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?
Diane wrote:
“Would you be willing to concede at least some Northern opposition to levying a war against The South? Say, Douglas’s attempts at “popular sovereignty” in the territories, for instance? There may be other examples that do not immediately spring to mind. Perhaps the split between Northern versus Southern Democrats weakened Northern opposition to war at the critical moment when The Republican Party formed from the remnants of previous Northern political parties.
“In any case, I am still curious to learn why the Confederate Constitution did not explicitly grant its independent Sovereign States the critical right to secede from The Confederacy without threat of war from The CSA? What harm might that have done to the Supremacy clause literally to inscribe that critical right of secession into The Constitution of the Confederate States of America? Or would such a punctilious measure have been universally understood to have been merely superfluous?”
There was ENORMOUS opposition to the war in the North, as DiLorenzo’s article PCR links to enumerates. Lincoln shuttered numerous Newspapers, deported a Congressman to Canada, threatened to arrest the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Most people in the North hated black people, so the abolitionists who supported the crushing of the South because they hated the South on general principles were singularly unpersuasive. Add to that the draft riots.
It has been a very long time since I read about the ins and outs of the debates about what the Confederate Constitution should emphasize, and if I ever felt competent to discuss it I no longer do. It’s certainly an interesting part of our history, and worthy of a scholarly focus, but I’m afraid I’ll never find the time to dig in to that. So I’ll just have to plead ignorance. Your questions are very good; I just wish I could answer them.
Patrick, I formally withdraw my questions about the Confederate Constitution on more or less the same grounds that you just gave.
If CNN political commentator and former Congressional Black Caucus director Angela Rye and her black colleagues are sufficiently intelligent, competent, capable and confident to demand the destruction of American monuments, they have no need for the artifice and favor of bias by the government and Americans can demand the elimination of unconstitutional “Affirmative Action Privilege.”
In deed, Confederate monuments are actually American monuments as the Southern states were denied secession. If the states that were once Confederate are American, the monuments that were once Confederate are American.
Truth be known, not only is governmental bias and artifice in favor of blacks unconstitutional, freed slaves and their descendants are illegal aliens. When the Emancipation Proclamation was issued, the Naturalization Act of 1802 required citizens to be “…free white person(s)…” and the legal status of slaves changed from “property” to “illegal alien” requiring deportation or compassionate repatriation, as Lincoln proposed.
Try living in the 21st century.
In the 21st century, America should take the necessary corrective action to obtain the result originally intended by its Founders as the current status is an egregious, antithetical and unconstitutional aberation arrived at through irrefutably unconstituional means.
That original intent may approximate something like: “…FREE WHITE PERSON(S)…”. and ..TO OURSELVES AND OUR POSTERITY,…”
Oh, and that of Alexander Hamilton’s observation regarding “discordant intermixture:”
“The influx of foreigners must, therefore, tend to produce a heterogeneous compound; to change and corrupt the national spirit; to complicate and confound public opinion; to introduce foreign propensities. In the composition of society, the harmony of the ingredients is all-important, and whatever tends to a discordant intermixture must have an injurious tendency.”
And thanks for reading.
Pelosi’s dad helped dedicate Confederate monument (beginning plus comments including Apple and SPLC)
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Let’s not forget the number one monument that needs to be demolished is the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial in Washington DC. You surely cannot have someone as hypocritical as Martin Luther King Jr. who professed to be so moralistic and a Minister who continuously \committed adultery. If these ignorant morons say that having slaves at a time in the country’s history when it was legal and that their own African Tribes captured and sold them on the shores of Africa then to be loaded on boats and sent to North and South America to work as slaves then the descendants of those slaves need to be held to the same high morals as those that are being judged.
excellent point
Enigma you may have something there. Recognize the extended family. I heard recently that the typical African American is 16 percent white. I also think that a lot of white people dont know everything about their ancestral make up. A lot can happen in 400 years.
That percentage seems low.
Please note that the Leftists ONLY make their attacks against WHITE people associated with slavery. They are SILENT about the Muslim people associated with slavery. In fact, Islam and slavery are inseparable and slavery is specifically condoned in Islamic Law, given that the standard was set by Mohammed, who was a HUGE SLAVEHOLDER. But do the Leftists have ANY problem with that? Of course not! Leftists are truly the lowest form of hypocrites on the planet imaginable, and in fact are the basest form of living creatures as well. Pig vermin ranks at a lofty level to them by comparison.
Ralph, Good point. However, they are not silent. The despicable SPLC is sliming the courageous Ayaan Hirsi Ali, listing her as a propagandist of hate. This woman speaks out about the horrors young Muslim girls, particularly Somalis, w/ female circumcision. There is a fatwah against her. She speaks the truth and the SPLC thinks it’s hate. The SPLC is a hate group.
Autumn, We’ve been missing you. Only see you once in awhile. Hope it’s because you are doing fun stuff. You are a valuable commenter here.
thanks Nick for the kind words!! I had to jump off and regroup. Went to the mountains in lovely Western North Carolina and chilled w/o any access to the web or news.
Schmoozing again.
I STRONGLY oppose ANY effort to alter the Jefferson memorial — or the Washington monument for that matter.
These memorials have stood for decades just as they are –and with everyone knowing the historical circumstances of the men’s lives.
Agree.
Other than everyone knowing, yes, I agree.
I agree, as well.
What have Abolition, “Affirmative Action Privilege” and Welfare Redistribution wrought?
The slaves said they wanted freedom. Looks like they wanted the whole country on a silver platter.
Lincoln knew the solution was compassionate repatriation but someone changed his mind.
_______________________________________________________________________
“I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.”
– Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto
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One can only hope.
Are they that desperate for relevancy, for a cause, that they will manufacture such a crisis? The US is demonstrably one of the least racist nations in the entire globe. Slavery still exists in Africa.
Snap out of the hysteria. I have crisis fatigue.
Angela Rye has a psychological disorder. She says George Washington didn’t protect “her” freedom, but she wasn’t a slave 300 years ago. She is a highly privileged CNN political commentator in 2017 and former director of the Black Congressional Caucus. She is one of America’s elite, yet identifies as a slave in the pre-American colonies. But this kind of delusion or disassociation with reality should not be surprising, since we live in an age where people get to pick their gender identity based on delusions rather than reality, and consider themselves of whatever race they “identify with” rather than what they really are.
“She is one of America’s elite,”
Seriously. You just said that!
Let’s have a quiz. Is the following quote from Angela Rye or Charles Manson? It’s similar to Rye’s blathering but if it’s Charles Manson, one may safely conclude that, rather than being elite, Angela Rye is a complete —-ing whackjob!
____________________________________________________________________________________
“It seems a shame to have to sneak to get to the truth.To make the truth such a dirty old nasty thing.You gotta sneak to get to the truth, the truth is condemned.The truth is in the gas chamber.The truth has been in your stockyards.Your slaughterhouses.The truth has been in your reservations, building your railroads, emtying your garbage.The truth is in your ghettos.In your jails.In your young love,not in your courts or congress where the old set judgement on the young.What the hell do the old know about the young?They put a picture of old George on the dollar and tell you that he’s your father, worship him.Look at the madness that goes on, you can’t prove anything that happened yesterday.Now is the only thing that’s real.Everyday, every reality is a new reality.Every new reality is a new horizon,a brand new experience of living.I got a note last night from a friend of mine.He writes in this note that he’s afraid of what he might have to do in order to save his reality, as i save mine.You can’t prove anything.There’s nothing to prove.Every man judges himself.He knows what he is. You know what you are, as i know what i am,we all know what we are.Nobody can stand in judgement, they can play like they’re standing in judgement.They can play like they stand in judgement and take you off and control the masses, with your human body.They can lock you up in penitentiaries and cages and put you in crosses like they did in the past,but it doesn’t amount to anything. What they’re doing is, they’re only persecuting a reflection of themselves. They’re persecuting what they can’t stand to look at in themselves,the truth.”
Addressing Turley’s comments, how much credit should we really give Washington for freeing his slaves “after his death?” Is that some sort of grand gesture or relatively meaningless after he could no longer derive any value.
As far as Jefferson, I’m in the camp that a slave cannot also be a mistress and that Jefferson repeatedly raped and had children with someone he owned that had little choice.
Instead of taking down their statues, why not add to them and show their slaves as well in recognition of the “history” nobody wants to be erased?
Another urban myth. There is no evidence that it was Thomas Jefferson who fathered children with a slave. Most credible evidence points to his nephew. I have no doubt that there were some rapes back in those days. But I also have no doubt that there were many voluntary liaisons. Young, attractive female slaves undoubtedly used their attractiveness to get out of the fields picking cotton and into the “big house” polishing silverware. Using sexuality to their advantage is what many women have done throughout history, and always will.
Not so much an urban myth as a political smear he had to endure in his lifetime. It’s nonsense of course, sort of like the idea the Trump/Russia made-up-in-whole-cloth nonsense. There is absolutely no evidence Jefferson did what this widely believed lie asserts.
Actually, though, we DO know that his brother partied late into the night around the campfire in the slave quarters, when he visited Monticello, and likely made babies with Tom’s slaves. Lots has been written about this research (here’s a short piece: http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/157626).
Its a reasonable wager that the father of her children was the most proximate white male, and that was Jefferson himself. Jefferson’s brother did make infrequent visits, so it could be him.
What they’re able to learn from genetic testing of the few descendants of Hemings whose chain of decent passes through males only is that a Jefferson male fathered one of her sons. There is early 19th century testimony that Jefferson’s nephew fathered the children, but that particular nephew was the issue of Jefferson’s sister and his Y-chromosome data (which differs from that of his maternal-side uncles) does not match the known descendants of Hemings who’ve been tested.
enigma – I take the side that Randolph Jefferson, next door neighbor was the father of Sally Hemmings’s children, except the first.
I would think that would make Thomas look worse, not better. He did eventually free Sally’s children, not doing the same for anyone else. She never saw freedom.
enigma – he did include the eldest, which could not have his under any circumstances. I see it as a different time that I did not live in and did not have to make those decisions.
I wonder how history will judge these times and the behavior people engage in. I’m thinking specifically as to how the rich exploit the poor under cover of laws they design but there’s a lot of directions that thought process could take.
enigma – as a historian, we are supposed to view people and events in the time they occurred, not today. You don’t overlay today’s morality on something that happened in 1860. I do not approve of slavery, but it was a common practice during the 17th and 18th century. In fact, a commentor who used to be on here released his slave before he came to the USA. So, it is still occurring today, even in the USA. Most slaves now are sex slaves is my understanding. And guess what the color of the skin of the owners is?
Is morality that much of a variable? If one were religious, have God’s commandments changed over time? Certain things may have been accepted but the morality of them should be relatively constant.
Perhaps you should study the Bible. Slavery is normative throughout. According to the Law, you could sell yourself into slavery, in fact. In the Roman context, Paul advised slaves to be good slaves.
enigma – morality changes with time. Abortion used to be immoral, now it is an acceptable platform of the Democratic Party. The death penalty used to be very moral, however with DNA testing, more people are finding it less moral. Was it moral for Lincoln to free slaves in the South, but not the North? To Lincoln it probably was. Morality is a slippery slope and each person treads lightly.
Morality is only a slippery slope for man. People try to justify their interpretation to meet their own needs but the basic tenets haven’t changed.
enigma – you and I probably would not steal a loaf of bread. However, our basic needs change, we are at the bottom of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and need food, but have no money and have no job. So, we heist a loaf of bread from the corner market. Now our morality has changed, at least temporarily because of our changing circumstances.
Our willingness to ignore what is moral might have changed, you could do something because of present circumstances. You’d still know it was wrong. Have the Ten Commandments ever been modified observe time?
enigma – desperate times, desperate needs. As an agnostic, I am not bothered by the Ten Commandments, except to throw them in the face of others. 🙂
enigma, You are so astute!! The rich have never exploited the poor like they do now. WTF. Do you have any sense that when you make such incredibly asinine comments like that you become a joke? Every century, the rich have exploited the poor just a bit less than the prior century. But, the rich will ALWAYS exploit the poor.
Economics degree?? Online?
Nick – spot on! Just finished “The Money changers” by Upton Sinclair written in 1908! – ain’t nuthin’ changed!
He wasn’t a next-door neighbor. He lived at some distance and the number of his known visits is in the single digits.
The DNA testing does indicate that he possibly was the father of Eston Hemings, but you cannot rule out other Jefferson males, including his brother.
DSS – DNA testing has the oldest son by someone other than a Jefferson.
I don’t think there are surviving male-line descendants of the oldest son that anyone has located. If I’m not mistaken, you need unbroken descent through males for the sort of testing they were doing in 1998 to give you probative information.
People treating something as disputable as if it were established (and casting aspersions on doubters) is annoying. That having been said, look at the context: two or three of the four Hemings children slipped into the white population in adulthood. All four were either manumitted or ran away. None were sold to pay the estate’s creditors. All four followed artisan’s apprenticeships rather than doing agricultural labor. Several were taught to play instruments. Their births were recorded with different notations than were other slave births in the Jefferson household. It’s a reasonable inference that these four youngsters were family members, just not a slam dunk.
DSS – I just happen to disagree with that reasonable inference. Nothing personal.
Jon Meacham’s book about Jefferson noted that Sally Hemmings got Jefferson to agree to freeing her children when they turned 21. While she was in France with him (and pregnant), she refused to return. He promised her, apparently, extraordinary privileges, as well as the pledge to free her children at 21. With his promises, which he kept, she returned with him to Virginia.
Charlottesville and calls for the removal of statues are a “red herrings” intended to obfuscate the revelations about Seth Rich and his attack on the DNC and Hillary Clinton’s scam as Sec. of State to obtain contributions to the Clinton foundation for approval of illegal “deals” such as that discovered by Joseph Rago:
“VEROPHARM”
Joseph Rago –
“Wall Street Journal Reporter Asks Russia For “Clinton Information” —-Turns Up DEAD 2 Days Later”
“A Wall Street Journal Editor who was investigating how a Russian
Pharmaceutical firm could have been purchased in 2014 by an American
Pharmaceutical firm while Sanctions against Russia existed against such
business transactions, has been found dead in his New York City
apartment. The crux of the dead journalists investigation was how
then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton influenced the transaction to be
finalized, but only AFTER her husband Bill was paid $500,000 for giving
a speech in Moscow.
The Russia Consulate General’s office in New York City was contacted
by Wall Street Journal reporter/editor Joseph Rago who requested a
Thursday (20 July) in person interview with consular officials regarding
an upcoming article he was preparing on Hillary Clinton and her links
to Russia. Rago failed to attend the meeting and was later discovered
dead in his apartment of as yet “unknown causes” just hours prior to
this meeting occurring.”
http://halturnerradioshow.c…
http://halturnerradioshow.com/index.php/news/world-news/878-wall-street-journal-reporter-asks-russia-for-clinton-information-2-days-later-turns-up-dead
https://twitter.com/theintercept/status/901140625936048130
The online forums are not what is driving whatever the heck White Nationalism is. It is watching black behavior over the past few decades, and confronting the obvious fact that something is really screwed up in the black community.
People can preach about Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King all they want, but what sticks in people’s minds is stuff like the Maury Povich show where one ghettopotamus after another has to run DNA tests to see who the baby daddy is. Or, when people watch blacks misbehaving in large numbers in day to day life, and watching how they ruin what were once nice neighborhoods. It is listening to blacks talk, and agreeing with Tommy Sotomayor that most blacks sound like they just got freed from slavery 2 seconds ago. It is reading about the murder rate in the black community while other blacks are stomping around hollering “Black Lives matter!” White people who never heard of Kafka, still pick up on the Theatre of the Absurd aspects of that.
It is the fact that we are over 60 years down the road from Brown v. Board of Education, and large numbers of blacks still can’t read or write at even minimal levels, even though massive amounts of money are being spent to educate them. It is the 72% illegitimate birth rate, and all the Trayvon Martins and the hordes of savage black teens invading malls and BART.
Liberals might want to blame “online forums” for white people becoming increasingly disgusted by black misbehavior, but really it is just keeping your eyes open and seeing what is right in front of you without a partisan lens. You should try it some time. But you probably don’t really need to.because you obviously had enough cognizance of the problems to send your kid to a college that is only 6% black.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
In other. Words,,,,GIVE US MONEY!!!!
And Seymour Hersh said that the D.C. Police learned from Seth Rich’s computer that Seth Rich attempted to sell DNC e-mail and data to Wikileaks.
I bet that made “Little Debbie In Big Trouble” mad and she probably received an offer she couldn’t refuse from Bill Clinton on the tarmac of the Miami International Airport.
Wait. Isn’t that called Means, Motive and Opportunity?
Can anyone explain why the D.C Police have not arrested her…and Bill et al.?
Must be that the murder of Seth Rich involves people “Too Big To Charge.”
It’s just like the Joseph Rago case.
The perps in the Joseph Rago case are similarly “Too Big To Charge.”
All this focus on statues, etc. takes away focus from the Dims and Awan brothers.
“A chief of staff for Democratic Rep. Yvette Clarke quietly agreed in early 2016 to sign away a $120,000 missing electronics problem on behalf of two former IT aides now suspected of stealing equipment from Congress, The Daily Caller News Foundation has learned.
Clarke’s chief of staff at the time effectively dismissed the loss and prevented it from coming up in future audits by signing a form removing the missing equipment from a House-wide tracking system after one of the Awan brothers alerted the office the equipment was gone. The Pakistani-born brothers are now at the center of an FBI investigation over their IT work with dozens of Congressional offices.”
Entire article: http://dailycaller.com/2017/08/20/democrats-office-approved-120k-write-off-linked-to-awan-brothers/
The right wing “daily caller” made fun of Baron the other day.
So? Do you have a point?
if only the millions of slaughtered black unborn, unnamed innocent children, offended you as much as these statues , in Jesus name I pray
Actually, the statues don’t offend me in the least. I view them as art. Some art pieces I like, others don’t interest me. But I don’t advocate the destruction of art, historical monuments, nor the burning of books that I don’t agree with.
The Awan brothers have been charged with felonies and their case has absolutely nothing to do with the statues.
Historically statuary was erected to advance white male domination and to glorify violence. One statue dedicated to the admission that humans have been very destructive in the past would be enough. We don’t need thousands of such statues.
Historically statuary was erected to advance white male domination and to glorify violence.
I’ll remind myself that the next time I see a pieta.
Silly rabbit, you don’t erect pietas! You just hang them from a tree and let the little kids whack them with a stick.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Check her background and find out why she is against America and its History:
Theodore Roosevelt’s ideas on Immigrants and being an AMERICAN in 1907.
‘In the first place, we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin.
But this is predicated upon the person’s becoming in every facet an American, and nothing but an American…
There can be no divided allegiance here.
Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn’t an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag…
We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language..
And we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people.’
Theodore Roosevelt 1907
http://www.ibtimes.com/who-angela-rye-cnns-political-commentator-6-things-know-about-sassy-analyst-2397364 She’s not an immigrant.
So? Are we supposed to revel at this… well, “revelation?” I guess? Best you got today?? Surely one of your usual flute-playing rags have something more inflammatory and partisan–you know, propaganda.
The previous poster accused the woman of being an immigrant. How about that Afghan war your boy was going to end?
Not an immigrant? Then why “African-American”?
Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn’t an American at all.
CNN used to have a commentator, I don’t recall her name and haven’t seen her in about a year. She was an older black woman, a New Yorker and convert to the Nation of Islam. She was very bitter, anti-white and seethed with hostility. In any case, she used to say that there is no such thing as an “African-American;” that they are “American-Africans,”
Wow, she’s black and only got into Seattle Univ School of Law? She must have been seriously hurting for grades if affirmative action couldn’t at least get her into the Univ of Washington.
David Benson: “The Democrats here in Washington state are relatively sane.”
~+~
Maybe they are in Whitman County. That is not the necessarily the case in Western WA.
Meet Gordon “Boudicca” Walsh, the high priestess of the Thurston County Democrats.
https://www.wethegoverned.com/trans-radical-witch-of-olympia-leads-democratic-party-just-awesome/
Nice Darren! I wonder what (insert correct pronoun here…) does to make a living? Thank cheap money, credit, and government programs for these enlightened individuals.
Trying to think how that outfit would work on me… balding, somewhat portly Jewish-looking dude.
Sorry for that visual…
LOL. But for someone like David B Benson, this high priestess is perfectly sane.
I should have stressed the “relatively”.
Way back in college… a long time ago now… I took two courses on the Civil War. They were quite honestly two of the most difficult courses I ever took. Why?… Because they challenged my previous conceptions in every way.
Even then, for years I had only been exposed to the whitewashed public school 15-minute talking point lesson that the Civil War was fought over slavery. Once you truly study it, slavery was but a minor consideration of the war. To state otherwise 150 years later is nothing more than revisionist history.
While true that the abolishment of slavery ended up being the greatest legacy from that war, it was not even close to the primary reason the war was waged.
That truism is one of the biggest problems in America today… Our public education system is woefully incompetent. I’d even wager that not 1 out of 100 citizens in our country knows anything more about that time than the worn out talking points that have been promulgated for decades.
USN, I taught high school history. There was MUCH pressure from the dept. head to say the Civil War was ABOUT slavery. I taught it the way I was taught by Jesuits, that being slavery was one of several issues in the Civil War.
Why stop at removing the statues? When the British monarchy was restored, Charles II ordered Oliver Cromwell’s decomposed body exhumed so he could be properly beheaded. Then he put Cromwell’s severed head on a pike and displayed it at Westminster Hall for a few years.
Why not dig up Washington and give him a proper beheading? Someone on CNN at least needs to suggest it. Think of the ratings. They can have “experts” spend two or three days in panel discussions exploring the pros and cons of symbolic posthumous beheadings, pros and cons of displaying skulls on pikes in public spaces, and why it may be necessary to dig up and posthumously behead other people who had opinions we don’t like.
There’s so much potential for fresh cable news content. It has the potential to be a ratings bonanza.
That’s genius Scott! Surely enough to launch your own cable network, or at least weekly show. “Tune in tonight to see who we’re diggin’ up this week and sticking on a pike–it’s truly a surprise and a long-time comin’!”