Interesting Numbers
By: Al Benson Jr.Every time you see a Confederate battle flag, with its St. Andrew’s Cross, you are viewing a Christian symbol
They say you can tell the difference between an optimist and a pessimist by the way they both view a glass of water. The optimist looks at it and says it is half full. The pessimist looks at that same glass and cries that it is half empty.
Over the years I have been generally pessimistic, but I have been learning, and still am, that at least for the long haul I need to be more optimistic because, no matter how bad things get, the Lord is still in control of human events and nothing can happen outside of His will or knowledge. And the day will come when He will set all the wrongs to right. His justice will prevail, whether I see it in this life or not.
You can often view poll numbers and survey results the same way, either optimistically or pessimistically. Back in 2000, (seems like ancient history now) there was a big fuss about the Confederate flag being taken off the state house in South Carolina. There was even a big march to protest that action. My wife and I went to it.
According to certain black radical groups the Confederate flag flying atop the state house in Columbia had absolutely ruined the lives of countless generations of blacks in the state. Why they just couldn’t function at all with that "evil" flag up there. So the flag had to come down, lest the black community in Columbia cease to function as a viable entity. Taken to its ridiculous conclusions that’s about what their argument said. So, with a little conniving on the part of some of the state legislators who had promised to keep it up there, the flag came down, only to be placed at another spot on the state house grounds that was just as visible, even more so, because it was now almost at eye level, on a regulation flagpole. The radicals were not happy so they boycotted the state, which actually did it little if any harm, but it made the radicals look good to their constituency and so the dollars kept flowing in.
At any rate, with that tidbit of history in mind, the Annenberg School of Communication did a study in 2000 which used analysis from more than 5500 Americans dealing with the issue of the Confederate flag. The numbers were interesting.
It turned out that, nationally, 51% of the people wanted the Confederate flag taken down from the state house in South Carolina, but the other 49% wanted it left alone. So the country as a whole was pretty nearly evenly split on the flag issue. Naturally there was more support for the flag among Southerners, 59% wanted it left alone. Surprisingly, nationally, 26% of blacks wanted the flag left alone.
Another interesting statistic–older people were less likely to support leaving the Confederate flag up than were younger ones, except in the South, where that age distinction pretty much disappeared.
You can look at this in several ways, which I don’t have space to analyze at this point in depth. However, you can note that, nationwide, almost half of those polled had no problem with the Confederate flag. Considering the massive cultural genocide attacks perpetrated on Southern symbols across the country, with reams of media coverage as to how "evil" Confederate symbols are, almost half the population still had no real problem with them, indicating that the anti-Southern hate-mongers have not really done as good a job as they would like to have. Not to worry though, they have no intention of quitting anytime soon, so the heritage violations will continue apace.
Another item worthy of note is the fact that more young people seemed to be having less problems with Confederate symbols. This also does not bode well for the anti-Southern culture killers, as it indicated that the campaign of cultural genocide being waged in government schools against any and all things Confederate has not met with the overwhelming success they could have hoped for. Hence, they must try even harder to kill the memory of anything Confederate. They are already meeting opposition and for them to clamp down even more will, in many cases, generate further opposition. One comment here to note this–I notice Dixie Outfitter Confederate tee shirts all over the place now, mostly worn by young folks. Five years ago I almost never saw one outside of at a Southern heritage conference. So the anti-Southern culture killers are getting a reaction not quite to their liking–poor babies!
And, to get to the crux of the matter, every time you see a Confederate battle flag on a tee shirt, with its St. Andrew’s Cross, you are viewing a Christian symbol, which must really get their goat, because, in the final analysis, the eventual destruction of anything Christian is really where all of this is at. So I guess, in the long run, I’m really more of an optimist than I first thought I was. For, ultimately, the battle is the Lord’s and He will win it, and what’s worse for the ungodly, He will even use their own efforts to defeat them!
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