Guest Post by Simon Black
Well, we knew it was bound to happen sooner or later.
Last week a handful of students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison called for a statue of Abraham Lincoln to be removed from the campus.
Unlike other more ‘controversial’ Lincoln statues that portray him breaking the chains of slavery, this one simply shows Lincoln sitting in a chair.
But it’s offensive, say the students. And they want it removed.
As I wrote to you a few weeks ago– nearly EVERY American historical figure, including Lincoln, George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, all the way down to Amerigo Vespucci (for whom the American continents are named) was either a slave owner or a white supremacist.
Lincoln told the audience during a Presidential debate in 1858, for example, “I am in favor of the race to which I belong having the superior position.”
Clearly such a view does not express our modern sentiments.
According to one especially erudite student leader, “I just think [Lincoln] did, you know, some good things…the bad things that he’s done definitely outweighs them. . .”
And poof, judgment has been rendered: Lincoln’s flaws outweigh his achievements. So let it be written.
This, of course, is the problem with monuments. They tend to commemorate human beings… those flawed, complicated sacks of meat who are paradoxically full of accomplishments… and shortcomings.
Even some of the most exalted historical figures, including Lincoln, were highly imperfect. Nobody’s legend ever survives real scrutiny.
Martin Luther King was a philanderer whose treatment of women would not hold up to modern #metoo views.
John F. Kennedy’s womanizing was so severe that he refused to fly back home from a Mediterranean vacation (with a mistress) after his wife gave birth to a stillborn baby.
Gandhi severely mistreated his wife and routinely slept naked with children in his bed.
Albert Einstein’s personal diary reveals a number of statements he made that would be viewed today as extremely racist, like saying Chinese are “more like automatons than people.”
And Barack Obama committed the most egregious sin of all when he said that “all lives matter.”
But the entire point of a monument isn’t to claim that every moment of every day of that person’s life was virtuous.
The idea is to commemorate achievement, and what that achievement stands for.
The Marine Corps War Memorial in Washington DC famously depicts six Marines raising a US flag on Mount Suribachi during the Battle of Iwo Jima in 1945.
The monument doesn’t mean that those six Marines were flawless human beings; it’s intended to memorialize the achievements and sacrifice of all Marines who died in service.
This is actually the root of the word ‘monument’. From Greek, the word ‘monument’ comes from “Mnemosyon”, the goddess who gave birth to the nine muses.
Mnemosyon was the mother of inspiration. And in many respects, that’s the point of a monument: inspiration.
From its Latin root, monument comes from the word ‘monemus’, which means ‘to remind,’ or ‘to warn’.
So in addition to inspiration, monuments may also serve as a reminder and warning about our mistakes of the past so that we are not doomed to repeat them.
As an example of this context, in the late 1500s at a time when most academic works were published in Latin, Sir Francis Bacon opened a chapter of one of his books with “primo monemus ex scriptoribus”
The translation is “First, the authors warn . . .”
“Monemus” = “to warn”. And then Bacon went on to warn readers that the ideas presented in his book may, in fact, be offensive.
Bacon lived in a time when intellectual dissent was met with censorship, persecution, and even death.
This is not so different than today.
Intellectual dissent is simply not tolerated. You cannot engage in civil discourse about areas where you agree, and areas in which you disagree.
Today’s Jacobian mob has appointed itself judge, jury, and executioner. And that’s not an exaggeration. Violence does occasionally ensue.
One member of the Twitter mob recently posted a video claiming that she wanted to stab anyone with the nerve to say that all lives matter.
NFL quarterback Drew Brees received death threats because he stated that he didn’t want to disrespect the flag.
These are not isolated incidents.
Personally I have no regard for most monuments and find it odd that so many Confederate leaders have been commemorated in bronze.
But I care deeply when people try to erase the past… or to change vocabulary… or destroy intellectual dissent… simply because someone who has been dead for hundreds of years did not live up to modern values.
The sole exception to this rule seems to be Joe Biden.
Several women have alleged sexual assault against Biden, or unwanted sexual advances, or inappropriate touching.
This alone would be enough for anyone else to be canceled.
But on top of this, Uncle Joe sponsored a racist bill in the 1970s, early in his Senate career, that would have limited the federal government’s power to enforce school desegregation.
Biden has also praised a former KKK leader, Robert Byrd, as a “friend” and “mentor”, and even just last year he bragged about how well he was able to compromise with racist, segregationist politicians in the 1970s and 80s.
None of this matters about Joe Biden. He gets a pass, simply because he’s not Orange Man. But Abe Lincoln? The guy who freed the slaves? He’s OFFENSIVE! Rip his statue down!
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Can someone tell me WHY we are changing our history and culture for a few disgruntled ass-hats? If they are so put off and upset then go somewhere that is more in step with their thinking. In other words, leave the USA.
Because after the monuments, books, movies, and so forth, these people will demand that white people are removed.
They want this country.
“The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.” – George Orwell
“Gandhi severely mistreated his wife and routinely slept naked with children in his bed.”
I guess if you’re going to get all judge-y about it.
Our history is what we’ve been told it is, not necessarily what it really was.
I have watched as the monuments to the Confederate dead, and to the women who supported them, and to the heroes who led them, and to the simple soldiers who followed those men, desecrated, torn down, spit upon. Sadly, few of my fellow Southerners have dared to raise their voices against this campaign by deranged, hate-filled Leftists even though our own ancestors are the ones being dishonored.
Politicians of all regions and parties have joined in, each eager to outdo the other in denouncing the crimes and “treason” of the men in gray. I understand, up to a point, why many people from outside the South or whose ancestors played no part in the Civil War either support this destruction or, more likely, are just apathetic. After all, who cares what those “rednecks” think and, anyway, they lost didn’t they? For Southerners who have joined in I have nothing but absolute, cold contempt. These shameless cowards may some day get what they deserve. If they think by pandering to BLM, Antifa, and the howling press they will gain their friendship, respect, or even the right to live should their “revolution” prove successful, they are sure to be sorely disappointed.
Those monuments have nothing to do with slavery or “racism”. The vast majority were paid for by public donations. In a South wracked by grinding poverty for a hundred years after the war, the people found pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters to remember the men who had given their lives to protect their homes and hearths. The great majority – like my great-grandfather – were farmers or ordinary working men. Contrary to what the Anderson Cooper’s and Jake Tapper’s and Don Lemon’s claim, the monuments sought only to honor the dead and their courage. Not a single one demeaned the black man or expressed the slightest disloyalty to a reunited country. There was a famous Southern novel written after the war. It was called, “And none shall look back…”. The South knew that the past was gone forever and the life they had before the war would never, should never, return. The bronze and stone statues they raised were the only way they could honor what they had lost.
Evil figures on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line had labored for decades to sow hatred between people meant to be brothers, whose own grandfathers has fought together to win our independence. And the war came. Guilty, innocent, good, bad, honorable and scoundrels, all were caught up in it.
In the North the majority of the people, but by no means all of them, saw the South as betraying the idea of a united nation and after Ft. Sumter they were enraged that the flag had been fired on. In the South, the majority, but by no means all, believed that it was no longer possible to remain in a Union which they saw as dominated by a party ruled by men who hated and despised them. To most Southerners, their culture and their society, including slavery, were just the way things had always been. The Haitian slave revolt, Nat Turner’s revolt, and the campaign against the South by radical Abolitionists had killed the Southern move for abolition that had taken root following the War for Independence. John Brown’s raid at Harper’s Ferry was the final straw when the people of the South came to believe that many Northerners literally wanted them exterminated in a bloody slave rebellion and powerful, influential men in the North approved of and even financed such a plot.
Of course, most Northerners had no such intentions and some ridiculed the South for believing it. Unfortunately, by that time it was too late. Attitudes had hardened on both sides and North and South had ceased thinking of themselves as one people in one nation. And the war came.
The South and North chose to settle their differences in the court of war, and from the decisions of that court there is no appeal. The South was utterly defeated, its armies crushed, its economy ruined, its best young men dead or crippled, the money was worthless. Southerners were completely at the mercy of the Union army and the Northern people, now infuriated by the murder of Abraham Lincoln. The South accepted the results of the war – did they have any choice? – and turned their hands to rebuilding and trying to heal shattered lives and fortunes.
The former slaves, now free in a destitute, embittered land, wandered the face of the earth and too many fell prey to those who only sought to profit from what little could still be wrung from the desolation. It was Reconstruction that sowed the real seeds of revenge and hatred, not the war.
There were those in the North who would “wave the bloody shirt” and seek to keep open the abyss between the North and South. In the South, there was no need to wave that shirt for those inclined to harbor hatred and revenge in their hearts. The open wounds of war were all around them.
There were others, though, who tried almost from the last day of the war to heal the rift, to welcome back the South into the nation, who refused to pile hate upon hate. Joshua Chamberlain, who led the 20th Maine and saved little Round Top at Gettysburg – he was bitterly criticized by men who had never shouldered a musket for honoring Lee’s surrendering troops, honors returned by General John Gordon. General Lee himself, who urged all to take the oath of allegiance to the Union and tried to raise up a new generation as a college president. General Grant, whose magnanimous terms at Appomattox perhaps saved the nation from years of guerrilla warfare and who threatened to resign if Lee was arrested for treason. There were many, many more and to them we owe a truly reunited nation.
James Madison Page was a Union soldier held prisoner at the notorious prisoner of war camp at Andersonville. Many years after the war he wrote a small book in which he tried to correct what he saw as false claims of intentional brutality towards the Union prisoners. As he himself had suffered as much as any other man, his statement deserves consideration.
If you have a chance, it would be worthwhile to read what he has to say about his former enemies and those who would deny the survivors the rights to remember their fallen comrades-in-arms, their fathers, husbands, and brothers.
“The man in gray was sincere in his convictions. He loved his sunny Southland and no Greek at Thermopylae or Marathon fought more valorously for his home and little ones than did the Southern soldier on many a battlefield. He was vanquished and turning his back on the battlefield, heavy-hearted, enfeebled by want and wounds, his money worthless, he sought his desolate home to begin life anew. We came home marching home with proud and glorious tread, glad that the cruel war was over, and were welcomed with loud acclaim by our friends and amid the cheers of a grateful nation. What a contrast!”
The monuments being destroyed are not, in most cases, great art, and many are almost pathetic in their homeliness, but they meant much to the Southern people and, for most of us, still do.
Hardly a voice was raised when true traitors tore down these monuments to men long dead. Now, they have set their sights on men who should be heroes to all Americans, North, South, East and West. The president has belatedly taken up the contest against these vandals and every day more Americans realize that what they did to the monuments of the South these fiends intend to do to every one of our national symbols.
Let us pray that that in a few decades those of us who survive will not have to raise new monuments to another lost generation of American heroes, victims of a conflict that seems to draw closer every day.
Yes, the warriors on both sides were like the Spartans.
It is the scum- BLM; Antifa; Maoists; Trotskyites; jihadis; and other enemies – who are taking down our monuments that must be put down. Violence must be met with overwhelming power to neutralize the threat.
Problem is the fuse of the citizens is, awfully, and possibly, too damn long.
Monuments can, and will be rebuilt.
Have faith and patience. Their time is coming, but it will be cut short with a vengeance.
That should be a post of it’s own, nice work.
I forgot to put my name on it! Thanks for the thumbs up!
As I stated on another blog, there was only one perfect Man and we killed Him. Even He is now under attack by such ‘stellar’ characters as shaunking.
I certainly do not have a solution to the traumatic events we are going thru but I hope and pray things will get better for the Republic. Unfortunately it is far too likely things will get much worse before it will get better.
And then this…
It’s obvious that you don’t believe what you’re writing so just STFU.
Fed up- Is there a meaning behind the bronze? Or is it just a metal well suited for longevity? Like brass on a sea going vessel?
Bronze is soft enough to work with metal tools and is easy to cast. The copper in the alloy oxidizes to a green compound and resists weathering.
Don’t forget – Abe Lincoln was an evil Republican!
“The idea is to commemorate achievement, and what that achievement stands for.” And that is what they want to tear down, an individuals achievements most of all, you didn’t build that. Only the collective matters…