It's June 14th again, Folks, so Happy Flag Day 2021 !

Now, good ol' Flag Day doesn't have the currency it once had, and even though I report from the former Confederacy, no one would accurately describe me as one of those the-South-shall-rise-again! types.

BUT, like high school and college debate teams or any law school grad, for intellectual sport I can argue either side of just about any issue.

ERGO, here's a nifty idea for any Son or Daughter of Dixie who wants to commemorate all those fallen Rebs but ALSO wisely realizes that displaying familiar Confederacy-evoking iconography will almost instantly result in your home being firebombed by the local franchises of BLM or Antifa, or both. (And this dilemma solution would work ESPECIALLY well for any Confed sympathizer who happens to reside in Colorado, as I shall explain.)

We are often reminded by 21st Century media folk, what them Duke[s of Hazzard] Boys displayed on NBC atop their General Lee-mobile is what's known as the "Confederate Battle flag". The reason it's "battle" is because it was what was used by the Gray troops on battlefields, but only AFTER the first battle.

Now, Ft. Sumpter in April 1861 may have seen the Civil War's first SHOTS fired--artillery, actually--but it WASN'T the first battle per se. (After all, the bombardment resulted in no deaths on either side.).

No, the first true battle of the war was on a sweltering Sunday afternoon in late July, what's now known as The First Bull Run, situated some 20 miles northwest of the District of Columbia.

Two things are remembered by every (alert) schoolchild about that First Bull Run: (1) it was [pretty much the sole] one where many picnicking families road carriages out to the site to witness the upcoming carnage from safe distance; and (2) after a couple hours or so it became a HUGE rout by the Rebs of the Union, with the North willy-nilly retreating in chaos and arguably even humiliation.

But what's seldom remembered is what would become that "battle" flag--not to mention a nowadays-globally-recognized (and maligned) logo--was a quick-design change adopted by the Confederate leadership (and presumably officially enacted by the Confederate Congress, then still seated in Montgomery) was a result of that battle. This quick change was adopted because some soldiers on each side had had a tough time distinguishing the then-in-use 34-state USA flag from what is in the fact that official Confederate States of America flag.

There is not only no 11-star-festooned cross on the actual CSA banner, but instead its three-striped, two-sector design vaguely resembles what would end up being adopted as the Colorado state flag upon its 1876 statehood!

So proudly fly the REAL Confederate flag today if you like, and probably NO ONE WILL NOTICE, especially out in The Rocky Mountain State!

Personally, I don't think the CSA and 34-state USA flags look much alike AT ALL, much less indistinguishable. But I'm also not struggling to reload a mid-19th century rifle while avoiding getting my head blown off on a battlefield where clouds of gunpowder-smoke obscure my view of things.

BRYAN STYBLE/Florida