I have been writing and speaking about the movement to remove statues that range from confederate leaders to Columbus to Supreme Court justices to Founders (here and here and here and here). CNN political commentator and former Congressional Black Caucus director Angela Rye (right) is the latest to expand the call for the removal of monuments. Rye stated on CNN that the country must tear down all memorials and likenesses of George Washington, and Thomas Jefferson. I recently wrote about the call for the removal of monuments to George Washington.
Rye declared on CNN that “George Washington was a slaveowner. Whether we think they were protecting American freedom or not, he wasn’t protecting my freedom.”
As discussed in my prior column, George Washington came to oppose slavery and was the only slave owning president and the only slave owning Founder who freed his slaves. That does not excuse his holding of slaves during his life but it does make him a more complex historical figure on the question. Washington and Jefferson helped lay the foundations for a great country that would continue to struggle with the scourge of slavery and racism. What they gave us was a system that proved better than the times and the people that created it.
As I have been discussing on air, there is an alternative to wiping out historical monuments. Just as will be done with the Jefferson Memorial, we can place these monuments into context by adding information and even additional statuary.
Rye insists that all of these statues must come down because “We have to get to the heart of the problem here and the heart is the way many of us were taught American history. American history is not all glorious.” Indeed, it is not all glorious but it was a glorious experiment with a people committed to self-determination and individual liberties. The hypocrisy of stating such ideals in a nation with slavery was not lost on some of that generation like Benjamin Franklin, John Adams and John Jay. However, the system that they created allowed for a nation to finally end this disgraceful practice. Indeed, hundreds of thousands of white and black soldiers would die together ridding the nation of this scourge. While aspects of our history are not glorious, we have had glorious and redemptive moments of a people struggling with our own failures. We can learn from that history, but not if we tear it down in a blind rage against our past.
What do you think?
Idiot…
Yep–because trying to erase history worked so well in the Soviet Union. These idiots won’t be happy until they really have triggered a civil war.
Americans can’t participate in Civil War II because they have to go to work.
Obama was importing reinforcements for his welfare army for eight years. It’s pretty big. The don’t work and they’re ready for deployment.
trump is going to be president for eight years and will not be impeached, so it’s their only hope. a civil war would not be good for the country, but particularly for black people, their demonization would be happen quickly, so i’m not sure what this woman wants. she is certainly not going to be one that is fighting it, she might break a nail.
When will Americans grasp the fact that Obama’s statement, “We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America,” was a declaration of war.
Most of us wouldn’t idolize or favor men that enslaved our own family members. African-Americans have every right to dislike some, not all, of the Founding Fathers that owned and supported slavery of their ancestors – any of us woukd feel exactly the same way.
African-Americans and other minority groups should dislike those that harmed and murdered their family’s ancestors, even the Founding Fathers – but the U.S. Constitution is the best friend of minority groups even if those that men that created it were flawed or bad individuals.
Although the Framers gave an ambiguous wink & knod to slave owners and racists (ex: 3/5 vote), the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights never specifically legalized slavery or 2nd Class citizenship. The Founding Fathers could have written it to make slavery permanent but intentionally used ambiguous language that would end slavery at some point.
As for the distinction between removing statues of conferate leaders vs. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and others – the distinction is that the latter group supported the ambiguous language in the Constitution that would eventually end slavery, the confederate leaders never supported a path for African-Americans’ emancipation. If Washington, Jefferson and others had not operated this way, they likely wouldn’t have in power and maybe the language would have permanently established slavery in the United States. So removing confederate statues isn’t a slippery slope to removing statues of Washington, Jefferson and other slave-holders.
Even for those that have legitimate cause to dislike some, not all, of the slave-owning Founding Fathers – you should love the U.S. Constitution (which can be amended when necessary) and was later embraced by Martin Luther King, Jr to successfully gain rights for African-Americans.
Most of us wouldn’t idolize or favor men that enslaved our own family members. African-Americans have every right to dislike some, not all, of the Founding Fathers that owned and supported slavery of their ancestors – any of us woukd feel exactly the same way.
The people who enslaved ‘your own family members’ would be African warriors and tribal chieftains who then sold said slaves to traders. Shy of 30% of Southern households held slaves in 1860.
Although the Framers gave an ambiguous wink & knod to slave owners and racists (ex: 3/5 vote),
The 3/5 compromise is not an ‘example’ of anything to do with social attitudes. It was just a compromise provision on how to apportion direct taxes and congressional representation. Different factions of the convention favored different apportionment methods. This split the difference between the formulae proposed.
The Israelites were slaves in Egypt for hundreds of years, so ALL traces of Egyptian existence should be removed from the planet!! The Greeks and Romans had slaves so ALL records of Greeks and Italians and ALL reference to their history should be banished from the world. The Vikings were barbarians, so All Scandinavians should be punished and stricken from history. The Irish and Chinese were enslaved to work when they came to America, so ALL Chinese history should be stricken from our world ……
Where do we end it, how far back in history do we continue to live. The Blacks were enslaved, the Native Americans were exterminated. This is not something that has been done by the current populous. We will never all be free until we all move on.
Slavery was what brought blacks to America and while some slave owners abused their help, many helped them to find a better life as well.
Slavery was wrong, but it still exists in the world. The blacks would do better to lift themselves up from the “ghetto plantations” that the left has confined them to. That is the real slavery issue of today. All the cities that are run by the left support ghetto slavery. It’s up to the people to rise above that, as many have. To demand an end to the ghettos from their local leaders and to pick leaders that will destroy the ghettos of America, like Trump is trying to do.
But the left, in cities like Chicago, New York, LA thrive on the ghettos and have no desire to change. They fight Trump’s agenda for ending the violence in Chicago, the worst city in America, run by the left.
We have eight years to get it done. Racists of America don’t want it to happen. So it’s up to the people to get rid of the racists in local and national government and help Trump to drain the swamp of them. It’s your one chance before this country returns to its prior ways.
GOD BLESS AMERICA!
DSS:
Your complaints about what I’m saying are pretty mystifying. They can only reflect gross ignorance of the political environment of the first half of the 19th century in America. The South groaned under financing the majority of the cost of the federal government, and deeply resented it. They blamed the tariff.
But, as I have documented here, they hated that factors in New York took 40% of their profit the combination was crippling. Most people an outsider would regard as rich in the South were deeply in debt. Jefferson, for example, was technically bankrupt most of his life, and couldn’t not have freed his slaves for that reason alone.
The sense that the game was rigged was real. And for good reason.
Your complaints about what I’m saying are pretty mystifying. T
They’re not mystifying if you can do basic arithmetic and have some background in economics or geography.
Sorry Miz Hathaway, I jes don’ know if I’z dumb or ignr’nt. But you sher sound durn’ bright! Maybe you can learn me!
DSS said:
“The South paid the tariff, and the North did not.”
“Tariffs on any given commodity are uniform. Some are more injurious to certain economic interests than others. I put a tariff on furniture and not jam, it injures the interests of consumers of furniture vis a vis the interests of consumers of jam. No, people do not declare and fight massive intramural wars over political tangles like this. These sorts of tangles are quite normal in political life.”
This displays a sad lack of knowledge of America in the 19th century, and the long-brewing antagonism between two completely incompatible economic systems.
For the most part, the North steadily grew an independent economy that manufactured whatever it needed, while the South remained agrarian, producing raw materials that were processed overseas, primarily in England. They sent cotton to England, via New York, and England sold fabric and finished goods to the South. The South paid the tariff. The North didn’t, because it manufactured its own finished goods–for the most part.
The resentment this created was a major tangle in American politics for half a century. The South almost left the union, in fact, in the 1830s, for just this reason. The North learned how to milk the South like a cow, and the South was being milked dry.
You don’t know anything about this, do you? You can look it up.
You don’t know anything about this, do you? You can look it up
Not only do I know something, I know what you do not know.
Please, Miz Hathaway, if you learn me what I don’ know, I’ll let you come by and use the seement pond!
You have in your mind a fanciful economic history wherein it’s sinister when regions specialize according to comparative advantage and normal-range excise taxes are somehow economically devastating. This fancy is quite attractive to you. It remains, however, fanciful.
That’s just silly. I’m talking about what really happened, the politics that led halftone states to leave the union. There were two, incompatible, economic systems–supposedly one country. The one was sucking the life out of the other, and the one being drained could do nothing about it.
That is the truth.
The culture of the South was one that appreciated a slow, leisurely, graceful–or at least lackadaisical–approach to time. The North, increasingly, lived by the second hand.
The Southern way was very expensive, at least for the large slaveholders. They had to take care of entire families from cradle to grave. Northern industrialists could work new immigrants to death without a consideration of their children and parents.
The South liked their way of life, and wouldn’t become like the North under any conditions.
So Lincoln murdered 850,000 Americans. Adjusted for population growth, he’s worse than Mao or Stalin.
The differences in the two economic /cultural systems are not mere “fancies,” they are deadly real. The two could not both exist simultaneously in one country forever. The best solution was to part ways. Lincoln’s Railroad interest masters, the parasite, decided it would be better to simply destroy the host, and rebuild a new system on its corpse.
Gee, Miz Jane, are you lernin’ me yet?
It’s interesting how easy it is to point out evils of the past but we can’t see our own evils happening right now.
Based on the government’s own statistics, about 86% of the humans we kidnapped and tortured at Guantanamo Bay had no connection whatsoever to terrorism or any wrongdoing and we knew it when they were kidnapped. Coalition forces, including the USA, paid huge financial bounties to poor war lords and poor tribal chieftains. We essentially said, hand over anyone you don’t like, not based on any evidence whatsoever. American voters however, are opposed to even offering an official apology or financial compensation to the people we committed an evil acts against. Should we remove George W. Bush from all future recognition? It wasn’t an honest mistake, he knew at the time it was based on bounties, not on evidence.
Based on the government’s own statistics, about 86% of the humans we kidnapped and tortured at Guantanamo Bay had no connection whatsoever to terrorism or any wrongdoing and we knew it when they were kidnapped.
If you want people to stop listening to you and never take you seriously again, you’ve accomplished that.
The most accurate portrayals of the real “response” is the documentary “Why We Fight” 2005 or 2006 featuring prominent members of Congress (of both parties) and maybe the most accurate portrayal is a comedy titled “Harold & Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay”. Most of the TV police shows are pure propaganda.
“Based on the government’s own statistics, about 86% of the humans we kidnapped and tortured at Guantanamo Bay had no connection whatsoever to terrorism or any wrongdoing and we knew it when they were kidnapped. ”
Since all this is based upon the government’s own statistics why not provide the government citation along with their admission?
Is the reason you already didn’t do so is because what you say is a figment of your or another’s immagination?
Although we should all take real terrorism seriously, the “response” to 9/11 is likely the largest fraud since the Tonkin Gulf of the Vietnam War ever perpetrated against the American people.
Hard statistics can be found at http://www.ACLU.org under “Guantanamo By The Numbers” backed up with footnotes based on hard evidence. The ACLU report includes the complaints of several FBI agents about punishing the wrong suspects (not your typical bleeding liberal group). You can also read The Washington Post coverage, which documented that Bush and Obama released most of the detainees, so most weren’t that dangerous.
Most of the tools pushing this fraudulent response are bureaucrats or contractors personally profiting from war profiteering or their agency’s mission-creep. The “response” is likely the largest fraud ever pulled against a nation’s citizens, that why they have started subverting legal First Amendment activity.
MLK, you supplied a library of 2,250 articles. If you actually had the numbers you would have simply quoted them so you hard numbers are dubious at best.
Your claim “Based on the government’s own statistics, about 86% of the humans we kidnapped and tortured at Guantanamo Bay had no connection whatsoever to terrorism or any wrongdoing and we knew it when they were kidnapped. ” is BS until you prove it with a quote and a citation.
Too much BS. DSS was right. You cannot be taken seriously.