Dignity and grace

Jonah Goldberg writes about Charleston's response to the murders of Christians at the AME church:

Not being a Christian, I can only marvel at the dignity and courage of the victims’ relatives who forgave the shooter. If I could ever manage such a thing, it would probably take me decades. It took them little more than a day.

Less shocking, but almost as uplifting, was the conduct of the broader Charleston community, which has been unified and dignified, despite the expectations of some in the media — and the accused gunman, who had singled out Charleston because of its success at racial integration.

Blogger Glenn Reynolds noted that when the South was solidly Democratic, we got “Gone With the Wind” nostalgia. Now that it is profoundly less racist, but also less useful to Democrats, it’s the enemy of all that is decent and good.

If we’re going to offer ridiculous flag comparisons, a better one would be the Japanese imperial flag. After World War II, the U.S. banned it until 1949. Douglas MacArthur then opted to let a defeated, once-authoritarian society keep a few symbols of its past to build a better future.

Can anyone argue the South hasn’t done likewise? White Northern liberals explain how the South is an irredeemable cesspool of hate, while ignoring that blacks are abandoning the Northern blue states in huge numbers to move to the South.

Demographer Joel Kotkin found that 13 of the 15 best cities in the country for African-Americans to live in are now in the South. Over the last decade, millions of African-Americans have been reversing the Great Migration of a century ago to live in Dixie.

A big part of that story is economic, of course — the “blue state” model has failed generations of minorities — but it’s also cultural. Word has gotten out that while the flags may be around in some places, the Old Confederacy is gone.

Whenever conservatives complain that blacks vote monolithically Democratic, liberals are quick to argue that this is a rational decision given the realities of the black community. Surely, the same thing holds when they vote with their feet?

No, the South isn’t perfect. Name a region that is. But it does have good manners, which is why it routinely acts with more dignity — and in Charleston, with more grace — than its critics to the north.

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