You May Be a Hypocrite

"We can't legislate morality" said Indian River County, Florida's Superintendent of Schools yesterday at a school board workshop.   The suggestion had arisen last month after some students at the Freshman Learning Center in Vero Beach printed a racist flier that included the Confederate flag.
The board found no interest in banning the symbol even though the district is under a federal desegregation order calling for a more equitable school system for minority students.

Legislating morality in the schools often appears prominent however when it comes to student behavior of all sorts, but this is Florida.  This is The South.  There are a million excuses and of course the idea that a symbol means different things to different people.  To me a battle flag of a group that flew it during an armed attack on the United States of America represents treason.  Your view may be different, but if your view is that it is a benign symbol of  Southern civilization, you may be a hypocrite.

Don't get me wrong, I will stand up for free speech without hesitation, but ask your school board whether they would look the other way at ISIS recruiting posters, at Marxist and Soviet symbols or nearly anything offensive to most forms of Christianity and you'll wait a long time to hear ."We can't legislate morality."  Show up at school with a "Jesus Sucks" T Shirt and watch them legislate morality.

One board member questioned the idea of the flag as a hate symbol at all and wondered how people are being taught it's hateful, another asked whether the display of that symbol was even detrimental to the learning environment as though learning was the goal and not learning the truth.  The truth is that it was the flag of  insurrection, of armed aggression against the US government and the battle  flag of a country built on slavery and human misery.

Is there a difference between a picture in a history book and a racist screed being passed out in school?  Is there a difference between a swastika in a movie about WW II and hanging one in your window or wearing an armband to school?  Is the solution, as one board member suggested, to "have a conversation?"  

Well go ahead, have a conversation, get your story and your excuses straight and present a unified front, but sooner or later people are going to refuse to shake your hand, to vote for you, to be seen with you in public.  You're on the wrong side of honesty and decency and education, for that matter -- and the name Vero may mean "True" but you still may be a hypocrite.