So I've seen a lot of this phrase thrown around over the Confederate flag debacle over the past few months. Or the similar "respecting the results of the referendum". These phrases have been used recently to either justify decisions by elected officials to vote for or sign off on the Confederate flag as the flag of the South, and before that it was thrown around a lot immediately after the result of the referendum, seemingly as a way to ensure elected officials would not formally oppose the change as they'd be "overturning the will of the people".
But what
really is the will of the people regarding the Confederate flag? Well, let's look at the referendum. Voters decisively chose the Confederate-based flag that the region has now been shamefully adopted... over
three other flags dominated by Confederate imagery. In other words, out of four Confederate flags, the people chose the recently-adopted flag as their preferred one.
On no ballot was there a choice between adopting a Confederate flag and a non-Confederate one. So yes, when we have people subsequently proclaiming that the legislature would be squashing the will of the people by refusing to adopt the winning flag, and the governor using this as a justification for signing it despite it being "personally abhorrent" to him, I find this to be rather blatant dishonesty.
And actually, this comes to another point. The four flag designs on the ballot were not pulled from thin air. Nor were they the only flags submitted for the referendum. The choice of which flags made it to the ballot was made by the Southern Flag Change Committee, a committee which was chaired by and whose creation was spurred by the Governor of the South, who, again, recently stated that he found the Confederate flag "personally abhorrent". His committee, however, chose to only advance Confederate-themed flags to the ballot, despite the fact that not all of the flags that were submitted had Confederate imagery.
In fact,
the Governor's own vote in the flag committe has him voting to advance the four Confederate flags that made it to the referendum,
and no other flags. So, despite it being "personally abhorrent" to him, he not only did not say anything or raise any alarm about the lack of non-confederate flags, but he
actively voted to allow only Confederate flags on the ballot. Subsequently following this, he used the argument that the Confederate flag should be enacted in order to "respect the result of the referendum" and "respect the democratic process" - even though, again, the flag was only chosen by a false choice that he himself created - to justify his signing of the bill.
Then, following backlash from some prominent Southerners - including a very prominent member of his own party - he suddenly declares that he supports having a second referendum to overturn the flag change decision and signs the petition to do exactly that.
In full summary, the Governor of the South:
- Used his flag committee to create a referendum between four Confederate flags
- Signed the statuted enacting the Confederate flag, despite "extreme dislike" for it, in order to "respect the democratic process" despite referendum being a false choice of his own creation
- Signed and posted in support of a petition to overturn the newly adopted confederate flagSo again, I think the people deserve to know, if the Governor of the South really finds the Confederate flag "personally abhorrent" and wants it overturned, why did he take steps to create a sham referendum between four Confederate flags and then use its result as a justification for signing it into law?
