Here's a link to good article from the Discovery Institute (original at Townhall) on the Reconciliation Monument from January this year:
Why Preserve the Reconciliation Monument in Arlington Cemetery?Here are a couple of key paragraphs...
President McKinley, a Union army veteran, recognized this healing that made the military exemplary. He told the nation, “Sectional feeling no longer holds back the love we bear each other… The Union is once more the common altar of our love and loyalty, our devotion and sacrifice.”Rather ironic that McKinley said "Sectional feeling no longer holds back the love we bear each other." Today, the "sectional feeling" is no longer defined by geography, but by the enormous philosophical divide between the communists and us freedom-loving, patriotic Americans. There is certainly no "love we bear for each other" any more. We are going to need a new Reconciliation Monument if we can ever get along again.In June 1900, McKinley supported a bill to establish a Confederate section in Arlington Cemetery. That resulted in the reintering of some 260 Confederate bodies from various burial places to a designated section of Arlington Cemetery. A few years later, Secretary of War William Taft received a request for erecting a monument in that Confederate burial area—Section 16. In 1906 it was granted.
Moses Ezekiel, a world-renowned American sculptor, the first Jewish cadet at Virginia Military Institute who served in Confederate army in the Civil War, was chosen to create the monument that would capture the fullness of the spirit of reconciliation, serve as memorial to the hundreds of dead Confederates buried in Section 16, and be recognized as a prominent “Peace Monument,” commemorating the reunification of the North and South.
In 1912, then President Taft, presided over the cornerstone dedication ceremony, describing what was to follow as “a beautiful monument to the heroic dead of the South,” calling the ceremony “a benediction of all true Americans.”
I want our old, good, loving, forgiving, reconciled, strong country back.
The only reason to remove it is if the government no longer believes in the meaning behind it. The way they demonize decent MAGA people is telling. They plan to eliminate us. I’ll be taking a couple of them with me if it comes to it.
Reconciliation Monument history - thank you
I agree