We have previously discussed the destruction of statues and the refusal of mobs to allow society as a whole to decide what statues should be removed. That debate is now occurring though the destruction has continued often with little comment, let alone action from universities or local governments. This includes the Columbus statue in Little Italy in Baltimore which was torn down and thrown into the harbor with no action from the police. In an opinion piece published in The New York Times, Lucian K Truscott IV, has called for the tearing down of the Thomas Jefferson memorial. As a descendant of the former President, his call has attracted considerable attention. At the same time, leaders like Sen. Tammy Duckworth (R., IL.), a leading candidate to be the vice presidential candidate with former Vice President Joe Biden, has said that she is open to the idea of tearing down the statue to George Washington. There are also recent demands to remove the statues of Abraham Lincoln.
While this debate is welcomed, it is not clear that the full debate will be presented on the pages of the New York Times where editors publicly committed to barring opposing views like those recently of Sen. Tom Cotton. Others in the media, most recently CNN’s Don Lemon, have rationalized the destruction of these statutes. Lemon lashed out at American history as based on “propaganda” and dismissed criticism of the mob actions as an example of how “the chickens are coming home to roost.” As for the statues of opponents to slavery that have been destroyed, Lemon simply said “movements are often messy.” He further claimed that “nobody is erasing history . . . What people are trying to do is put it in context and these are conversations that we should be having.”
It is not much of a conversation after statues are torn down and thrown into harbors. Some of us have been engaged in this debate for years. I called for the removal of some statues over two decades ago. However, I have also opposed the removal of statues to leaders like Washington and Jefferson. We learn from history not by wiping it away but placing it into context. Washington and Jefferson are honored not because of their ownership of slaves but despite that terrible wrong. Indeed, the history of both leaders on slavery is complex, particularly for Jefferson who sought to include the following statement that was deleted by pro-slavery delegates as a condition for voting for independence:
He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the Christian King of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market where Men should be bought & sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or restrain this execrable commerce. And that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people on whom he has obtruded them: thus paying off former crimes committed again the Liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another.
Jefferson was a hypocrite on this issue and kept hundreds in bondage. As we discussed recently, this part of his legacy is not ignored but emphasized in tours at Monticello.
Truscott insists that Monticello “is enough.” He added: “And that is why his memorial in Washington should be taken down and replaced. Described by the National Park Service as ‘a shrine to freedom,’ it is anything but.”
While I respect Truscott’s view and appreciate his thoughtful column, I cannot disagree more with that premise. The memorial is a “shrine to freedom” because it celebrates Jefferson’s legacy in such acts as drafting the Declaration of Independence and the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom. It is not a memorial to his legacy as a slave owner. That legacy should be part of the context in viewing Jefferson but not a reason to tear down this memorial.
Truscott joins others, including a CNN analyst for calling for tearing down the memorials, including the Washington monument. Often these calls are examples of rage overcoming reason. Historical legacies tend to be complex and include elements that many of us find deeply offensive or immoral. We can discuss all of these elements in considering the history, and historical figures, that creates this country.
Washington’s view on slavery has long been debated. He was without question of slavey owner and there are shocking accounts of the mistreatment of slaves under bondage at his estate. There is no act that erase that immorality. As I noted in a prior column, some of his friends however saw Washington as regretful over slavery and his failure to break from it. After the war, Washington continued to discuss ways to convert his plantation from slaves to tenants at the suggestion of his close aide (and outspoken opponent of slavery) Marquis de Lafayette. By 1786, Washington wrote his friend Robert Morris, “I can only say that there is not a man living who wishes more sincerely than I do, to see a plan adopted for the abolition of [slavery].” In the end, Washington was the only one of nine slaveholding presidents (and the only slaveholding founder) who freed his slaves upon his death. Washington freed as many of his 317 slaves as possible. Some 123 slaves were his to emancipate while neither he nor Martha could free the so-called “Custis Dower slaves” (who remained property of the heirs to the estate of Daniel Parke Custis, Martha Washington’s first husband). He further ordered that all of the elderly or sick slaves would be supported by his estate for the rest of their lives.
CNN Angela Rye stated 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.” As we discussed earlier, 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.
This slavering mania for destroying statues of past public figures is all too reminiscent of the fanaticism of ISIS.
This movement lobotomizes our collected history of learning, and anachronistically judges people from the distant past by today’s values. Selectively so, as this is not done to other countries.
The more of our history we erase, the more ignorant we become.
It might come as a shock to today’s vandals that they will likely not pass muster to future generations, either. What will Americans think of a movement that chemically and surgically castrated children suffering from gender dysphoria, a condition that typically clears up by adulthood? If history is to be the judge, those who created the castrati of Italian opera are viewed in a dim light.
How will tomorrow’s young people view this generation’s destruction of art, and the excision of important, foundational literary works from curricula?
I really don’t know what you’d do without Wikipedia and Fox, or where someone like you gets off using the phrase “pass muster”, which usually refers to constitutional issues. As usual, you don’t know much about what you are spewing. First of all, the castrati were amateur surgeons who, upon request by the Catholic Church to maintain talented singers with a high soprano voice in all-male choirs at the Sistine Chapel and other churches, performed surgery, but this was not for Italian opera. It was considered to be an honor at the time, and not all of them were completely castrated. We wouldn’t do this today because now women are allowed to sing soprano in churches.
The other big words you try to use to imply you are educated and knowledgeable also give you away. Telling the truth about Washington and Jefferson owning slaves, and Jefferson repeatedly impregnating a slave woman is not equivalent to a lobotomy, nor is it judging anything. The problem was that the full truth about these people has not been told, including the fact that Lincoln viewed Africans as genetically inferior to other races. He only freed them for political reasons–not for altruistic or moral reasons. To imply otherwise is a lie. For Washington to be credited with believing that “all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, among which are life, LIBERTY, and the pursuit of happiness”, while simultaneously enslaving, buying and selling black people is hypocrisy. Saying so is not revising history–history lied to us by enshrining Washington as the father of this country and yet omitting this detail. Now that we know the truth, we can decide for ourselves what their place in history should be. None of these people should have their images carved into a mountain sacred to the indigenous Americans who obtained title to these lands via treaty with the U.S. government around the time of the Civil War. This mountain should not be used for political campaign purposes over the objections of the indigenous people, either.
Where the hell did you get the idea that gender dysphoria is a “condition that typically clears up by adulthood?” Certainly not from those who experience this condition. Virtually all of these people who write or speak about their gender identity say they knew, even as young as 3 or 4 years old, that they were biologically different from their identity. There is no “movement” here, other than to encourage people not to judge those with gender dysphoria. Individual families decide what is best for their child, and the decision to allow a child to dress consistent with his or her gender identity is not one made frivolously or lightly. Surgery is not done until the patient is old enough to consent to the procedure.
Natacha – your knowledge is so limited. In the 18th Century almost all male singers in opera were castrati. There is a fascinating movie about one of the greatest, Farinelli. Beautiful and moving movie. BTW, castrati are the singers, not the surgeons, you ignoramous/
FOUNDING FATHERS INHERITED COLONIAL INSTITUTIONS
The first British colonists came to what is now the United States in the early 1600’s. From that point, about 1630, until George Washington took office in 1789, about 160 years passed. That’s how long slavery had to plant its roots in the colonies. If we go ‘back’ 160 years from the present that takes us to 1860 when Lincoln was elected. That gives one an idea of how long slavery had been in place when the United States opened for business as a sovereign nation.
So the question is often asked, “Why didn’t our founding fathers free the slaves when the new nation began?”
The obvious answer here would be simple economics. When the U.S. began there was no Treasury, Federal Reserve or Fort Knox. Washington D C was still a swamp. The United States began as flat broke and greatly in debt to France (for aiding the Revolution). At that point in time, the 1780’s, the United States hod only cotton and tobacco exports to raise hard currency. And one should note the Industrial Revolution was still in its infancy.
Therefore, it’s not hard to grasp why the Founding Fathers did not think freeing slaves was a priority at that moment. But to their credit the Founding Fathers refused to enshrine Slaveholder Rights into the Constitution (despite considerable pressure to do exactly that). The Founding Fathers were essentially ‘kicking that can down the road’. They obviously knew that slavery was a potentially explosive issue. And for this very reason, they decided to defer the issue. The United States might never have happened had our Founding Fathers banned slavery in the 1780’s. The former southern colonies might have splintered off right then.
So our Founding Fathers kicked the slavery issue to their grandchildren. 70 years later, (3 generations), Lincoln was elected and the Civil War quickly followed. One could argue that the Civil War vindicated our Founding Fathers decision to ‘kick that can down the road’. They didn’t want a civil war on top of revolution!
One should also note that when this country first began, Virginia was our most populous state and the geographic center of the country. This fact in itself would have had a big impact on our Founding Fathers decision to defer the slavery issue. However by 1860, the center of the country had moved northwest to the Pittsburgh / Lake Eerie region. By 1860 a string of industrial cities were sprouting along the Great Lakes from Buffalo to Chicago. Those cities represented what was then the ‘new economy’. An economy in which giant industrial plants would produce decades of robust growth.
In this new economy slavery had no place. No place whatsoever! By 1860 slavery was a threat to every working man. If manufacturers could run industrial plants on slave labor, the future of capitalism was threatened. There would never be a middle class if slaves were used in industrial plants. Slavery was totally incompatible with the new economy. This explains ‘why’ the Civil War came when it did. It was 3 generations after the Revolutionary War and 3 generations into the Industrial Revolution.
This timeline also illustrates why the southern confederacy was a lost cause from Day 1. By 1860 slavery was a holdover from the 17th Century. It no longer had any place in the new economy. Therefore Confederate leaders are totally undeserving of any statues honoring them. Their cause was mindless even by 1860’s standards. The confederacy should be seen as what it was: “A lost cause to save a colonial institution’.
Remembering St Junipero Serra
– Fr Julio Minsal SJ
Lucian K Truscott IV’s claim of being a descendent of Thomas Jefferson really invalidates anything he says. He claims his descendency through Sally Hemmings a black slave but that has been pointed out to be a hoax or a deliberate mistating. Randolph Jefferson a widower and Jefferson’s brother, is said to more likely be the person paired with Hemmings.
He claims his descendency through Sally Hemmings
IOW, he’s a con man. It can be demonstrated that a Jefferson male sired at least two of her children, but they cannot securely establish which Jefferson male did so or who sired the others. Th. Jefferson’s a decent candidate but not the only one.
Jonathan: You say the statues of Washington and Jefferson should not be removed because, in the case of Jefferson, his memorial is a “shrine to freedom”. If Jefferson’s slaves could speak today they would probably have a different opinion. In the case of Washington he did say during his lifetime that slavery was a “wicked, cruel and unnatural trade”. But until his death Washington never took any steps to make any changes to the system he inherited. He was a moral hypocrite as was Jefferson. Washington was a typical slaveholder. He did not tolerate suspected rebellions by his slaves. He approved the whipping of recalcitrant slaves and even shipped rebellious slaves to the West Indies where the tropical climate and relentless work in the cane fields caused premature death. When some of his slaves escaped during the Revolutionary war and fled to the British side Washington demanded their return. The British refused. And this is the man you think deserves a public statue? It’s like saying that Germans should honor the leaders of Nazi Germany with statues and ignore their crimes against humanity because they put millions of Germans to work and made the trains run on time. Jefferson also followed the practice of most slaveholder–even going to the extent of fathering children by Sally Hemings. Jefferson embodies the inherent contradictions of his position as a slaveholder. He could have slaves who were his children serve him but never found that relationship troubling. Jefferson could not bring himself to oppose slavery because he was opposed to miscegenation. Talk about a hypocrite!
I support Lucien Truscott’s call for the removal the Memorial to his ancestor and replacing it one of Harriet Tubman who was also a patriot who spent her entire life fighting against the institution that Washington and Jefferson defended until their deaths. You simply cannot separate what Washington and Jefferson did to form an “imperfect union” from the system of slavery they perpetuated and that still survives today in the form of racial bigotry–that Donald Trump promotes and hopes will help him hold on to the White House. We need to make a clean break from the past and that means removing all the symbols of our sordid past before it consumes us.
“In an opinion piece published in The New York Times, Lucian K Truscott IV, has called for the tearing down of the Thomas Jefferson memorial. As a descendant of the former President, his call has attracted considerable attention.”
– Professor Turley
_______________
The aforementioned disgruntled purported descendant has no standing.
The aforementioned disgruntled purported descendant has no weight or relevance.
Any and all publications and positions of the New York Times shall be rejected out of hand and are totally and completely irrelevant and immaterial.
The New York Times promulgates “fake news” and propaganda fabricated by communist party headquarters.
The New York Times is the mouthpiece of the enemy of the U.S. Constitution and the United States of America.
If we are going to tear down the monuments to everyone who was not perfect, let’s at least be consistent and remove FDR (Japanese internment camps and refusal to help the Jews during WWII); Truman (used the N word and spoke disparagingly of Blacks; JFK (a shameless adulterer); MLK (a known pedophile and womanizer); and, of course, any other Democrat (they were members of the party that was on the losing side of the Civil War and later supported Jim Crow laws and segregation into the 1960’s. Membership in the Democrat party should be the kiss of death politically, like membership in the Nazi Party.
So it must be OK that Texas writes textbooks for most of the nation and writes the rules about what they want included and omitted in history, right? The highly politicized Texas State Board of Education rewrites the teaching and textbook standards for nearly 5 million schoolchildren. But that’s OK cause it’s “their” history. The republicans rewrite history everytime they say they voted for civil rights, they did then, those 1950’s and 60’s republicans would be thrown out of the party today. And talk about rewriting history, just listen to a republican talk about St. Ronnie. Of course, St Ronnie would be tossed out today cause of his stance on immigration.
excellent use of what-about-ism
What does Kim Kardashian think?
Tell us, Turley, were all Americans consulted and was there a vote in favor of the erection of statues honoring people like Stonewall Jackson, Robert E. Lee, Nathan Bedford Forrest, Thomas Jefferson and other controversial historic figures who either owned slaves or fought to maintain the institution of slavery before the statutes went up? Of course not. It is also a fact that the Confederate monuments went up in the twentieth century, not right after the Civil War, right about the time the KKK was surging and “Birth of a Nation”, a film paying tribute to the KKK, was shown at the White House. Most of these statues were paid for by Sons of the Confederacy, not taxpayers, but taxpayers, including black ones, own the land on which these monuments were placed. It is also a fact that the sculptor for Mount Rushmore was an active Klansman, as was Fred Trump. Also, about the time of the Civil War, the U.S. government entered into a treaty with the Lakota people and agreed that the land where Mount Rushmore is located belonged to them, but after gold was discovered, tried to renege and force them to allow gold mining on their property. Mt. Rushmore has always been sacred to the Lakota people and other indigenous tribes living in the Dakotas. They are highly offended by the visages of controversial American Presidents carved into their mountain. Were these people on board for construction of Mt. Rushmore? Of course not. Were they on board for the fat Dotard and his former stripper wife holding a campaign rally on their land or shooting off fireworks, which, in the past, have caused forest fires? Did anyone listen to their concerns? Hell no. Photo ops are more important. How ironic that someone beholden to a hostile foreign country because it helped him cheat his way into our White House by telling lies about his opponent, waves the flag and tries to pretend to be a patriot on land stolen from indigenous people, under a mountain belonging to native Americans which is scarred with the images of controversial white men, some of whom enslaved other humans. Cheating, lying and stealing are not American values.
So, when Turley argues about “the refusal of mobs to allow society as a whole to decide what statues should be removed”, this claim falls flat. Society as a whole never agreed to the construction or erection of these monuments in the first place. Society as a whole never supported the things these figures stood for. The confederacy LOST the Civil War. Slavery was abolished, so why erect monuments to people who owned slaves or who fought to maintain slavery? Does any other country honor traitors? Are there any statues of Musollini in Milan or Hitler in Berlin?
What is more worrisome is that the election cheater tells his disciples that when the truth about people like Lincoln, Washington, Jefferson and Roosevelt is disclosed, that these are lies. HE is the one who is a liar. The outrage never ends. Every minute this fat slob election cheater continues his presidential charade is an outrage. He is stealing the dignity of the office and the values of the American people.
“It is also a fact that the Confederate monuments went up in the twentieth century”
Along those lines, it should be noted that the resurfacing of the confederate flag was not that long ago. From the end of the Civil War into the 1960s, it was nowhere to be seen. There is nothing about it that is linked to “southern heritage” — and it is an insult to southern heritage to suggest otherwise. People started re-waving that thing as opposition to civil rights including the Civil Rights Act of 1964. And people have continued to wave that thing from the 1960s to the present day.
You shouldn’t get your history from the Bezos Birdcage Liner.or Wikipedia
https://www.tennessee-scv.org/16thtenn.htm
The Confederate flag is visible in this Sons of Confederate Veterans gathering a century ago Battle flags were derived from the cantons of these flags. Here’s another variant
https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/06/entertainment/dukes-hazzard-general-lee-trnd/index.html
Which was, 40 years ago, understood as harmless mass entertainment.
And, of course, your point is inane. The point of the whole complex of court decisions and sketchy statutory legislation was to put Southern states under a trusteeship run by the BosWash corridor bar. Of course there was resistance from Southerners qua Southerners. Not everyone thought Earl Warren and Joseph Rauh were good men.
If you want to get pedantic and inane about it, Mississippi incorporated it around the turn of the 20th century. The real resurgence happened in the 1960s for the reasons I mentioned.
Why the Confederate Flag Made a 20th Century Comeback
The popularity of the Confederate battle flag today has more to do with the Civil Rights Movement than the Civil War.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2015/06/150626-confederate-flag-civil-rights-movement-war-history/
If you want to get pedantic and inane about it,
‘Pedantic and inane’ is what normal people call ‘providing a discrete example which tends to discredit a general characterization’. Again, National Geographic is just being part of an echo chamber.
So you admit your claim that I got this from Bezos is false.
You could have got it from several sources. It’s a meme.
Why it is isn’t it. And here I was all the time thinking I had made a decent retort.
I don’t know why you’re bothering. He’s not gonna get it.
Absurd’s opposition to the CR Act of 1964 is duly noted and in line with the Dixiecrats who morphed into today’s Sunbelt Republican Party. Hard to imagine why blacks wouldn’t want to be part of that.
Actually Daughters of the Confederacy put up the monuments across the South Natasha.
Even if the entire country did not now oppose slavery – and it does with exceptions like Paul and Sadie Mae Glutz – often the monuments are downtown in cities where the whites all moved to the suburbs. Maybe try to move General Lee out by the RedLobster next to the interstate, but he’s not staying downtown. Uh nuh!
Anon – my guess is that you come from oppressor people. I come from oppressed people. My people were enslaved and brought to the New World. My enslaved ancestors were mated with blacks to make mulattos, etc. for the house slaves. My people were not freed until the Easter Uprising and later.
Well Paul, that makes your support of slavery doubly confounding, as if it could be more that it already was. You don’t mean to say that family lore is about what a good time it was, right?
Anon – I support slave uprisings, Harriet Tubman, the Underground Railroad, etc. Very few people in the South own slaves, yet everyone fought.
“Nuthatches are omnivorous, eating mostly insects, nuts, and seeds. They forage for insects hidden in or under bark by climbing along tree trunks and branches, sometimes upside-down. “
Let city councils have a vote on the subject of statues… Actually they have… and the motions always fail. Maybe we can waste more time and energy on referenda on the topics OR come November, pols can run on a “Tear down that statue” campaign. So far very few have. Meanwhile, our major cities a filled with the blood of murder victims, most of them Af-AMs. Congrats on your thoughtful priorities.
They’re gone where I live sara. It wasn’t a mob.
Was there a vote on the decision to remove? There sure wasn’t a vote in Boston to deface the Robert Gould Shaw and the Af-Am 54th regiment; or the removal of the Frederick Douglass statue in Rochester, NY
Yes, by the City Commission. Those were mob actions that you name and no one should support that in my opinion, and it’s not even a reasonable point of discussion.
PS The city commission was clear majority white with 2 out of 7 blacks, so it didn’t fit the formula I implied earlier. The city is also majority white, but liberal in a Deep South region. Many big cities throughout America, including the south, are now majority black.
Why should the opinion of some obscure descendant of a historical figure have more say in the disposition of a national monument to that figure than any other American? Should we allow that descendant to instruct all libraries and intuitions of higher learning to strike all reference to Thomas Jefferson from all books and to burn Jefferson’s books and papers? Because that is where we are headed.
“Trump criticizes NASCAR ban on Confederate flags and attacks Black driver, NFL and MLB teams”
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/07/06/trump-nascar-bubba-wallace-confederate-flag-349730
If they were acting on principles, they will demand an end to the Democratic party.
As a Democrat Olly, and you a Trump supporter – and I hesitate to ask – why so?
Oh pleeze, spare me the outrage of what happened 200 years ago. If it’s that bad why aren’t these pseudo itellectuals calling for the destruction of the Pyramids annd Great Wall of China?
Precisely. BTB is either 25 or just an idiot. If you want to dismantle this retroactively, you’d better go back at LEAST to the Pharaohs. I wouldn’t expect an ignoramus like him/her. them to understand, though, given their education seems to begin in 1776 and end in 1861.
??
He’s actually 74. Oddly impressive, in a way. You can’t say he aged like wine.
The pyramids were built by contract and volunteer labor… despite various myths and fairy tales.
https://www.harvardmagazine.com/2003/07/who-built-the-pyramids-html
Of course all ancient civilizations had slaves, as the story you linked to effectively admits:
https://www.harvardmagazine.com/2003/07/who-built-the-pyramids-html
He thinks the pyramid builders were mostly performing voluntary communal labor similar to that that built medieval European cathedrals
All this is about is a small minority of self-important black people who are offended by Confederate statues, and small minority of white people (aka/Antifa) who pretend to be offended by any and all reminders of American history that they want to erase Which is a classic Marxist tactic.
But all people who get offended by anything need to realize that the second they are offended they lose their power, and weaken themselves.
“Self-importance is man’s greatest enemy. What weakens him is feeling offended by the deeds and misdeeds of his fellow man. Self-importance requires that one spend most of one’s life offended by something or someone.”
– Don Juan Matus (“The Fire From Within”)
None of us are important. We are nothing more than tiny pieces of animated protoplasm in a vast and ever expanding Universe. Just another grain of sand on a huge desert.
Which is why I don’t care at all about anyone who tells me they’re offended by someone’s words, or some thing, like a statue.
The fact that they are offended by anything, is a personal problem, not my problem.
Rhodes, I like your setting perspective, though I disagree with you on that too. Unlike a grain of sand, we keep score – maybe the only things in the universe keeping score and there fore while we are here, unbeaten and undefeated. Who cares about it after we’re gone? Not us. Not the grain of sand. While we’re here, live it up! It counts now..
Monuments in public spaces should count and should represent some consensus of thought of the public they are there for.
“Monuments in public spaces should count and should represent some consensus of thought of the public they are there for.”
Then the Jefferson Memorial should stand for this:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed”
If his memorials are dismantled, that reflects a dismantling of those ideals, the things we strive to embody.
“Unlike a grain of sand, we keep score”
Which is just another testament to your self-importance.
If you want to remain offended and weak, that’s fine with me. As I already said, that’s your own personal problem.
As long as you keep that mindset you will never know what it’s like to be “unbeaten and undefeated”.
Beautiful Duet between Strangers
Thank you for sharing! That was so beautiful!
Does it really matter what Truscott thinks about the Jefferson Memorial? Jefferson was his great-great-great-great-grandfather. That’s so far removed that he likely shares 5% DNA, at best, with the former president. And he is certainly not on par with his distant relative; Truscott was a 2d Lt. who discharged from the Army after 13 months with “a general discharge under less than honorable conditions.”
The capsule biographies of him (if accurate) make him sound like a self-centered pest.
His father was an Army colonel and decorated combat veteran. His grandfathers were, respectively, a general and a colonel, combat veterans both; the latter was awarded the legion of merit. Three of his great-grandfathers worked in demanding fields with operational measures of competence (two were doctors, the third a civil engineer, and of these at least two had grown up on the land). Now comes Lucian Truscott IV. The military disgorges him after less than two years and he sets himself up as someone who writes animadversions about others.
“Movements are often messy.” Well, Mr. Lemon should know, he airs an intellectual bowel movement every night – and that’s the only kind of movement these Leftists are capable of – a noisy, splattering, putrid excretion of all the indigestible propaganda they gorge upon.
I don’t give a crap if Jefferson had slaves. It was legal back then. This is just something else for wokesters to call for to avoid having to face the real reasons for “disparity” which is this, which is standard operating procedure for over half the blacks in the country:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7TELZ9d3JE
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Yeah, it was legal to send Jews on trains to concentration camps in WWII Germany, so Sadie Mae Glutz is probably OK with Himmler too.
It sure was legal to have slaves when Moses put down his laws. overall. in spite of the Exodus and all that.
turns out from the careful study written below, that Mosaic law forbids enslavement by capture, and yet implies that enslavement by selling oneself to satisfy debts was licit. interesting, the term of years for a slave appears to have been only 6 years, subject to the rules on debt forgiveness, it seems
oops, but wait, that injunction also went against another one that said gentiles could be slaves for life.
apparently God was not very careful when he hired his Jewish lawyers to write things up. they contradicted themselves it seems.
http://thebriefing.com.au/2014/01/slavery-and-the-old-testament-law/
ah you know the old Joke– two israelites, three opinions!
They were slaves because someone captured them in a raid and sold them to traders or someone captured an ancestor and sold them to traders. Those capturing and raiding would have been…other Africans. I don’t think the African continent was free from misery in 1780. As for life without slaveholders, you can study the history of Haiti.
Truscott is a fruitcake. He’s a former Army officer who went nuts. We used to be in contact with each other but I’ve not heard from him in years. He received a less than honorable discharge from the Army a little over a year after graduating from West Point. I would expect nothing less from him.