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Nikki Haley’s Defense of Flaggers Doesn’t Make a Lick of Sense

Steven Hale
6 min readDec 14, 2019

I tried to understand her point, honest.

The original pink Confederate battle flag (source)

Nikki Haley has taken at least four opportunities since her Glen Beck podcast interview, including a Washington Post editorial, to clarify her controversial remarks about the people who venerate the Confederate flag. Each time she says about the same thing with minor qualifications.

In the Washington Post editorial, she repeats remarks she made when she argued for taking down the Confederate flag from the state capitol after the deadly shooting by white supremacist and flag lover Dylan Roof at Emanuel AME Church:

“For many people in our state, the flag stands for traditions that are noble — traditions of history, of heritage and of ancestry. The hate-filled murderer who massacred our brothers and sisters in Charleston has a sick and twisted view of the flag. In no way does he reflect the people in our state who respect and, in many ways, revere it. At the same time, for many others in South Carolina, the flag is a deeply offensive symbol of a brutally oppressive past. As a state, we can survive, as we have done, while still being home to both of those viewpoints. We do not need to declare a winner and loser.”

To this perspective (which some have pointed out gives Haley more credit for the decision than she merits), she…

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Steven Hale
Steven Hale

Written by Steven Hale

Music: Discovering the lost and forgotten. Politics: Exposing injustice. Screenwriting: Emotional storytelling.

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