This country is filled with national cemeteries that honor Americans who fought and died in our wars. Many of those cemeteries hold Civil War soldiers from both sides and contain monuments to their sacrifice.
Those Civil War soldiers, blue and gray, are buried alongside one another for a reason. One side was right, one side was wrong. But when it was over, they were all Americans. Allowing them to lie in the same cemeteries allowed this country to heal its deepest fissure. – Tucker Carlson, 6/13/20
FoxNews.com reports that
Lt. Col. Allen West warned Saturday that Americans toppling Confederate statues or defacing infamous historic symbols were missing the point of that time in U.S. history.
In an interview on “Fox & Friends Weekend” with hosts Jedediah Bila, Pete Hegseth, and Griff Jenkins, the former Florida congressman advised that angry desecration of longstanding monuments to racist historical figures was not the path to take.
“The right thing is for everyone to understand those — and George Santayana once said — those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it,” he urged.
“History is not there for you to like or dislike, Jedediah. It is there for you to learn from,” he told Bila.
Following weeks of protests against police brutality and unjust killings of Black Americans like George Floyd, many — including state government officials — have turned to look inward at their own communities. They’ve responded by toppling depictions of figures like Christopher Columbus in Minnesota, removing Kentucky’s Jefferson Davis, and graffitiing a Virginia memorial of Confederate General Robert E. Lee.
Some in the military have also called for changes to bases named after members of the Confederacy.
Many make the argument that removing the statues and names themselves would not erase the history — nor could it erase racism — but that it would relieve the pain felt by the families of those slaughtered in the 400 years since African slaves were first brought to America every time they looked at these representations.
West explained that as a young officer in the U.S. Army he had served at places like Fort Bragg — named after Confederate General Braxton Bragg — and commanded a battalion at Fort Hood in Texas which was named after Confederate General John Bell Hood.
“I did not think about them as Confederate generals. I thought about the honor of being able to serve on those military installations,” he remarked.
“And, one of the things that has me absolutely incensed right now is the fact that you had these individuals [who] went up and defaced the monument, the memorial to the 54th Massachusetts regiment there in Boston,” added West.
The Robert Gould Shaw and the 54th Regiment Memorial was reportedly defaced 123 years to the day it was dedicated: May 31, 1897. The tribute held Colonel Shaw’s sword. Shaw had been killed alongside his men — African-American soldiers — fighting for their freedom in a battle at Fort Wagner.
According to WBUR, a $3 million dollar restoration project for the sculpture was just granted clearance at the beginning of the month.
That said, the city rallied quickly to carefully clean up the damage.
“That was the first Black organized unit to wear the uniform of the United States of America and fought in the Civil War. And, their history was depicted in the movie ‘Glory,'” West pointed out. “And, I would challenge people this weekend to go back and look at that movie and understand: these were former slaves. These were freedmen [who] stood up and fought for this country.”
“And now, here we are not even 200 years from that moment when they stood up to that challenge,” he noted. “We destroyed their monument.”
“No. History is about learning from it. I don’t want to see us become like the Taliban or ISIS,” West concluded. “Those are the people [who] destroyed history.”
Since before the 2016 President Election, I have referred to those who want to be known as “The Resistance”, like Antifa, as “The New Bolsheviks” because of the striking similarity of their actions to the ruthless aggression displayed by those who followed Vladimir Lenin in the Russian Revolution of 1918.
However, there is another group that these “brave new radicals” remind me of: the barbarians of Islamic State, or ISIS and as Lt. Col. West proved in his interview, I am not alone.
When they would take over a city in the Middle East, for example Palmyra, one of the first things that they would do would be to tear down the area’s historical sites, destroying any artifacts and antiquities which they did not like, in order to establish that their culture was supreme, just as Lenin’s Bolsheviks did.
Antifa and the rest of The Resistance” or protestors, if you will, who are bringing down the historical statues which I just mentioned, are defaming other monuments as well, while proclaiming their self-righteousness through their actions.
As an American, I see nothing different from their actions than those of the Bolsheviks and the Radical Islamists of ISIS.
The subjects of all of this censorship were Americans. In the case of the Confederate Generals, most of them were West Point Graduates who proudly served their country before the War Between the States.
The Civil War was a seminal moment in American History.
If you find the statues offensive, then that is your prerogative as an American. However, as Lt. Col. West said, your hurt feelings do not give you just cause to attempt to erase history by pulling down a statue which is not your property.
History cannot be hidden, nor can it be changed through violent acts in the present. It just is.
Those statues were put in place so that Americans might learn about those historical figures and learn FROM them, as well.
Which brings me to a very important point: Lenin’s Bolsheviks and ISIS also destroyed historical artifacts in order to make the populace “malleable” and “agreeable”.
Without their history there to remind them through statues, buildings and antiquities, the populace would lose their sense of “country”, not to mention knowledge of how their nation had evolved and changed into what they had become comfortable with.
These New Bolsheviks, the ungrateful little punks of Antifa, who are censoring history do not understand that in order to be properly educated as an American Citizen, you need to be aware of our Sovereign Nation’s History and reminded of it constantly, the good and the bad, so that our nation does not lose our cherished liberty which was bought by the blood of those before us.
So why, all of a sudden are these statues and other monuments which been a part of our nation’s history for so long, so offensive?
Perhaps because they stand in the way of those who would replace our Constitutional Republic with a Marxist form of government…like “Democratic Socialism”.
After all, those with a proper knowledge of history and a strong sense of American Patriotism would not make very good “useful idiots”.
Until He Comes,
KJ
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