Bonnie Blue or EU?

In the all too prevalent trend of poltroonery, Georgia has adopted a new state flag. Southern Christian Leadership Conference co-founder Joseph Lowery comments, "It's better than what it is, but it's not what it should be."

Lowery reflects the fundamental intransigence of the anti-Confederate movement. It makes sense: If you detest Confederate symbols, how can you accept their presence, no matter how marginal, on official materials?

The compromisers don't comprehend or don't care that anti-Confederates will be satisfied only when those symbols are "removed from a position of sovereignty," to quote the NAACP. I anticipate my state will soon face "economic sanctions" for its Confederate-esque flag.

At first glance, the new flag looks inspired by Michael Jackson's "We Are the World." The only thing missing is the proverbial kitchen sink.

Students of the Confederacy might discern another presence. The blue field with a circle of white stars around the state seal – might the new flag be an homage to the Bonnie Blue Flag? (Anti-Confederates may charge the stars signify white supremacist incorporation. I'm being only somewhat facetious.)

The Bonnie Blue possibility isn't out of hand. The flag's designer, Cecil Alexander, had a grandfather who fought for the Confederacy.

But Alexander's design might signify something else entirely. Its composition, down to the circular arrangement of the stars, corresponds to the banner of none other than the European Union.

It's an irony of Jabba the Hut proportions for the EU to have a flag with Confederate flair, but those continental consolidationists never cease to surprise. The Eurocrats aren't even surreptitious about their designs. European Commission President Romano Prodi recently stated regarding the Charter of Fundamental Rights: "[I]t will be possible to envisage calmly how to incorporate the Charter in the founding treaties of the Union. The Commission would like to see this happening as soon as possible." (Eurocracy's evils will be examined on a panel at this year's Austrian Scholars Conference.)

In a moment of inferential intensity one might contend Alexander's flag ingeniously honors Georgia's Confederate past while allusively portraying the federal emasculation of Georgia's sovereignty. Beneath its ostensible plainness is a representation of American federalism's decline and a call for renewed autonomy; to prompt citizens to observe the subordination of Europe's sovereignties to supranational governance and in their recoil reassert self-government in their own state.

This interpretation is probably erroneous. Mr. Alexander likely contemplated neither the Bonnie Blue Flag nor even less the European Union. The neatness with which they accord nevertheless contains an excellent utility in crystallizing the question before Georgians and their neighbors: Bonnie Blue or EU?

February 2, 2001

Myles Kantor lives in Boynton Beach, Florida.