Getting Blood from a Stone

“You have no reason to be ashamed of your Confederate dead. See to it that they have no reason to be ashamed of you.”

— Robert Lewis Dabney

Earlier this month, you may have heard about a woman from Upstate New York who could lose her multiracial child in a custody battle with the girl’s father because the mother has a Confederate Battle Flag painted on a rock alongside her driveway.

The story itself is already one of tragedy. This 7-year-old has a broken home and is exhibiting “behavioral issues, including ‘kicking, spitting, hitting and swearing a lot.’” The parents, who were never married, do not have an amicable relationship, so the child has become their battlefield. Even though they have joint custody, the mother is seeking to cut in half the father’s already-limited time with the girl.

My guess is that the father is using the Battle Flag because he’s desperate to get a leg up in the case, since family courts are overwhelmingly anti-male. And the mother is being told that she must “encourage and teach the child to embrace her mixed-race identity, rather than thrust her into a world that only makes sense through the tortured lens of cognitive dissonance.” (Read: white bad, black good.)

I don’t know these people or all the details of this complicated situation, but what I do know is that the 5-0 ruling against the mother due to her flag-adorned stone should worry us all, especially those of us who have Battle Flag rocks of our own (see mine at top).

Attorney Michael Stutman sees the case as “a rather astonishing extension of wokeness” in that “someone’s political viewpoint” can now be seen as reflecting “on their fitness as a parent.” He added, “It is one of the clearest infringements on someone’s free speech by the state to have a court threaten to restrict a parents’ rights to their child based upon … the propriety of a person’s political beliefs.”

That “we have to stamp out ‘hate whenever we see it, even on private property” is a “very dangerous precedent,” explains historian Brion McClanahan. What concerns me most is that we, as in Southerners and our anti-leftist allies, have allowed the denigration of Confederate symbols even to get to this point. Cultural Marxists are going to try to destroy truth, beauty, and goodness; it’s what they do. But we don’t have to give an inch. Ever.

Even the child’s attorney who “wondered whether the ruling could make political views more of a target in family court … [and said he thinks] ‘this thing opens a door to litigating … someone’s personal opinions,’” also “recognized the court’s concern for the Confederate flag’s presence.” This is how indoctrinated in their anti-Southern malevolence even semi-common-sense people have become.

Sure, it doesn’t hurt that this story is playing out in New York, where back in December Gov. Andrew Cuomo outlawed the public-property sale and display of Confederate flags and other “abhorrent symbols” like the “Nazi swastika.” But would “the nationwide push-back against Confederate symbols” even be a thing if “conservatives” hadn’t hopped on the neo-Bolshevik bandwagon? I think not.

Even in the most recent edition of Confederate Veteran magazine, a 24-year-old who joined the Sons of Confederate Veterans in late 2018 suggested in a letter to the editor that the organization should redesign their Battle-Flag logo in an effort to “change the narrative” and increase recruitment among young Confederate descendants. “‘Cancel culture’ has targeted no symbol like the Southern Cross,” he wrote.

And that is why I am wanting to get a Battle Flag tattoo, not necessarily the one above; I just want a simple, reverent piece of art. Honestly, I can’t find one that hits the mark; most are way too ostentatious for my tastes.

Now, bear in mind, I’ve made it nearly 50 years ink-free. Sure, I had quite a few piercings back in the wild ’90s, but I never did get a tat — one promise to my parents that I actually kept.

Yet, the contrarian in me is half-seriously considering the idea of ringing in my half-century of life this summer with some cool rebel ink. And because I’m not supposed to even admit the thought of wanting to get a Southern branding these “daze,” well, of course it makes me want to do it all the more.

These feelings are reminiscent of when my family and I fled Evangelicalism, slamming the door on the self-loathing, self-promoting Southern Protestants who hate the South, and subsequently hate my children, my husband, and me. I toyed with the notion of visiting one final Sunday while wearing the above t-shirt. I mean, this was 2016, so I figured what’s the worst that could happen. Sure, I’d get a few politically correct glares, but at least the congregation serves up some dank coffee. Ultimately, I decided to leave well enough alone.

I also deliberated buying and donning the above dress if I had gone to my 30-year high school reunion in the fall of 2019. Alas, I could not bring myself to attend the event at my formerly Dixie-proud alma mater, which is now a progressive breeding ground in a city that doesn’t feel too much like home, even if it was to make a rebel stand.

“Those contemplating getting a tattoo should ask themselves why they want one in the first place, and they should ask whether this is really something that pleases God,” advises Fr. John Whiteford. On one hand, I do believe the Battle Flag in both its roots and its modern meaning fits that bill.

It was not only the the symbol of the fighting citizen-soldiers in their defense of home and resistance to centralization, but it has come to represent the last stand of Western civilization. Dixie defenders of yore powerfully and selflessly fought to “defend beliefs that were not concocted yesterday,” as Russell Kirk described the War for Southern Independence and the traditional descendants it bore.

And we rebels of today still rail against the imperial “indivisible” Union and the rootless nihilism it produces. The war may look different, but the battlefields are still the same: faith and family.

However, since the main impetus for my potential tattoo is about triggering my enemies, I’m still on the fence about it. Is it a pride thing, as in haughty in the eyes of the Lord? Or would getting tattooed be a tiny act of remaining faithful to the discharge of my duty?

Would it be bending to a fashion that I have so long resisted, and I, just another sellout to postmodernity? Or would it be a real act of defiance in that I’d be forever memorializing the Civil War dead, which is a “Southern, Christian tradition“?

After all, Memorial Day has Confederate origins, no matter what ahistorical lies the Lincolnians and their globohomer comrades try to sell you. Both Southern widows who began Decoration Day in 1866 and those of us who reflect today on Confederate sacrifice see fallen Dixians as “martyrs for religion, as well as for liberty … [and their] solemn obligation to maintain the Christianity which sustained them amid the privations of a soldier’s life and the anguish of a soldier’s death.”

Hmmm, I’m still not sure what to do. Please let me know what you think in the comments.

In the meantime, I will keep my own rebel rock just where it is in my yard. My mother in-law gave us that unique stepping stone, which was hand-painted by one of her Appalachian-artisan friends.

Interestingly, while it was in the back of our van, we attended a Divine Liturgy at a Tennessee parish, where it was sprinkled with Holy water. The Orthodox priest happened to do a car blessing that day, so our family’s special piece of slate really ain’t going anywhere now. Like it or walk on by, haters!

Really, none of this is about putting a rock, a tattoo, a t-shirt, or a dress above the welfare of children. In fact, it’s precisely about putting our progeny first. It’s about taking a stand for love.

They say you can’t get blood from a stone, but maybe this time you can. Happy Memorial Day, y’all.

Originally published May, 31, 2021, at Dissident Mama.