Free Republic

While the city of Washington, D.C. has openly promoted tearing down statues of America’s Founding Fathers, Hillsdale College’s Liberty Walk stands in distinct contrast. Hillsdale College, a small liberal arts college in southern Michigan, hosts an increasing array of original statues honoring men and women who have stood courageously for freedom.Walking Hillsdale College’s Liberty Walk, one sees statues erected to founders such as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson as well as others who have fought for liberty and equality such as Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, Ronald Reagan, and Winston Churchill. Hillsdale also has the only statue in North America of...

The thirst among Republican voters isn't even for policy. It's for seeing the politicians they elected join the fray. I’ve been hammering away at conservatives and Republicans for failing to defend the symbols of national pride the woke leftist mob has been tearing at in recent weeks. Yesterday on the “Brian Kilmeade Show,” I admitted to letting my anger get the best of me a bit. Brian said I was speaking not as a publisher but as an American — and that’s fair. But part of my frustration is that this is such an obvious challenge that anti-American leftists and...

The outrage over statues and the 'white' depictions of Christ is meant to detract us from the real endgame: the 'canceling of Christianity itself. Towards the end of his reign, Tuthmosis III of Egypt ordered the destruction of all the public monuments to his aunt, Hatshepsut, the former leader of Egypt. It wasn’t the first instance of iconoclasm that the world had seen, but it has become one of the most memorable.Iconoclasm — the deliberate destruction of images — has existed almost as long as man has walked the earth. When it took place, there were usually deep and profound...

Radical activist mobs toppling statues across the country aren't just wrong about the contributions of Thomas Jefferson, they're wrong about the Founding. It is believed playwright George Bernard Shaw once said “Every man deserves to be judged in the context of his times.” While that sentiment often goes unheeded, in our current moment it seems to be under full-blown assault. Hardly an hour goes by without demands — even preemptive actions — to topple a monument or statue memorializing someone from the past.A Thomas Jefferson statue is the latest target for my alma mater, the University of Missouri. Since 1885,...

Since the museum has already explicitly stated Roosevelt had 'troubling views on race,' its condemnation is not merely of the monument, but of the man. As the woke mob continues its crusade, pillaging cities and purging history, the next victim of the “tear it all down” impulse is Theodore Roosevelt, or at least a statue of him. But if Teddy is so problematic he must be canceled, mustn’t we also cleanse all the artifacts connected to his legacy, including thousands of animals?The desecraters never intended to stop at Confederate monuments, of course, and now the sculpture honoring the 26th president...

Rarified conservative arguments that we should remove Confederate monuments is tantamount to accepting the left’s vision of America as irredeemably racist. Last week, as statues of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson—among many others—were pulled down by angry mobs, conservative writers Rich Lowry and Philip Klein were penning throat-clearing columns explaining how it’s wrong to pull down monuments to the Founders but okay to remove Confederate statues, because you see, Confederates were traitors who fought for slavery.Which, of course they were. But at this point it would be hard to imagine an argument more detached from reality. Lowry and Klein—and all...

he promise of bloodshed coming alongside or following shortly after is an historic certainty. The symbols of a people never satisfy: People themselves must always come next. WASHINGTON, DC — For millennia, King Mob has targeted societies’ icons with varied goals and to varied ends, and few things are more foreboding than his desecration of civic art. Just as the targets have ranged from rulers to clergy, from tyrants to helpless, and from the guilty to the innocent, the outcomes have ranged from victory to defeat depending on the society’s strength and will. The promise of bloodshed coming alongside or...