The national press is giddy over the news that the statue of Robert E. Lee will be removed from the Virginia state capital this week. Just giddy. The Taliban would be proud. The modern Left doing what so many enemies of America tried to do an failed.
UPDATE: Apparently they didn't just remove it. They tore it apart, to the cheers of adoring mobs. The growing insistence that black Americans never forgive America, hate it, and want it burned to the ground will be one of the greatest injustices every visited on black Americans. Meanwhile. Christians and Christian traditions stand by ... or join in. If you ever wondered how bad things happened in the past, you need only watch what is happening in the present, and who's eager to jump on the bandwagon.
I usually agree with you, bit I fail to see the similarity between removing a statue of a slave-owner who fought to create a slave nation, vs. A Government in Afghanistan that forces women to wear head-scarves and threatens to arrest and kill Christians. Govenor Northam is a hypocritical bonehead, and his comments on Abortion were incredibly disturbing, but on this issue, he's not wrong. Some may argue that removing the statue is part of a slippery slope to institute Communism, and that may be true, but in that case, the issue is the intent, not the action itself
ReplyDeleteI get where you're coming from, but here's where I'm at. I don't think it's a slippery slope to communism, as much as an immediate arrival at presentism. Lee himself was a product of his time, when the fledgling country was just coming around to itself, and many Americans had more regional loyalties than to the whole nation itself. Likewise the idea that slavery was inherently evil was still rather novel, with only a few nations even addressing it (and all in the Christian West). That Lee, who struggled with the issue, didn't do everything immediately and perfectly makes him much easier to relate to, given how often I know what I should do but don't do it. I fear we're building a generation with ever diminishing tolerance for any of those sinners in the past, and increasingly those other sinners today. It's that sense of righteous intolerance for the sins of those sinners over there that smacks similar to the same righteous intolerance of the Taliban.
DeleteHad Gen. Lee said something like "My country, right or wrong," he would have been referring to Virginia (an independent nation-state belonging to a republican union of such states), rather than the USA.
DeleteI've taken your thoughts into account, and I think I've stumbled across a solution not
DeleteOnly to Confederate statues, but to any statue of a controversial historical figure. Keep the statue up, but change the inscription to be more nuanced. Somthing like "Robert Edward Lee, General in both the United States and Confederate States armies. May we study his actions, both the good and bad, and learn from them."
30 years ago the crown heights riot happened. An event I had not heard or thought about but in listening to this report on it, I find it seems more relevant than ever.
ReplyDeleteI remember hearing about that way back in the day. We hadn't so firmly embraced the whole 'if it ain't white, it ain't evil' mantra. Such a thing today would likely be swept under the carpet the day after it was over. That's why we hear so little about so many evils in the world - if it can't be pinned on a white Christian (male preferred), it is of no value to the Left's prime narrative.
DeleteAnd now, Virginians, a word with you in closing: “Show me the man you honor; I know by that symptom, better than by any other, what kind of man you yourself are. For you show me then what your ideal of manhood is; what kind of man you long possibly to be, and would thank the Gods, with your whole soul, for being if you could. Whom shall we consecrate and set apart as one of our sacred men? Sacred; that all men may see him, be reminded of him, and, by new example added to old perpetual precept, be taught what is real worth in man. Whom do you wish to resemble? Him you set on a high column, that all men looking at it, may be continually apprised of the duty you expect from them.”
ReplyDeleteThe virtues of a superior man are like the wind; the virtues of a common man are like the grass; the grass, when the wind passes over it, bends.
Charles Francis Adams, Lee Centennial, 1907
Nice. From a different era and world no longer welcome by modern progressive Christians.
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