I know I promised y’all something more Orthodox this weekend (I promise, there’ll be two significant stories very soon) but this just came to my attention and it neatly confirms the evil that the left poses for society.
On Tuesday, President Trump came out swinging against the cultural Marxists, asking a rhetorical question. First Lee, then why not Washington? Well, we now know the answer: Heck yeah! let’s blow up Mt Rushmore, take down FDR’s statue and then, who knows? Because in these peoples’ lights, all of America pre-Obama was pretty much an evil enterprise.
At this point, the only saving grace for any of these Dead White Males would be if one was found to be a transvestite or some other type of deviant.
The always oafish “Rev” Al Sharpton weighed in on Jefferson. Yeah, take him down as well. Something about his “tax dollars” having to support Jefferson’s Memorial. And the star of the Broadway hit Hamilton said Washington was fair game. (I’ve got an interesting question: why is it when white people wear dreadlocks it’s called “cultural appropriation” but when black people play the Founding Fathers it’s cool? Just curious.)
As I will aver in my next editorial on Charlottesville, the left will overplay their hand in due time. Well, I was wrong, they started within 24 hours when they took down the statue of that Confederate soldier in Durham, North Carolina. Their stupidity knows no bounds. Just yesterday, they nearly demolished this bust of Abraham Lincoln in Chicago.
Lincoln. The Great Emancipator.
This is a toxic mixture of idiocy, moral arrogance and violence. If they keep this up then Trump is well on his way to winning reelection.
In the meantime, please watch the following clip. If the left really wants reconciliation (they don’t, but work with me for the sake of argument), they’d take a cue from FDR, speaking at the 75th reunion of Civil War veterans from both sides.
Here’s a news-story about FDR and what he said about Lee at the dedication of a Confederate monument in Dallas, Texas back in 1936.
https://youtu.be/UsRZRGKzhZ4
George I draw the line with Confederate foot soldiers, their memorials should stand, as no doubt they were sold a bill of lies. Their homes were in of the Confederate States of America. In the eyes of unlearned simple folk, who owned no slaves, were fighting a tyrannical oppression, invading their states. Theirs was a simplistic innocence we can forgive. Their leaders such as Davis, Lee, and southern state representatives were traitors to our nation, and responsible for the largest war death toll in our nation’s history, in fact nearly the same death toll as all American wars combined. They were on the wrong side of morality, in regards to slavery, and that alone is enough. NO history lesson of what, why, and yea buts, can change that. Slavery is a sin of the greatest proportion. Giving glory to those leaders in the form of a prideful statues is wrong. Memorials to the foot soldiers who fought on those lands, reminding us of our history is proper and right.
Now as you like to say, let’s lay our cards on the table. Okay! These statues of Confederate leaders, were erected and promoted decades after the war for the most part by racists. History should never be forgotten, as we know, lessons not learned will be repeated. Let’s admit these statues, in southern states have more to do with southern pride, than history lessons. The under belly of southern pride is racist. Pride in a movement that wanted to preserve slavery, and later on in the 20th century, deny rights to our black citizens, deserves no such honor. Again why pretend the fact that most of these monuments were supported and largely erected by racists. Hell there is even a Confederate monument in Montana. Montana! They were not even a state, during the civil war, and are as far north as you can get in our nation!
Now don’t get me wrong. I despise the way the leftist, anarchist, race baiter groups are tearing down these statues. ONE, that belongs to local governments to decide, in a democratic manner, and replaced with a history lesson type monument, if it applies to that city. TWO, these leftist phonies, are not removing statues as patriots, just the opposite, as traitors, they want to erase our history. They want to rewrite, and redefine our history. In doing so they can redefine our nation, our Constitution, our way of life, by lies, instead of facts that defined our nation’s history, good and bad, but mostly good, and like no other nation in the history of this world. Say what you want about our nation, but most people want what we have, and many risk death to get here. Many have died preserving those freedoms. Leftist racist want us to forget, in large part, white Americans ended slavery, and later fought to end the spread of The Nazis, and the fascist spread thru Europe, and Northern Africa, and later help rebuild, and feed a world, left in ashes. The leftist wants Americans to see our history as only hateful. A hateful nation that must be overturned to their liking. I have said it many times here, let them protest, they are repulsing voters away from the Democratic party.Trump is the exact type of ugly, that can stand up to the grotesque ways of the left we are witnessing. Any other politician would cave and play by the unwritten rules of MSM. Politicians fear losing their jobs, Trump has no such fear, as he was never a politician. We must fight to preserve our history, starting with our founding fathers, not saints, but brave men, who left the tyranny of Europe, and sought to create something great, risking all they owned to create the nation we can still freely enjoy today. Lest, we allow the true haters to destroy all we love. Lord have mercy on our great nation, and forgive us all in our efforts to preserve it.
If a statue makes you feel oppressed, you have bigger issues. They should be viewed in the context of their time instead of through the prism of modern values.
I am a firm believer in ‘keep your history before you’. I want us to have to look at those monuments and recognize what they did and to be able to tell our kids what they did and for them to have a sense of their own history. When you start wiping out history, sanitizing history to make you feel better, it’s a bad thing. Instead it should be celebrated that the country has come a long way from the times when the founders agreed to count each slave as three-fifths of a person or when black men in Alabama wouldn’t be allowed to register to vote in the 1950s.
Statues do not oppress, I have stated that in previous posts. Again, let’s be honest, statues for the most part are erected in pride, for whatever it represents in our history. Why are there not statues of early KKK leaders, are they not part of the south’s history, no, instead said closest and manifest KKK leaders in public service, and wealthy cohorts erected leaders of the Confederacy, not in their defeat, but in prideful statues on Horses, or in prideful stance. Keep your history before you? What of Statues of Stalin, Lenin, Hitler, Nazi SS leaders, Saddam Hussein, or how about Turkish leaders during the occupation in Greece, would you be OK with said leaders on horses, head held high in pride in said countries, as Robert E Lee is depicted? History is for history books, and monuments, monuments explaining what happened on a historic location. Ask yourself why is there Confederate monument in Helena, Montana, southern pride? From the most north of all states, not even a state during the Civil War. There is a under belly of racism then, just as now with many of these statues, regardless if you don’t want recognize it or not.For whatever reason, it just is. I personally growing up, always have seen statues as patriotic symbols, prideful, in what they represent. Right or wrong that’s just as I see it as well.
Regarding Turkish statues in Greece, they were invaders.
True but for nearly all of the last two millenniums Greece has been ruled by outsiders. It’s their/our history, most likely I am more Roman than Greek, with maybe a sprinkle of Turk, since my blood line is from Asia Minor. Must do the DNA deal and find out, might get a surprise since half in my family have blue eyes.
Lee was a loser who said himself confederate symbols had no place in America. How many other losers are in town squares and were put the in response to Jim Crow or civil rights movements?
The slippery slope talk is just an excuse for Trump’s spineless failure to remind Americans we crushed the Nazis in the 40s and there is no place for them now. He proved he is weaker than Hillary. Now I get why the Russians liked him.
Sometimes the truth is hard. Trump blew it this time and I think we know who helped create a sutuation where Trump failed to pick the easy fruit and condemn Nazis.
You’re fired.
He did condemn the neonazis. And the KKK. When did Bamster condemn BLM or the New Black Panthers? Or Rashid Khalidi? Or the Nation of Islam.
The Russians liked Hillary big-time. To the tune of several million dollars.
lol
I guess all the historically illiterate in this country forget that Andrew Johnson PARDONED all the confederate soldiers and in the early 20th century CONGRESS passed a law that was signed by the president declaring all confederate soldiers US VETERANS and making their wives, still alive, eligible for veteran pensions.
Therefore, all the disdain showed to the confederates that are depicted in statues, most erected in the 20th century, is just wrong on ANY level. They are veterans. I don’t care who dislikes it, they were pardoned and given the same status as any veteran.
While I’m at it, Woodrow Wilson’s family were confederates and pardoned AND renationalized making Wilson eligible to be president. He was a democrat and a racist BUT he was pardoned and nationalized by presidential proclamation. Then as one of his first actions he fired all blacks on the federal payroll.
Foot soldiers pardons no problem, Government, and military leaders not in my book. I suppose your cool with all of Clinton’s, and Obama’s pardoned as well? Wilson I’m sure was a fan of the erection of many Confederate statues, most racist were after all. “Democrat and racist”, says Paul Smith. Thanks for helping me make my point, in regards to racists, and their promotion of said statues.
https://davidmschroeder.com/2013/05/16/what-robert-e-lee-teaches-us-about-reconciliation/:
“It was a warm Sunday at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, and an older man, one of the church’s many distinguished communicants, who had spent the last four years in war, was sitting in his customary pew. With his shoulders rounded, his middle thickened, his hair snow-white and beard gray, as usual, he attracted the attention of the rest of the church. But then so did another parishioner.
“As the minister, Dr. Charles Minnergerode, was about to administer Holy Communion, a tall, well-dressed black man sitting at the western galley (which was reserved for Negroes) unexpectedly advanced to the communion table-unexpectedly because his this had never happened here before. Suddenly, the image of Richmond redux was conjured up-a flashback to prewar years. Usually whites received communion first, then blacks-a small but strictly adhered to ritual, repeated so often that to alter it was unthinkable. This one small act, then, was like a large frontier separating two worlds: the first being that of the antebellum South, the second being that of post-Civil War America. The congregation froze; those who had been ready to go forward and kneel at the altar rail remained fixed in their pews. Momentarily stunned, Minnergerode himself was clearly embarrassed. The horror-and surprise-of the congregation were no doubt largely visceral, but Minnergerode’s silent retreat was evident. It was one thing for the white South to endure defeat and poverty, or to accept the fact that slaves were now free; it was quite another for a black man to stride up to the front of the church as though an equal. And not just at any church, but here, at the sanctuary for Richmond’s elite, the wealthy, the well-bred, the high-cultured.
“The black man slowly lowered his body, kneeling, while the rest of the congregation tensed in their pews. For his part, the minister stood, clearly uncomfortable and still dumbfounded. After what seemed to be an interminable amount of time-although it was probably only seconds-the white man arose (Lee), his gait erect, head up and eyes proud, and walked quietly up the aisle to the chancel rail. His face was a portrait of exhaustion, and he looked far older than most people had remembered from when the war had just begun. These days had been hard on him. Recently, in a rare, unguarded moment he had uncharacteristically blurted out, ‘I’m homeless-I have nothing on earth.’
“Yet these Richmonders, like all of the South, still looked to him for a sense of purpose and guidance. No less so now as, with quiet dignity and self-possession, he knelt down to partake of the communion, along the same rail with the black man.
“Watching Robert E. Lee, the other communicants slowly followed in his path, going forward to the altar, and, with a mixture of reluctance and fear, hope and awkward expectation, into the future.”
The man was a saint.
Really George, a saint? A military traitor, who if victorious would have preserved slavery, and split our nation? Speechless!
He’d already freed his slaves six years before the War began. He was fighting to protect his state from invasion.
The Radical Republicans were like the modern left today in that they wanted no conciliation. Slavery could have been ameliorated the way it was in England and serfdom in Russia: with the stroke of a pen. Each slave owner could have been given money for his slaves and his land parceled out so that they could make a living. It would have been 1000 times cheaper than the war in monetary terms alone.
And you honestly think the south would have accepted such amelioration? Not historically accurate. Any move against slavery was repelled with threats of secession.
Yes I do. If it was made in good faith and tone of the murderous language of Northern Abolitionists had been toned down.
Please go back and read my essay on ‘The Long Cold Civil War: Part I’. In it I bring forth evidence of the genocidal fury that many of these Abolitionists had towards Southerners.
Even if many or even most of the Southern planters had not accepted the offer of cash for their slaves some would have. And those who did would have been an active minority within the South that would have hobbled the plans for secession. It’s called divide and conquer and it’s been practiced since Roman times to great effect.
As Frs. Jacobse & Webster often do here, too, George commends one of his writings above, wherein he accuses Northern Abolitionists of “murderous language.” This reminded me of the triumphant coda of another of his essays, “Yeeee-Hawwww!,” published on the Euphoric Day of Trump’s pyrrhic “victory.” It’s shorter, and I would like to commend it to Lori, too. Maybe as a sort of appetizer:
“Go after” “Destroy them” “Literally” Republican political opponents of the man Donald Trump = Traitors. “They need to go”
Hmmm. What’s the meaning of that? What kind of political ideology emboldens someone to publish stuff like that?
Or how about this one:
Minister of Fear? What’s that all about, George?
BTW, you have well-informed company, who can’t believe he won WI either. Precinct level results in PA are also looking very, very strange. MI numbers deeply suspect as well. The plot thickens!
Anyway, testimony before Congress is scheduled on these matters. Stay tuned!
Not so obvious. We agree though on wondering how you’ll ever be able to do that convincing.
BTW, George, just a few days ago Alex Jones portrayed his political orientation in almost exactly the some way as you, before you wrote that. Listen to minute 1:35 thru 1:45. AJ was tilting at windmills on the streets of Seattle. You getting identity talking points from Alex Jones these days, or is this just an odd synchronicity?
Mike, I’m not Alex Jones. He can speak for himself. As for me, I’m so beholden to Classical Liberalism/Jeffersonianism that I have a guilty conscience when I catch myself admiring Ayn Rand and wanting to change America’s name to Ancapistan (that’s Anarcho-Capitilist-Stan in case anybody was wondering).
So take your calumnies about my supposed crypto-fascism elsewhere.
“He’d already freed his slaves six years before the War began. ”
This is a complete fabrication. Lee’s father-in-law died in 1856, having willed that all his slaves be emancipated not later than five years after his death. Lee failed to do this, largely for financial reasons. He emancipated his slaves in 1862, right around the time that his father-in-law’s plantation fell to the Union – making his emancipation meaningless.
George, you are so darn gullible. You’ll fall for anything that fits your narrative.
So there you have it — St. Robert E. Lee. Knew that was coming. The crypto-white supremacists in American Orthodoxy will be clamoring for St. Robert icons soon. George in the vanguard of corruption as usual.
St Robert E Lee does have a nice ring to it.
Over step George. One act of humility and Christian virtue does not make a saint. It is an act of humanity that should be the norm.
Dino, the US Civil War was not that simple. It’s aftermath even less simple. Our country was already split and has remained so.
Michael Bauman,
Yes small details are not simple, but the large point is quite simple. Slavery of a brother is simply wrong and a sin.
The south did not want to give up it’s cheap labor(sound familiar) and thus sold it’s soul and young men out in the process.
Dino, I largely agree with you. After the slave revolt of Haiti in 1805, the idea of a large, emancipated (and possibly violent) black population scared Southerners witless. That doesn’t mean that an accommodation couldn’t have been worked out. At one time the Indian population was just as large and unruly (and far more savage) but the American government was able to come to some kind of terms with them. The first of course was tragic (the Trail of Tears) but then more peaceful means were found. Things like Reservation system, schools, training program, etc.
Given that freed blacks existed in the North in some numbers and were assimilated into “white” society without any problems, it’s not at all clear to me that this couldn’t have happened in the South, especially if the Federal govt had not only compensated their former owners and parceled out lands to them to farm (i.e. “Forty acres and a mule”).
However, once John Brown’s murderous rampage had been brought to a halt and the extent of his plans to execute a horrific rampage of slaughter against innocent whites in the South had come to the fore, then any peaceful solution from that point on was impossible.
George, I know you mean well, but at some point we must accept the great sin of our nation, without excuse, resulting in The Civil War.The Fruits of Sin, as Orthodox Christians we should understand clearly.
American Indians, and Slaves, apples and oranges, George.
Federal hand outs would have been better, than a Civil War, but still I have doubts the South would accept such a deal. The farmers only saw the bottom line, and were short sighted to a future without slaves. I can appreciate that, but not excuse it. As a business person myself, I avert from immoral easy money practices, and accept and expect business failures from time to time. While I’m at it, I don’t expect the Government to bail me out. Like our too big to fail friends, that our Fed is always too happy to oblige. The south made a sinful, and bad investment in terms of slave labor that was bound to fail, but they did not want to accept the responsibility of their bad decision. Then they gambled the non-slave owning lives of the young sons of the south, under the false flag of states rights, and pride. The rest is History, another bad investment indeed.
John Brown was a terrorist, and dealt with accordingly, arrested by Robert E Lee ironically, and hung by our Justice system. If the slaves were freed, what fear would whites have of Brown’s actions. Makes for interesting conversation I suppose.
George,
I’m not picking a fight because I have no idea how such a plan might have worked out. But to say that blacks were assimilated into “white” society in the north is an exaggeration to say the least. It may be somewhat true today, thank God; but almost everything in the north was (and to a large, albeit far lesser, degree remains) functionally, if not legally, segregated. Although there are reasons other than race alone for this segregation, it was and remains largely a fact. In many areas if it were not for the workplace blacks and whites would rarely meet in person.
The prevailing attitudes of whites toward blacks in the south and north were also quite different, though in general no less racist. Perhaps as a function of the slave culture of the south in which white people interacted with ‘servants’ on a regular basis and knew them personally, the prevailing attitude in the south was “We don’t care how close you get as long as you don’t get too high.” In the north, the prevailing attitude was, “We don’t care how high you get as long as you don’t get too close.”
They were “assimilated” in the North to the extent that the Irish and German immigrants were “assimilated”. That is to say not by our measures but by the measure of the time. They were self-employed, lived in intact, segregated neighborhoods (as did the Irish and Germans), had fraternal organizations, enjoyed the franchise and not prone to violence. Nor did they exhibit the pathology that is so rampant today.
We should never judge the past by our standards. Don’t forget, that at that time, an American soldier, sailor or Marine (98% of whom were white) could be flogged. Corporal punishment for petit crimes were also in vogue in several states. Etc.
W.E.B. DuBois, on Confederate monuments. Below is an short essay from DuBois on Robert E. Lee’s legacy published in 1928.
Robert E. Lee
Each year on the 19th of January there is renewed effort to canonize Robert E. Lee, the greatest confederate general. His personal comeliness, his aristocratic birth and his military prowess all call for the verdict of greatness and genius. But one thing–one terrible fact–militates against this and that is the inescapable truth that Robert E. Lee led a bloody war to perpetuate slavery. Copperheads like the New York Times may magisterially declare: “of course, he never fought for slavery.” Well, for what did he fight? State rights? Nonsense. The South cared only for State Rights as a weapon to defend slavery. If nationalism had been a stronger defense of the slave system than particularism, the South would have been as nationalistic in 1861 as it had been in 1812.
No. People do not go to war for abstract theories of government. They fight for property and privilege and that was what Virginia fought for in the Civil War. And Lee followed Virginia. He followed Virginia not because he particularly loved slavery (although he certainly did not hate it), but because he did not have the moral courage to stand against his family and his clan. Lee hesitated and hung his head in shame because he was asked to lead armies against human progress and Christian decency and did not dare refuse. He surrendered not to Grant, but to Negro Emancipation.
Today we can best perpetuate his memory and his nobler traits not by falsifying his moral debacle, but by explaining it to the young white south. What Lee did in 1861, other Lees are doing in 1928. They lack the moral courage to stand up for justice to the Negro because of the overwhelming public opinion of their social environment. Their fathers in the past have condoned lynching and mob violence, just as today they acquiesce in the disfranchisement of educated and worthy black citizens, provide wretchedly inadequate public schools for Negro children and endorse a public treatment of sickness, poverty and crime which disgraces civilization.
It is the punishment of the South that its Robert Lees and Jefferson Davises will always be tall, handsome and well-born. That their courage will be physical and not moral. That their leadership will be weak compliance with public opinion and never costly and unswerving revolt for justice and right. it is ridiculous to seek to excuse Robert Lee as the most formidable agency this nation ever raised to make 4 million human beings goods instead of men. Either he knew what slavery meant when he helped maim and murder thousands in its defense, or he did not. If he did not he was a fool. If he did, Robert Lee was a traitor and a rebel–not indeed to his country, but to humanity and humanity’s God.
These words from DuBois are the words of a hateful man who knows little of the man he is criticizing and evinces little in the way of love.
lexcaritas
Indeed.
Ditto for you.
I agree that in retrospect it “was all about slavery” but the question that no one asks or no one in the North wanted to answer was, why not emancipate the slaves, reimburse their former owners (as was done in England) and grant them parcels of land so they could farm and thus fend for themselves?
This is not a pie-in-the-sky question. Not only had Queen Victoria and Alexander II done something along those lines in their respective countries but Lincoln created the Homestead Act which gave 168 acres of prime farmland in the Upper Midwest to any person who would farm them for a set period. Once the Scandinavians heard about that they poured into America by the thousands.
After the War, when it was too late, parts of the Indian Territory (what is now Oklahoma) were set aside for freedmen to do just that. Why couldn’t this have been proposed before hostilities?
It’s interesting, but W E B DuBois also visited the Third Reich in 1935 and spoke in glowing terms about Nazism. Believe it or not, he was treated kindly by Nazis who went out of their way to be respectful to him. He considered it to be a “synthesis between capitalism and communism” which “would benefit” African Americans. (This is from David Levering Lewis’s biography of DuBois.)
“the question that no one asks or no one in the North wanted to answer was, why not emancipate the slaves, reimburse their former owners (as was done in England) and grant them parcels of land so they could farm and thus fend for themselves?”
It really takes astounding historical illiteracy to write this, but I’m not surprised coming from you George. The granting of land to former slaves was indeed proposed by many. Read Eric Foner’s book about Reconstruction sometime. Or some other book.
Here’s an article more suited to his attention span than Foner’s book.
Years of experience with George has taught me that facts & reason are no match for his quite stubborn delusions, caused by his willful vanity. Many of us have watched in a certain awe as he remains impermeable to the shame that you’d think most somewhat honest persons might feel after having their head handed to them ad nauseam. I’m beginning to think he’s like a little hydra — or maybe he thinks of it as his “spirit animal,” a mythological role model. It’s clinical.
I persist in calling out his foolishness for the sake of those here at risk of falling prey to the idiocracy his depraved, ignorant rhetoric represents.
You know, I just don’t get it. In the worldview of the left, I’ve always thought that Orthodoxy was a minor irritant of little to no account. And everything that emanates from it must be similarly small beer.
So I can’t figure out why you spend so much time and effort on this blog. After all, you wanted to become an Orthodox at one time but decided that Pope Frankie’s outfit was more to your liking. Am I wrong? Is Orthodoxy (and by extension this blog) a bigger deal than I imagine or is it simply because you can’t abide the fact that the leftist narrative is crumbling all around you? Or that you can’t abide the fact that there are people on the right who think differently than you?
Which is it? Regardless, go in peace. Enjoy the collapse.
Why not both? Vatican and Phanar want unity . . .
Minor irritant and tiny squeaker in the world, but no longer! Orthodoxy may finally step forward with brassy confidence and toot itself as relevant with a significant message after hundreds of years of shame and embarrassment
Frank and Bart made a joint declaration together – a Fart
This is why the Holy and Great Council was lightly attended and almost only by yes men
To them, it’s a fragrant, melodious potpourri. A classic, familiar and sophisticated scent.
Remember, the council was binding and they want unity at all costs – so better eat your beans, buddy trumpets!
Bulgaria, Georgia, Antioch and Russia skipped out on the beans. I think a few Serbians took some Beano . . .
Rhetoric like this fascinates me: you remind me of those terrorists who hide among innocent civilians, stashing their missile launchers & IEDs in a hospital basement. Where do you get off, assuming that because I (and others here) call you out on your bigotries, your malicious prejudices and nearly global dishonesty, your ridiculous, ignorant assertions, the seditious disinfo peddling and vicious libels, that this amounts to an attack on “Orthodoxy”? You wrote:
“by extension this blog”? Get real. You and your blog aren’t an extension of Orthodoxy. I’m a cradle Catholic, but I’ve noticed that plenty of evidently Orthodox Christians complain pretty forcefully here about your malignant static, too.
When I asked weeks ago whether you ever worry about serving demons, you replied that you pray every night not to fall into delusion. Maybe I and some others here are one of the ways God is answering your prayer: trying to persuade you to listen to our warnings to choose better sources of information than you do. Magical thinking isn’t going to help you avoid delusion. You need to actively choose to avoid lies and to stop parroting them, if you’re sincere about seeking the truth.
So now I’m a “terrorist” who “hides out” in hospitals, uses “human shields”, and I engage in “bigotries”, etc. That’s rich coming from a man who regularly spews invective in my direction and stereotypes people who he has no intention of trying to understand. To me, you sound like a veritable one-man rhetorical antifa.
The New York Times “Copperheads” ? Whatever do you mean? “Copperheads” were Northerners who sympathized with the Confederacy and wanted to end the Civil War. Some even wanted to form a third country, which would have taken in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky, and Missouri, at least. The latter two states had opted for the Confederacy, but were occupied by Union troops.
Are you living in 1928? Nobody says, “Negro” anymore. Do your own Google research.
Ok. I realise you were quoting DuBois in 1928. Nevertheless, I think you’re full of it.
If people would punctuate quotations properly, they would make reading easier for everyone.
Use the block-quote function whenever possible. When not possible, use quotation marks beginning and end. When quoting more than one paragraph, BEGIN EACH PARAGRAPH with a quotation mark but END ONLY THE LAST PARAGRAPH with a quotation mark.
Whatever the relative vices and virtues it us incumbent upon each of us to examine our own hearts for the seeds of hate.
Odd thing is that anything Confederate belt buckle cap or whatever goes for high
collector value. As an investor collector I would take General Lee’s horses’s leg
if it broke off, hide it stash it and then take it to Pawn Stars ask for 70,000 thousand.
Emancipation of serfdom first began in Russia and the serfs were also granted land.
There were criticisms but at least it was not a “nothingburger” like all the following
serf policies in Europe. Blacks should have been granted some land like Russian serfs.
Upon emancipation, so what if it was not prime territory, just something to continue
grow cotton whatever. In Russia though “serfdom” became too much like a union worker with too many benefits and like my dad’s ancestor possibly a graff and peasant Siberian serfer-girl had bastard child got baptized became completely entitled, gambler and alcoholic, my Grandfather did not drink and became an industrialist because his dad was alcoholic.
In Scripture we recall something significant. The person who helped Christ carry the Cross.
His name was “Peter the Syrian”? something along those lines? We know he was a Black race person. He is a saint, no doubt. Then further down the road, thief on the right and left. Democrats directly contradict the Bible. Republicans? More like Pontius Pilate, who in one passage in Scripture shared camaraderie with Herod Antipas, however Christ did state that those who delivered him to judgment had the greater sin.
There is one that kills the body, republicans. The soul, democrats.
You cannot on your platform contradict the Bible. Risk going into eternal perdition.
The New York Times “Copperheads” ? Whatever do you mean? “Copperheads” were Northerners who sympathized with the Confederacy and wanted to end the Civil War. Some even wanted to form a third country, which would have taken in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky, and Missouri, at least. The latter two states had opted for the Confederacy, but were occupied by Union troops.
Are you living in 1928? Nobody says, “Negro” anymore. Do your own Google research.
When the islamic Taliban announced that they were going to destroy the ancient Buddhist cliff carvings in Afghanistan — a ‘world heritage’ site — there was some polite clucking, but nobody did anything.
Then the Taliban put up their scaffolds and tarpaulins and again announced that they were going to dynamite those ‘idols’, precious works of art which had been in place for thousands of years. Again, nobody moved to defend the sculptures.
Then the Taliban blew up the statues. and thought to themselves: ‘Well, we got away with it. We can get away with anything!’ And so islamists have continued to destroy the monuments of the past, most recently ancient Palmyra in Syria.
The world should have come together and shut down the Taliban at the first sound they made about committing cultural atrocities, but we didn’t, and now — like the Hydra slain by Herakles — the islamic monster grows two new heads for each one we cut off. It could have been stopped early on, when it had but one head, but we failed.
The Taliban’s desecration of the ancient monuments of Afghanistan provides a paradigm for the cultural suicide now being planned in the United States
The emplacement of monuments to people who betrayed their oaths to the nation and cloaked the enslavement of their fellow human beings in the guise of ‘states’ rights’ was a bad idea, but those monuments are undeniably here, regardless of the sentiments which recommended their construction. After all, there are no American monuments to Major Benedict Arnold or General Charles Cornwallis.
But there are indeed shrines in place honoring the memory of certain personalities of the Confederate States of America. Our modern sensitivities are — or should be — very different from those of the people who built those shrines, but that does NOT mean that we should destroy them, or we would fall under the same condemnation as we feel is due the Taliban.
Instead, like scars which remind us of injuries we suffered in years gone by, confederate monuments serve as reminders of what NOT to do, NOT to repeat the mistakes of the past, and so might best be left in place.
Monk James, One certain thing that goes along the nihilist politicians no matter what their political affiliation is iconoclasam. The nihilist agenda is all about destruction. In our culture it began with uktural Calvinist. Abortion is of the same ilk. Destroying marriage. Destroting the human image found anywhere.
Islam has always been iconclastic. Read The Three Metamorphosis of the Spirit from “Thus Spake Zarathrustra” for a precise statement of secular iconoclasm.
It is all part of the modern myth of progress.
Trump was correct that eventually any statue of a white political figure will be destroyed. Mount Rushmore may well meet the same fate as the Buddha’s. Stanford’s new class on the end of witness.
I wonder what the anti-white laws will be called. Doughboy Laws?
Of course this is all simple linear projection. But how are good men to act?
No normal political action, certainly not voting, will arrest the destructive impluse loose in our hearts. How does one counter that beast?.
Personally I think the only real counter is authentic monastic aceticism whether in the monastery or not.
Mike, wonderful observation.
BTW, every one of those four men on Mt Rushmore were stone-cold White Supremacists, not only by our lights but by theirs.
Just sayin’.
It probably fair to say that almost every viewpoint expressed about these monuments is true to one degree or another.
One man sees a history from which we can learn being erased. Another man sees the pride and honor of the South as it once was. Yet another sees monuments to traitors. Another man, none of whom has commented here, sees a ‘glorious’ racist society that he hopes will rise again. And still another sees and wonders how it is that defeated oppressors could possibly be worthy of being memorialized.
What one sees in these monuments says a great deal about what is in one’s heart, as well as about one’s life experience. Small wonder that these differences of perspective arouse deep suspicion or antipathy toward those of the other perspectives. We read other’s hearts through the lens of what is in our own. And we almost always manage to view our own heart as pure when in fact it is likely to be filled with a mixture of both truth and lies, good and evil.
All of us are deluded to some degree, and I am no exception. It’s time we recognized this and pursued the only prescription that exists for our malady…
“But I say unto you, love your enemies…”
George is absolutely correct about one thing, though. Leftists – not Liberals, but the ideologues of the Progressive Left – will never be satisfied because they do not have the love of God in their hearts. Like their fascist ideological cousins on the far right, they have no power to build or to heal. In the absence of this power the justice they claim to seek can only conclude with the destruction of everything including, ultimately, themselves.
So, Dino, should we say the same thing about Saint Paul? “Really, a saint? A traitor, who if allowed to continue, would have murdered more Christians?”
Many Saints go in through one door and come out another.
Gail quite a stretch to make a point my friend. Let’s remember Saint Paul had a vision of Christ and changed his ways. Robert E Lee was a general in defeat, we do know that slavery would have been preserved and no doubt our country would have suffered a second civil war, if the south won. Now just because he was humbled in defeat, guilt, and most likely mental trauma from horrific memories of the war, makes no Saint. If he has done something great or performed some miracle to deserve sainthood please let us know. Thank God there is hope for us all, no matter how wretched we might have been.
Dina, you missed my point entirely. I didn’t say anything about Robert E. Lee. I was questioning your argument. You suggested that because he was: “A military traitor, who if victorious would have preserved slavery, and split our nation,” it would preclude him from being a Saint. My point was that if God can take a man who murdered Christians and make him a Saint, I think it is reasonable to conclude He could take a “military traitor” and make him a Saint.
We use the word “saint” in all different contexts. It might surprise you to know, that people have even said to me, “Gail, you’re a saint!” In my case, it’s strictly an idiom. With George, I suspect he was responding to Lee’s humility in defeat. The guy lost the war of wars in this country and seemingly accepted it. I wish the left could be so saintly!
Yes Gail, with our savior all is possible, especially sainthood for the fallen. Just fail to understand George’s deep affection for the man. Hopefully Dina was just a typo, and NO I’m not surprised many call you a Saint.
Sorry, DinO! It was just a typo. You’re definitely not a “Dina.”
Dino,
You and I largely agree – certainly about the south of the past, slavery, the sin of our nation, etc. I also agree with Michael Bauman, as I often do, that “Saint” was an overreach unless it is meant as hyperbole (like as Gail’s friends calling her a saint).
However, having read much about the character of Lee (completely apart from this blog), flawed like all of us though he was, he was a remarkable man of courage, duty, honor, and selflessness.
I write this of him as a man of the North. It is not at all surprising that Lincoln wanted him to lead the Union Army. Saint? No. That is a category unto itself. But someone with whom I vehemently disagree – about slavery anyway – whom I could have respected as a person for his overall character? Yes. In this respect I can certainly understand George’s and many others affection for the man.
Brian,
I will finish my comments, in regards to Robert E Lee, and the leaders of the south’s sins with an exert from the book “Saint Paisios of Mount Athos” by Hiermonk Isaac:
He waited upon God for the salvation of nation. He would say,”If God was to leave the fate of the nation to politicians, we would be ruined. He leaves things up to them just enough so that each of their dispositions may be revealed.”
Regarding politicians who committed crimes against the nation, he said, “with a clear conscience, I ask God to give them repentance and then take them. Otherwise, they will do even worse things, and God will raise up Maccabees.”
Brian these thoughts apply now in our current state, just as they did over 150 years ago.Perhaps ghosts of the past egging some on today? Today, our politicians have largely been exposed, and/or forced to put their cards on the table. The rest is up to God working with us, or against us, and visa versa. Time will tell shorty I fear. Lord have Mercy!
PS, excerpt, not exert.
Let’s also pray, and give whatever we can to help those in need in southern Texas. They are and will be in desperate need from us all. Lord have Mercy on The Lone Star State!
Well said, Dino.
Well, this certainly doesn’t fit the narrative.
https://www.newsmax.com/JohnGizzi/nancy-pelosi-confederate-statues-racism/2017/08/23/id/809429/
Just sayin’.
Did you hear about the Chinese American sportscaster who was prevented from covering a game because his name happened to be Robert Lee?
I did! I’m gonna write about it! File this one under “can’t make this [feces] up!”
Whatever happened to “With charity for all and malice towards none…” to bind up our nation’s wounds.
I know it died with Lincoln and the victors have been intent on the destruction of every last remenant of the vanquished including those who existed in a previous condition of servitude ever since.
The Left is nothing more than iconoclastic Roundheads who seek to purify the state and body politic. Borg intent on ruling a totally homogeneous state in the name of diversity. Tryanny in the name of equality.
Resistance is futile, we will be assimilated.
One drop of white blood and you are not really human.
Maybe they will import pure blood black studs from Africa to assist in purifying the new master race since all vestige of whiteness must be eliminated in an orgasmic paroxysm of virtue while actually existing in a horrible state of hubris.
All white children must be aborted and we vile creatures not allowed to breed at all.
All been tried before. All failed before. Nothing is new under the sun.
Read Nietzche and you will see the outline clear as day. “Destroy the dragon of Thou Shalt and the herd who abide by the slavery of morals.”
That first comparison was a simile, George. Try to be less literal-minded. The later list, including the bigotries charge, etc. was meant quite literally however. All of that is very well-documented in your own words here.
Curious: who do I stereotype that I have no intention of trying to understand? I think I understand you all too well. Maybe you mean other people tho. Neo-nazis? Neo-confederates? Racist white nationalists? Pepe punks? Trumpistas? The Golden Dawn types you sympathize with in Greece and would like to see more of here?
Y’all need to realize that at least 2/3 of Americans are “antifa”, anti-fascist. Anti-confederate, too. Fought a couple of winning wars over these issues.
You’re dreaming Mike, truly you are. It’s sad, but Antifa and their urinary balloon antics are the best recruiting tool that the Alt Right has. As always, the “angelic left” continues to overplay their hand.
As for the American people being largely “anti-Confederate” I’ll give you that one. However it’s surprising to me how many blue states are adopting neo-Confederacy as a governing philosophy.
Things are gonna get interesting Mike. Pretty soon your boys in California will be calling for secession. Oh, did I misspeak? They already are!