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.
Dig up the Dead , a little something they would have in common with Muslims
Shouldn’t Byrd have any mention of him ripped off the pages, plaques, etc since he was Klu Klux Klan
It is truly amazing what 12% of this country can get away with.
The sons of Union civil war vets officially support continuing to display the flag of their fallen Confederate brothers. Obviously the sons of Confederate war vets do the same.
Maybe joining one of those groups can be a starting point for building a movement.
http://www.suvcw.org/?page_id=129
I have often wonder if the men who fought and died in the civil war on the UNION SIDE and seeing the future today would have said “f*ck it - it is not worth my sacrifice.”
“The Left is really good at dividing people. Divide and conquer is one of their key tactics.”
Then we should start dividing the left from their heads.
“The anti Southern culture jihad is on. There will be no stopping it. This has been pre planned.”
They can kiss my rebel ass.
“Dealing with the left is like dealing with terrorists. Any compromise with them is seen as nothing but a weakness to exploit later.”
Exactly. That is why CWII is inevitable.
“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.”
As long as you kill at least two of the bad guys they can never get even.
I refuse to be Reconstructed.
“...and people like us will become men without a country.”
I’ve got your six, friend.
“I refuse to be Reconstructed.”
Amen, brother.
“Nancy Pelosi introduced a resolution demanding that Mississippi’s state flag be removed from display on U.S. Capitol Grounds.”
I’m about ready for that, I’m not represented by either party. Our government as it now exists cannot be relied administer our laws and many regulations in an equitable fashion or to follow our Constitution, our legislature has ceded their authority to the executive branch and the majority those who run under the conservative banner have been spending us into oblivion and who have not insisted on protecting our borders are now working their butts off to insure we join the other third world countries in economic and social chaos.
“Nancy Pelosi introduced a resolution demanding that Mississippi’s state flag be removed from display on U.S. Capitol Grounds.”
I’m about ready for that, I’m not represented by either party. Our government as it now exists cannot be relied administer our laws and many regulations in an equitable fashion or to follow our Constitution, our legislature has ceded their authority to the executive branch and the majority those who run under the conservative banner have been spending us into oblivion and who have not insisted on protecting our borders are now working their butts off to insure we join the other third world countries in economic and social chaos.
it has been on as long as i can remember i’m 75.
If true it will be ignored, Memphis accepted a large sum of money to name the city operated hospital the “John Gaston Hospital”, time goes by they changed the name kept the money. Vanderbilt received money for buildings to be named for General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson and others but eventually changed the names and kept the money.
Didn’t you know? All these actions against anything confederate has to be done to heal the country and bring us together. </sarcasm>
It's even more amazing what 2% can get away with.
We who are in the south are to be the new Negroes.
Don't you worry about a thing. If this happened, Obama would simply issue an Executive Order. If that wasn't enough, the SCOTUS would rule that the words in the will have the opposite meaning, when taken in the context of the time.
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