Why DC Statehood Is a Suicidal Gamble

Guest Post by Pat Buchanan

Why DC Statehood Is a Suicidal Gamble

When U.S. cities erupted after the death of George Floyd, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser was in the vanguard of the protests, renaming a section of downtown Black Lives Matter Plaza, and painting the name in letters on the street so huge they could be seen from space.

Thursday, however, Bowser awoke to those same BLM protesters yelling outside her home, denouncing a “D.C. police murder of a Black Man,” and demanding the mayor fire Police Chief Peter Newsham.

18-year-old Deon Kay had been shot and killed Wednesday afternoon in an encounter with cops. While this was the fifth shooting by D.C. cops this year, it was the first fatality.

There have been 130 other homicides in D.C. in 2020, mostly of Black folks that involved other Black folks, and not the cops.

“We believe the suspect had a gun at the time,” Newsham told reporters. Witnesses challenged the chief’s claim.

But this is only the latest problem bedeviling Bowser.

While she has been blaming “outside agitators” for the mayhem in the city, the Washington Times reports that 82 percent of the 541 people arrested for riot-related crimes were residents of D.C., Maryland or Virginia.

On Tuesday, the mayor’s office made national news by releasing a list of monuments and memorials in Washington that should be “removed, replaced or contextualized.” Among them are the Washington Monument, the Jefferson Memorial and Columbus’ statue at Union Station.

The name of Alexander Graham Bell should be erased from Bell Multicultural High School, Bowser’s working group said. Like Winston Churchill and Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, the inventor of the telephone believed in eugenics.

Presidents James Madison, author of the Constitution, John Tyler, who annexed Texas, and Zachary Taylor, who led the U.S. army to victory in the Mexican-American War, are also candidates for having their memorials and monuments “replaced, removed or contextualized.”

Woodrow Wilson’s name should be removed from Wilson high, and the names of Founding Father Ben Franklin and author of the national anthem Francis Scott Key should be erased from buildings named in their honor.

Eleanor Holmes Norton, the D.C. nonvoting representative in Congress, explained that the working group formed by Bowers to look into monuments and memorials did not mean the statues were to be pulled down but that plaques should be added informing visitors that these sites are dedicated to men who had a perverted view of human rights.

Norton wants the Emancipation Proclamation statue featuring Abe Lincoln and an unshackled slave, unveiled at an 1876 ceremony attended by President Grant, at which Frederick Douglass spoke, removed. She also wants the statue of Andrew Jackson in Lafayette Square removed.

Yet, it was General Jackson who saved the Union from being torn apart at the 1815 Battle of New Orleans, while the defenders of Washington and the White House fled from the attacking British, letting the nation’s capital be burned in August of 1814.

D.C. officials are today running away from the plans of the mayor’s working group, but those plans testify powerfully to what an act of folly and a capitulation to political correctness it would be for the Congress to vote statehood for D.C., as Nancy Pelosi’s House did this year.

D.C. is unrepresentative of America and undeserving in any way to be raised to statehood. Since given the franchise 60 years ago, it has never voted Republican for president. Its three electoral votes have gone to the Democrats in every election since LBJ in ’64. Republican nominee Donald Trump got 4 percent of the D.C. vote. Hillary Clinton got 90 percent, a margin of 22-1.

Moreover, D.C. has a smaller population than 19 other American cities and is smaller in geographic size than 150 other U.S. cities. Rhode Island, our smallest state, is geographically 20 times the size of D.C.

The D.C. government has been in the headlines countless times for personal scandals and financial crises. One four-term mayor, Marion Barry, was sent to prison and returned to be reelected to office.

As for D.C. public schools, the problem is not that they are named for presidents but that they produce some of the lowest test scores in the nation.

More significant, as the protests, attended by riots since May, have shown, the D.C. government, a hostile province when a Republican is in the White House, is the domicile of a permanent regime of leftist and radical media, tens of thousands of federal and city bureaucrats, lawyers and lobbyists, all yoked to big government.

As the “peaceful protests” of June and July showed, with Georgetown sacked and statues demolished, D.C.’s government is an incompetent custodian of the nation’s historic monuments and memorials, and incapable of protecting the White House.

What does Joe Biden, who approved of the removal of statues of Confederate soldiers, generals and statesmen, think of D.C.’s scheme to “remove, replace or contextualize” the statues of so many men who held the office he now seeks?

Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of “Nixon’s White House Wars: The Battles That Made and Broke a President and Divided America Forever.”

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20 Comments
22winmag - TBP's Jewish Yankee Mormon Shit-poster
22winmag - TBP's Jewish Yankee Mormon Shit-poster
September 4, 2020 9:05 am

Pat has lost his fire and his touch over the years.

He used to write about lamp posts and walls.
comment image

Kid Jupiter
Kid Jupiter

Why haven’t you been blocked from commenting yet? You contribute nothing of value, even in dissent. It’s all garbage.

22winmag - TBP's Jewish Yankee Mormon Shit-poster
22winmag - TBP's Jewish Yankee Mormon Shit-poster
  Kid Jupiter
September 4, 2020 11:55 am

comment image

Anon
Anon
  Kid Jupiter
September 4, 2020 2:44 pm

who the fuck is “kid jupiter”?? Never heard of you and I’ve been reading TBP for over a decade.

You are worthless. Go the fuck away. Jim can kick people out if he wants too, and you aren’t him.

Kid Jupiter
Kid Jupiter
  Anon
September 4, 2020 3:40 pm

Who the fuck is “Anon?” I’ve been here for a while. Where have you been? Why don’t you re-read my initial comment, genius.

Fatman from Oz
Fatman from Oz
  Kid Jupiter
September 4, 2020 3:23 pm

Here we go, the usual shitkunts that want censorship have started to come here. FUCK OFF back to facefuck, instashit or twatter where you can get your hourly dose of censorship.

Kid Jupiter
Kid Jupiter
  Fatman from Oz
September 4, 2020 3:45 pm

If “Oz” means Australia, you have a lot more important things to worry about right now than me. Go re-read my initial comment, angry man, and see how I qualified it. The guy says the same garbage, every post. Same unintelligent thing, like a troll. Every other comment (with the exception of yours and the Anon guy above) adds something to the discussion – even in dissent. This guy adds nothing – he goes out of his way to troll.

That was my point.

Take ten deep breaths and relax.

Fatman from Oz
Fatman from Oz
  Kid Jupiter
September 4, 2020 6:44 pm

Hahaha. You are funny. The kind of funny that thinks censoring stuff is OK. Like the Commissar of propaganda. I bet you would be the sort of kunt that will be the first in line for a brown shirt.

Champ fuck off back to facefuck, twatter and instashit, or better still start your own damn site and censor away.

Saxons Wrath
Saxons Wrath

(((DC)))(destruction and corruption) is suicidal, and wants to milk the States for everything, before the end of the US. Because (((they))) are behind the scenes everywhere in DC, and doing their damndest to destroy our country.

Vektor
Vektor

Trying to understand if your comment is serious or sarcasm. If you are serious, then I am in agreement. Pat needs to find the fire again. However, I wouldn’t say he’s lost his touch.

musket
musket
September 4, 2020 9:28 am

The District of Columbia is a 10 square mile insane asylum harboring criminals, clowns and an odd assortment of influencers who think that their sh*t does not stink. Just ask them and they will show you their diplomas from and ivy league clown show and their law degree from another of these past their prime outhouses……

Lebowski
Lebowski
  musket
September 4, 2020 9:51 am

You nailed it musket

Captain_Obviuos
Captain_Obviuos
  Lebowski
September 4, 2020 12:20 pm

Well that’s just, like, your opinion, man.

Kid Jupiter
Kid Jupiter
September 4, 2020 9:58 am

Too many blacks.

Auntie Kriest
Auntie Kriest
September 4, 2020 10:22 am

Auntie is quite certain that the trajectory of the Negro arguments for destroying the statues of the leaders who made, nurtured, and saved the nation; changing names from bad White men to Wakandian heroes; implementing African customs and traditions; will go the full route from the current hysteria and psychosis to burning, looting and murdering in the name of the “cause”.* (Oh, sorry, the USSA has already arrived there.)

They – the BLM, Antifa, Communists et. al. – won’t be happy until They get everything they want and more. The quaint capital affectionately known as Baghdad-on-the-Potomac will wind up being transformed and renamed to either Al SHarptonton, LeBron Jamesburg or New Wakanda (or something like it.)

A pox on them. They are a blight and a cancer. Their works are already manifest from coast to coast.

* Next destination on the American Negro Destruction of the Bad White Peepo Tour is pandemonium.

Anonymous
Anonymous
  Auntie Kriest
September 4, 2020 12:01 pm

Ahh yes Wakanda a fictional African Nation where blacks in Africa harnessed some mythical magic energy source elevating them from the ignorant mud hut hand to mouth subsistence animals to “We Wuz Kangs” bull shit .
More propaganda nonesense to make sub human majority of American blacks think their past existence in the “Dark Continent”
has some modern civil societal connection . Get woke black people your past history only shows your true abilities today . Place you in a modern society and you turn it into a jungle !

Anonymous
Anonymous
September 4, 2020 11:48 am

Just what America needs , another sub-division filled with government employees and welfare recipients placing 2 liberal bags of shit in the senate and probably one bag of shit in congress .
If you think Washington DC is a black hole wear the taxpayer’s confiscated wealth evaporated with little or nothing to show for it wait till it’s a state

William Williams
William Williams
September 4, 2020 1:15 pm

Just return 99.9% of DC to Maryland.

It may be prudent to leave The Capitol, Executive Mansion and Supreme Court buildings within a small independent District outside of any state.

And fuck DC anyway.

very old white guy
very old white guy
September 4, 2020 2:51 pm

Question, how could DC pretend to become a state. they produce nothing but debt and immoral BS.

Kid Jupiter
Kid Jupiter
September 4, 2020 4:00 pm

DC should’ve never received the 3 electoral votes in the first place, and it should never have ever been able to elect a mayor or city council. The Constitution lays it out as the seat of the US gov’t, therefore the US gov’t should’ve always been the one to administer it. A Federal department should’ve been set up just to administer the District.

No one was supposed to “reside” there – they were supposed to come from wherever they came from, do the business of the United States, then go back to wherever they came from.

Since it technically sits in Maryland, those people who “reside” in DC should’ve just been counted as residents of MD and voted in their elections.

Now it’s on the verge of becoming a state. SMDH…