As Confederate ban-mania continues across the country, the U.S. Park Service has now announced that it intends to stop the sale of “stand-alone” Confederate flag related items at the nation’s parks, including civil war battlefields where the Confederate army actually fought.
“The National Park Service is asking its cooperating associations, concessions, and partners to voluntarily withdraw sales in their stores of Confederate flags and other items, such as stickers, that depict the Confederate flag as a stand-alone feature,” Park Service spokeswoman Kathy Kupper told the Washington Post on Wednesday.
The Park Service’s decision comes on the heels of several retail companies putting a ban on Confederate flag-related merchandise as well as moves by several southern states to begin to move Confederate flags away from government installations outside of museums.
Thus far, the federal government has made no move to do anything about the Confederate flag on federal property, but the fact that the Park Service couched its stance as “voluntary” may mean there is not any actual force behind it.
It is also hard to say how a ban on Confederate merchandise would be easily implemented at the nation’s Civil War battlefield parks, some of the most popular tourist destinations in the U.S. Parks Department.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston, or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail.com.