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Try this little experiment sometime. Walk up to a large person and say "Hey, you're FAT." When they get angry and when other people within earshot start calling you an asshole, state that the 1st Amendment protects your right to call people fat. It does, after all. And since you're able to call people fat, doesn't it follow logically that you should?

This is an example I've been using in class for a decade to introduce the section on freedom of speech / expression when we cover the Constitution and Bill of Rights.
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What the 1st Amendment protects our right to say is almost without limit. Seriously, take a look through Federal court cases involving free expression. Then look around the internet at the things people say without sanction. You can find examples of every conceivable objectionable expression of ideas: racism, blatantly incorrect facts and history, websites dedicated to ad hominem attacks on single individuals or groups of people, misogyny, anti-anything groups, and so on. Hell, the average news site comment section is guaranteed to contain at least a handful of exhortations to kill somebody.

Put on a Klan outfit and march around your city. Scream "Fuck you, Kikes!" as loud as you can in public. Start a group advocating the extermination of Muslims. People will think you're an asshole, but the fact remains that you can do any of these things legally in the U.S.

Of course you don't do any of them, because the fact that you can does not mean that you should or that you will. As a human being with a basic awareness of the society in which you live, it doesn't take much thought to conclude that these are all terrible ideas even if they did enter your mind for some reason.

OK? Let's talk about the Confederate flag now.

Can you plaster Confederate flags on your car, home, and person? Yes. You can do the same with swastikas, Juggalo logos, or images of Cap'n Crunch if you feel like it. It's highly unlikely that the Courts ever will interpret the 1st Amendment otherwise.

If you want people to think you are a jackwagon, go ahead and do any of those things. Otherwise, consider these good examples of how discretion moderates your enjoyment of the rights afforded to you.

The important thing to remember, in that light, is that displaying the Confederate flag is not illegal but it most emphatically is a dick thing to do. When Mitt Romney, Jeb Bush, Rick Perry – Rick Perry! – and ultra right-wing Town Hall columnists say that it's time for the old Dukes of Hazzard flag to go, it's a pretty good sign that it is approaching swastika territory as the kind of symbol you're legally able to display but you might possibly probably be a major asshole if you do it.

As the aforementioned columnist states, "Like a lot of people below the Mason-Dixon Line – white people, anyway – I saw the emblem as a token of regional pride.
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I didn't revere slavery and Jim Crow. But I thought there was much about the South to love." You hear things like this a lot; it's a symbol of "southern pride", or honors the bravery of the Confederate soldier from 160 years ago, or heritage or tradition or blah blah blah. Try wearing a swastika t-shirt and telling curious onlookers that your purpose is to honor the memory of the Indus River Valley civilization of 3000 BC. They will look at you like you have brain damage or are in need of the padded van. So why should essentially the same argument hold any water with the flag?

It shouldn't. The Confederate States of America stood for "states' rights" alright – states' right to have slavery. If you want to honor your southern heritage, there are other symbols you could choose that don't stand for our racist past, the legacy of which fuels the racist present. You can choose symbols that aren't a giant, throbbing middle finger extended at about 30% of the population who are not white. Try your state flag. Try an image of your state or the whole south. Try literally anything that isn't a thinly veiled expression of semi-literate white underclass rage about the passing of the days in which they could stay off the bottom rung of the ladder simply by virtue of being white. Every time I see a Confederate flag I think of Gene Hackman in Mississippi Burning: "If you ain't better than a nigger, son, who are you better than?"

That's what the flag represents. So shut up about how you have the right to display it; you do. Spend a little more time thinking about whether it's a good idea. Think about what it says to other people. Think about what it says about you. When you get over your own stubborn ignorance you'll realize that it's not complicated. It's a very basic Can vs. Should problem with an obvious correct answer.

(From a laundromat in Anchorage. Remind me to copyright the slogan "Anchorage: The Scenic Bakersfield!")

One sad but interesting development since the end of the second World War is the death of pacifism as an organized movement. Well, at least I find it interesting (Nicholson Baker's "Human Smoke" is a particularly good read if you're interested too).
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In the course of reading a book about Henry Ford, I was reminded about the Peace Ship debacle prior to World War I and the central role that religious groups used to play in the pacifist movement. And it wasn't just groups like the Quakers, whose stance on nonviolence remains well-known today.
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Major, mainstream Protestant religious groups – especially, curiously enough, evangelicals – the Catholic church, major Jewish organizations, and the like were all strongly associated with the anti-war movement before World War II.

Part of the difference today stems from the Hitler, Imperial Japan, and fascism making war a moral crusade that religiously inclined people felt safe getting behind. War is not a moral or ethical dilemma if one conceives of the potential target or opponent as the Third Reich. Unfortunately this has served as little more than a straw man since 1945, as whoever the western nations of the world feel like reducing to rubble happens to be "just like Hitler," coincidentally enough. Attempts to recreate the black-and-white morality of World War II in modern conflicts is not only idiotic, but seemingly mandatory on the part of political leaders.

What stands out to me is how much, in the United States, mainstream Christianity has bent and molded itself around the preferences and prejudices of the one demographic – white people, particularly conservative and rural white people – with which it is still popular. We know from all varieties of survey data that Americans are identifying with organized religion less than ever today, and even among identifiers the percentage of Protestants and Catholics is declining. Smaller religions like Mormonism, Hinduism, Buddhism, "New Age" belief systems, and so on are all growing at the expense of traditionally common Christian denominations.

Not to be accused of concern trolling, but it seems like a religion should have a belief system that tells followers or potential followers "This is the One True Path. Join us. If you're not interested, piss off, because the One True Path does not change for anyone." In practice we see American Christianity, particularly the evangelical variety, becoming hard to distinguish from a Support Our Troops rally, which makes sense when you realize both organizations are aiming at the same demographic.
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Religion seems to have ceded, at least in our case, the moral argument against violence and war. I haven't been a practicing Catholic in decades, but I do like the fact that the incumbent Pope is willing to remind his flock that there are things they should be opposed to beyond just abortion and The Gays – poverty, war, injustice, and other things that fly in the face of the Dignity of Life and Humankind thing that they care about collectively.

I may not be the kind of person to whom organized religion appeals, but nonetheless I understand the potential it has to be a positive force in the world and in the lives of individuals who do find it appealing. It would be nice, in that light, if American churches were willing to take some kind of moral stance against something other than the convenient target groups that its core supporters already hate. It's safe and easy to bash abortion from the pulpit; how about branching out and asking the congregation what exactly it needs all those guns for, or why they don't mind that an alarming number of unarmed black men seem to end up dead when they encounter police. I don't disrespect right-wing Christianity because of the beliefs per se, as there are tons of belief systems in the world I find ridiculous personally. I disrespect it because it tells the faithful what they want to hear while remaining silent about what they need to hear. "The customer is always right" is a poor strategy in this case.
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I usually express optimism here about once annually, and rather than procrastinating I decided to get it out of the way early this year.

One of the lessons of American history is that we're capable of social change but we take our sweet time doing it. Think about Dwight Eisenhower calling on American blacks to exercise "patience" in their calls for equal rights – nearly a century after the 14th Amendment ostensibly guaranteed them (and Thurgood Marshall's sick burn response, "I'm the world's original gradualist. I just think ninety-odd years is gradual enough.") And of course here we are sixty years later with some of the same problems left unresolved. We're….a little slow sometimes. Glacial, even.

There are some less bleak examples, though.

In the past 20 years Americans, particularly those born since 1980, have done an about-face on gay marriage (57% opposed in 2001, 57% in favor today). That might not seem like much, but swings in public opinion on social issues usually play out over decades. The fall from 57% opposed in 2001 to 39% opposed today is significant.

As completely hopeless as the problem of excessive force and institutionalized racism in law enforcement seems – God knows the death toll isn't subsiding – I think Americans are starting to get it. Not all of us, of course. There's 30% of the population that is intractable on this and many other issues for a variety of reasons (usually something to do with racism and/or an Authoritarian-Follower personality type).

The recent incident in McKinney, TX not only resulted in the cop losing his job but didn't see the usual number of people rushing in to defend him. Sure, some people still defended him, the ones would defend a white cop beheading someone for no reason as long as that person happened to be young and black. Moreso than other recent incidents, even those in which someone ended up dying, we seem much more willing to look at this video and say, "What the hell is wrong with that guy." I think – hope – that a growing number of people see this endless stream of videos of police brutality and weekly stories about unarmed black men being shot and think that maybe there's some kind of pattern here. If nothing else, people who don't pay attention to anything going on in this country might be forced into awareness through sheer repetition.

Don't get me wrong, there remain plenty of problems.
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Incidents in which cops actually get punished or prosecuted still inevitably require a bystander's video to keep the system from reverting to the default setting of believing whatever story the cops concoct. And the willingness of Americans to see themselves as Good People who have rights while others are Bad People who don't (or, more accurately, that the violation of their rights is fine because they're Bad and unworthy of sympathy) remains disturbingly high. Prosecutors and juries are deferential to police to the point of absurdity. Despite all that, there are reasons to be optimistic; not that the problem will be solved by Christmas or your next one's free, but that we are moving in a positive direction. The first step in solving the problem is admitting that it exists.