It shouldn’t have taken the slaughter of nine innocent people worshipping at a Charleston, South Carolina black church to get some people to rethink their embrace of the Confederate flag. The alleged killer was not only a racist but also someone who appears to have immersed himself in the symbols of the Confederacy. This has resurrected the discussion about the flag that has raged off and on ever since the south was forced to give up official segregation. The fact that the stars and bars flies over the grounds of the South Carolina State House (though no longer over the capitol itself) adds fuel to the fire over the debate. This is to a certain extent an attempt to latch onto something tangible to explain an act of unspeakable evil. A flag didn’t kill nine African-Americans in a historic church and those who honor it in the name of their southern heritage can’t be held personally responsible for those murders. But it is time for those who care about southern history to come face to face with the meaning of their history. The Confederate flag may be an icon of a “lost cause” that some Americans view as harmless nostalgia or a connection with their ancestors. But it is also a symbol of a government founded in defense of racism and slavery and has no place in civil society in 2015.

For those who plan to respond, as they always do, to discussions about this topic with emails regurgitating neo-Confederate talking points about the Civil War being a conflict about state’s rights rather than slavery, let me state up front that I’m not buying it and neither is any other serious student of history. The Civil War did hinge in part on constitutional questions but the notion that slavery was incidental to the outbreak of the conflict is simply absurd. Without slavery, there would have been no war. The south seceded because it feared limits on the expansion of slavery would eventually doom the institution. To protect a heritage built on the uncompensated labor of slaves and their vast investment in human “property,” the states that formed the Confederacy waged a bloody war that costs hundreds of thousands of American lives and left the south in ruins. It would take a century for the region to recover completely. Unfortunately, the same pro-slavery forces that advocated for rebellion wound up in control of these states after their war due to the north’s exhaustion and lack of support for a true reconstruction of the south. That led to a century of official racism and oppression of African-Americans that ended only after the federal government finally ended this legacy of Civil War via civil rights legislation.

I understand that those whose forebears fought under the Confederate battle flag feel that tossing that banner into the dustbin of history is a slight to their heritage. But the legacy of vicious oppression that the flag symbolizes is an essential part of that same history. It should not be forgotten but rather studied and remembered primarily for the hurt that was done in the name of the cause of the Confederacy.

That’s why the U.S. Supreme Court was correct this week when it granted Texas the right to deny citizens the ability to have a state license plate promoted by the Sons of Confederate Veterans with the flag. While concerns about the government restricting free speech are often reasonable, Texas (and other states that grant this group such a privilege) had the right to say that this kind of speech was offensive and had no place on their plates.

Moreover, as Phillip Klein reminds us in the Washington Examiner, when conservatives defend the Confederate flag it stains a movement that should be rooted in a defense of liberty. Both secessionists and the segregationists that followed them not only distorted the Founders’ vision of American freedom but also wrongly associated the cause of limited government with an effort to defend slavery and the ability of states to deny rights to minorities.

No law or government action can drive hate out of the hearts of racists or ensure that prejudice is permanently driven from American society. Taking down that flag won’t bring the Charleston victims back to life or ensure that other white supremacists won’t stain American soil with the blood of innocents. But taking it down is the right thing to do. The Confederate flag should be relegated to the fever swamps where mad extremists still fantasize about the south and pretend that its cause was not inextricably tied up with an evil that caused irreparable harm to our nation. No state should be so trapped in the embrace of a mythical Gone With The Wind version of American history that it allows a symbol of racism and treason to continue to wave over its official property and our public squares.