Posted on 08/14/2017 3:08:29 PM PDT by NKP_Vet
Several Brooklyn Democrat activists are smarting this week after a firm rebuke from the U.S. Army. The activists, who include Congresswoman Yvette Clarke and (sigh) the Rev. Al Sharpton, demanded that the Army rename two Brooklyn streets that are named after generals in the Confederate military. But General Lee Avenue and Stonewall Jackson Drive won’t be changing their names anytime soon because the Army has rejected their requests for, cough cough, social justice.
Those streets at Fort Hamilton, said the Army in their letter, are named after men who are “an inextricable part of our military history.” As such, they will continue to be memorialized, no matter how bent of out shape it makes a handful of politicians with nothing better to do with their time.
“After over a century, any effort to rename memorializations on Fort Hamilton would be controversial and divisive,” Deputy Assistant Chief of Staff Diane Randon said in the letter. “This is contrary to the Nation’s original intent in naming these streets, which was the spirit of reconciliation.”
Both Lee and Jackson, of course, were proud members of the U.S. military decades before the Civil War. In their time as leaders in the “Union,” as it were, they both served at Fort Hamilton at various points in their careers.
Clarke was unhappy about the response, telling the New York Daily News that the fight was not over. These monuments are deeply offensive to the hundreds of thousands of Brooklyn residents and members of the armed forces stationed at Fort Hamilton whose ancestors Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson fought to hold in slavery,” she said. “For too many years, the United States has refused to reckon with that history.”
Please. Sometimes it feels like the United States does nothing OTHER than “reckon with that history.” Is Clarke serious? Nothing else in our national past gets as much attention as the enslavement of blacks. We’re certainly not suggesting that this is an era of our history we should cover up or strive to forget, but let’s get real. The idea that we’re somehow trying to whitewash that history just doesn’t pass the smell test.
Besides, that has nothing to do with what’s going on here. These memorials are not suddenly “deeply offensive” to anyone. They are the left’s newest cause celebre – a rallying point around which they can create a problem where none exists. It’s so much easier to build a “problem” out of straw and then knock it down than it is to actually address the issues facing the American people here and now, in the present moment. And we’re sure it makes for a great donation strategy as well.
These activists have plenty of sway when it comes to Democratic-run city councils in New Orleans and corporate stores like Amazon…but they don’t have any when it comes to the U.S. military. So we’ll enjoy this little smackdown of political correctness for the time being, even if we know that, like Clarke herself said, the fight is not over.
Sheila Jackson Lee and Jesse Jackson need to apply for name changes to more appropriate names that comply with the new reality of the SJW snowflakes.
There's a tree nearby that Lee is supposed to have planted.
Wonder what will happen with that.
Exactly - would all of these people saying these statutes should be left up defending leaving up statutes of lenin and stalin in the soviet union because those figures are “inextricably tied with soviet history”?
It’s all part of the glorious Fundamental Transformation of America.
It creates racial strife and racial strife is good because BLACK VOTES MATTER!!! BLACK VOTES MATTER!!! BLACK VOTES MATTER!!!
I sorta disagree with that one. Every time I see that name on a street, I know not to go down there. It’s a safety issue.
Why? It’s history. When a child looks at a statue of Robert ELee and asks “mama who is that” a mother has a chance to tell a child about a war that freed the slaves. How a country split in two and brother fought against brother in the bloodiest war this country has ever known. How holding human beings is wrong and freeing them is worth fighting for.
now we are allowing people to era e that history and those who do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat it. It’s like the Arabs tearing down the statues of Egyptian king in an attempt to erase history, or the Taliban destroying the Bamiyan Statues in Afghanistan. It’s ignorant, and it cheats future generations of a chance to grow and learn
Then let's officially erase all that history. From that day forward anyone who mentions slavery in America will be treated as a kook babbling about fairy tales. OK, Miz Clarke?
Gen Winfield Scott thought Robert E. Lee was indispensable in the Mexican War.
He was one of very few to graduate West Point without a single demerit.
Some good news, for once, in this fascist war on history.
In here to insult people, huh, n00b?
They are already there and want everyone to join them. Evil has been defeated but at times it seems otherwise.
Yes, but maybe a bit inconvenient, he chose the CSA and lead traitors in killing thousands of loyal Americans. That can never be forgiven or forgotten. Yes, make peace, but Lee is not a hero. Period.
Maybe they should rename Fort Bragg?
Interesting question and one for public discussion. Times change and we need reasoned discourse on what is acceptable and what is not and a deliberate approach. Vandalism like in Durham tonight, or violence by everyone in Charlottsville on Saturday are wrong and all parties should be identified and prosecuted.
My favorite recording of Dixie is by the West Point marching band.
Do they still play it?
Do they still play it?
I'll bet they played it whenever President Clinton visited.
That may be the conclusion that we reach in the end, but it doesn't mean that people are going to argue about the statues in the meantime.
Also, the people who put up the statues may not have thought about the Civil War in quite that way and there may still be people around who take a very different view of the Civil War and its outcome.
now we are allowing people to era e that history and those who do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat it. It’s like the Arabs tearing down the statues of Egyptian king in an attempt to erase history, or the Taliban destroying the Bamiyan Statues in Afghanistan. It’s ignorant, and it cheats future generations of a chance to grow and learn
To the extent that statues are actually being destroyed, yes. But in many cases, they're being moved. Maybe a museum will display them.
Your question is right on point. Is it rhetorical? Do you have theory?
Here's mine:
99 years ago, up to 20 years or so ago, the empirical data could be explained away by legal separation and insufficient resources.
This is no longer the case. Therefore, explanations are increasingly tendentious, and increasingly frantic. Your choices lie between the forbidden and the self-hating.
It is making white people crazy.
What about the statue of Lenin in Seattle?
If I were younger....
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