Renowned legal expert Alan Dershowitz praised the speech by South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley Monday in which
she announced the decision to take down the Confederate flag from the state capitol grounds.
"I agree with just about everything she said. It was a brilliant and perceptive and balanced, thorough statement," Dershowitz, professor emeritus at Harvard Law School, told Ed Berliner on "MidPoint" on
Newsmax TV Monday.
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"She gave something to all the citizens of South Carolina," he explained. "Those Republicans or Democrats who want to run on the symbol of the Confederate flag have the right to do that, and each citizen has the right to put terrible symbols in his backyard, but not on the state's grounds."
"That's the right decision to make, and it's right to do it now, and it's right to call the legislature back into session," he said.
"Hopefully the legislature won't have to be called back; it'll do it on its own. She's got it just right. Exactly the right balance and exactly the right tone," he added.
Dershowitz explained that if you "compare it to Germany where of course they not only took the swastika down from state property, but they banned it and made it an illegal symbol. That option is available, but under our First Amendment, this was the right balance to strike."
The Confederate flag, which has flown on a Confederate memorial on the state capitol grounds in Columbia, South Carolina, became the focus of attention following the church shooting in Charleston on Wednesday, when pictures were released with shooter Dylann Roof posing with the flag.
Desiree Adaway, of The Adaway Group, joined Dershowitz on "MidPoint" and said that the flag should have come down sooner.
"That flag caused a lot of pain before Wednesday, and so when she said 'it's caused pain,' that flag caused a lot of pain to a lot of people prior to the murders on Wednesday night," Adaway explained.
"I don't want the flag to become a distraction from really what has been a brutally oppressive past in South Carolina, and for a lot of people it's a brutally oppressive present day," she added.
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