Posted on 07/11/2015 7:01:13 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
To no one’s real surprise, the national Confederate-flag debate turns out not to be about flags alone. It’s not even truly about history. And it’s certainly not about dealing with the issues of crime and poverty that still disproportionately impact the black community. It has now moved entirely into the realm of raw cultural and political power. It’s an identity-politics hammer that is “heads, I win; tails, you lose” for all too many conservatives. With the Left in the lead, you’re either a racist for refusing to bulldoze history or — if you go along — you’re still a racist, but at least the Left has you under control.
In a piece on June 19, I articulated a simple principle: Official flag displays that are intended — like the Democrats’ displays in the 1960s — to demonstrate an official commitment to white supremacy are vile and should come down. Flag displays at Civil War monuments, memorials, and battlefields are part of history and should stay. In fact, there is no principled distinction between a flag and the monument itself. If one goes, why not the other?
Why not, indeed. A fever is now sweeping the land. In New Orleans, the mayor has proposed removing four monuments, including one of Robert E. Lee, as “public nuisances.” In her public statement, the mayor decried the “false valor” of Confederate soldiers. Nancy Pelosi introduced a resolution demanding that Mississippi’s state flag be removed from display on U.S. Capitol Grounds. Republicans in the House acquiesced in Democrat Jared Huffman’s proposal to ban even privately placed Confederate flags at Confederate grave sites in national cemeteries. And in the most bizarre move of all, the Memphis city council just voted to disturb Nathan Bedford Forrest’s grave and move his remains from under his statue (with the statue-removal vote to come later.)
This is only the beginning. Speaker of the House John Boehner is proposing a bipartisan commission with a “broad mandate” to “review all issues related to Confederate symbols” (emphasis added). Creating this commission guarantees that the “debate” (such as it is) will carry on indefinitely. I eagerly await their conclusion that social justice demands removing all Confederate remains and Confederate markers from national cemeteries, no doubt to be followed by a mandate that Confederate soldiers in battlefield reenactments fight in Nike shorts and Target T-shirts, waving “Coexist” banners as they charge Union positions.
Let’s fast-forward and imagine an increasingly plausible future where Confederate memorials are piles of rubble and Confederate bones are interred in landfills — will America be a better nation? But let’s fast-forward and imagine an increasingly plausible future where Confederate memorials are piles of rubble, Confederate bones are interred in landfills, and Confederate flags linger on mainly as fading stickers on a few mud-covered pickup trucks — will America be a better nation? Will a single inner-city school improve? Will we have taken a single meaningful step toward finding a way to responsibly end mass incarceration? Will community and police relations improve, at all? Will the leftist urban elite stop oppressing the liberal urban poor?
Of course not. In fact, by screaming “Squirrel!” at the top of their lungs, the social-justice warriors would have been rewarded with yet another round of pop-culture accolades and are empowered to engage yet another target. And, at the end of the day, America will be more ignorant, the cultural Left will be more self-righteous, and our nation’s history will be viewed as an infinitely malleable tool for delivering only Left-approved messages to the hearts and minds of our citizens.
Many thousands of the men who risked their lives and spilled blood to defeat the Confederacy would be appalled. Abraham Lincoln would see the malice toward all, the charity toward none. Ulysses S. Grant would be shocked at the notion, for example, that Pickett’s Charge represented “false valor,” and the great warrior-abolitionist, Joshua Chamberlain, would be disgusted at the thought of digging up Confederate bones to make a political statement. But why take any guidance from Union heroes when determining how to remember the past? After all, tweeters and Facebookers know so much more about right and wrong, about justice and injustice. After all, they’ve spilled their own online blood, and they have the hate-tweets to prove it.
As so often happens, the cultural Left is winning because dissenters are silent. Despite an avalanche of cultural propaganda, stubborn majorities of Americans still don’t see the Confederate flag as a symbol of hate. Yet conservative political leaders apparently believe that the loud cultural minority is more important to appease than history is to preserve. So fire up the bulldozers, the hashtagging Left will accomplish what no Union soldier ever could — knock General Lee off his horse.
Slave-owning George Washington, you and your phallic monument are next.
— David French is an attorney and a staff writer at National Review.
Is it legal to just dig up American soldier bodies at will.
After all, Confederate war dead have exactly the same legal status as any American soldier killed in Iraq or Afghanistan.
The Left is really good at dividing people. Divide and conquer is one of their key tactics.
The anti Southern culture jihad is on. There will be no stopping it. This has been pre planned.
The battle flag was hoisted by Democrats in the South. This is like a Stalinist purge of the party's history.
Dealing with the left is like dealing with terrorists. Any compromise with them is seen as nothing but a weakness to exploit later.
IIRC, the STATES usually control grave disposition. I know this is so in Georgia. I don’t think a city or county can arbitrarily dig up a grave and move it or otherwise dispose of it.
Years ago at a little church cemetery in East Cobb, GA, Cobb County had encroached on the cemetery to the point the road ROW and sidewalks were actually cutting the corner on my Grandparents’ graves (and their parents). I took my mother down there once to put fresh flowers on and clean up and she got hopping made. Long story short, she had the State agency responsible MAKE Cobb County realign the road (moving it) to cure the encroachment. It cost them a bundle and they had to purchase ROW on the other side of the road to move the road. They also made the County install a wrought iron Fence along the entire ROW it shared.
It is becoming clear that we are headed into a cultural revolution much like Chine. That didn’t work out very well, and ours won’t either.
Maybe we should dig up the bones of the British Regulars and Marines buried here, and send them back to England because of what they did to the Colonists here several centuries ago.
This makes just as much sense, doesn’t it?
I keep shouting this sort thing ... into a vacuum. Conservatives MUST convene to make plans to combat this steady erosion of our Principles. We MUST become activists, or just say goodby to this cherished Nation. Leaving comments on blog sites isn't good enough. Time is running out.
...I keep shouting this sort thing ... into a vacuum. Conservatives MUST convene to make plans to combat this steady erosion of our Principles....
Cruz and Trump are not keeping quiet. Neither should we.
Enough of liberalisms’ divide and conquer.
The Left is winning because dissenters are SILENCED.
We have no voice nor venue for such. Our elected reps say what they think we want to hear but when they get to DC they're all about keeping their career options open. And they do this with impugnity. Meanwhile, America is being destroyed by the gods of liberalism.
A poster here on Free Republic (don’t remember who or which article) said that the agreement between the Forrest family and the city of Memphis was that the land the park sits on was willed to the city as long as Forrest’s bones remained where they are. If they are removed, the land reverts to the family members. Does anyone know about this?
They reburied Abe Lincoln’s remains in a mass of concrete... so nobody could do this.
Let’s give it all back to the Indians. If anyone deserves reparations..it’s the Indians.
You are of course 100% correct.
Clearly we have no representation at any level of government.
The madness has infected the culture deep and wide, and people like us will become men without a country.
“They reburied Abe Lincoln’s remains in a mass of concrete... so nobody could do this.”
Buffalo Bill Cody’s too.
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