MOVING STATUE SCORNS CONFEDERACY- IT’S SAME AS A BROKEN TOMBSTONE
Posted By : manager
Posted : February 28, 2022
By Reed Lannom
The campaign by certain groups to remove all the symbols and memorials to the Southern past amounts to the same thing — a desecration of graves. Every flag or monument removed, every plaque was taken down, every school or street or bridge that is renamed is no different from a broken tombstone.
Wanton and hateful violence is directed at the dead who can no longer defend themselves.
Removing Confederate monuments and memorials is not just about taking down politically incorrect statutes. It is part of an attempt by the political left to use the crimes of slavery to devalue anything that is not part of the radical progressive agenda.
In the end, this battle is more than just over statues or even history. It’s about everything that makes us who we are. To “fundamentally transform” America into the progressive state and society they want, the progressives have to destroy the old America.
But instead of whitewashing history, America needs a renewed commitment to learning about its past leaders and inspirational people, from all backgrounds and walks of life, heralded “Moving Statue,”
and unrecognized, who made this country what it is today.
There needs to be a renewed commitment to understanding that many episodes in history are distasteful when judged by today’s standards, but that does not mean they should be airbrushed away.
The exercise the political and cultural left is engaged in today — to destroy Confederate monuments and memorials by applying to them today’s social mores and ethos — is historically fallacious. Instead, men and their integrity, character, judgment, and morality should be judged by the tenor of the times in which they lived; and how their standards of conduct, integrity, and decency held up under pressure, relative to their peers and the unique challenges of their time (e.g., their country’s most significant national crises in its history).
New monuments and reinterpretations of the past will undoubtedly arise, but this should not necessitate the bulldozing of priceless and irreplaceable works of art, many created almost 100 years ago, memorializing significant figures and events in American history. The mature, enlightened, tolerant, and reasonable solution of what to do with the monuments to the Confederate dead soldiers is to let the advocates of change propose new monuments instead of erasing history they dislike. These statues and memorials are a means of learning about American history and how America came to be today. It is not “celebrating” or “romanticizing” that history, as the modern-day Robespierres like to claim. The statues are not there to “glorify” past but to “preserve memory,” of both the “good” and the “bad”; and what was of primary importance in contributing to what America is today. And moving the statue to a cemetery diminishes the statue’s visibility and is, thus, a subtle, insidious form of censorship and historical revisionism. Fewer people will visit the graveyard than walk or drive past the park or main site where the statue was located. Ultimately, fewer people will have the opportunity to learn the vital history of America, both the “good” and “bad.”
The current efforts to “fundamentally transform” history are fueled by people who believe America has been rotten to the core since Day One and want nothing less than a total cultural and political revolution. It will be a travesty and a foreboding sign for America’s future if there is no attempt to preserve these monuments against the push of a vocal, insistent, and intolerant minority.
When this agenda of the political left is stoked and accepted, monuments will increasingly face a permanent and revolving ideological test, subjected to destruction after sudden shifts in power and minor changes in the cultural milieu.
If Americans continue to back down to the relentless attempts to erase our history — essentially everything that falls outside of the constantly shifting and increasingly narrow bands of ideas acceptable to the modern intellectual left — there will not be merely fewer statues of Robert E. Lee and Confederates. There will be little of this country’s history and ideas left to protect, reflect on and uphold.
We will live in an intellectual and moral wasteland in which the only views deemed acceptable to express or examine come from the loudest and most indignant purveyors of social justice stalking our college campuses or city council chambers.
This article appeared in the Orlando Sentinel on May 17, 2017. Reed Lannom, a resident of Winter Park, FL, is an author and historian. As a guest columnist for the Orlando Sentinel, he authored numerous articles that appeared in the newspaper. He is a fair-minded defender of Confederate history and heritage. His enlightened and informative articles often call out modern PC historians who are prone to ignore inconvenient facts.