South Carolina state representative Doug Brannon, a Republican, will introduce a bill to bring down the Confederate battle flag at the state house because he lost a friend and colleague this week. He’s got the full support of Russell Moore, a Mississippian and the head of the Southern Baptist Convention–the sect that seceded along with the Confederacy–because, as Moore put it, he lost a brother in Christ.

I’m named after my great-great grandfather, a Confederate brigadier general, and my middle name is his son’s, a Confederate staff officer killed in action in 1862. Because of that connection, we had a Confederate battle flag, too, a souvenir from a 1913 veterans’ reunion. We kept it hidden in a closet. Maybe we were proud of our ancestry, but nobody in my family had the appetite to celebrate treason or to celebrate the kidnaping, brutalization and enslavement of human beings.

Put away the flag. Better still, burn it. Burn them all. Can you really cite “freedom of speech” to defend an object that symbolizes the denial of all human freedom?