It’s still there.  It’s been there for several weeks, a big Confederate flag on a pole in a front yard on Third Street in Becker.  At first I thought it might be some kind of sick, fleeting joke and that it would be taken down after a day or two, but I was wrong.  Don’t worry; I understand that the owner of the property has a right to fly it. After all, this is America. Never mind that the flag was that of a regime that allowed humans to own other humans and all the horrors that entailed including rape, abuse, and murder. Never mind that when most citizens are forced to look at that flag, they picture children being ripped from their mothers’ arms and sold, never to see their families again. Never mind that according to the University of Houston’s Digital History, as a result of high infant and childhood death rates and the brutal existence that slavery created, “the average life expectancy of a slave at birth was just 21 or 22 years, compared to 40 to 43 years for antebellum whites.“ Never mind. This is America after all. The owner of the property on 3rd Street has a right to fly his or her flag and I have a right to hope that either he or she finds a conscience and takes the flag down or else moves far, far away.