Friends, while the mainstream media obsesses about the legal travails of Michael Cohen and Paul Manafort -- and obfuscates the inconvenient fact of President Trump's innocence of any crime -- my eyes have been turned to recent events in the Tar Heel State: North Carolina. There, days ago, a mob of left-wing activists tore down the statue of "Silent Sam," who was a memorial to Confederate war dead. The disrespect these protesters showed, not only to fallen Confederate soldiers, but also to the rule of law, American history and heritage, and basic standards of decency, is profoundly shocking. Actually, I take that back -- it is disgusting, but not shocking, because the passion for silencing their opponents, and destroying all symbols of a hated past, seems to infuse the modern Left. We have seen it before, and we will see it again. At any rate, I wanted to register my disapproval.
“Silent Sam” Wasn't Silent
Enough for a Liberal Mob
Recently we
witnessed the tragic and grossly illegal toppling of the “Silent
Sam” statue on the campus of the University of North Carolina at
Chapel Hill by a crowd of enraged protesters. Silent Sam had stood
for over 100 years as a memorial to fallen soldiers of the
Confederacy. He represented not a single, specific individual, but a
great mass of several hundred thousand Confederate soldiers who died
fighting for their homeland, albeit a homeland that practiced
slavery. He especially stood for the UNC alumni who died in the Civil
War.
A
campaign to have the statue removed from campus had been active for
years, but the mob that formed on August 20th
was not inclined to wait. Silent Sam was knocked to the ground and
stomped on by euphoric radicals. All this was done in the name of
anti-racism and to defeat “white supremacy,” which in point of
fact receded as a meaningful force in American politics decades ago.
Besides a tiny fringe of genuine hardcore racists and “Nazis” in
the U.S., white supremacy has become, more than anything, a rallying
cry for the Left, and an excuse to bully, silence, and even
physically assault conservatives. Racism is and ought to be condemned
by the vast majority of Americans, but the use of violent and illegal
tactics to achieve one's political goals is never acceptable.
The Left's
rationale for the removal of the Silent Sam statue rested largely on
the fact that it was dedicated by, among others, the avowed racist
Julian Carr, who saw Silent Sam as embodying the “Anglo Saxon race”
in the South. This was indeed an inauspicious start for the statue,
but the fact is that Silent Sam himself had no explicit connection to
white supremacy – he is, or was, simply a weary Rebel soldier, who
represented ordinary combatant Southerners, the vast majority of whom
did not own slaves, but who did feel a duty to defend their homeland
from what was perceived as “Northern Aggression”. Regardless of
the justice of their cause, these men fought and died in appalling
numbers, and it is not unreasonable that the people of North
Carolina, and the state of North Carolina, would honor their courage
and their sacrifice.
While we must
concede that the Left is correct that Silent Sam does have some
potentially negative associations, the bigger problem is that the
Left's desire to expunge historical symbols with such “baggage”
is extremely selective. Very few historical personages rise to the
level of moral purity and perfection demanded by the modern-day
acolytes of political correctness. And, if all historical heroes and
heroines are flawed, who are liberals to decide which of these
luminaries are to be consigned to the dustbin of history?
To
take an obvious example, liberals are united in celebrating the
contributions of Susan B. Anthony to the cause of women's liberation
and female suffrage. The fact of the matter is, however, that Anthony
was a racist, who opposed passage of the 15th
Amendment, which enfranchised black men, because she believed that
white women, due to their superior “intelligence, justice, and
morality”, should received the vote first, and “the negro”
last. She referred to newly emancipated black men as “densely
ignorant”. That racist philosophy, however, has never prevented
leftists from lauding Susan B. Anthony, from erecting statues in her
honor, or from pushing for her face to appear on the currency of the
United States.
Liberals seem to
take the view that, if an historical personage was, in the main, “on
the right side of history,” then his or her sins, no matter how
inexcusable by modern standards, can be forgiven and forgotten. In
fact, even to raise questions about his or her virtues, as I have
with Susan B. Anthony, is to invite a charge of racism or sexism on
oneself. Simply put, the heroes in the liberal pantheon are
effectively beyond reproach. They occupy holy ground on which no
critical thinker may tread.
If,
by contrast, liberals simply don't like an historical figure, or they
associate him or her with retrograde or conservative beliefs, that
individual's flaws becoming defining features, and he or she can
never
be celebrated or memorialized, and can only be discussed in the
context of evil, oppression, and injustice. The fact that even people
who do bad things can have good qualities, worthy of examination and
even admiration, offends the black-or-white moral code by which
liberals live. To them, the verdict of history is an all-or-nothing
affair: you are either with us, or you are against us, and “us”
means the modern Left itself, the views of which are the only
(self-referential) standard of rectitude liberals recognize. No
higher law exists than this: the Left must prevail – over the past,
over the present, and over the future.
In the end,
conservatives must oppose the toppling of the Silent Sam statue for
two reasons. First, because it is an affront to the rule of law and
an instance of mob rule. Second, because how we interpret history is
a reflection of the cultural and moral values that we practice and
hold dear. We simply cannot afford to hand our nation's heritage over
to leftists, who will expunge and destroy everyone, and everything,
that fails to live up to their totalitarian vision of the perfect
society. After a few years, we would have nothing left but a
jerry-rigged gallery of purported heroes and villains, useful only as
props in liberal propaganda.
Sadly, Silent Sam
was twice a victim of history. He died first on the battlefields of
the Civil War, fighting for a cause that was arguably doomed from the
start. Last week, he died a second time – a victim of liberal rage
and intolerance, and of political correctness gone berserk.
Let's do all that
we can to make sure that the next chapter in American history won't
be written by a left-wing mob.
