Waging War Against the Dead

Real Clear Politics ^ | Mar 14, 2019 | Victor Davis Hanson

[centurion316]

The 21st century is in danger of becoming an era of statue smashing and historical erasure. Not since the iconoclasts of the Byzantine Empire or the epidemic of statue destruction during the French Revolution has the world seen anything like the current war on the past.

In 2001, the primeval Taliban blew up two ancient Buddha statues in Afghanistan on grounds that their very existence was sacrilegious to Islam.

In 2015, ISIS militants entered a museum in Mosul, Iraq, and destroyed ancient, pre-Islamic statues and idols. Their mute crime? These artifacts predated the prophet Muhammad.

The West prides itself in the idea that liberal societies would never descend into such nihilism. Think again.

In the last two years there has been a rash of statue toppling throughout the American South, aimed at wiping out memorialization of Confederate heroes. The pretense is that the Civil War can only be regarded as tragic in terms of the present oppression of the descendants of Southern slaves --154 years after the extinction of the Confederate states.

There is also a renewed crusade to erase the memory of Italian explorer Christopher Columbus. Los Angeles removed a Columbus statue in November based on the premise that his 1492 discovery of the Americas began a disastrous genocide in the Western Hemisphere.

Last month, the Northern California town of Arcata did away with a statue of former president William McKinley because he supposedly pushed policies detrimental to Native Americans.

There have been some unfortunate lessons from such vendettas against the images and names of the past.

[centurion316]

VDH is one the greatest Classicist and Historians of our day, but he could not gain tenure in today's Academy. The society misfits have taken over higher education and the Democrat Party and they have encouraged and nurtured the criminal morons who are running amok in our cities and our campuses. They are not to be seen in Rural America where they would be shot or at least taught a very painful lesson, but they have taken over in Democrat Land and are quickly destroying all of it.

[dsrtsage]

I heard they might take away their right to vote democrat a dozen times per election too

[aquila48]

“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”

Orwell.