Honoring these men with monuments seems as peculiar as erecting a monument to honor Benedict Arnold.
These memorials should not, however, be torn down at the insistence of know-nothing mobs. If they're to be removed it should be done respectfully, at the conclusion of calm public debate, and housed in museums. Moreover, those monuments which stand in our National Parks like Antietam and Gettysburg, which are essentially outdoor museums and history classrooms, should be left alone.
Having said that, the self-righteous yahoos rampaging through our streets seeking willy-nilly to topple statues of abolitionists, Christian saints, Europeanized representations of Jesus, past presidents and any other symbol of Christianity and American history they can get their hands on are revealing a shocking depth of ignorance indicative, if nothing else, of an utter failure in our public education system.
It also reveals a highly selective moral outrage. For instance, consider this question: If monuments to every American who was less than perfect are to be expunged from our collective consciousness will the virtue mob next demand the de-naming of every school and street named for Martin Luther King and the removal of every portrait and statue of the man? King, after all, has been, according to some scholars, credibly accused of spousal abuse, philandering and worse. If every one who is not as pure as distilled water is to be rendered a non-entity by the leftist puritans then why stop with white men?
But the benighted mob is impervious to questions like this. Like a forest fire feeds on wind and tinder, the left is in the grip of a hysteria that feeds on abject historical ignorance and irrationality. They're mostly twenty-somethings so they think they know everything there is to know and they're overflowing with vast surpluses of moral sanctimony.
Here's an example of this ignorance and irrationality:
Eric Kaufmann, professor of politics at Birkbeck College at the University of London, surveyed self-described liberals and found that 44 percent of self-described liberals and 58 percent of those who described themselves as “very liberal” agreed that the United States should “remove the monument to four white male presidents at Mount Rushmore, as they presided over the conquest of Native people and repression of women and minorities.”
Of course, the native people in question, the Lakota, were themselves in possession of the land because they had brutally seized it from others who possessed it before them, and so on for millenia so who should ultimately get it? Ironically, the New York Times has joined the clamor on behalf of the Lakota, suggesting that Rushmore is a symbol of the white man's maltreatment of native Americans.
I say this is ironic because the New York Times building in Manhattan sits on land that was essentially stolen from the Lenape by the Dutch Europeans in the 17th century. Don't hold your breath waiting for the Times' owners to practice what their paper preaches and return the land their building sits on to descendents of the Lenape.
President Trump held a Fourth of July celebration on Friday evening at Mt. Rushmore which the Democratic National Committee (DNC) fatuously condemned as an event “glorifying white supremacy....Trump has disrespected Native communities time and again. He’s attempted to limit their voting rights and blocked critical pandemic relief. Now he’s holding a rally glorifying white supremacy at Mount Rushmore — a region once sacred to tribal communities,” the DNC tweeted.
About the only thing in this tweet that has any connection to the truth is that Trump held a rally at Mt. Rushmore which is on land once sacred to tribal communities, but then so was much of Manhattan. If the faces of the presidents on Rushmore are a symbol of "white supremacy" are not the skyscrapers on Manhattan likewise? Should the buildings on Manhattan be removed and the land returned to the Lenape? Why not?
In any case it's doubtful that the left really cares much for the Lakota. Most of the young people marching in the streets probably never heard of the Lakota before last week. What the left is trying to do by cutting us off from our history is the equivalent of slicing through the trunk of a tree to sever it from its roots. The trunk may teeter on the stump for a time, but it'll eventually topple.
These memorials should not, however, be torn down at the insistence of know-nothing mobs. If they're to be removed it should be done respectfully, at the conclusion of calm public debate, and housed in museums. Moreover, those monuments which stand in our National Parks like Antietam and Gettysburg, which are essentially outdoor museums and history classrooms, should be left alone.
Having said that, the self-righteous yahoos rampaging through our streets seeking willy-nilly to topple statues of abolitionists, Christian saints, Europeanized representations of Jesus, past presidents and any other symbol of Christianity and American history they can get their hands on are revealing a shocking depth of ignorance indicative, if nothing else, of an utter failure in our public education system.
It also reveals a highly selective moral outrage. For instance, consider this question: If monuments to every American who was less than perfect are to be expunged from our collective consciousness will the virtue mob next demand the de-naming of every school and street named for Martin Luther King and the removal of every portrait and statue of the man? King, after all, has been, according to some scholars, credibly accused of spousal abuse, philandering and worse. If every one who is not as pure as distilled water is to be rendered a non-entity by the leftist puritans then why stop with white men?
But the benighted mob is impervious to questions like this. Like a forest fire feeds on wind and tinder, the left is in the grip of a hysteria that feeds on abject historical ignorance and irrationality. They're mostly twenty-somethings so they think they know everything there is to know and they're overflowing with vast surpluses of moral sanctimony.
Here's an example of this ignorance and irrationality:
Eric Kaufmann, professor of politics at Birkbeck College at the University of London, surveyed self-described liberals and found that 44 percent of self-described liberals and 58 percent of those who described themselves as “very liberal” agreed that the United States should “remove the monument to four white male presidents at Mount Rushmore, as they presided over the conquest of Native people and repression of women and minorities.”
Of course, the native people in question, the Lakota, were themselves in possession of the land because they had brutally seized it from others who possessed it before them, and so on for millenia so who should ultimately get it? Ironically, the New York Times has joined the clamor on behalf of the Lakota, suggesting that Rushmore is a symbol of the white man's maltreatment of native Americans.
I say this is ironic because the New York Times building in Manhattan sits on land that was essentially stolen from the Lenape by the Dutch Europeans in the 17th century. Don't hold your breath waiting for the Times' owners to practice what their paper preaches and return the land their building sits on to descendents of the Lenape.
President Trump held a Fourth of July celebration on Friday evening at Mt. Rushmore which the Democratic National Committee (DNC) fatuously condemned as an event “glorifying white supremacy....Trump has disrespected Native communities time and again. He’s attempted to limit their voting rights and blocked critical pandemic relief. Now he’s holding a rally glorifying white supremacy at Mount Rushmore — a region once sacred to tribal communities,” the DNC tweeted.
About the only thing in this tweet that has any connection to the truth is that Trump held a rally at Mt. Rushmore which is on land once sacred to tribal communities, but then so was much of Manhattan. If the faces of the presidents on Rushmore are a symbol of "white supremacy" are not the skyscrapers on Manhattan likewise? Should the buildings on Manhattan be removed and the land returned to the Lenape? Why not?
In any case it's doubtful that the left really cares much for the Lakota. Most of the young people marching in the streets probably never heard of the Lakota before last week. What the left is trying to do by cutting us off from our history is the equivalent of slicing through the trunk of a tree to sever it from its roots. The trunk may teeter on the stump for a time, but it'll eventually topple.
That's exactly what the left has in mind for the United States, and if that's what Americans really want there are plenty of candidates running in November who'd be happy to grant them their wish.