Allen Hunt's Blog

My listeners are great. Some agree, some disagree, and some make us all better.

Mitch sent me an email during the show on Sunday about the world's largest Confederate flag being unveiled in Tampa this past week at the busiest intersection in the city. The issue is not the freedom to fly or use that flag; the issue is what is the most loving thing to do. Christians should first and foremost act from a motive of love. Mitch's email took us to another level - here it is

Hi Allen;

Enjoy the show and have my own flag story.

While serving as vehicle dispatcher in Viet Nam with the 19th Combat Engineer Battalion, I was involved in an incident which could have become ugly but was instead resolved peacefully and graciously.

A Southern white boy received a Confederate Flag from home and immediately put it on the wall over his bed. Several black members of his platoon came to me and complained, so I wandered down to their bunker to check it out.

The offending soldier was a genuinely nice guy, liked and trusted by all his comrades in arms, but there he stood, beaming with pride next to this symbol of his heritage.

I admired it with him for a moment and then asked him what his black friends thought about it? He thought for a second and then this horrified look came over his face and he asked me if they were angry. I said no, but not real happy because that particular flag meant something entirely different to them than it did to him.

He immediately pulled it down and put it away. Backwards as he was, he instinctively understood what a slap in the face the flag was to some he slept, ate, worked and fought along side of.

I thought he showed manners and good sense, and unlike some rear area units over there, our's never had any race problems. We were too busy doing our job.

Slight criticism now - you were making a point about 3/5th's of a person? That was a compromise slipped into the constitution by Northerners to prevent the South from holding a permanent majority in Congress, electing Representatives based on counting ALL noses, and effectively making slavery a permanent institution. Also, blacks in Colonial Times didn't have 3/5th's of any rights - they had zero, none, nada.

A brief, concise explanation of the whole 3/5th's deal is in Bill Bennett's excellent book, America, The Last Best Hope, Vol 1. The way you used that issue on your show today is typical of the rabblerousers who twist and contort History and facts, and I'm certain that wasn't your aim.

Sorry, one of my pet peeves. I'm on a one man crusade to correct incorrect quotes of History.