As a society, we are being incessantly reminded by nearly all of the anarchist class, that the threshold for memorialization is to have lived a perfect life. Truth is, that's just a cover story. The real truth is that it's a pretence to simply destroy all American culture, to leave the nation vacuous of cultural mores, and therefore seemingly ready to have served up a whole new batch of ethos and role models.
It started as an aspiration for the removal of all monuments to Confederates, on the grounds they were all traitors to the United States, mostly slave owners, and therefore unworthy of adulation, or even memorialization. Truth is, there is considerable merit to that notion, but for well over 250 years, the core concept in America is that what was important to our forefathers should remain important to us. The idea of writing people out of history was something we Americans stood above, and allowed Bolsheviks to practice on themselves.
The guiding principle of this better angel of human nature is the same, whether it be used to refute the pretense, or the actual motivation. "He who is without sin among you, let him be the first to throw a stone at her." This passage from John 8:7 is attributed to be a direct quote of Jesus Christ. It has lived for centuries as a cornerstone value of a moral life, and gives judgmental people proper pause to avoid condemning others without serious moral need.
Fairness is not the mob's objective, and neither is justice. The opposite of both is true. The anarchists are out to destroy America, and they believe to do this, they must first destroy anything that Americans have spent the last quarter of a millennia celebrating and embracing. In their mania, our morality is unfit, our ethos is untrue, our heroes are unworthy, and our dreams remain unenchanting.
No one rationally uses that Biblical quote to justify letting murderers escape justice. On the other hand, it serves as a quality foundation to avoid becoming holier than thou. The anarchists are generally atheists, so they put no stock in Biblical quotes of any sort, even if attributed to the direct teachings of Jesus Christ.
Sadly for all of America, and particularly damming for the anarchists engaged in the wholesale destruction, the once debatable goal of removing Confederate monuments has morphed at lightning speed to the destruction of memorials to Union generals, former Presidents, Founding Fathers, and even international figures, who up until this latest incarnation of insanity, were scions of morality and courage. Even Mahatma Ghandi has had statues in America desecrated. The list includes George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, noteworthy abolitionists, and a host of other people of eminent esteem.
Among the more egregious acts was the complete destruction of a statue of Ulysses Grant, a man who risked his life in the crusade of the American Civil War, to end slavery in the southeast, and then as President, to work for Constitutional Amendments that fully provided equal voting rights to black citizens of the United States. Grant as President also worked to destroy the first generation of the Ku Klux Klan. These are all well documented facts.
But, the irony does not stop there. Less widely known, but no less true, is that when Grant married his wife, then Julia Dent, he was a noted abolitionist, who's own father was quite public in condemning slavery. After resigning his Army commission in 1854, Grant returned to his family in Saint Louis, and personally cut down trees to build his family a log cabin he named, "Hardscrabble." The name was as much a description of just how dirt poor Grant was after leaving the Army. He also cut down trees into firewood, which he sold to keep his family in a hand-to-mouth existence.
During these hard times in 1858, Julia Dent's father gave his daughter a personal gift of one slave, William Jones. Jones assisted Grant in cutting down trees for firewood and adding to their log cabin home. Despite remaining financially destitute, less than a year later, Grant took William Jones to the local courthouse and formally emancipated him. Grant could have legally sold Jones for several thousand dollars, enough to provide for his impoverished family for years. But, in 1859, Grant instead chose, in his own words, to "hereby manumit, emancipate and set free said William Jones from slavery forever."
Jones and Grant shook hands goodbye in the courtroom. Jones began his life in freedom. Grant returned to abject poverty for his family.
None of this mattered to the hate America anarchist mob, who destroyed Grant's memorial in Portland, Oregon this week. Not content with merely destroying the statue, they had to spray paint, "Slave owner" on the now empty pedestal. Having just read the true history of Grant's very brief period of time technically owning a slave, it stretches logic to the breaking point to truly regard Grant as a slave owner in the real sense.
No less a true expert on Grant, who worked closely with him for many years, Frederick Douglass had this to say of the man, "Too broad for prejudice, too humane to despise the humblest, too great to be small at any point." Again, not even the unlimited admiration of Grant, by such a noteworthy champion of black freedom in America, was enough for the anarchist mob. Truth is, they are historically illiterate, and therefore unaware of any such nuances of reality.
Fairness is not the mob's objective, and neither is justice. The opposite of both is true. The anarchists are out to destroy America, and they believe to do this, they must first destroy anything that Americans have spent the last quarter of a millennia celebrating and embracing. In their mania, our morality is unfit, our ethos is untrue, our heroes are unworthy, and our dreams remain unenchanting.
One can quite easily reply to the mob by asking pointedly, what is there about Communism, which they fully embrace, has turned out moral, true, heroic, or dreamy! It must be true that the dreams of the anarchist are rancid, because if they were worthy, they would simply champion what makes them good, vice spend so much time destroying all that is around them.
What should have been another entirely brief example of the rabid frenzy of the extremists in America, has instead become a month long foray into the macabre, because municipal leaders across America lost whatever courage they ever possessed, and surrendered the best of their cities to the ravaging mob. Some have asked what President Trump has been doing during this time, other than constantly making public demands that governors and mayors perform their duties, allow their police to perform theirs, and put a quick end to this political warfare. In truth, the President would have been legally challenged if he placed federal troops into cities in the direct objection of state governors and city mayors. Even Dwight Eisenhower had to first browbeat the public agreement of Arkansas governor Orval Faubus, before he ordered the 101st Airborne Division into Little Rock to prevent complete violations of the recently announced Supreme Court case of Brown vs Board of Education. That remains so far the only time since Reconstruction that a President has ordered US troops into an American city to defend federal law.
Trump has repeatedly asked governors in ravaged states to agree to the use of American troops. But, in the hardest hit areas, the requests have been stiff armed. It now rests with the American people to decide what form of government they truly wish to have, one that stands for rule of Constitutional law, or another that facilitates mob anarchy.
What we see before us is imperfect intolerance, the sanctimonious claim that to be worthy of memorialization, subjects must be perfect. Likewise, to be worthy of duty, honor, and country, a nation must be a perfect example. The claims are a vacuous shell of unlimited anger, and perpetual rage. Our Founding Fathers chose instead a different model, one that sought logic to exist in harmony with imperfect people, without the arrogance of thinking that a perfect form of man would be ever achievable, and instead use well formed laws, carefully studied and principally written, to establish human liberty and ensure its continual protection.
While Winston Churchill called such a system, "the worst form of government except for all other forms that have been tried from time to time," he was wise enough to realize that having lived to see the evils of two forms of totalitarian governments, Fascism and Communism, that he had no use for either. After so many millions of people have needlessly died on the altar of collectivist government, it remains incredible that today people would convince themselves, "Ah, but only if we tried it!"
Well, such government has been tried, and failed every single time. Latest examples include Venezuela, taken in less than one generation from the wealthiest and most stable nation in South America, into the most failed regional state. Those of us still willing to sit on the fence must take immediate heed of this lesson, and fortify our courage. We have more than a right to defend liberty, we have a moral duty to defend it. And it's time we get on with the defense, in the most vigorous means necessary.
-- Ken Stallings
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