2,459 words
THE REMOVAL OF THE CONFEDERACY MONUMENTS
In 2018, New Orleans, Louisiana will celebrate its tricentennial—its three hundredth year. It is a beautiful old Southern city, steeped in history. It is also a city divided, recently stripped of its four nationally recognized and beloved historic landmarks, among them, the old Confederacy statues of Jefferson Davis, General PGT Beauregard, and General Robert E. Lee—major players in our history. They will no longer stand in the parks and atop tall marble pedestals to be viewed and learned about by tourists, or admired and smiled upon by native Louisianans and others who know and appreciate history.
The decision to remove the monuments took place in 2015, after the massacre of nine black parishioners in a Charleston, South Carolina church. The mayor of New Orleans, Mitch Landrieu, and his city council voted to remove the Confederate monuments because, he said, they were “symbols of terror.” He also likened them to the burning crosses of the Ku Klux Clan,” which was insulting and absurd. He said the statues “celebrated a fictional, sanitized Confederacy.” The killer of the nine parishioners, Dylann Roof, was an avowed racist who brandished Confederate battle flags in photos, but we should remove historical monuments because of his atrocity?
I think the Mayor of New Orleans and his city council should have given the people in their city the chance to vote on whether or not they wanted the monuments taken down—really the people in the whole state.
Also, in 2015, the words, “Black Lives Matter” were spray- painted on both sides of General Beauregard’s monument. Well, Mr. Black-Life, you vandalized a national monument that matters to a lot of people. It is also against the law, which you don’t seem to respect either. What about “people’s property matters?” and “What other people think, matters?” Let me make one thing clear, here. I am not against black people. I am against pandering to those – black and white – who feel entitled—who feel that they are owed. And I dislike those who keep entitling them.
The first monument of the four to come down was an obelisk dedicated to the Battle of Liberty Place.
Christopher Mele – New York Times, April 24, 2017:
“The Liberty Place monument, which was 35 to 40 feet tall, commemorated a violent uprising by white Democrats against the racial integration of the city’s police force and the Republicans who governed Louisiana. The White League won the battle and forcibly removed the governor, but federal troops arrived three days later to return the governor to power.”
The dismantling of the four monuments, in my opinion, is political correctness in all its one-sided glory. If you don’t agree with something, vandalize it, tear it down. The protesters said the monuments were of racists – a word liberals are fond of using, to define conservatives—and symbols of terrorism. Of course, the protesters were the ones burning cars and vandalizing the monuments. The Robert E. Lee statue was one of several sites vandalized by anti-Trump protestors. So, it appears that this removal boils right down to politics.
Think about it. Why did this suddenly come up in 2015, when the monuments had been there forever? Coincidence? I don’t think so. The great black agitator of all time, once he got their votes and became president without one accomplishment to his name, who actually did nothing for his people, (nor have the Democrats done,) he and his cronies stirred the “race” pot all over again—got everybody angry again. And then after eight years of being stirred up, when a Republican was elected President, Katy bar the door! There was rioting in the streets, and thugs, hired by Soros, egged them on. Many of them when questioned by reporters, had no idea what they’d like the new President to do for them, they just were against him. And they were against him because they were and still are, fueled by the liberal, biased media, Hollywood, the Democrats and elitist Republicans in his own party. It is disgraceful.
This very dissatisfaction, this very feeling that they are not responsible for their actions or lot in life and that they are entitled to all the free stuff, that they would rather think of injustices of the past instead of their opportunities in the present, is part and parcel – a basic element – of the reason for the dismantling of the monuments. The need to blame somebody, so why not our National heroes. And the mayor and the city council said okay, I get that, and down they came.
I am not speaking of self-sufficient, hard- working black men and women.
And I, along with others who truly love this country and think it’s the greatest country on earth, am angry at what is happening to it. Angry at the loud, mostly ignorant, uninformed, perpetually-discontented, who have the ear of the media, and therefore the world. Those who voted to remove our historical monuments, those who want sanctuary cities where OUR police cannot get to criminals or suspected criminals or terrorists TO PROTECT US, those who voted for Sanders’ socialist ideas—do they know what they’re doing to this country? They are destroying the very fiber of our being. They want to wipe out our history because they don’t like it and have us become a socialist country? It would serve them well to learn from history and not just ours. Slavery did happen, but that was a long time ago and it was perpetuated by the Democrats. Check your history if you don’t believe me. Today anyone can achieve and get ahead if they want to badly enough. But slavery did exist and the Civil War happened and that is history and the monuments should be left where they were because it did happen! Like the holocaust.
I watch the news and read reports and am saddened and angered to see America turn into a land where civility, respect for others, and good sportsmanship are fast becoming things of the past—the very things that make our country special. The right of free speech does not mean the right to prevent or stifle those who think differently. I am going to give some examples of that, then I’ll get back to the monuments.
Fact:
Bradford Richardson -Washington Times, April 20, 2017:
Students at Wellesley College made the intellectual case for using force to stifle free speech in an editorial last week, arguing that “hostility may be warranted” against people who are “given the resources to learn” yet “refuse to adapt their beliefs.”
Now I ask you, what does that sound like to you? What kind of adults will these kids be? And what kind of parents raised them? This kind of thinking is un-American! It is wrong. And when they took action on it, that, to me, was criminal.
“Many of our college campuses today are actively silencing those who support President Trump with physical assaults, threats, and intimidation.” Videos of the violence have been on the news. It was sickening and horrifying to watch. “Institutions of learning should provide an environment for the free exchange of ideas, but instead, young Conservatives are threatened with poor grades should they express support for President Trump and his conservative agenda. There is no diversity of thought on today's college campuses. It is fascism and group think that has taken root and those who differ are singled out as outcasts to be ridiculed and shunned at best or physically and verbally assaulted at worst.” This is true. I have heard students from these schools say the same things in interviews on TV.
Elementary school books have changed or totally left out parts of our American history because the powers that be don’t agree with it or think it might hurt somebody’s feelings. This is called manipulating the facts. It is not education. It goes hand in hand with teachers planting seeds of dislike and hate in students’ minds against conservative ideas and ideals. This, I’ve also seen on the news.
Here are some other facts that perhaps the protesters in New Orleans and all Liberal protesters should think about:
Fact: The Republican Party was founded primarily to oppose slavery, and it was the Republicans who eventually abolished slavery. The Democratic Party fought them and tried to maintain and expand slavery. The 13th amendment, abolishing slavery, passed in 1865 with 100% Republican support but only 23% Democratic support in congress.
Fact: The 14th Amendment, giving full citizenship to freed slaves, passed in 1868 with 94% Republican support and 0% Democratic support in congress.
Fact: The 15th amendment, giving freed slaves the right to vote, passed in 1870 with 100% Republican support and 0% - yes ZERO again by the Democratic party in congress.
Individual white Americans and the American government have bent over backwards for years, making things easier for the black people to succeed, and many have done extremely well. They worked hard, took advantage of benefits offered them, or struggled on their own. They used their brains and proved themselves. Today, minorities have more perks and are offered places in colleges, etc over whites with equal or greater grade points because of quotas. So, it is my opinion that the black and white protesters in New Orleans should stop beating to death the slavery subject, for heaven’s sake, and respect history for history’s sake. After all, many white people died in that war and their families want them remembered and their leaders remembered.
To another point: We fought England in the Revolutionary War for our freedom from taxation and we lost many men. Do we still blame them for that, do we still hold a grudge? Do we want the Revolutionary war removed from history books? History is history.
But back to monuments. What about Grant and Sherman? Are we Southerners crying to remove the statue of Ulysses S. Grant from its place in Union Square in front of the United States Capitol in Washington, DC because he reminds us of our defeat in the Civil War? And what about General William Tecumseh Sherman, who burned Atlanta? His monument is located high on a pedestal in Sherman Plaza in the President’s Park in Washington DC. Do we want them removed? Personally, I wouldn’t mind, but they are part of our history.
The removal of the Confederate monuments, in my opinion, is an insensitive disregard for history and for the remembrance of the founding fathers of this country. America has come a long way since the Civil War. We are an equal opportunity country. There is no need to continually bring up the “race” card about every single thing, to whine, protest, and remove national monuments.
The Associated Press, on May 17th, reported:
‘For supporters, the works are a way to remember and honor history.
"Mayor Landrieu's actions are an insult to New Orleanians who came before us — the veterans, widows, parents, children, and citizens — who donated their personal money to build and place these monuments where they stand to honor the memory of their fallen family members," said Pierre McGraw, President of the Monumental Task Committee which has been advocating keeping the monuments in place.
But for many in this black majority city, the monuments pay honor to a history of slavery and segregation, and they want them down. When the statue of Confederate President Jefferson Davis was finally lifted from its pedestal, a cheer erupted from dozens of demonstrators who'd waited for hours to see the city fulfill its promise.’
There was one black lady I read about, however, from New Orleans, who protested the removal of Jefferson Davis’ statue. Wearing a Confederate tee shirt and waving a Confederate flag, she said, “I felt I needed to be at the [monument] for Jefferson Davis because he was the one and only president of the Confederate States of America. He’s the most significant of all the monuments to be taken down.” She went on to say her race had nothing to do with the support of the Confederacy; “It’s about being on the right side of history,” she said.
History. Imagine that! Hooray for her!
On May 23, 2017, I read that a bill to halt the removal of Confederate monuments by local governments passed the House, in Baton Rouge.
The sponsor of it, Rep. Thomas Carmody, Republican from Shreveport, said, “My bill, in its current posture is a perfect exercise of democracy. It allows for the people to have their input in the decision to remove military monuments from the public spaces in which they live." Carmody's bill bars local governments and municipalities from removing plaques and statues to military figures and events. The monuments could only be torn down following a vote by the public. The entire black caucus voted against it. It now goes to the Senate.
New York Times – April 24m 2017:
Robert Bonner, 63, who said he was a Civil War re-enactor, protested the monument’s removal. “I think it’s a terrible thing,” he told The A.P. “When you start removing the history of the city, you start losing money. You start losing where you came from and where you’ve been.”
An organization dedicated to preserving monuments in New Orleans, the Monumental Task Committee, opposed removing the statues. In a statement on Monday, Pierre McGraw, the group’s president, said the removal process had been “flawed since the beginning” and that the use of unidentified money reeks of “atrocious government.” The statement added, “People across Louisiana should be concerned over what will disappear next.”
Professor Robin A. Lenhardt, a law professor at the Center on Race, Law and Justice at Fordham Law School, said in an email that city officials should be concerned about where to go from here. “Simply to remove the statues without a plan for community engagement and discourse would be a mistake, a real missed opportunity,” she wrote.
I believe the removal of the national monuments is part of the dumbing of America. If you don’t like the facts, change them or leave them out entirely. If historical monuments offend a few, get rid of them. But why? Why continue to look backwards instead of moving forward; why be negative instead of positive; why teach our kids to hate; take the easy way, name call, bully, blame others, think they deserve something without earning it, ad infinitum.
I think the removal of these national monuments is not “moving forward,” it is removing history, and that is wrong.
Author Notes
I hope the Louisiana House and Senate can get together and put the Confederacy monuments back where they belong.
THIS IS ABOUT PRESERVING OUR HISTORY
|
|
