Jefferson Davis was at first indicted for treason for presiding over the South’s insurgency, but he was never prosecuted. Robert E. Lee went directly from his military surrender to the presidency of a college, serving it honorably until his death.

To fly a flag because it symbolizes one’s devotion to the South means . . . what? That one still has quarrels with the East, West or North? If those governing South Carolina were paying tribute to what’s truly great about their state, its yellow jasmine or its lovely capes and inlets, then bless their hearts. But to rudely flap a gonfalon of slavery in the faces of African Americans who make up more than a quarter of South Carolina’s 3 1/2-million population--this is heartless indeed.

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When the candidates go to South Carolina in the coming weeks, they can show their true colors. They can say what they think of Arthur Ravenel, a state senator there who not only endorses the flag above the statehouse, but responded to an NAACP protest by calling it the “National Assn. of Retarded People.”

Al Gore, a proud Southerner, has decried the flying of the Confederate flag, and Bill Bradley is outspoken as to how it offends him. So one hopes a search for South Carolina votes will not soften their opinions. George W. Bush at long last expressed disapproval of the flag--eureka--but said flying it was something the people of South Carolina should decide for themselves, as did John McCain.

Equivocation isn’t called for here. This flag is shameful, and one should say so for as long as one breathes.

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Mike Downey’s column appears Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays. He can be reached at Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles 90053, or online at mike.downey@latimes.com.