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Conservatives Should Feel No Investment in Confederate Monuments
National Review ^ | June 19th 2020 | RICH LOWRY

Posted on 06/20/2020 2:51:52 PM PDT by Ennis85

In the wave of cancellations sweeping America, Confederate statues have been particularly hard hit.

They have been graffitied, assaulted, and torn down, while authorities rush to remove them.

For his part, President Donald Trump has been a steadfast defender of the statues and other forms of recognition of the Confederacy. He has come out in favor of preserving the names of military bases named after Confederate generals and pointedly said that we should build on our heritage rather than tear it down.

Conservatives tend to think the same way. They reflexively oppose politically correct campaigns to destroy anything giving offense.

They fear where the slippery slope of woke iconoclasm will lead — first it’s Jefferson Davis, ultimately George Washington.

They value tradition and worry we are trashing part of our history.

This impulse, though, is a mistake. Confederate statues and symbols deserve to be reevaluated, and often mothballed.

n the wave of cancellations sweeping America, Confederate statues have been particularly hard hit.

They have been graffitied, assaulted, and torn down, while authorities rush to remove them.

For his part, President Donald Trump has been a steadfast defender of the statues and other forms of recognition of the Confederacy. He has come out in favor of preserving the names of military bases named after Confederate generals and pointedly said that we should build on our heritage rather than tear it down.

Conservatives tend to think the same way. They reflexively oppose politically correct campaigns to destroy anything giving offense.

They fear where the slippery slope of woke iconoclasm will lead — first it’s Jefferson Davis, ultimately George Washington.

They value tradition and worry we are trashing part of our history.

This impulse, though, is a mistake. Confederate statues and symbols deserve to be reevaluated, and often mothballed.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: blacklivesmatter; civilunrest; civilwar; cluelessauthor; confederates; culturalrevolution; defeatedarmy; itsnotaboutthewar; lowry; richlowry; southlost; statues; thefourolds
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To: Ennis85

I would say to the author of that piece, if given the opportunity, “Don’t be a pussy.”


21 posted on 06/20/2020 3:01:09 PM PDT by Augie
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To: Ennis85

Rich Lowry is to National Review what Kathleen Kennedy is to Lucas Films.


22 posted on 06/20/2020 3:01:21 PM PDT by who_would_fardels_bear
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To: Ennis85

An asshole point of view. It’s part of American history and all true Americans want it remembered. Also, most of those confederates in statues made significant efforts to heal the nation.

This fool thinks that by offering the revolutionary communists half of what they want, maybe he can appease them.

Taking down statutes is the mark of Stalin, Nazis, ISIS.


23 posted on 06/20/2020 3:02:17 PM PDT by DesertRhino (Dog is man's best friend, and moslems hate dogs. Add that up. ....)
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To: Ennis85
They fear where the slippery slope of woke iconoclasm will lead — first it’s Jefferson Davis, ultimately George Washington.

They value tradition and worry we are trashing part of our history.

This impulse, though, is a mistake

Really, richy boy?

The mob already has burned an American Flag, wrapped around the neck of George Washington, and then destroyed the statue.

Piss on you richy girl.

24 posted on 06/20/2020 3:02:22 PM PDT by USS Alaska (NUKE THE MOOSELIMB, TERRORISTS, NOW!)
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To: Ennis85

Conservatives must stand up to this political revisionism.
It needs to stop NOW!
If not now then conservatives will be revised out of
existance. Don’t think it can’t happen here it already is.
These BLM protests are just the Delphi Technique applied
nationally. It’s plain to see, just pay attention!


25 posted on 06/20/2020 3:02:32 PM PDT by tet68 ( " We would not die in that man's company, that fears his fellowship to die with us...." Henry V.)
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To: Ennis85

The Democrat party should change its name as it is associated with slavery, segregation, and 60 years of presiding over ghettos and urban hellholes. Please start a petition someone.


26 posted on 06/20/2020 3:02:38 PM PDT by Atticus
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To: euram

Yes, indeed, you’re right.

Rich Lowery has always had a rather weak spine, but until I just read this latest column, I hadn’t realized he was gelded.


27 posted on 06/20/2020 3:02:46 PM PDT by onyx (#StandWithICE. - #KAG #TRUMP2020Landslide)
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To: Ennis85

Omly a total ass would come to that conclusion. And lately the National Review has a flood of them.

First Confederates then Washington and Jefferson.

The war in 1861 1865 was NOT a Civil War.
It was a war BETWEEN THE STATES.


28 posted on 06/20/2020 3:02:52 PM PDT by ZULU (Impeach John Roberts for corruption. SOROS IS "SPARTACUS" BOOKER'S LANISTA.)
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To: Dilbert San Diego
The Berkeley Unified School District has begun the process of deleting the names of George Washington School and Thomas Jefferson School.

The city and the school district are named after George Berkeley, a slave owner.

29 posted on 06/20/2020 3:02:59 PM PDT by Fiji Hill
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To: Ennis85

First they came for the Confederate Monuments...


30 posted on 06/20/2020 3:03:05 PM PDT by lodi90
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To: Ennis85

we erect monuments to our national follies and weaknesses to PREVENT their repetition and to remember the circumstances of their origin.

A nation stripped of its history will repeat it.

the Southerners were Democrats and the Demcrats are scared to death the remainder of their “own” voters are about to get politically incorrectly “woke”..which means their doom.

https://amgreatness.com/2018/09/02/lbjs-democratic-plantation/


31 posted on 06/20/2020 3:03:11 PM PDT by mo ("If you understand, no explanation is needed; if you don't understand, no explanation is possible")
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To: Ennis85

Rich, you ignorant slut.

How about we start with the concept that no one, regardless of their motivation, has a right to damage, deface or destroy something that does not belong to them and is not in danger of causing them immediate physical harm.


32 posted on 06/20/2020 3:03:38 PM PDT by AbnSarge
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To: manc

I gave up on NR once they purged all the conservatives - Buchanan, Francis, Sobran, etc.


33 posted on 06/20/2020 3:03:40 PM PDT by NotSoFreeStater (If you choose not to decide you still have made a choice)
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To: Demian
Not entirely. Highly recommenced in today’s NR: “The Intellectual Roots of Today’s Identity Politics."
34 posted on 06/20/2020 3:03:46 PM PDT by ProtectOurFreedom
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To: Dilbert San Diego

Yet the statue of V. I. Lenin still stands, disgraceful.


35 posted on 06/20/2020 3:04:13 PM PDT by WHBates
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To: Ennis85

The author couldn’t be more wrong. Look, I have no emotional investment in the Confederacy. But I have great respect for the poem quoted below.

Oh, and one more thing. Some folks argue that since the Confederates fought against the United States, they should not be honored. But Sitting Bull and Geronimo also fought against the United States. Should they be erased from history too?

The well-known poem:

They came first for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant.

Then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up.


36 posted on 06/20/2020 3:04:18 PM PDT by Leaning Right (I have already previewed or do not wish to preview this composition.)
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To: tet68

History is not perfect. I will not be lectured to by Democrats who had a “literal” Klansman sitting in their Senate caucus in the last decade.


37 posted on 06/20/2020 3:04:26 PM PDT by lodi90
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To: NotSoFreeStater

Yep around the time I did.


38 posted on 06/20/2020 3:04:33 PM PDT by manc ( If they want so called marriage equality then they should support polygamy too.)
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To: Fiji Hill

Interesting. So the city of Berkeley has to change its name, based on these criteria of cleansing us of any mention of anyone who owned slaves, was involved with slavery, or involved in any actions which were not politically correct by 21st century criteria.


39 posted on 06/20/2020 3:04:38 PM PDT by Dilbert San Diego
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To: Ennis85
The veterans of the CSA are, by act of Congress, veterans of the United States of America and to be given the same honors and treated with the same dignity.

So yeah, I have an investment in Confederate statues, monuments and cemeteries. I might believe their cause was mistaken but they are my fellow country men and their memory should be preserved.

As the first Republican president said, "With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

Seeking to remove these monuments flies in the face of those sentiments.

40 posted on 06/20/2020 3:04:42 PM PDT by Harmless Teddy Bear (Leave it to me to be holdin' the matches when the fire truck shows up & there's nobody else to blame)
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