As momentum against Confederate flags on statehouse grounds and on license plates picks up steam, conservative pundit and entrepreneur Bill Kristol wonders exactly how far the slippery slope will go:
The Left's 21st century agenda: expunging every trace of respect, recognition or acknowledgment of Americans who fought for the Confederacy.
— Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) June 23, 2015
What's great about this tweet is that while obviously there's more to "the Left's" agenda than this (pre-K, climate change, income inequality, blah blah blah), Kristol isn't actually wrong about its positions. Most people on the American left really do think that fighting for the Confederacy — a country founded for the purpose of maintaining slavery — was morally wrong and unworthy of recognition. The United States has historically been very unusual in its official commemoration of the leaders of a failed rebellion against the government, and the story behind that commemoration is one of a rather sordid bargain in which white Americans from the North and the South agreed to sweep the interests of black Americans under the rug. The stability of that "compromise" is now coming undone, and rightly so.
