For a century, Americans lived comfortably with the honoring, North and South, of the men who fought on both sides.
But today’s America is not the magnanimous country we grew up in.
Since the ’60s, there has arisen an ideology that holds that the Confederacy was the moral equivalent of Nazi Germany and those who fought under its battle flag should be regarded as traitors or worse.
Thus, in New Orleans, statues of Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederate States of America, and Gen. Robert E. Lee were just pulled down. And a drive is underway to take down the statue of Andrew Jackson, hero of the Battle of New Orleans and president of the United States, which stands in Jackson Square.
Why? Old Hickory was a slave owner and Indian fighter who used his presidential power to transfer the Indians of Georgia out to the Oklahoma Territory in a tragedy known as the Trail of Tears.
But if Jackson, and James K. Polk, who added the Southwest and California to the United States after the Mexican-American War, were slave owners, so, too, were four of our first five presidents.
The list includes the father of our country, George Washington, the author of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson, and the author of our Constitution, James Madison.
Not only are the likenesses of Washington and Jefferson carved on Mount Rushmore, the two Virginians are honored with two of the most magnificent monuments and memorials in Washington, D.C.
Behind this remorseless drive to blast the greatest names from America’s past off public buildings and to tear down their statues and monuments is an egalitarian extremism rooted in envy and hate.
Among its core convictions is that spreading Christianity was a cover story for rapacious Europeans who, after discovering America, came in masses to dispossess and exterminate native peoples. “The white race,” wrote Susan Sontag, “is the cancer of human history.”
Today, the men we were taught to revere as the great captains, explorers, missionaries and nation-builders are seen by many as part of a racist, imperialist, genocidal enterprise, wicked men who betrayed and eradicated the peace-loving natives who had welcomed them.
What they blindly refuse to see is that while its sins are scarlet, as are those of all civilizations, it is the achievements of the West that are unrivaled. The West ended slavery. Christianity and the West gave birth to the idea of inalienable human rights.
As scholar Charles Murray has written, 97 percent of the world’s most significant figures and 97 percent of the world’s greatest achievements in the arts, architecture, literature, astronomy, biology, earth sciences, physics, medicine, mathematics and technology came from the West. What is disheartening is not that there are haters of our civilization out there, but that there seem to be fewer defenders.
Of these icon-smashers it may be said: Like ISIS and Boko Haram, they can tear down statues, but these people could never build a country.
What happens, one wonders, when these Philistines discover that the seated figure in the statue, right in front of D.C.’s Union Station, is the High Admiral of the Ocean Sea, Christopher Columbus?
Happy Memorial Day
Eventually, the whole thing will catch up with Woodrow Wilson, and his status will take a mighty fall.
They cannot erase their connection with slavery as long the memories of the Confederacy exists. They are going to towards making it look like Christians were responsible.
After the Confederates, who’s next?
Christian Conservatives, who take the Bible literally.
My great, great, grandfather is buried in a mass grave at camp Douglas. The victors write the histories.
Who’s next?
Banning of Memorial Day and the now homophobic Mother’s Day. One celebrates the deaths of soldiers promoting the racist society of the United States, as it were, and the other reminds people, subconsciously, of the futility of perversion and murder while exalting the natural design of God’s plan for the human race.
Black community organizers are next
Christian Churches and Jewish Synagogues will be next
Because that’s their big “fallback” argument. When all else fails, reach back hundreds of years and spout a selective history of racism.
"Alabama Republican Gov. Kay Ivey signed legislation Wednesday that protects Confederate memorials from removal or modification. "
What conservatives who side with BlackLivesMatter thugs in defaming Robert E. Lee or Jefferson Davis don't realize or admit is that this isn't really about the Confederacy or about slavery at all. It's an attack on American history, on white people, and on western culture. Confederates just happen to be an easy and convenient early target. The radical Left wants to tear down monuments to Washington and Jefferson, but for the time being they'll have to settle for easier targets like memorials to Robert E. Lee or Jefferson Davis. And as a bonus, they even get some stupid conservative Republicans to take their side, in much the same way as the multicultural Left has joined hands on immigration with the cheap labor "right."
Yes, but Third World people continue to contribute such great things to humanity as suicide bombings, the MS-13 street gang, and the knockout game.
Sherman didn’t burn Atlanta. And Sheridan’s animus toward Indians was rooted in the reality that they were enemies of the white settlers on the Plains. Neither man was a villain.
But then, neither were Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, or Jefferson Davis. All were honorable men who fought for their principles, and whose principles were worth fighting for.
So they went and named the dinner after bj. From racist to rapist.