Has the Confederacy Won the War?

The recurrent lunacy of uncertain economic times is proverbial. I see more Confederate States of America flags flying, and not at historical reenactment events. Ironically, I am seeing them flying at private domiciles by roadways in UNION STATES! Outside historical events, films and monuments, this flag ("the Stars and Bars") takes on a whole new context. For African Americans, it is the equivalent of flying a Nazi flag, and this holds true for most European Americans for which it is a reminder of the fault-line that was created in our Republic when we did not give freedom and citizenship to slaves when we won independence from the British Empire. There are now people wearing confederate flag t-shirts that say, "if this offends you, you better go back to your history books". Well, if you do, you find that it does indeed represent the collective desire of a group of seceding states to defend the institution of slavery. An historian pointed out to me that the protest lodged with the Union Government by the rebelling states was that Federal Law had not been properly enforced with regard to the Fugitive Slave Act. In fact, state and municipal laws were trumping it, and law enforcement officials were supporting the abolitionists. The Unionist states knew that slavery was simply not Constitutional, and were not going to support a Federal Law that was a slap in the face of true democracy. So, for those who think it was about "states rights", sorry guys! If there had been no slaves, there simply would have been no "War Between the States". Take away the slave economy as a factor, and you change the whole picture. You create a fantasy history, a bedtime story of a "Never-Never-Land". So why are these people, most especially people living in states that fought for the Union, flying these flags in a non-historical context? Well, a little investigation shows these Neo-Confederates have been misled by manipulative politicians who have convinced them that all their hardships are due to the Federal Government. That the Federal Government has been front and center in historically providing monetary, medical, educational and housing assistance for the poor, their children, the underemployed, the vulnerably aged, seems to have somehow been blotted out by those political master-manipulators tapping into the "Lost Cause" myth. It is a pernicious fairytale, and this sort of misinformation leads people to vote against their own interests, effectively victimizing themselves. You know it's a shell game when these politicians tell you on the one hand that "this a matter for states to decide", and then when it comes time for the states to address the issue, they say "oh, this is a federal matter!" This is a complete "pass the buck" abdication of political responsibility. So if you're going to run the Confederate Emblem up the old flagpole in your front yard beside the flowerbeds, or wear it on a bold t-shirt at the grocery store, why don't you think about going back to the history books yourself and rediscover what democracy has meant to your fellow Americans, men and women, of all creeds and colors, for the past 235 years in these United States.