In an appearance on Birmingham, AL WAPI’s Matt Murphy Show last week, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) reacted to the controversy surrounding the Confederate flag and its place in public forums.
Sessions was asked in particular to react to Gov. Robert Bentley (R-AL) and his decision to remove the flag from his state’s capitol grounds.
The junior Alabama did not criticize Bentley directly, but insisted that despite the flag having been “commandeered” by those opposing the civil rights movement, it is not appropriate to “erase history” when it comes to the flag.
“I’m not criticizing the governor,” Sessions said. “You know the Confederate battle flag. I believe in history. We can’t erase history. But I do know that a lot of our good citizens feel like that was kind of commandeered as a symbol of anti-civil rights, and those kind of things. So I can be sensitive to that and working on that. What I do think is that it is not appropriate for us to erase history and who we are and our ancestors. I had ancestors – my great grandfather was killed at Antietam. I don’t think he was an evil person. He was called to serve his country as he knew it at that time and he did his duty leaving my grandfather, a baby, at home.”
“So this is a huge part of who we are and the left is continually seeking in a host of different ways it seems to me – you know, I don’t want to be too paranoid about this, but they seek to delegitimize the fabulous accomplishments of our country by finding all the problems and highlighting them continually and ignore the tremendous achievements we’ve obtained.”
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