Don’t for one minute think this past week of Charlottesville-tied mayhem has been over a statue of Robert E. Lee.
It’s not. It’s about power, control and the political course our nation will take as we head into the future.
Don’t see the connection? Walk with me.
The clashes in Charlottesville, disgusting as they were — fatal as they proved — were quickly seized upon by a committed far-left that wants nothing more than to A) remove this president from office and B) change the constitutional nature of America’s society for one that’s ruled by whim and mob voice, rather than law and order.
Charlottesville was the perfect confluence of hot emotion and irrefutable evil. The neo-Nazi mindset is ugly and white supremacist beliefs, wicked. The torch-bearing protesters angry at the idea of the whitewashing of history that comes with the removal of the Confederate statue didn’t help their cause by — well, bearing torches.
The Antifa fascists, Black Lives Matter types and communist-socialist-anarchist thugs who came to Charlottesville weren’t exactly innocent players in the clashes that followed; they came to the community with violence on their minds.
But the media message was this: It was white supremacists and neo-Nazis, for goodness sake! And with that, Reason left the room.
Hot Emotion stayed. It became the wedge of the left for what followed. Those who dared suggest the statue should stay for historical reasons became cast as white supremacists themselves. Those who pointed to the First Amendment rights of protesters of all walks, from far left to far right and all points in between, were slammed as neo-Nazi sympathizers.
Nancy Pelosi called for the National Parks Service to yank an already-approved permit for white supremacists to protest at a spot in California. The mayor of Charlottesville, the Democratic activist and anti-President Donald Trumper Michael Signer took to national television to draw a direct line between the White House and the city’s violence, saying most shamefully and unfairly, “Look at the campaign he ran,” while pointing blaming fingers squarely at the president.
The progressive, Asian, black and Hispanic caucuses in Congress penned quick letters to the White House, demanding the immediate removal of aides Steve Bannon, Stephen Miller and Sebastian Gorka because of their so-deemed, yet entirely unsubstantiated, white supremacist views.
Baltimore in the middle of the night removed its Confederate-tied monuments. North Carolina thugs in Durham tore down a Confederate soldier statue and kicked and spat on it. A pastor — a man of Christ — called for the renaming of Washington Park in Chicago, as well as the removal of its George Washington statue and the renaming of Jackson Park. Why? The names conjures images of slavery, he said.
Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan removed the Taney statue from the State House — a step aimed at appeasing those offended by the fact it showed the likeness of the very U.S. Supreme Court justice, Roger B. Taney, who wrote the famous 1857 Dred Scott decision upholding slavery and denying citizenship to blacks.
Democrats in Congress called for an all-out cleansing of Confederate-tied statues, monuments and structures from Statuary Hall, a Capitol Hill fixture and popular tourist draw that contains dozens of contributions from individual states.
“The Capitol is a place for all Americans to come and feel welcomed, encouraged and inspired,” said Sen. Cory Booker, New Jersey Democrat. “Confederate statues do the opposite.”
This, from House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi: “The Confederate statues in the halls of Congress have always been reprehensible. If Republicans are serious about rejecting white supremacy, I call upon Speaker [Paul] Ryan to join Democrats to remove the Confederate statues from the Capitol immediately.”
And then, the capping to the left’s week of anti-Trump hurrahs: Rep. Steve Cohen of Tennessee announced intent to bring forth articles of impeachment against president, saying his remarks, post-Charlottesville, proved his inability to lead.
In a tweet, Cohen followed that claim with this rather arrogant and ominous vow: “These boots are made for walking and one of these days they’ll walk all over you. YOU #DonaldTrump.”
Breathing a sigh of relief the week’s news cycle has wrapped? Don’t. The left’s only warming up. This insanity is not going to end any time soon. The train still has to ride over the Washington, D.C., monuments of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. Al Sharpton’s already called on Congress to defund the Jefferson Memorial in the District, saying Jefferson “had slaves and children with the slaves” and that tax dollars that are used to fund this monument are an affront.
“When you look at the fact that public monuments are supported by public funds,” Sharpton told Charlie Rose in a recent televised interview, “you are asking me to subsidize the insult of my family.”
Keep going. The journey’s not over. Next stop: The documents of these so-dubbed racist Founding Fathers. The Declaration of Independence. The U.S. Constitution.
And the question that looms — the question that’s to be posed by the left: How can these documents represent the freedoms of all, when they were penned by those with racist mindsets?
Once it’s admitted into U.S. society that Jefferson and Washington have no business being represented in the public memorials of America, it’s only a small, very small step to say the same of their writings?. But what are we going to do, rip up the original Declaration of Independence — tear the Constitution to shreds? What would that accomplish?
Tearing the paper is meaningless.
It’s the spirit behind the paper the left wants torn. These documents are what gives life to America’s government.
This is the left’s logic: If America’s founders were racist, then the documents the founders wrote were racist — and since these are the documents that still guide our governance today, then America’s entire political system is inherently racist.
This is what the left is after; this is the end goal — a complete upheaval of America’s republic and uprooting of law and order. The quest is dark. It would mean the end of America’s greatest asset — the fact that our country is built upon the foundation that individual rights come from God, not government. It would leave a nation at moral and political drift, a society in chaos, a wide open door for those with selfish desires to take the reigns of political power.
What to do?
Our job, our responsibility, as a nation of patriotic, evangelical, constitutional, civic-minded, law-and-order-loving people, is to root out the evil without killing the dream.
White supremacy is an evil; Antifa violence is an evil; Black Lives Matter racism is an evil.
But the monuments? They’re symbolic of America’s progress. Wiping them off the face of the earth won’t change the fact that racism existed in this country. What it will do, however, is give the left a fighting tool to argue against the greatness of our founding documents, and therefore, the exceptionalism of our country’s republic.
The only sane solution to this anti-monument madness that’s sweeping the nation is for those who care about preserving our country’s greatness to stand fast against this destruction, get in the political game, and demand their local government officials, state politicians and congressional representatives put a stop to this historical whitewashing.
Fear of being slandered a racist by the left is not a good reason to stand silent.
The fate of our nation, the direction of our government, the greatness of our country, rests entirely on the will of the people to keep the dream alive. In short, the spirit needs wings.
First published at The Washington Times
