![\"RepublicansOnParade2\"](\"https:\/\/www.7thstep.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/RepublicansOnParade2.jpg\" "\\"RepublicansOnParade2\\"")
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Here is the seventy-second article in our Republicans on Parade series, featuring individuals who personify what the Republican Party has become. Today\u2019s honoree is Republican Terrorist Dylann Storm Roof. He is so honored for his traditional Republican approach to race relations.<\/font><\/p>\n Let me begin by clarifying that, for a century, the hate criminals attaching black churches were Democrats. What makes this a Republican tradition is that the Democratic Party had the decency to abandon it\u2019s white supremacist wing. The Republican Party embraced them and they became a substantial part of the Republican base. But these are the same people and groups that have practiced domestic terrorism all along, so ownership of the tradition is now Republican.<\/font><\/p>\n [How people convince themselves the flag represents freedom, not slavery<\/a>]<\/p>\n But a third flag within view of the State House \u2014 a Confederate one \u2014 flew as high and as proud as ever, flapping in the breeze on a sunny day.<\/p>\n This looked bad.<\/p>\n Roof was photographed wearing flags himself<\/a> \u2014 of defunct white supremacist regimes in South Africa and Rhodesia \u2014 and drove a car<\/a> featuring a Confederate flag license plate. The Emanuel AME Church shooting and its description by authorities as a \u201chate crime\u201d were tragic enough to be compared to the 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala., a murderous act that claimed the lives of four young African American girls and helped bring about passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.<\/p>\n And yet, as a pastor and members of his flock lay dead and the Supreme Court dealt a blow to those who wish to display Confederate flags on license plates in Texas<\/a>, South Carolina seemed to be flaunting its heritage of slavery as the first state to secede from the Union. It was deplorable enough, critics said, that the flag was there in the first place\u2026<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Inserted from <Washington Post<\/a>><\/p>\n\n
![\"0620roof\"](\"https:\/\/www.7thstep.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/0620roof.jpg\" "\\"0620roof\\"")
After Dylann Storm Roof<\/a> allegedly shot up an AME church in Charleston, S.C., killing nine people, two flags were lowered more than 100 miles away in Columbia, the state\u2019s capital. Atop the South Carolina State House, the U.S. flag and South Carolina\u2019s palmetto flag flew at half-staff as the manhunt for Roof ended with his capture in North Carolina<\/a> and prayer vigils were planned. The show of respect would have been appropriate even if one of the state legislature\u2019s own \u2014 state senator Clementa C. Pinckney<\/a> \u2014 had not died in the attack.<\/p>\n