In the aftermath of the Charleston killings, our public discourse took a curious turn. The nation decided it was finally time to discuss the possibility of further tightening our gun control legislation. Just kidding, of course. The left’s need to bring up gun control after a gun-related incident is reflexive and irresistible, and this time was no different. No, what I am referring to is the debate we began to have over the propriety of flying the Confederate battle flag on state grounds. It hasn’t been much of a debate, actually, as the imputation of racism is today a rhetorically omnipotent charge. And since the flag’s association with a racist past is the rationale for its removal, the flag doesn’t really stand a chance of staying up. In case you think I’m sensationalizing, here is liberal commentator Jonathan Chait in a piece from last year: “Few liberals acknowledge that the ability to label a person racist represents, in 21st-century America, real and frequently terrifying power. Conservatives feel that dread viscerally. Though the liberal analytic method begins with a sound grasp of the broad connection between conservatism and white racial resentment, it almost always devolves into an open-ended license to target opponents on the basis of their ideological profile. The power is rife with abuse.”

But buried in all this is a philosophically interesting debate, one which, again, we cannot have given the explosiveness of the circumstances surrounding it. Even the usually implacable David French was tamed, offering a defense of the flag that was uncharacteristically conciliatory. And it’s not hard to see why: can you imagine mounting a full-throated defense of the flag in this political climate?

And yet…this is when critical engagement is most needed. The emotional energies that infuse race-related discussions today are intense, yet we do society a disservice when we let them disrupt our critical sense. When outrage is an industry unto itself, when an argument is ineffective unless it drips with moral fervor, when advocacy journalism is done under the guise of objective journalism, we are announcing the supremacy of feelings. Instead of reason guiding the emotions, to borrow imagery from Plato, what we find is that a consideration of feelings now always trumps rational reflection. In many quarters — most notably the media — this spells the end of dispassionate discussion. Ah, that term, “dispassionate,” so thoroughly discredited in our time as insufficiently caring; once a mark of intellectual virtue, now a deficient sort of reasoning. But let me try to practice what I preach vis-a-vis the flag issue.

I am in favor of the flag coming down. Citizens should be able to fly the flag freely, but governments — whether federal, state, or local — should not. In a moment I’ll explain why I take this view. I did not pre-select my position and then retrofit some reasons as my justification. In modern discourse the direction of reasoning goes: arrive at conclusion first, generate reasons second. This is procedurally ad hoc and anti-intellectual; it is what led Bertrand Russell, in his History of Western Philosophy, to write: “The finding of arguments for a conclusion given in advance is not philosophy, but special pleading.” But if we evaluate the reasons first, what we find is that one and the same position has the potential to be supported by vastly different reasons, and an advocate of a position can agree with some reasons but not others. Some of the reasons offered for bringing down the flag are bad ones. Let’s start with those.

The flag must come down because of the Charleston killings.

Should the flag come down in response to the Charleston killings? What does this even mean? At first glance the two seem quite unrelated; is the proposal even coherent? Here’s an alternative statement that seems to make sense: the shooter must be punished because of the Charleston killings. There is a logic and justice to suggest that as a response to the event in question. But in virtue of what does a shooting event require us to lower a flag?

If we are to make sense of this argument, I think it has to do with showing respect to those who are grieving. Nine African-Americans were shot to death by a white killer intending to single-handedly jumpstart a second Civil War, and the flag that hovers proudly above the state house in South Carolina is the Confederate battle flag from the first Civil War. The flag is surely an offense to the families of the victims mourning the loss of loved ones gone so suddenly and unfairly.

In The Economist, the Democracy in Action blogger writes: “No, taking down this symbol will not heal America’s wounds tomorrow. Of course it wouldn’t. But letting the Confederate flag wave away on South Carolina’s state grounds simply antagonises [sic] those who grieve.”

But this is a bad argument. For one, this argument overreaches. At most, what it prescribes is taking down the flag while the sense of grief is most intensely felt. This is an argument for respecting those who grieve in their moment of deepest personal anguish. But there’s no reason offered for why it should be permanently lowered. The flag caused offense prior to the killings, and it will cause offense post-killings, but the argument itself points away from that and seems to narrow in on a moment of grief that is transitory in nature. Secondly, it’s not clear that feeling offense is good enough grounds for making changes to our national iconography. I’ll return to this argument later, as I think it provides the beginnings of a good argument for removing the flag, but the key difference is that feelings themselves are often insufficient for making sweeping changes; reasons grounded in historical fact are also needed.

The flag must come down because it can soothe racial tensions.

Should the flag be taken down because doing so could go some distance toward soothing racial tensions? For those seeing the last two arguments as prima facie identical, consider how they are importantly different. The last argument proposed taking the flag down to alleviate the grief of the victims’ families. This one has broader societal scope: the flag must come down if we are to get serious about trying to unify a racially divided America.

In a quasi-about face, South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham retracted a “this is who we are” sentiment to declare: “I hope that, by removing the flag, we can take another step towards healing and recognition — and a sign that South Carolina is moving forward.” But if this is part of who we are, then why would we “take a step” away from it? The answer, for Graham at least, is certainly political pressure.

But the argument is bad for another reason. Lowering the flag won’t lessen tensions among those predisposed toward racial animus. I take it that what we would like is to eliminate future Dylann Roofs, yet lowering the flag on state grounds will likely energize future Roofs instead. “Look how they’re taking over and erasing our history” and all that. For a utopia to emerge, previously conflicting races would need to come together. Yet there’s no reason to think that lowering the flag would achieve this. It’s not like there is a racial harmony just waiting to be actualized, ready to bubble up if only we exercised the courage to permanently lower the flag.

This argument is an attempt at appeasement. But appeasement is particularly effective in situations where grievances don’t run very deep. When resentment is high, justifiably so given how African Americans have been historically treated in this country, liberals will not be satisfied with any one instance of self-purification. This is the purgatorio, and we will be here a thousand years rectifying our past sins. If anyone believes that by lowering the flag, race-baiters like Al Sharpton will eschew race complaints from their talking points, I would like to offer you the chance of a lifetime to become a millionaire by getting in on the ground floor of an investment opportunity that is not to be missed. You will first need to deposit your life savings into an offshore bank account whose numbers I can provide for you via email. Let me know.

The reality is that lowering the flag will not heal any wounds nor introduce racial rapport. Those of different races who showed solidarity with the victims’ families did not have to wait until the state legislators met to discuss the flag to do so. Those who harbor ill will toward those of different races will not suddenly find that their antipathy toward those people has evaporated along with the flag. So it is hard to see how it is anything but sociologically false that lowering the flag will go any distance toward achieving racial accord.

The flag must come down because the South allowed slavery.

Should the flag be taken down because the Confederate States of America allowed slavery? This argument fails to explain why the CSA should be singled out as an exception and implies that most regimes in world history are to also experience the repudiation of their flags and national symbols. Why not also lower the American flag permanently while we’re at it, since it took awhile for us to arrive at the 14th Amendment? In those intervening years we built this country on slave labor. Perhaps what the “perilous fight” which our anthem memorializes could not do, we can do through an overburst of moral rectitude. Down with the flag whose regime ever allowed slavery!

But as Dylann Roof wrapped himself in the Confederate flag, he indicated his contempt for the American flag by burning it. Certainly if all slave-allowing regimes are of a piece, there should be ideological consonance among sympathizers. Why indeed would Roof embrace one and reject the other?

The answer is of course obvious. There was something special about the Confederacy’s relationship to slavery. More on this in a bit, as this will form my argument for lowering the flag. For now I note that this specialness about the CSA’s stance toward slavery sets it apart. To implicate other slave-allowing regimes alongside the CSA is to reveal a historical ignorance and to fail to to make elementary distinctions concerning how slavery featured and functioned within these regimes.

But before moving on, I want to note how depressingly irrational our public discourse is. In my opinion, going after the American flag for symbolizing a country which has allowed slavery, or of tarnishing the legacies of our founding fathers for having been slaveowners, functions for me as a reductio ad absurdum. But what’s interesting is that what counts as a reductio for me counts as a clincher for someone else. To me it’s obvious that the ubiquity of slavery was such that nearly every person prior to the onset of the abolitionist movement was participatory in or a beneficiary of the institution of slavery. A slaveless utopia did not exist, which means everybody was touched in one way or another. I would wager that many of us who so loudly denounce slavery from our historically fortunate vantage point would in some way or other similarly participate in the same peculiar institution if we were their contemporaries. But allowing it and prioritizing it are not the same, which leads me to my argument for why we should disallow the flag to be flown on government property.

The flag must come down because it is inextricably wedded to a practice fundamentally at odds with our core values.

Should the flag come down because it represents the championing of a cause diametrically opposed to our core values? Yes.

For its self-presentation, America should avail itself of imagery and symbols which promote our core values, or those which at the very least do not violate them. Our iconography should embody American virtues, not challenge them. America should not have the opportunity to utilize anti-American symbolism in its self-expression. Citizens should, but not America, and not at any level of government.

One can again note the fact that the United States historically allowed slavery up until the 14th Amendment. But allowing slavery and positioning it as the central economic relationship are worlds apart. Historian Stephanie McCurry notes in her work Confederate Reckoning how the CSA was an attempt to organize a state around slave labor. She writes: “The short-lived CSA was a signal event in the history of the Western world. What secessionists set out to build was something entirely new in the history of nations: a modern proslavery and antidemocratic state dedicated to the proposition that all men were not created equal.” The reference is to the Declaration of Independence, the most glaring point of divergence between the CSA’s project and our core values.

Obviously, since the United States lives on and slavery officially does not, the latter was not a sine qua non of the former. And yet there could not be a CSA minus slavery; for the Confederacy, it was crucial. They fought a freaking war to keep it! Since it is not possible for the Confederate battle flag to extricate its connection to slavery in any meaningful way, and since the attempt to further entrench and permanently establish the institution of slavery was the rationale for the Confederacy’s war with the United States, there is nothing to be gained, and quite a bit to be lost, by allowing any pocket of our country to officially herald its identity through the use of that flag.