In any sane culture, the reaction to the recent massacre at the Charleston Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal church would have been a racially and ethnically unified demand to try, convict, and swiftly execute the monster who perpetrated the evil attack. 

But we don’t live in a sane culture.  So instead, we are chasing a 150-year-old battle flag from the 1860s, pretending that by abolishing it from public sight, we are striking some kind of historic blow for racial healing.  What foolishness.

To make things worse, the liberal politicians and media elites promoting this meaningless distraction as some kind of substantive objective are doing so not because they are truly interested in providing a lasting peace to those who have suffered loss in this South Carolina bloodbath.  No, they are despicably consumed with advancing their political agenda.

Less than a week after the slaughter, the national Democratic Party was shamelessly trying to raise funds over the Confederate battle flag issue.  And faithfully fulfilling their role as mouthpieces of the Democrat left, the Washington Post followed up with an article titled “The GOP’s uneasy relationship with the Confederate flag.”  Yes, that would be the Confederate flag designed by a Democrat for a country full of Democrats and warred against by Republicans.  Good heavens.

I find it far more useful to judge modern politicians, parties, and movements on the basis of their ideas and the moral appropriateness of their policies.  But if leftists are intent on slandering their opposition by tying conservatives and Republicans to what they call a symbol of racism, then it is more than fair to open up the history books and remind all Americans of a few poignant facts regarding race relations in our country.

Democrats were the party of secession.  They were the party of slavery.  They were the party that defended the plantation owners’ whips, railed against abolitionists, and put bounties on the heads of heroes like Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass. 

Democrats were the party of lynching, the party of Jim Crow.  They were the party that defended poll taxes, grandfather clauses, and literacy tests for voting, all to disenfranchise blacks.

Democrats were the party of the Ku Klux Klan, twice elected virulent racist Woodrow Wilson to the presidency, and sent an “Exalted Cyclops” of the Klan, Robert Byrd, nine times to the United States Senate.  Democrats willfully made Byrd, a man who proclaimed himself “anxious” for the Klan to rise again in “every state of the nation,” their Senate leader, elevating him to third in line for the presidency.

And lest you think such a racist history for the Democrats is confined to an ancient era of American politics, let’s remember they were the party of “separate but equal.”  They were the party that put Plessy in the back train car, demanded that Rosa Parks give up her seat, and segregated lunch counters.  And when civil rights leaders bravely defied them, Democrats like Bull Connor turned fire hoses and police dogs loose on them, while Democrats like Orval Faubus stationed the National Guard at school doors to turn blacks away at gunpoint.

Democrats are the party that opposed the Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and 1960, and were far more likely to oppose the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964. 

And today, Democrats remain the party of Margaret Sanger and her racist eugenics movement.  Democrats remain the party of Charles Darwin and his inherently racist ideology that teaches that some humans (like Africans) are “savages” and “degraded” compared to Caucasians.  They remain the party committed to an economic socialism that deprives upward social mobility for blacks, promotes a welfare state that locks them in an unending cycle of poverty, and opposes scholarship programs to allow inner-city blacks to escape failing schools.

Democrats remain the party of illegal immigration that has caused a staggering unemployment rate for young black men.  And they remain the party of Planned Parenthood, which through strategic targeting of their abortion mills in black neighborhoods have successfully killed more blacks than the Klan could have ever dreamed of accomplishing.

So please spare me the silly talk about banning a flag that some idiots still use as a rallying cry for their racist sentiments. 

If you really want to strike a blow against something that has truly been an instrument of subjugation, destruction, and hate against black people, it would seem to make more sense to follow the advice of conservative commentator Mark Levin and start by banning the Democrat Party.

Pete Heck is a speaker, author, and teacher who hosts a weekly radio broadcast on WIBC.  Follow him @peterheck or e-mail peter@peterheck.com.