War by other means

When Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered his Confederate flag at Appomattox 150 years ago, the Civil War did not truly end. It smoldered for generations, like a low-grade fever, sometimes flaring in the unimaginable violence of Reconstruction, the Jim Crow era, and the civil rights struggle. It smolders still. In a piece in The Atlantic titled "The Civil War Isn't Over," historian David Blight recently pointed out that the most fundamental conflict between the Union and the rebels was never fully resolved: the balance of power between the federal government and the states. That, at bottom, has been what the Confederate flag has represented to those who held it dear: Defiance. The refusal to surrender, despite a long series of defeats to the "Northern aggressors" and their liberal ideas and values — universal equality, social change, and centralized government as a force for good. The Stars and Bars is the flag of "states' rights," an upraised finger that says: Don't come to our state and tell us what to do.

Another sickening act of violence has shamed politicians into distancing themselves from the rebel flag itself, but the rebellion against federal power will go on. Today, the revolt is not limited to the South; it takes the form of indignant opposition to same-sex marriage, any form of gun control, ObamaCare, federal poverty programs, immigration, climate-change regulation, and Common Core educational standards. In a very real sense, the country is still at war with itself. We're split into red and blue, rural and urban, religious and secular. The electorate, Congress, and the Supreme Court are all utterly polarized. Divided we stand; yet somehow, we stumble forward.

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