A Possibly More Realistic Interpretation

The right honorable Thomas DiLorenzo tells about his trip to Poland, where he was picked up by a young man who displayed on his dashboard a Confederate flag magnet which he bought while visiting Richmond.

Politically-Correct Interpretation: Obviously, this young libertarian, whose parents were slaves of socialism, is a racist who reveres nineteenth-century American slave owners and would probably like to introduce slavery to Poland.

More Realistic Interpretation: This young Polish libertarian, who has not been brainwashed by American government schools, and who has never attended a Claremont Institute seminar, naturally thought of the Confederate flag as a symbol of opposition to a hated centralized governmental tyranny.

Or how about this possibly more realistic interpretation: This young Polish libertarian is fascinated with not-exactly-libertarian idiosyncracies of other cultures' histories, just as I as a young American libertarian am fascinated by Soviet-era classical music and entertain an arm-chair interest in socialist realist art, and this young libertarian Pole wishes to collect trinkets and other paraphernalia that reminds him of these unlibertarian idiosyncracies, partly because they tickle his brain and partly because they make him feel rebellious.

Of course, it was Tom DiLorenzo who rode with him from the airport to the hotel or the conference, and so DiLorenzo knows more about the guy than I do. Maybe the Pole really was a Confederate sympathizer. Or maybe he was just being chatty.