More on monument destruction: no historical assist allowed
I just published this long post on how the current riots and statue-toppling represents a war on Western Civilization.
I want to add something here, on a related topic. John Hinderaker of Powerline has written a piece today on much the same theme (although he’s not as wordy as I). It ends this way:
Every four years it is said that the current election is the most important one in our lifetimes. This time, it is actually true. Not a single Democratic Party official, to my knowledge, has condemned the anti-American madness that is sweeping across the nation. Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi are fully on board with the extremist elements in their party–I am starting to wonder whether there is any Democratic Party apart from the extremist elements–and the Democrats’ presidential nominee is a senile nonentity who, in office, would be controlled by the radicals. It is absolutely essential to our country’s future that Donald Trump be re-elected.
UPDATE: Hans Bader has more, including this quote from Frederick Douglass about Grant:
“To him, more than to any other man, the Negro owes his enfranchisement,” Douglass said. Douglass eulogized Grant as “a man too broad for prejudice, too humane to despise the humblest, too great to be small at any point. In him the Negro found a protector, the Indian a friend, a vanquished foe a brother, an imperiled nation a savior.”
But then, liberals hate Douglass, too.
Similar to the point I made at the end of my post, about Martin Luther King.
I well remember a time in the mid-to-late 60s when I became aware of the Black Power movement and the Black Panthers and their messages. One of the things I recall happening is the rejection of white allies who had been with them in their fight for liberty and voting rights and an end to segregation. They were kicked out and not wanted anymore, sometimes even insulted and reviled.
This is the same impulse. Not only do the BLM and Antifa movements and the left hate Douglass (and perhaps Martin Luther King, at this point), but they hate any historic white person such as Grant and Lincoln, not just in spite of what such people did to assist black people in their struggle, but because of it. Assistance from any white person, after all, means that one didn’t do it all by oneself. It means that some white people helped.
The desire to reject that aspect of history is the same impulse that led to the otherwise puzzling choice to vandalize the Robert Gould Shaw monument in Boston. This is not random, nor is it an accident or error. This is the left.
I have no doubt the Pelosi/Schumer crew think that once Trump is gone and Democrats control Congress, they’ll just buy off/shut down BLM/Antifa with some token gestures so they can go on servicing the global oligarchy/national security state. After all, they basically shut down BLM once before when it got inconvenient.
They’re wrong but I’m sure that’s what they think.
Mike
I’m guessing it won’t take Dems 3 1/2 years to file indictments.
Then, I imagine, will come the disarming. Illegal but piecemeal and with overwhelming backup force. Starting in Blue states which have Dem Gov plus Dem legislatures.
MBunge:
Yep.
The leftists in Iran who partnered with the mullahs thought they would win out in the end. They were wrong. Same mistake the right made in Germany when they let Hitler take charge.
Never think you can control groups that have their own agenda and could not care less about yours.
Ann Coulter is promoting Jesse Kelly’s trolling #cancelyale. Elihu Yale was a slave trader. Let’s be consistent, SJWs. It can return to its original name “Collegiate School” or renamed for a prominent alumnus of color. Perhaps “Wise Latina” Sotomayor? Or Cory Booker?
Obviously any statutes of Yale should be defaced and torn down. All woke Yale graduates should desecrate (probably burn) their diplomas and refuse to put this noxious name on their resumes, CVs, professional biographies, etc.
But it doesn’t stop there. Columbia deserves the same fate…for obvious reasons. Brown? Moses Brown had likewise been a slave trader. He regretted it, converted to Quakerism and became an outspoken abolitionist; too bad, his sins still taint him and the university named for him. They doubtlessly trigger some special snowflakes. Bye bye, Brown.
Stanford? Leland Stanford was vitriolic in his opposition to Asian immigration. Technically, the school is named for his son, but so what? It absolutely must suffer the same fate as the above schools.
Honestly, I don’t know how any woke employer could hire or retain employees from any of these schools. As a prerequisite for securing or maintaining employment, alumni of these schools should renounce their degrees and humbly petition admission to a less “problematic” school, preferably an HBCU
They did not seem to have issue with having white allies during the Brinks Nanuet robbery… or Brink’s robbery (1981)
carried out by six Black Liberation Army members:
Jeral Wayne Williams (Mutulu Shakur),
Donald Weems (Kuwasi Balagoon),
Samuel Brown (Solomon Bouines),
Samuel Smith (Mtayari Shabaka Sundiata),
Edward Joseph
Cecilio “Chui” Ferguson
and four former members of the Weather Underground, now belonging to the May 19th Communist Organization, consisting of David Gilbert, Judith Alice Clark, Kathy Boudin, and Marilyn Buck
But I guess they were the BLA… not the BLM…
In December 2016, Andrew Cuomo commuted Clark’s sentence to 35 years, citing “exceptional strides in self-development”
now what was Charles Mansons family reason for killing the Tates and others?
oh yeah… the crazy riots and stuff they called Helter Skelter
Don’t life get weird?
The BLA and Quebec separatists planned on blowing up the statue of liberty and the liberty bell..
The Weatherman planted a bomb which blew up a statue in Chicago commemorating the deaths of police officers during the 1886 Haymarket Riot. The blast broke nearly 100 windows and scattered pieces of the statue onto the Kennedy Expressway below. The city rebuilt the statue and unveiled it on May 4, 1970, but the Weathermen blew it up as well on October 6, 1970. The city rebuilt the statue once again, and Mayor Richard J. Daley posted a 24-hour police guard to protect it, but the Weathermen destroyed the third one, as well. The city compromised and rebuilt the monument once more, but this time they located it at Chicago Police Headquarters
“What a long strange trip its been” – Grateful Dead
[lets see how long before someone else uses the term Helter Skelter soon… ]
Unfortunately, it is not just democrat ‘leaders’.
Not a single one of my democrat friends can tell me why it’s ok to tear down American statutes but it was bad when ISIS tore down statues it didn’t like. Because…reasons…
One monument that Antifa, BLM, and the other assorted crazies won’t dare deface is the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington. This 10-minute video about the training and dedication of the soldier-sentinels explains why. The testimony of the soldier speaking at 8:46 is thoughtful as well as moving– “If you really understand what you’re doing– you’re guarding the Unknown Soldiers who gave everything. Their parents never, never got to bury them. Ever. And you are out there guarding the Unknowns.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QebrbHpjAac&ab_channel=3dU.S.InfantryRegiment%28TheOldGuard%29
There are still some young Americans ready to defend our heritage.
The left’s rabidity is reminiscent of McGovern era. Let’s see if this has the same oomph as Anti-Vietnam-War emotion.
“What a long strange trip its been” – Grateful Dead
[lets see how long before someone else uses the term Helter Skelter soon… ]
ArtflDgr: I’m going with an earlier classic:
_________________________________________
The pump don’t work ’cause the vandals took the handles.
–Bob Dylan, “Subterranean Homesick Blues”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Mb3CoWwNyY
Dylan took a lot of his stuff from others…
I often liked the originals from Blind Willi McTell
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_Willie_McTell
a Piedmont blues and ragtime singer and guitarist. He played with a fluid, syncopated fingerstyle guitar technique, common among many exponents of Piedmont blues. Unlike his contemporaries, he came to use twelve-string guitars exclusively. McTell was also an adept slide guitarist, unusual among ragtime bluesmen. His vocal style, a smooth and often laid-back tenor, differed greatly from many of the harsher voices of Delta bluesmen such as Charley Patton. McTell performed in various musical styles, including blues, ragtime, religious music and hokum.
[snip]
McTell’s influence extended over a wide variety of artists, including the Allman Brothers Band, who covered his “Statesboro Blues”, and Bob Dylan, who paid tribute to him in his 1983 song “Blind Willie McTell”, the refrain of which is “And I know no one can sing the blues like Blind Willie McTell”. Other artists influenced by McTell include Taj Mahal, Alvin Youngblood Hart, Ralph McTell, Chris Smither, Jack White, and the White Stripes.
As a general rule, our politicians stink on ice. I’ll wager they’d stink less if we had better screens on the eligibility to run for office. The business and professional element from which our politicians are drawn is comparatively smaller in the black population, so you have fewer choices from which to select your stinkers (most of whom seem to be school teachers and low-rent lawyers). When they behave badly, the shame-honor culture abroad in the black population interferes with punishing them. (The way it works AFAICT allow crooks to be voted out of office, but not incompetents and not malicious clowns, either).
“The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.”
George Orwell
Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.
George Orwell
The above two quotations are all you need to know as to why historical statues are being destroyed.
A commentator above, PA Cat, avers that no one would dare deface the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.
I beg to differ.
When one soldier it guarding the Tomb and a mob of thugs is surreptitiously “visiting” the tomb (disguised as normal tourists) , don’t think for a moment they will not attempt to deface the tomb and at the same time beat up or kill the guard.
These ANTIFA / BLM Nazis are capable and willing to do anything at all.
Hopefully the guards at the Tomb have prepared for this eventuality.
I’ll compromise. They can tear down and erase anything of Woodrow Wilson or FDRyms
It has turned a great deal more vicious than it was in the McGovern “era”. There were then few Weathermen, a few SLAs and the 1968 Dem. convention drew thousands of roaches. The few vicious blacks never drew followers. McGovern was in 1972, remaking the Democratic Party into less of a smoke-filled room exercise. He was not even a pale imitation of Schmucky Chuckie.
But today we have had literally hundreds of thousands in the streets, with remarkable viciousness, almost brainless in quality. Mobs, by definition.
As ye sow so shall ye also reap.
It is a mighty sorry, indeed poisonous, crop we now reap. Our then-leaders and our collective conservative passivity allowed it.
I think you have said something important, here, Ms. Neocon, and honor is due.
Don Surber found it, too, in a NY Times op-ed:
https://donsurber.blogspot.com/2020/06/black-lies-matter.html
Now the Red Guard has decided to nuke the statue of Theodore Roosevelt that has stood in front of the Museum of Natural History in New York for 80 years.
When are we going to fight back? And how?
She published it a long time ago, and it’s largely based on the work of another writer (whom she acknowledges and footnotes extensively), but an excellent and hair-raising book about the psychology of Leftist/Jacobin mobs is Ann Coulter’s “DEMONIC.”
Get it while you can. Prepare to be shocked by the passages about the Reign of Terror of the French revolution: it was satanic.
The Left now isn’t quite bold enough to start decapitating the police and politicians they hate, but they’re working themselves up to it.
donf: Good Surber column. Here’s the intro:
_______________________________
Jamelle Bouie of the New York Times explained why Juneteenth is so important to the Black Liberation Movement (or Black Lives Matter as it now calls itself). Juneteenth allows black intellectuals like him to divorce themselves from Lincoln’s freeing of the slaves.
Lincoln is nettlesome to Bouie and others because having white people free the slaves makes it impossible to write off the entire white race. Indeed, 300,000 white boys from the North died to liberate 6 million people and make them American citizens.
_______________________________
Juneteenth, based on June 19th, celebrates the end of slavery in the United States. Somehow I’ve lived most of my life without hearing about it, aside from knowing it was Ralph Ellison’s second novel, unpublished until 1999. However, it is celebrated in black communities in the US, as well as other places.
Now there is a big push to get it recognized as a national holiday. My Amazon page has had a tickler on it for the past week. Even the “Spectator” has climbed aboard the bandwagon with an article advising Pres. Trump that it is not only the right thing to do, but the smart thing:
“Juneteenth is Trump’s chance to win in November”
https://spectator.us/juneteenth-trump-chance-win-november/
I disagree. I consider a Juneteenth national holiday just another slab of red meat to throw overboard to the BLM/NYT crocodiles in the hopes their appetite will be sated. But of course that appetite is never-ending.
When will enough be enough? Washington’s and Lincoln’s birthdays were merged into vague President’s Day to make room for Martin Luther King Day. You just know that a renewed push on reparations is coming too.
Prepare to be shocked by the passages about the Reign of Terror of the French revolution: it was satanic.
Beverly: I haven’t read Coulter’s “Demonic,” but today I did notice a BLM flag on a window down the hall in my apartment complex. It was a print of a crude vertical American flag with a satanic goat’s head (Baphomet) superimposed over the white stars and blue field at the top.
I don’t get torqued on satanic imagery, but I don’t like it either, especially not on the American flag. Do these people know what they are playing at?
I googled for the flag print but couldn’t find it on the web.
Huxley
Do these people know what they are playing at?
They are playing with Fire. Anger is one thing, but anger and fear is entirely an another dimension. They are revealing and exposing the worst in human nature. Even if they are 2 million strong the country has hundreds of millions of more people. At some point, we fight back.
After 16 trimesters of witch hunts and warlock trials, they must be desperate to share/shift responsibility if they are willing to foment diversity (e.g. racism).
Douglass eulogized Grant as “a man too broad for prejudice, too humane to despise the humblest, too great to be small at any point
There was a time when people… persons recognized the shortcomings and dangers of indulging diversity.
I thought conservatives here and in general told me there would be no civil war and that I was without base?
I am still waiting on that “no war” scenario people kept pushing around.
Beverly on June 22, 2020 at 12:10 am said:
Now the Red Guard has decided to nuke the statue of Theodore Roosevelt that has stood in front of the Museum of Natural History in New York for 80 years.
When are we going to fight back? And how?
By the time any of you here has woken up to the War, it will be over.
Stand down and enjoy the show. Survive to 2021 and see.
My faction has many surprises ready.
ymarsakar:
You’ve gotten pushback on a lot of things here, but the idea that we may yet have a civil war was not one of them. Although I suppose a person here and there may have disagreed, I think most people thought a civil war a distinct possibility.
Just to take a single example, here’s a post of mine from almost exactly two years ago, that talks about it quite seriously.
I think the refusal to acknowledge help from others is a sad but accurate point. It is certainly not common among African-Americans in general, who have been excellent examples of showing gratitude throughout my life. But activists are usually drawn from a different pool. The attitude is common among those with personality disorders: borderline, antisocial, and especially narcissistic. Social media empowers those with such disorders greatly.
More humorously, it reminds me of Peter Pan crowing about how accomplished he is when Wendy sews his shadow back on.
neo on June 20, 2020 at 7:23 pm said:
“Never think you can control groups that have their own agenda and could not care less about yours.”
This is why I don’t support (entirely) Tom’s insistence that the Left is equivalent the Democrat Party — I think the (organized) Left is using the Democrats, as Neo points out.
However, I do agree with him that the Democrats’s need to be tied to the Left’s depredations with vigor and dispatch.
Surber has a good conclusion too:
Some people here and on other blog threads claim they have never heard of Juneteenth.
I grew up in west Texas.
Jefferson Davis’s birthday was still on the free calendars in the fifties.
I knew what Juneteenth was.
It should have been a national holiday a century ago, for the reasons Don Surber gave.
If not for John Wilkes Booth, and Lincoln’s mistaken selection of his vice president, it might well have been.
From Surber’s comments, and I bring this one forward just to tell a story:
In the fifties and sixties, my mother would hand out Republican literature on the main street of our hometown, and sometimes I and my siblings would go with her.
She registered Republican every year that I know of, but a lot of times as I got older I noticed that she actually favored Democrat politicians, and even some Democrat policies (never Leftist, though; she knew the Cold War first hand).
So I asked her about that bout of political activism. She replied that, in those days, the Democrats had a strangle-hold on Texas politics, and she thought it was wrong to only have one operational political party in the state, so she deliberately worked for the Republicans until they became viable.
She also flew Confederate flags, when she felt like it, and rooted for the Confederate Air Force, a group of private pilots having fun and doing charity shows. They changed their name a few years back, which kind of ruined the joke.
A picture is worth a thousand words – but he had those as well.
https://babylonbee.com/news/i-told-you-so-whispers-ghostly-image-of-george-orwell-hovering-over-nation