Every once in a while you see a story that illustrates the madness of our times. This is a good example.

Two Long Island high school students have been suspended for allegedly bringing a Confederate flag to school.

Brother Gary Cregan, principal of St. Anthony’s High School in South Huntington, said the two seniors walked in with a Confederate flag draped around their shoulders during an after-hours sporting event at the school.

As CBS 2′s Kathryn Brown reported, there is outrage and disgust on Long Island.

Outrage? Disgust? Really?

“The African-American students who immediately saw it really exercised heroic restraint and fortunately a teacher immediately confiscated the flag and took the students out of the gym,” Cregan said.

I like the unintended racism at work here. Blacks, like feral animals, immediately fly into a rage upon seeing a flag?

The students were initially suspended for 10 days, but Cregan decided Tuesday they won’t be allowed back, Brown reported.

Cregan wrote a letter to parents saying the use of any symbols “designed to revive past injustices or to inflame discrimination or racial intolerance, is completely unacceptable and profoundly offensive,” Newsday reported.

Cregan said he sees the flag as a symbol of hate.

“I find it just very hard to even imagine why any student in 2014 would even consider or think that a Confederate flag would be anything other than a symbol of hate,” Cregan said.

He is right. The flag does symbolize hatred. It is the hatred of southern whites by northern whites. Up until 25years ago, displaying the Confederate flag was a non-event. I have some hand painted ties I bought in Maine that have the flag on them. But as the South began to prosper, northern whites decided that southern whites were getting too uppity so they had to put them in their place.

“It’s absolutely absurd, I don’t understand why you would bring up things from the past that are hateful,” student Jessica Flynn said.

Of course, asking the students is out of the question. They are hateful haters and must be banished from society. Ignorance is the price of freedom or something.

“It represents slavery to us. It represents racism and prejudice to us,” parent JuJu Quinnonez added. “Believe me, I am all for freedom of speech but to have someone come in to school with that flag draped around their shoulder – I’m not really sure what the intent was.”

This is hilarious on a few levels. For starters, “JuJu” does not get a say in the matter. His people clearly had no dog in the fight. The illiteracy of the sentence is what gets me. He is for freedom of speech, but not if he does not understand it. In other words, his ignorance is a veto on speech. That’s probably not what he meant, but that’s what he is saying. I think we know what he meant. He’s all for free speech as long as it agrees with the official dogma.

“I certainly think this particular symbol of hate falls in the category of something that should be excised from our culture,” Cregan said.

Like maybe Catholic collaboration with the Nazis? Should that result in banning the Catholic Church? How about Father Coughlin’s lurch into Fascism?

The students haven’t explained why they did it. St. Anthony’s is a private Catholic school and isn’t bound by the First Amendment right to free speech.

Still, the New York Civil Liberties Union said all people should be able to express their views freely, even the offensive ones.

“Our motto is more speech, not censorship or punishment,” NYCLU director Donna Lieberman told Brown. “Helping children understand the impact of this patently offensive expressive activity.”

Tensions are so high among students at St. Anthony’s that the principal said he has security concerns once the suspension is over. He’s made the decision that the students involved aren’t coming back at all.

This is where the madness of these adults is dangerous. In some weird attempt to take a silly prank and make it into a public act of piety, they are encouraging very bad behavior amongst their students. If these adults had any sense of self-respect and cared about their students, they would stop this nonsense. You take the flag from the kids and carry on like it was no big deal. Later you bring in the parents and address it with them. These are high school boys and high school boys do dumb stuff like this all the time.

Instead, it is used as a chance for the adults to publicly display their piety and obedience.