In the wake of the shooting last Wednesday of nine African Americans in a Charleston chapel...

the president of USC has joined a growing list of notables urging removal of the Confederate flag from a memorial on the state house grounds.
http://www.thestate.com/news/local/article25159591.html

This raises once again the 150-year debate:

Does the flag represent heritage or hate... or both...and should this be decided on a case-by-case basis?

What of First Amendment rights... when a private citizen displays it?  Is it hate speech and can that be censured under our constitution?

And what of this official display of the flag?  Should the voters decide?

And, somehow, I sure, this will all get mixed together with Second Amendment rights, since the shooter is a proclaimed racist.

Is the flag as representative of evil as the swastika?  
I don't think so... but, then, I'm not a black American.

No one except fringe neo-Nazi hate groups reveres Hitler and the Third Reich, which systematically liquidated millions of Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, leftists, etc.

By contrast, I think many of us admire Robert E. Lee and other Southern "heroes" of the Civil War for patriotism, albeit regionally focused, their bravery, and their resilience.  And yet we abhor slavery.

So how DO you separate heritage from hatred here?  Not as clear cut as banning the swastika, I am afraid.