And, yes, it’s come to this,
It’s come to this,
And wasn’t it a long way down,
Wasn’t it a strange way down?— Leonard Cohen, from “Dress Rehearsal Rag”
This is what happened to General Robert E. Lee and his horse Traveller in Emancipation Park (formerly Lee Park) in Charlottesville, Virginia, on August 23, 2017:
You thought it was over when you signed the surrender document, didn’t you?
That was on April 9, 1865, in Wilmer McLean’s parlor in Appomattox Court House, Virginia. You gained an honorable parole for the men under your command. You advised your subordinates not to continue the conflict as a guerilla war. You laid down your sword and retired to your home.
You thought it was over, didn’t you?
One hundred and fifty-two years later, and it’s still not over.
Your enemies will not be satisfied until every daguerreotype, every painting, every engraving, every statue of you is effaced from our public spaces. They will not relent until your name has been scrubbed off, painted over, and chiseled away from every wall where it appears.
You and Traveller will have to endure the Confederate Burka for a while. But only for a while. Soon enough you and your soldiers and your valor and your love for your homeland will be completely erased. You will be relegated to oblivion. Not a trace of you will remain. You will have been deconstructed.
Non fiat lux.
I’d like to say a quick word about what that statue of General Lee means to me. Personally.
It doesn’t mean that I support slavery, or condone slavery, or hate anyone of a different race. It doesn’t mean anything about slavery. It doesn’t have anything to do with white supremacy, or racism, or fascism, or Nazism, or any other -ism.
It means that my great-great-grandfather served honorably in the War of Northern of Aggression. He rode to the Second Battle of Manassas and fought in defense of his homeland, the Sovereign Commonwealth of Virginia. He was in the Army of Northern Virginia under the command of General Robert E. Lee.
His country had been invaded by an army that confiscated property, torched farms and fields, and took civilian hostages. He and his brother, my great-great-great uncle, volunteered to fight to defend their commonwealth against that invasion.
When he returned home to his plantation between Richmond and Petersburg — yes, he was one of those slave-owners — he found that his house and property had been burned by the invaders. What little the family had saved had to be lowered out of the windows at the last minute.
I don’t know how he felt about that. I don’t know how he regarded the fact that those who had formerly been his slaves had become free men and women. I think it was a good thing. He may not have. But it doesn’t matter.
He served his country, and his country lost the war. He and his family lost their wealth and were reduced to penury.
He paid the price. And hundreds of thousands of his comrades-in-arms paid an even higher price. They paid the ultimate price.
And hundreds of thousands of brave men on the other side paid the ultimate price.
The debt has been paid.
So the Recent Unpleasantness should be over. But it isn’t over. It won’t be over until the bones of the last Confederate soldier are dug up, crushed to powder, and scattered to the four winds.
Will that satisfy the enemy?
Probably not…
How can we cut this canker from our collective soul?
How can one forget? Millennia hence,
When English is just the language of the scholiasts
Or the key to ancient software, Gettysburg
Will mean no more than Thermopylae does to us,
And Jackson’s tactics, like Hannibal’s,
Will be studied by commanders
Training for the galactic wars.Then Appomattox will no longer appear on any map,
With Bull Run just a vague rumor,
A place somewhere off to the east
Of the Blue Ridge Islands.
The “Blue Ridge Islands” is an evocative image. When Bull Run is just a vague rumor, Global Warming will have inundated South Carolina, with only the Blue Ridge Islands above water. See the map at
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Ridge_Mountains
Give all your money, every cent from now on, and Al Gore and his Bankster Buddies, will appreciate you.
I support slavery—
In the same manner that the New Testament describes slavery: as masters being benevolent to their slaves and as slaves were to obey their masters and give to them their honest day’s labor.
In the same manner do I uphold “slavery” when today’s modern “slaves” give to their employers an honest and diligent day’s work. In my mind — and given the 2000 years since the writing of the NT — the employee-employer relationship is much the same.
That is not to diminish the abhorrent trade in human bodies that was the slave traders’ lucrative meal ticket.
————
But as to the price being extracted by the left to expunge our collective “guilt,” AS THEY DEFINE IT, know this: the left could fill the oceans with OUR blood and never say we paid enough.
Only when the haters of humanity rule will they stop persecuting normal, decent people. But they will NEVER rule.
A nation that forgets its history is truly cramped, both in the head and in the heart. The civil war in America, from what I have read, was not a proud moment but it happened anyway. It was a different time and a different age and people thought differently from how they think now (most of them).
History is history. It happened. We should try to learn from it, not squish it into nothingness. The civil war happened. The 60’s happened. The crap today is happening now.
I am Hungarian born, but an American citizen since I was 16 years old. I am rather proud of my Hungarian heritage but I am an American with merely Hungarian heritage. It doesn’t hurt in any way. So I cook chicken paprikas? That’s not a sin.
Why can’t everyone appreciate their heritage and still savor their current positions? Granted, some of these positions don’t smell very good, but that is part of history taking place.
I would suggest people clean up their own back yards, front yards, and remember they are still citizens (or immigrants) of the best country in the world. Count your blessings and quit your qvetching. Be grateful for your blessings.
Jeeze, do I have to tell you this? It should be self-evident. If you want a different life, move to Mexico and see how you like that, or to one of Europe’s blooming garden spots, full of murderous raping muslims. If you want to be safe in Europe, choose Hungary or Poland — they have not fallen for the current idiocy. And many of them speak English.
I suppose I might get hammered for being this frank, but really — people have to be a little more realistic about what the choices in life are. You don’t get to be a millionaire just because you want to be one. You don’t get a cushy life without working for it. Heck, you don’t even get a moderately nice house and garden without working for it. As for a mansion, dream on.
There is a lot of slavery in the U.S. right now. Those undocumented aliens being brought in to work under horrific conditions in meat-packing plants and poultry “producers” are slaves indeed. Should one fall over from the effects of that TB they contracted back home? His or her carcass is pulled out of line and the work continues.
What goes on here makes the 19th-century textile mill workers’ lives seem easy in comparison.
And then we have the huge sex-slave traffic on both of our coasts here in the US, but it must certainly go on in other countries, too. I wonder how many of those children Obama invited across the border have disappeared??
Not to mention the cheap goods we can purchase At Target or WalMart, fabricated by slave workers in China.
For the record, Dymphna — I have purchased nothing from Walmart nor Target, nor from Home Depot (since the later determined that employees wearing crosses on their neck chains were a sign of offense).
I woke up to the slave-trade that is globalism only recently, maybe six years ago. To the Marxist attitudes that permeate ALL global corporations, my learning curve is slightly of more recent derivation. Just slightly.
But then, we gave over control of our universities more than 70 years ago.
And that’s only a hint of where I’m headed in this O/T comment.
Bless our dear friends at GoV!!
They’re chasing ghosts Baron. There is no honor or redemption in that, there is only the futility that comes from destructive and endless hatred.
The Civil War was fought over the issue of whether the United States would remain one country, or split up into two. The issue was decided by force of arms and many deaths, but at the end, the objective was to pull back into one country.
A brilliant strategy was to encompass the heroes of both sides into American history, focusing more on their dedication, loyalty, sacrifice, and gallantry than on what side of the conflict they fought on. The Doughboys of World War I, GIs of World War II, grunts of Vietnam: were from all states and all came as Americans. They were as likely to draw inspiration from Robert E Lee as from Ulysses Grant.
Contrast that with the Irish pilot in World War I, who really didn’t care which side won:
https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/irish-airman-foresees-his-death
So, why are the statues and monuments being removed and destroyed? The leaders don’t care about slavery or racial inequality or blacks or browns. The mentally damaged participants may think they do, but they’re not the leaders.
In fact, the Confederate monuments, the Washington and Jefferson monuments and statues, are being targeted for the same reason they were erected: because they meld the courage, loyalty and gallantry of the south with the north to form a single country. Most educators, bureaucrats, and mainstream journalists are cultural Marxists, and certainly all protest leaders are. It is a prime tenet of cultural-Marxism that Western culture be destroyed and Western people as a people be disempowered, scattered, diluted, and vilified. For real. It’s not a conclusion; it’s a premise. It’s not supported by facts; it’s prior to any facts or logic. It’s simply a dogma.
So, I only half pay attention to arguments addressed to the mob on why the monuments are part of history and should remain, or why they should be taken out of public view. Because the people driving the movement are not telling the truth, don’t care what the counter-arguments are, and are not going to change their minds. They are going to be relentless, and can only be fought, not reasoned with or converted.
Like Gettysburg, the argument is victory or defeat, not facts or logic.
Brilliant!
Very well stated. I wish there was more coverage of this aspect.
We find ourselves living during the times predicted in George Orwell’s 1984:
“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.”
The endless demands of the American Left to expunge all traces of the Confederacy will leave nothing standing. At that point the purge will turn to it’s next target. What will that be? I can’t say, but eventually the targets will become living bipedal creatures who don’t fit the Left’s model of the “New Man”.
Rule 308
When Marxist mayors order their police to stand down,
So that Antifa thugs can beat old men to the ground,
Don’t think they’ve surrendered, or been run out of town.
Politicians should consider, and media bosses beware:
When Amendment One is abridged, the Second’s still there,
Just watching and waiting, like a rattlesnake in its lair.
When justice is perverted, and Marxist judges legislate,
When free speech is censored, then banished as hate,
Then the only rule standing will be Rule 308.
It is becoming increasingly apparent that Karl Marx was not published as a populist response to the over-weaning greed of the English gentry of the early 19th Century. Rather, it seems as though the Gentry saw how Karl Marx’s ideas could be made useful, as long as the narrative pointed back at Marx and not themselves. You can be assured that had there been a threat to their cherished order of things neither Karl nor his Das Kapital would have seen the light of day. Instead, the whole lot was co-opted with the results that we the plebians are left to deal with. No, this isn’t paranoia, just a realistic assessment of how we got here from there.
If you read the chapter on Marx in Johnson’s Intellectuals,
https://www.amazon.com/Intellectuals-Marx-Tolstoy-Sartre-Chomsky/dp/0061253170/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1504789274&sr=8-1&keywords=the+intellectuals
you’ll see that Marx was not reacting to the abuses of the Gentry. He was pulling together his own theories out of air. In fact, the abuses he did cite were lifted and misquoted from, among other sources, the records of official commissions which had already addressed the abuses. Marx, in his usual dishonest manner, neglected the steps already taken to address the incidents, and changed the actual descriptions to fit his framework.
When I have looked at the beautiful statues / works of art that represent portions of our history that are currently being destroyed, there are no thoughts of politics, just the beauty of the art work. It is part of history as are the pyramids in Egypt or the city of Petra. It is beyond my ability to understand the mind of anyone who would destroy beauty and art.
LikeIslam, the cultural Marxists despise history. They want it destroyed.