A fairgoer named Karen Wood was shocked to see Confederate flags for sale at this year’s Wood County Fair. She has asked the fair board to ban Confederate flag sales at future fairs.

She is right to worry about the flag, and the feelings it evokes today, both in people attracted and those repulsed.

But she is wrong about the solution.

Display of the Confederate flag is free speech. And it is best countered by more free speech.

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The history of the flag is a complicated, even tortured one. It was only one of several battle flags flown by the South during the Civil War and not the official flag of the Confederacy. But it is the one most closely identified, in almost everyone’s mind, with the “cause,” of the South. It was commonly thought of, for generations, as the “rebel” flag — the flag of the rebel soldier.

Historically, the Confederate flag was not generally thought of as a symbol of slavery, but of the South itself, and what, to southerners, was primarily a war for states’ rights and southern independence.

For most southerners of the 20th century, the flag was a vestige of their heritage and a sign of remembrance, far from all positive, of the sacrifice of ancestors who fought in the war. It was part of history.

But over the last generation or so, the Confederate flag has been largely appropriated by those who would use it to sow racial divisions.

That is why the then-governor of South Carolina, Nikki Haley, a little over two years ago, came out for removing the flag from the State House in Columbia. This was after Dylann Roof killed nine black people in the Charleston church shooting, saying he hoped to incite a race war. He loved and displayed the Confederate flag. He desecrated the American flag.

Ms. Haley (now ambassador to the U.N) too had grown up understanding the Confederate flag as a symbol of southern pride and heritage. But she changed her mind. She came to believe that the Confederate flag is now something else. She persuaded the South Carolina legislature to take it down.

The governor did not ban the flag. She chose not to fly it and to persuade others to join her. It had become a symbol, not of the Confederacy, but of hate.

Does that mean that anyone who flies the Confederate flag is guilty of hate, or hate speech?

No, it is more like dumb, or ill-informed speech.

But it is still speech.

To some people, the Confederate flag remains a tribute to southern heritage. To others, it merely symbolizes rebellion. Many people do not know the history of the flag, and many others do not understand its appropriation, including, most recently, in Charlottesville.

They know not what they do.

It’s a good guess that most who fly the rebel flag in Wood County are in the latter category. Few of their forefathers fought with Robert E. Lee. Those people need to be engaged in a conversation that will educate them and deepen their empathy, as Ms. Haley said should happen on a massive scale in South Carolina. They are not haters who are engaged in an incendiary action — like throwing a punch or a baseball bat. And most of them are not racists or separatists who intend incendiary speech.

They need to be engaged. They need to meet people who are the descendants of slaves and hear what the Confederate flag today means to them. Or meet Ms. Haley, a Republican whose parents were Indian immigrants who wore a turban and sari, respectively. She said all people who come to the South Carolina State House need to feel welcome.

By the same token, liberals need to meet some folks from Mississippi and Alabama whose ancestors did fight in the Civil War, not because of race hatred or racism, but duty. Not every southerner, or every 28-year-old in Wood County, Ohio, with a Confederate flag on the back of his pickup is a hater. Most have simply not heard the other side.

But whether they hear the other side or not, whether they really know what they are talking about or not, all citizens are entitled to their First Amendment freedoms.

And if the First Amendment remains strong, we all have a chance of hearing the other side.

The cure for speech that is ill-informed, confused, or offends is more speech.

First Published August 28, 2017, 11:30 a.m.