Last night at the Carbon County Fair I saw a young man wearing a T-shirt with a Confederate battle flag and the message “If this shit offends you, you need a history lesson.”
Actually, the young man needs a history lesson. The Constitution of the Confederate States of America parallels the U.S. Constitution in many ways, but here is what Article IV, Section 3 of the Confederate Constitution says about statehood:
The Confederate States may acquire new territory, and Congress shall have power to legislate and provide governments for the inhabitants of all territory belonging to the Confederate States lying without the limits of the several States, and may permit them, at such times and in such manner as it may by law provide, to form States to be admitted into the Confederacy. In all such territory the institution of negro slavery as it now exists in the Confederate States shall be recognized and protected by Congress and by the territorial government, and the inhabitants of the several Confederate States and territories shall have the right to take to such territory any slaves lawfully held by them in any of the States or Territories of the Confederate States.
I thought about calling the guy over and telling him about the Confederate Constitution, but I remembered a poster my Department head kept on his wall. It said, “Never try to teach a pig to dance. It wastes your time, and it annoys the pig.”
Incidentally, I thought it interesting that the T-shirt called the Confederate battle flag “shit.”
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