EDITORIAL – Dialogue better than anti-art protests

An estimated 1,000 protestors from the Sons of Confederate Veterans and similar groups are… An estimated 1,000 protestors from the Sons of Confederate Veterans and similar groups are expected at Gettysburg College today to protest an art exhibit they say desecrates the sacred, hallowed, etc. legacy of the Confederate flag.

Both the college and the artist, John Sims, say the art exhibit is designed to start a dialogue about the nature of the ever-controversial flag. But its capstone will come at the opening, with a mock lynching of the flag on a 13-foot-tall gallows, according to an article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

It doesn’t matter if this “lynching” is good or bad art, which, not having seen the exhibit, we can’t say. It’s art, and it’s doing what art is supposed to do — push limits and play with self-expression.

What matters is that people who claim to respect Southern heritage and Southern history want to shut down a debate about a brutal and ugly part of their past.

Acknowledging history — the good with the bad, the triumphs and the wars, William Faulkner and Confederate VP Steven Alexander — is part of accepting history. All nations — except maybe Luxembourg — have checkered pasts, and the Confederacy’s was more than checkered. Slavery, secession: These are still controversial subjects that need open debate.

The Confederate flag, to many, stands not for the nation of slavery, but the nation for which their ancestors fought. And, if they want to voice this, they’re welcome to participate in the dialogue, not by overwhelming the 2,600-person college.

No one’s desecrating the soldiers who died for the Confederacy — Gettysburg is marked with memorials to all those who gave their lives for what they believed to be the right cause.

But now, 140 years later, history has shown that, painful as it is to say, many of them died for the wrong cause, a cause that shouldn’t be honored, even while they are.

Sims has a right to use the Confederate flag in his exhibit; the Sons of Confederate Veterans have a right to be angry about it. And the Sons should engage in the dialogue and acknowledge the legitimacy of Sims’ right, not protest and storm Gettysburg. After all, that didn’t work so well before.