the voung man’s attempted robbery to arnlegislator who serves on the commission,rnI was told, “If he [Manzanares] was anrnAnglo, the poliee wouldn’t have pulledrntheir guns so quickly.” The HumanrnRights Commission is obviously too busyrnauditing racial attitudes to take noticernof the human rights abuses wrought byrnthieves and murderers.rnWilliam Grigg is a columnist for thernDaily I lerald in Provo, Utah.rnLetter From thernLower Rightrnby John Shelton ReedrnCapture the Flag,rnPartirnIn an earlier letter I cheered my buddyrnChris’s suggestion that announcementsrnat the 1996 Atlanta Olympics be givenrnin both Southern and Yankee Englishrnbut pointed out that on preliminaryrnform Atlanta’s civic leaders are unlikelyrnto cotton to the idea. I didn’t mentionrnanother of Chris’s proposals, one they’rernguaranteed to like even less: he wants tornfly the Stars and Bars at the Games. Myrnfirst inrpulsc is to unleash a rebel yell forrnthat proposition, too, but let’s thinkrnabout it a bit before we write MaynardrnJackson.rnChris observes that the Catalans gotrnto fly their flag in Barcelona, and personallyrnI like the idea of the South as arnsort of American Catalonia. But wernhave a problem that the Catalans don’t.rnUnlike their historic symbols, which arcrnsigns of national unity, ours are mostlyrnthe symbols of the Confederacy, whichrnthese days signify and inspire mostly discord.rnWitness the fact that many of Georgia’srnand virtually all of Atlanta’s politicalrnbigshots are now campaigning to endrnwhat the Atlanta Journal-Constitutionrncalls the “disgrace” of including thernConfederate battle flag as part of thernGeorgia state flag. Far from wairting tornfly the rebel flag at the Olympics, thesernfolks want it completely out of sight beforernthe television cameras come to thernCity Too Busy to I late and beam it outrnworldwide. The Journal-Constitution srneditorial cartoonist even did a scurrilousrnlittle number juxtaposing the Nazi flagrnflying over the 1936 Olympics and thernSouthern Cross waving over the 1996rnGames. (The cartoonist, a young manrnfrom Seattle, claims he got some deathrnthreats, but not nearly enough to suitrnme.)rnAll the arguments for and againstrnchanging have been aired at length inrnthe Georgia press, and they even spilledrnover to the editorial page of USA Today,rnwhich gratuitously urged Georgiarnto rejoin the Union, then printed thernpredictable letters. Most of the pros andrneons you can probably reconstruct forrnyourself, and I won’t rehash them here.rnIf you have trouble seeing the case forrnkeeping things as they are, write a grouprncalled Northeast Georgians for the Flagrnand Southern Heritage and ask for arncopy of their brochure (Box 2731,rnAthens, Georgia 30612—send them arnbuck or two to cover expenses). Thernanti-flag arguments are pretty obvious, Irnshould think; we’ve heard them in arndozen other disputes.rnOne complication in the Georgiarncase, however, is that the present flagrnwas adopted only in 1956—to symbolizernresistance to desegregation, its opponentsrnclaim. Its defenders find in thernrecord of the legislative deliberations nornsigns of that motive and a good manyrnindications that the point was to honorrnthe Confederacy in light of the upcomingrnCivil War centennial. Those whornobject to honoring the Confederacy, ofrncourse, don’t see that as an improvement.rnAnother factor that gives the Georgiarndispute a special twist is the nature ofrnAtlanta. The Peach State’s capital is thernkind of place where you get off an airplanernand confront a sign that saysrn”Welcome to Atlanta: A World-Class,rnMajor-League City.” (I mean, really:rntry substituting London or Tokyo orrneven Los Angeles or Budapest in thatrnline to see how pitiful it is.) When Atlanta’srnConvention and Visitors Bureaurnrecently hired MeCann-Erikson to deviserna slogan for the place, the best thernMad. Ave. boys could come up with wasrnthe insipid “Atlanta: Hometown to thernWofld.” (My buddy Martin did betterrnoff the top of his head with “Atlanta:rnThe South Stops Here.”) Anvway, arntown this insecure doesn’t want to emphasizernits true, provincial identity orrnthe ambiguity of its history.rnNevertheless, it seems that mostrnwhite Georgians don’t share their betters’rndistaste for the flag of their ancestors.rnA Mason-Dixon poll last July, forrninstance, showed that 66 percent of allrnwhite Georgians—even 61 percent of allrnwhite Atlantans—wanted to keep thernpresent flag and that only 29 percentrnwanted to scrap it. Not even many blackrnGeorgians dislike it, if we can believernthe polls: fully 59 percent of them wantrnto retain the current flag. Given this,rnand the fact that Atlanta still doesn’trnmuster a majoritv in the Georgia legislature,rnthe political handicappers I’verntalked to predict that the flag will be retained.rnBut one Atlanta pol told me atrnsupper one night that he and his friendsrnwill simply n(jt fly the state flag, if theyrncan’t get it changed back to what itrnwas before 1956. (He didn’t know, ofrncourse, and apparently hardly anyonernelse docs either, that the old Georgiarnflag is actually the Stars and Bars, thernConfederate national flag proper, withrnthe state seal—and motto, “Wisdom,rnjustice, moderation”—substituted forrnthe stars. It was adopted in 1879 withrnthe restoration of home rule after Reconstruction.)rnAnyway, when these conflicts arise,rnmy first reaction—and surely that ofrnmany sensible people—is always to wonderrnwhether our politicians and journalistsrndon’t have something better to do.rnAfter all, it’s not as if Alabama andrnGeorgia and North Carolina don’t havernsome real problems, even a few realrnproblems of race relations. I feel likern”Soapy Sam” Wilberforce, 19th-centuryrnbishop of Oxford, confronted with a bitterrncontroversy over whether priestsrncould wear chasubles. “What a plague itrnis,” His Lordship complained, “that peoplerncannot have common sense as wellrnas earnestness.”rnBut like the chasuble question, this isrnimportant, if not in itself, at least in thernmatter of what it stands for. The Confederaternflag is as offensive to some ofrnour fellow citizens as Romish vestmentsrnwere to some of Wilberforec’s, and inrnmany of the same ways. Like their Victorianrncounterparts, our latter-dayrnRoundheads see scraps of colored clothrnas representing doctrines they find repugnant,rndoctrines once thought to havernbeen extirpated for all time. Thosernof a more Whiggish disposition—likernAtlanta’s leaders—see the flag as anrnemblem of opposition to progress andrnMARCH 199.V39rnrnrn