The Governor of South Carolina, Nikki Haley, is showing leadership and courage today, in asking the State Of South Carolina to remove the Confederate flag from the State Capitol. Now Senator Graham has decided that it is time to take down that flag.

I wish other so-called leaders of her political party were as honest and courageous as Governor Haley. She immediately recognized once apprised of the facts regarding the hate based attacks on the AME Church in Charleston, that the crime was a hate crime.

There have been far too many Republican candidates for President who have made lame excuses for the rampage by young Mr. Roof. We have heard that it was an accident, we have heard that there is a war of Christians, we have heard that it is President Obama’s fault, we have heard that it was evil, we have heard that the Confederate flag that Roof brandished is part of the heritage of South Carolina.

The Confederate flag is a symbol used by white supremacy groups. It is a symbol of slavery. For all of those who doubt what the flag and the Confederacy represents, all you have to do is to read the writings of the two top leaders of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis and Alexander Stephens. Both of those gentlemen explained in unambiguous terms that the war, the Civil War was about maintaining slavery. In no uncertain terms they wrote and spoke about the inferiority of the Negro.

The flag is an insult to every African-American. It is an awful reminder of the day when their ancestors were sold at the Charleston slave market.

Some weak kneed white conservatives will admit that the flag is insulting and remind the audience that if you are a Christian you should love your neighbor and of course you would not want to hurt your neighbor. People like Erick Erickson fails to explain that it is not just Christians who should treat their neighbor with love. He claims that there will be a big run of confederate flags. Erickson in his blog on June 22, 2015 still uses the name Yankee, derisively.

Someone should tell him that the Civil War ended 150 years ago and also please remind him and others of his ilk that we are the United States of America. No state has the right to discriminate based upon a person’s color. No state should have the right to fly a flag of a group of states that attempted to secede. The leaders of that movement were traitors. They wanted to maintain an inhumane and immoral system of man’s inhumanity to his fellow man.

The flag belongs in a museum or in a person’s home or in a cemetery devoted to those who fought for the Confederacy.

My own great-grandfather fought in the Civil War. He owned no slaves. His memorabilia from his life and service for North Carolina is in a local museum, and that is where it belongs. The past is our past. We can’t change that.

Well, ladies and gentlemen, my fellow Americans, the fact is that a whole lot of Republican candidates get campaign money from hate groups and from the same hate group that Mr. Roof associated with. What kind of message are they sending by accepting money from such groups? It is because they receive money as campaign contributions from such racists and bigots that their voices are stilled in recognizing the source of evil that these contributions come from. We need to demand that every Republican candidate return any financial contributions from any recognized hate group.

Are the Republican candidates, except for Kasich and perhaps Graham, seem to be running for the President of the Confederacy instead of running to be President of the United States.

Unless we want a race war, we need to repudiate hate and hate groups. As part of that effort we need to take down the flag of the Confederacy and just fly the one flag that we swear allegiance to and that is the American flag. We are Americans. The dream of the Confederacy died in 1865. We need to permanently bury that war and move on.

As a test of our candidates for President all of them should be asked about how they stand on the Confederate flag? We should demand of all of the candidates an affirmation that they are against bigotry and the hate that white supremacy represents. If any of the candidates refuses to do so we should reject them at the polls. It is time to move forward in America to a time when every American will feel safe from racism in their homes, schools or churches.