In the wake of removing the Travis Park Monument in San Antonio, TX in 2017, a chorus of lame stream media outlets, political activists, and random people on the internet have called for the removal or destruction of Confederate monuments in cities across the country. The left says we shouldn’t honor a bunch of racists who fought to preserve slavery, and that it’s long past time for these painful reminders of our past to come down—stow them away in a museum or smash them to pieces, just get them off the streets.
This iconoclastic impulse is a mistake. It’s a mistake because there is something noble—and, for a free people, necessary—about preserving our history so we can understand who we are and how we should live. For all the lefts tough talk over the years about the problems with these historical monuments, there hasn’t been nearly enough discussion of their history. Most of them were built a half-century after the war, as the Civil War generation was beginning to die off. Before the turn of the century, Confederate graves had for the most part not been cared for in federal cemeteries, and erecting a Confederate monument was considered treasonous. But as the veterans of the war began to die, there was a renewed push for reconciliation between the North and South. Of course, the monument boom across the South during the first two decades of the twentieth century came at a time of terrible race relations, mass immigration, which poisoned the South. So the monuments reflect more than one current of early twentieth-century America. They served to honor Confederate heroes like Robert E. Lee, and they were also an outpouring of grief and remembrance for the hundreds of thousands who had died in the war. Nearly a quarter of Southern white men in their twenties were killed or died from disease. Is it any wonder that decades later, as families began to bury Confederate veterans in greater numbers, there would be a push to erect memorials to that generation? People in the South adorn these monuments, their purpose was also to convey to future generations why so many people kept fighting, for years and in the face of staggering casualties. For the ordinary soldiers who fought and died, devotion to the Confederate army did not arise primarily from a devotion to the institution of slavery (just as most Union soldiers were not fighting primarily to end slavery) but from a devotion to their home states and a sense of honor and duty to defend them from what they considered to be an invading army. The fact that there was slavery in the North & South back then, does not excuse us today from the burden of trying to understand what motivated them to fight—and what motivated them and their families to undertake a flurry of monument-building decades later as the surviving veterans began to die off. Speaking on Memorial Day in 1884, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., a Union veteran who saw a great deal of action, talked about the importance of transmitting the emotional weight of the war from one generation to the next, and he specifically mentions the role of monuments: “I believe from the bottom of my heart that our memorial halls and statues and tablets, the tattered flags of our regiments gathered in the Statehouses, are worth more to our young men by way of chastening and inspiration than the monuments of another hundred years of peaceful life could be.” For Holmes, it was also the duty of Civil War veterans themselves to convey the significance of the war to posterity. He said, “the generation that carried on the war has been set apart by its experience. Through our great good fortune, in our youth our hearts were touched with fire… we have seen with our own eyes, beyond and above the gold fields, the snowy heights of honor, and it is for us to bear the report to those who come after.” THIS REALLY ISN'T ABOUT CONFEDERATE MONUMENTS
Nevertheless, the lefts' common objection to these statues today is that because they occupy public spaces, they serve to venerate their subjects, who were of course racists and fought to preserve slavery in their minds. But if we know the history, why can’t we see them in a different light? Why shouldn’t we view them as we should?
Certainly, the statues were not originally meant to educate future generations about the evils of slavery and secession, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t take them as such today. Indeed, the fact that these statues were erected in prominent public places is itself a powerful lesson in American history—a testament to our turbulent past that would be diminished if they were removed to a sanitized display in a museum. Not every statue or piece of public art has to comfort and console us. Sometimes, they should oblige us to grapple with our nation’s history and the vagaries of human nature. Even so, some rinos (Republican In Name Only) are willing to let the things go. Kevin Williamson at NRO urged conservatives to do nothing. “The Left’s vandalism is intended mainly to get a rise out of the Right, in the hopes of getting some Republican to wrong-foot himself over a racial question,” he said. Even if some sympathize with those who want to remove Confederate memorials—there’s no need to join them because the iconoclasm sweeping the country, said Williamson, “mainly consists of local authorities making democratic decisions about the disposition of public property,” and thus “there is a case for political quietism in this matter.” Really? Did he just say that? That would be fine advice if it were true that this is really just about local authorities making democratic decisions about statues. It would even be fine if it were just about the moral preening of Democratic politicians and activists, seizing on an opportunity to shame and embarrass Southerners for gradually abandoning their party in favor of the GOP. But the iconoclasm on display now is about more than anathematizing the Confederacy or scoring cheap political points against conservatives. It’s part of the Left’s overarching critique of American constitutionalism, the goal of which is to overthrow that order. THE REAL REASON THE LEFT WANTS TO FORGET THE PAST
President Trump was mocked for suggesting that if we tear down statues of Lee then activists would demand the removal of George Washington or Thomas Jefferson next. But sure enough, later in the week after Trump said that, the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC was vandalized with spray paint. A Lincoln statue in Chicago was burned. Al Sharpton said the Jefferson Memorial should be abandoned. A pastor in Chicago asked the mayor to remove the names of Washington and Andrew Jackson from city parks because they owned slaves. A writer at Vice News called for Mount Rushmore to be blown up. One columnist in Philly even argued for tearing down a statue of Frank Rizzo, who served as police commissioner and mayor in the late 1960s and ‘70s. In some cases, any monument would do.
All this sounds crazy, but jumping from Confederate statues to Lincoln to Rizzo follows a certain logic. For the Left, the Confederacy is just a small part of a much larger problem, which is the past. Iconoclasm of the kind we’ve seen this week is native to the Left, because the entire point is to liberate society from the strictures of tradition and history in order to secure a glorious new socialist/communist future. That’s why Mao’s Cultural Revolution in China torched temples and dug up ancient graves, why the Soviets sacked Orthodox churches and confiscated church property, and why various governments of France went about de-Christianizing the country during the French Revolution. The modern-day American Left is just as bad as all that, its ideology about the past is the same. Hence the statement issued in 2017 by Seattle Mayor Ed Murray calling for the removal of all “symbols of hate, racism and violence that exist in our city.” These symbols, Murray said, represent “historic injustices,” and “their existence causes pain among those who themselves or whose family members have been impacted by these atrocities.” He is not interested in the history of the statues themselves, the people or events they depict, or “what political affiliation may have been assigned to them in the decades since they were erected.” Don’t be fooled by the therapeutic language about causing pain. The statues must go because they remind us constantly of a past that needs only to be overcome and forgotten. A more mature society would recognize that the past is always with you and must always be kept in mind. There’s a reason Christians in Rome didn’t topple all the pagan statues and buildings in the city or raze the Colosseum. Edmund Burke had strong words for the French during their revolution, while they were doing their best to destroy a rich past and slaughter one another in the process: You had all these advantages in your ancient states; but you chose to act as if you had never been molded into civil society, and had everything to begin anew. You began ill, because you began by despising everything that belonged to you… If the last generations of your country appeared without much luster in your eyes, you might have passed them by, and derived your claims from a more early race of ancestors. Under a pious predilection for those ancestors, your imaginations would have realized in them a standard of virtue and wisdom, beyond the vulgar practice of the hour: and you would have risen with the example to whose imitation you aspired. Respecting your forefathers, you would have been taught to respect yourself. You would not have chosen to consider the French as a people of yesterday, as a nation of low-born servile wretches until the emancipating year of 1789." ~Edmund Burke
This Is Texas Freedom Force (TITFF), a nonprofit whose mission is preserve and protect Texas historical monuments, has been fighting the left since 2017, trying to ensure our Texas historical monuments stay intact. TITFF has protected and has stopped many of the lefts plots to destroy our history. Texas doesn't have a monument protection bill, that's why TITFF has led the charge to get this passed. It's important that we preserve our historical monuments, they serve to honor those who died, display the craftmanship of that era, and it serves as a reminder of our past. That is part of why these memorials and statues are important. Giving into the iconoclasm of the Left, with temperatures running high, will mean we lose far more than we gain by hiding these physical reminders of our nation’s past. Let our historical monuments stand as a memorial of our ancestors who died, a challenge to understand their time and its troubles, and a warning for the present day.
If you would like to help save our Texas History, visit our website at
https://www.txfreedomforce.org
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This Is Texas Freedom Force has hit the ground running in 2022 with 6 events on the Calander within the next 45 days. Texas is in a fight for our lives. The establishment Rinos are dropping loads of money into their campaigns to convince you to reelect them. They don't want you to remember the Republican Priority Bills that they killed in the 87th Legislature, nor do they want you to remember Texas being shut down for covid in 2020. While the rinos scramble to save their necks, the grass roots are taking the battle to the rinos. Rallies all over Texas have sprung up with some great conservative challengers in the primaries, but the media is downplaying the challengers, even hiding their names from articles. We encourage Texans to go hear from the candidates, listen to their message, before you go vote. Below is a list of events coming up, you can simply click on the black box below the event and it will direct you to our site for more info & to RSVP for the event. TITFF HOST AARON SORRELLS & DR. ALMA ARREDONDO/LYNCHTITFF'S VP & PRESIDENT WILL BE JOINING DON HUFFINES, WESTON MARTINEZ, DR TIM WESTLEY & NATHAN BUCHANAN
TITFF HOST LTC ALLEN WEST & DR. TIM WESTLEY
SAVE TEXAS RALLY
TITFF HOST CHAD PRATHER & WESTON MARTINEZ
TITFF'S 5TH ANNUAL REMEMBER THE ALAMO CEREMONY
So as you can see, there is a lot going on. Join us at these events. God bless Texas!
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