Brothers and sisters in arms

Dear Editor,

Since my last letter, when I was “confused,” I have bought a modern computer and started some research and fact finding. As far as I have gone, it gets more interesting.

Here goes…

Confederate soldiers, sailors and marines who fought in the Civil War were made U.S. veterans by an act of the United States Congress in 1957 — U.S. public law 85-425, section 410 was approved May 23, 1958.

This made all Confederate Army, Navy and Marine veterans equal to U.S. veterans. Additionally, under U.S. public law 810, approved by the 17th U.S. Congress on Feb. 26, 1929, the War Department was directed to erect headstones and recognize Confederate grave sites as U.S. war grave sites.

Just for the record, the last Confederate veteran died in the 1950s. So in essence, when you remove a Confederate statue, monument or headstone, you are in fact removing a statue, monument or headstone of a U.S. veteran, and as a disabled veteran myself, all veterans are brothers. It doesn’t matter if we are red, yellow, black, white, green or purple.

Now, the definition of monument is “a structure made to keep alive the memory of a person or event.” So the way I read this is nobody in South Carolina had the right to vote or otherwise remove the Confederate flag. I always thought there was the federal government, state, county and city, in that order.

Well, I haven’t found where the federal government has changed these laws. The bad part is the ones who break these laws are felons according to the facts so far. Felonies are punishable by no less than one year in prison and as much as death.

If convicted, you are not allowed to hold public office or even vote or possess a gun or a passport.

So if prosecuted, we would have no governor and very few senators or members of the House, because by rights and laws they broke them by taking and voting to take the flag down and dig up the pole and concrete.

Most of them have never been in service or a war zone. Maybe they all need to be sent to one and dodge a few bullets and become a veteran, along with all these people who want to march about everything. It would give them a reason to believe in their heritage, freedom and rights. I think there would be a whole lot of changes going on about their fellow mankind.

A lot of our past presidents fought in service, but nowadays they just sit in Washington and say “go get ‘em.”

A lot has changed since Vietnam — nowadays the girls fight right alongside the boys. So now as veterans, we are not only brothers, but sisters, too.

Troy Black

Central