Flag confusion in South Carolina
I’m in Columbia, South Carolina now with my family visiting my dad’s parents. I’m currently browsing from a “business center”* in the hotel, though I should probably instead be hacking encryption on the world’s largest banks; after all, I did sleep at a Holiday Inn Express last night.
One weird thing I noticed earlier in the day was a BBQ restaurant with an obnoxious flag pole. They were running four flags: the USA flag on the top, then the state flag of South Carolina, then the Confederate flag, and finally, the Union Jack. I was baffled. I understand the first three flags; this is, after all, the South, and some people are still pissed off at losing the “War Between the States”. But the Union Jack?! How does that possibly fit in? If anything, any truly red-blooded patriotic Americans(r) would hate the British with a passion. They are, after all, the oppressive colonial power that we won our independence from in the first place. And they certainly didn’t pick a side during the Civil War. So I’m just not seeing it.
*The business center is basically a computer, printer, and fax/copier in a small four-foot alcove off the main hallway on the first floor of the hotel.
December 30th, 2006 at 14:02
Maybe the point *was* to diss the British. Flying two national flags on one pole is considered disrespectful to the nation whose flag is underneath; it’s only supposed to be done in wartime, for instance on captured vessels.
OTOH Britain might have been persuaded to pick the Confederate side during the Late Unpleasantness, if they had won a few more battlefield victories. Davis did his level best to persuade them. And British shipyards did build some Confederate raiders such as the _Alabama_.
Did you note just which Union Jack it was? The last one to fly over the Thirteen Colonies was the pre-1801 flag. It differed from the present one in that the diagonal cross was solid white. The present Union Jack has a red stripe through each arm of the diagonal cross — the so-called “Cross of St. Patrick”, which Parliament invented in 1801 to give Ireland a symbol on the Union Jack.
December 30th, 2006 at 15:49
Luckily, I took pictures, and looking at the picture, I can see that it’s the present Union Jack.
I thought of another thing that could possibly explain this. The United Kingdom is pretty much the only other country that is really helping with the war effort in Iraq. I know that Southerners tend to be very pro-Iraq War (especially the ones that fly Confederate flags), so maybe this is a way of showing solidarity. They probably don’t know that flying one nation’s flag below another’s is derogatory.