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(JD Crowe/jdcrowe@al.com)

AL.com Opinion

South Carolina State Rep. Doug Brannon gets it. All it took was the murder of his friend, state Sen. Clementa Pinckney, senior pastor of the Emanuel AME church in Charleston as he was leading a prayer service last week.

From an AL.com AP story: "I just didn't have the balls for five years to do it," said state Rep. Brannon, a Republican elected in 2010.

"When my friend was assassinated for being nothing more than a black man, I decided it was time for that thing to be off the Statehouse grounds," Brannon said. "It's not just a symbol of hate, it's actually a symbol of pride in one's hatred."

He's not the only Southern conservative politician who was awakened by the massacre of 9 church members at Charleston's historic black church.

"150 years after the end of the Civil War, the time has come," South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley said after rousing applause, surrounded by Democrats and Republican lawmakers. "That flag, while an integral part of the past, does not represent the future of our great state."

As my Al.com colleague Kyle Whitmire puts it, it's time to stop whistling Dixie and move into the 21st century.

You're free to wear your feelings for that flag on your sleeve or bathing suit bottoms, of course. There's something oddly appropriate about a Confederate flag bikini wedgie.

But a symbol of our heritage? To many of our brothers and sisters, that rebel flag is nothing but a tongue of hate speech, flapping in the wind.

Bring it down.