PRINCE GEORGE, Va. -- The new Northern Virginia battle flag practically flying over Interstate 95 in Prince George County is likely the Virginia Flaggers' most visible.
It's right there in Prince George County, at mile marker 40 - right in your face.
Its 20' x 20' on an 80 foot aluminum pole.
It's on private property leased to the Virginia Flaggers by a sympathetic landowner who didn't want to go on camera.
It sits perfectly, right beside a swooping curve of the interstate, so it commands your view when the wind is in it.
"That flag and all the flags we put up are educational," said Barry Isenhour with the Virginia Flaggers and the Army of Northern Virginia, which also sponsored the display. "They're living monuments to these Confederate soldiers who we want people to understand and to realize who they were. They were our ancestors. They were our neighbors."
It's also smack dab in the middle of a small, largely African-American neighborhood.
One 82-year-old resident thought the Ku Klux Klan had arrived when the flag went up with cannon fire - without warning to her - last Saturday.
She called police. Finding out that it was put up by a southern heritage group didn't ease her feelings.
"We've never had anything in the area like that," she said. "I don't want it in this neighborhood."
But other residents said it doesn’t bother them, or they don't want to talk about it.
And, of course, there are nearby residents who love it. The honks from people passing by on the interstate appear to also indicate support.
Isenhour denied they were being defiant or overtly in-your-face.
So why so big, so prominent, in an era when strong feelings and beliefs surround that flag?
"Our intent is to honor our Confederate ancestors and let, so to speak, the flag speak for itself."
He and other supporters say you can't blame that flag for the KKK co-opting it any more than you can blame the US flag, which was also held up by the KKK and many other nefarious groups.
"It was the soldiers' flag," he said of the new one being flown.
Me, I get their commitment to try to honor their heritage, to try to bend it away from the slavery and oppression that so many associate with Confederate symbols and monuments.
But to fly that flag, that way, for some 100,000-plus people to consider every day - many of them likely offended - feels like that line from "Gone With The Wind":
"Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn."
