6/12/2020 - Pat Buchanan Townhall.com
On
Gen. George Washington's orders, the Declaration of Independence, signed in
Philadelphia, was read aloud to his army. On hearing it, the troops marched to
Bowling Green, decapitated and pulled down the statue of George III, and sent
the remnants to be melted down into musket balls.
It
was a revolutionary act, a symbolic statement. These once-loyal American
subjects were now rebels and no longer owed allegiance to the king. They would
fight to end his rule in America.
During
the recent demonstrations and disorders here, similar acts had about them an
aspect of societal rebellion and a repudiation of a heritage.
In
Richmond, Virginia, a statue of Christopher Columbus, who generations of
American children were raised to revere as the intrepid Italian explorer who
discovered the New World, was pulled down and thrown into a lake.
In
Boston, the Columbus statue was beheaded.
In
a half-dozen states, statues of Confederate generals and soldiers were pulled
down. Gov. Ralph Northam promises to remove the huge statues of Robert E. Lee
and Stonewall Jackson from their century-old places of honor on Richmond's
Monument Avenue.
In
Philadelphia, the statue of fabled Italian American cop, police commissioner
and mayor, Frank Rizzo, was desecrated and hauled away.
Retired
Gen. David Petraeus has written to urge that all army bases bearing the names
of Confederate generals, such as Forts Benning, Bragg and Hood, be renamed.
Robert E. Lee, who is everywhere at West Point, says Petraeus, was a U.S.
soldier who "committed treason."
Nancy
Pelosi wants 11 statues, including those of Confederate President Jefferson
Davis, Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens, and Sen. and U.S. Vice
President John Calhoun, removed from the Capitol.
The
purge of historical figures has spread to Europe.
The
giant statue of King Leopold II in Brussels, who was enriched by the
brutalitarian plundering of his Congo colony, has been taken down.
In
Bristol, England, a statue of Edward Colston, philanthropist and patron of the
city but also a slave trader, was thrown into the harbor.
At
Oxford, students are moving to take down the statue of Cecil Rhodes, the
archimperialist and founding father of Rhodesia who created as his legacy the
Rhodes scholarships for British and American students.
Resumes
of all the once-admired great men who discovered, explored and colonized the
New World, as well as all those who created and first led the United States,
are being investigated to determine how egregiously these men violated the
egalitarian and democratist dogmas of modernity.
The
list of malefactors seems impressive.
Who
are we talking about?
Nearly
half of the signers of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution
were slave owners. So, too, were five of our first seven presidents and two of
the four men on Mount Rushmore.
George
Washington won the war for independence. Thomas Jefferson doubled the size of
the nation with the Louisiana Purchase. Andrew Jackson saved the nation from
defeat by the British at the Battle of New Orleans and seized Florida. James
Polk took us to war with Mexico and relieved it of what is now the American
Southwest and California.
All
four of these nation-builder presidents were slave owners.
The
systematic dishonoring and disgracing of men once revered has only just begun.
But it represents a spreading revolution in thought and belief about the
origins and history of America.
How
far is this going?
During
the London protests in solidarity with Black Lives Matter, there was painted on
the Parliament Square statue of Winston Churchill, who historians voted
"the greatest man of the 20th century" for his role in leading
Britain against Nazi Germany, the word "racist." The mob wanted
Churchill's statue down.
And
was Churchill a racist?
Surely,
he was an archimperialist, a lifelong defender of the British Empire who
believed in the supremacy of the Anglo-Saxon race and its right to rule what
poet Rudyard Kipling called "the lesser breeds without the law."
Churchill
disparaged people of color whom the British ruled, from the Caribbean to
Africa, to the Middle and Near East, to South Asia and the Far East, in terms
that would instantly end the career of any American or British politician who
used them today.
Historian
Andrew Roberts writes of Churchill that he was a "white ... supremacist
(who) thought in terms of race to a degree that was remarkable even by the
standards of his own time. He spoke of certain races with a virulent
Anglo-Saxon triumphalism."
Many
Americans, especially among the young, view the history of the European
exploration, the colonization of the New World, and the creation of Western
empires not with pride but with shame and guilt. And they want to make
expiation by canceling out all the honors accorded such men, be it in statues
or the names of cities, towns, parks and streets.
And
their numbers and militancy are growing. The left has the bit in its teeth and
is dragging the panicked elites along.
How
this ends without permanent division in the country escapes me.
Patrick
J. Buchanan is the author of "Nixon's White House Wars: The Battles That
Made and Broke a President and Divided America Forever." To find out more
about Patrick Buchanan and read features by other Creators writers and
cartoonists, visit the Creators website at www.creators.com.
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