My ancestors happened to fight on the losing side of the Civil War, or as some called it in the South, The War of Northern Aggression.

My people were simple farmers, many of whom are now buried in the Counts family cemetery in Cabot, Arkansas. I'm certain more than one of them raised a bayonet against a Union solider during America's bloody conflict.

Still, I cringed when I saw that the Confederates of Michigan held a rally Sunday along a freeway south of Jackson, the birthplace of the Republican Party, which put an end to slavery and the Confederacy.

I'm also not sure if the group was aware they had their gathering at a park named for Gov. Austin Blair, Michigan's governor during the war and a staunch abolitionist who helped start the party of Lincoln.

The 20 or so people waving Confederate flags for the benefit of cars cruising along U.S. 127 said they were merely celebrating their Southern heritage.

"We may be holding Confederate flags, but (that) does not mean we are hateful," the group's leader, Steve Panther, told MLive. "We wave it for our heritage and for families of veterans of the confederacy who were just defending their land."

There are a lot of wonderful things about the South. The food. The music. Its grand literary tradition.

Institutional slavery and the Confederate States of America that arose to defend it are not among those, however. The flag is a symbol for the defense of slavery, once a prime component of the South's economy. There were other reasons for secession -- as organizations like the Confederates of Michigan will point out -- but there's no doubt slavery was at the heart of the affair.

My Southern forbearers probably didn't own slaves either. Perhaps they were also just defending their farms. It doesn't matter. In the ensuing years, the flag has become a symbol of hate and seeing it unfurled and waved with anything resembling pride is deeply unsettling.

And in 21st Century America, when you stand on the side of the road waving it, you should know this.

It's not just extremely disrespectful to African Americans, it presents Michigan as a place where white people don't understand the pain it causes their black neighbors. Empathizing with and understanding people of all different races and ethnicities is vital to creating a better society.

Do the Confederates of Michigan have a right to wave the flag? Absolutely. Our freedom of speech guarantees it.

Do I think the Confederates of Michigan truly care about their Southern heritage, as they claim? I think Sunday's gesture was more about shock and provocation, much like the open carry groups who get a certain kick out of taking guns into schools.

The thinking goes that it's healthy to exercise our Constitutional rights whenever we can.

But just because you have the right to say something doesn't mean it's good for our republic to say it. With our rights comes a responsibility to try and say something beneficial and enriching for our society, not just to provoke.

The Civil War may have ended this same month 151 years ago, but the legacy of slavery still remains with America's volatile race relations. Look no farther to southeastern Michigan.

We can't escape the past. We live with it every day.

"The past is never dead," the great Southern novelist William Faulkner wrote. "It's not even past."

We can only try and do better in the future, a future where it would be better if the Confederate flag was displayed where it belongs: in a museum.

This is an opinion column by John Counts, a writer on MLive's Impact Team. Contact him at johncounts@mlive.com.