After the horrific events in Charlottesville, President Trump was hounded by the press for a statement. Once he had the time to assess all the known facts, he released an accurate statement to the effect that both sides of the conflict were in the wrong.
This, of course, was not good enough. During the press conference, he pointed out that the so-called white nationalist group had come to Charlottesville to protest the removal of a statue depicting General Robert E. Lee.
The statue removal protesters were called racists by the media and by Antifa — the militant alt-left group that attacked the protesters with mace and clubs. That is how the violence began.
But during the press conference, Trump had to explain all this to reporters as they hounded him with accusatory invectives. The reporters, concerned that Trump was defending racists, said, ‘Robert E. Lee was a slave owner… are you defending people who support owning slaves?’
To this, Trump responded by pointing out that Abraham Lincoln and George Washington were also slave owners. He made the point that if we start tearing down statues based on whether or not the figure they depict owned slaves, we would run out of statutes very quickly in this country.
He said, “George Washington was a slave owner. Are we gonna take down statues of George Washington? … you’re changing history, you’re changing the culture…you had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists. And the press has treated them absolutely unfairly.”
For this statement, he was mocked mercilessly in the days that followed. The premise of the derision was that his statement was based on an absurd assumption that anyone would go so far as to even suggest taking down the effigies of men like Washington, Lincoln, and Jefferson. But the liberals who mocked him thusly have shown that they do not understand the so-called progressive movement they support. Democrats, liberals, and leftists of every stripe have been coming out saying that exact thing: that we should take down the images of Washington, Lincoln, Jefferson, and more.
Since the press conference, Duke University has taken down a statue of Robert E. Lee. Attacks, both physical and rhetorical, have been carried out on Confederate statue sites. But it didn’t end there. This week, the Reverend Al Sharpton has called for the removal of statues depicting George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.
On CNN this week a member of the Congressional Black Caucasus, Angela Rye said. “George Washington was a slave owner. We need to call them out for what they are, whether we think they were protecting American freedom or not. He wasn’t protecting my freedoms. My ancestors weren’t deemed human beings to him. And so to me, I don’t care if it’s a George Washington statue or a Thomas Jefferson statue, they all need to come down.”
Al Sharpton told Charlie Rose he thought that we should no longer divert public funds to statues of people who owned slaves- including Washington and Lincoln. He advocated for their removal.
Since the Charlottesville event, statues of the Founding Fathers and other significant American historical figures have been defaced by cowardly vandals who cannot understand that just because something bad happened in the past, does not mean we should not memorialize it.
Wars are memorialized. The 9/11 attacks are memorialized. The attack on Pearl Harbor is memorialized. We do not always create statues to exalt the subject, but to commemorate them. But the left does not understand this.
What is useful about these events is their similarity to the lead-up to the installment of communist and socialist regimes all throughout the 20th century — movements that killed an estimated 100 million people. Before these murderous regimes were put into place, they first defaced public monuments and tore down statues. Today’s leftists are signaling to us their violent nature, giving us the clear message that if they are not stopped the destruction will continue.
~ Liberty Planet
