Man On Quest To Carry Confederate Flag To Washington By Foot
MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — Johnny Cooper says America is losing its way, a message he intends to carry along the highways from Alabama’s capital to the nation’s capital.
Toting a Confederate battle flag to help make his point, Cooper is walking from Montgomery to Washington to push back against what he considers abandonment of the U.S. Constitution.
The 60-year-old from Hazel Green, Alabama, opposes the efforts to purge the battle flag from public places, as well as the Supreme Court ruling legalizing gay marriage.
“All pillars of our society are just coming off,” Cooper said.
He left the State Capitol in Montgomery on the Fourth of July and was just outside Moreland, Georgia, on Tuesday night when he took a few minutes for an interview on his cellphone.
Cooper said his goal is to preserve for his children some of the heritage of the country, “the greatest country the world has ever seen.”
He said those who consider the battle flag a symbol of racism and hatred don’t know its history.
Dylann Roof, the white man accused of killing nine black worshippers in a South Carolina church, should not define that history, he said.
“If I had been there, I would have shot him myself,” Cooper said.
Cooper said the South had the right to secede under the Constitution. As for vilification of the battle flag, he notes that atrocities have happened under the U.S. flag, too, mentioning, for example, the massacre of Indians by the Army at Wounded Knee in South Dakota.
“If we go around taking down every symbol that offends everybody” there will be no symbols left, Cooper said.
Cooper, a retired electronics technician and maintenance man, sees an inconsistency in the crusade against offensive symbols – what he says was the lack of media outcry against illumination of the White House in rainbow colors to celebrate the gay marriage decision.
“There’s 200 million Christians in this country,” Cooper said. “Where is the media on that?”
Cooper opposed Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley’s decision to take the Confederate flags from the monument at the state Capitol in Montgomery. He hopes the South Carolina Legislature will reject the bill to remove the flag from its capitol grounds.
“I’d like to think that South Carolina, being one of the strongest representatives of the South, would have enough common sense to resist the political correctness and inanity of it all,” Cooper said.
