PENDER: Flag referendum PR would be priceless, rotten

And now, for the flag.

It looks like the feel-bad issue of the 2016 session, the state flag, is about to kick off this week.

Several groups, including the Sons of Confederate Veterans, are planning a “High Noon” rally on Tuesday to tell the Legislature not to remove the Confederate rebel emblem from the state flag. It’s a pre-emptive strike. No such legislation exists, but it’s expected.

They probably needn’t worry. I’m sure there will be much flag debate this session, but I’d put my money on the Legislature — if in the end it does anything — punting this to a referendum, letting the masses vote as they did in 2001. That’s what Gov. Phil Bryant and Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves have recommended — put it on the ballot for the 2016 presidential election. There’s also a pro-flag change group pushing for a referendum.

This is a bad idea.

As Yoda would say to the Legislature: change the flag, or change it not. But a referendum you must not have.

Over many years, I’ve heard politicians opine that some event or another — even Hurricane Katrina, or the state’s response — provided Mississippi with positive publicity “you just couldn’t buy.”

Another flag referendum would provide Mississippi with priceless publicity, of the most rotten kind.

We’d get all sorts of national media attention for months during such a referendum campaign. National outlets would showcase the Magnolia State all the time. But they wouldn’t showcase anything good. They would hunt down every bad stereotype ever linked to Mississippi, stick a camera in front of it, and make it look like it’s all there is here.

There are reasonable people on both sides of the flag debate who make reasonable arguments. They won’t be the ones in the klieg lights with microphones thrust in their faces. God knows, we still have plenty of problems, but they would be magnified 1,000-fold and continue to be our brand.

I once asked a New York reporter if his newsroom issued him a pith helmet and jodhpurs when he ventured down to the Heart of Darkness they portray Mississippi to be. He had asked me if I knew where he could find some Klan to interview and didn’t appear to believe me when I told him it wasn’t much of a going concern in most of the state anymore.

Every vestige of racism, ignorance and radicalism will be hunted down and put on national display during such a flag campaign. Would that be good for tourism? Would it make the CEO of a major company want to build his new development and create jobs here?

Whichever side would win such an election, Mississippi on the whole would likely lose.

Ironically, some of the same state leaders who railed against the school-funding referendum last year — saying such work is the domain of the Legislature — are the same ones calling for a flag referendum.

Ours is a representative republic, not a direct democracy where major spending or policy issues are decided by a majority vote of the masses. Our founding fathers were just as afraid of the “excesses of democracy” and “tyranny by majority” as they were of despotic kings. They believed democracy should be tempered through legislative representation.

If everything in our state and country were decided by majority — mob — rules, there would likely be no civil rights. Major roads would be built only in the most populated areas and New York, Los Angeles and Chicago could dictate the nation’s gun laws.

Changing the state flag, or not changing the flag, is the job of our elected Legislature. If it has the will and votes to change it, then change it. If it does not, then move on — we have plenty else that needs to be addressed.

But we don’t need government by goat rodeo, and we don’t need the bad PR another flag referendum would bring.

Contact  Geoff Pender at (601) 961-7266 or gpender@jackson.gannett.com. Follow @GeoffPender on Twitter.