How Many Statues “Still” Need To Go?

The New York City Council removed a statue of Thomas Jefferson because the composer of the Declaration of Independence and signatory to the Constitution owned slaves.  More recently the political correctness gestapo removed the statue of Theodore Roosevelt from outside New York’s Museum of Natural history.

Of course, these are just a few examples of the scores of statues, plaques and memorials that have been removed from public view by over-zealous and under-educated woke activists.  Many have been destroyed.

It all started with the statues and memorials of Confederate leaders – including the honoring of the Confederate battle flag.  Not all these honors date back to the post-Civil War era.  Some were erected when the Democrats took control of the old Confederate states first by force.  They statues were part of the culture of Jim Crow laws and the unleashing of the paramilitary organizations, such as the Ku Klux Klan, the White Citizens Councils and the Knights of the White Camellia – to name a few. 

The next wave of honors – such as including the battle flag on state seals and official flags – arose with the Democrats’ opposition to integration, equal justice and voting rights for blacks during the 1950s and 1960s Southern Resistance Movement.  That was the era when Democrat Alabama Governor George Wallace stood in the school entrance in defiance of a court to block black children from entering.  He infamously declared “Segregation today.  Segregation tomorrow.  Segregation forever.”

Following the contemporary attack on Confederate statues, the loony left decided that virtually every American icon had to go.  There was only one issue to consider.  Did they own slaves?  Forget about their enormous positive accomplishments.  Forget about the fact that Jefferson, Washington and others longed for the end of slavery.  Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence boldly declared that all men are created equal – and created a Constitution that would make it possible.

Then the statue toppling brigade showed their partisan underpinnings.  They went after Lincoln – the man that fought against slavery all his life, endured a Civil War because of his beliefs in abolition, issued the Emancipation Proclamation and pushed for the 13^th, 14^th and 15 Amendments to the Constitution – the first of which was enacted before he was assassinated.

The Republican Roosevelt was targeted because they claim he was a white supremacist.  He was nothing of the kind.    In a famous rebuke to the southern Democrats, Roosevelt invited his friend and advisor Booker T. Washington to the White House for dinner.

But who has been exempted from the cancel culture hit list?  For starters, there is that other Roosevelt – FDR – who was a genuine white supremacist, and a bit of an anti-Semite.  He is the fellow who illegally incarcerated Japanese Americans in concentration camps and forced a boat load of Jewish refugees back to Hitler’s Germany.  He refused to allow Blacks at his Georgia spa.  And he was Woodrow Wilson’s right-hand man in implementing the segregation of the military and the Executive Branch of the federal government.

Yes, the same Wilson who praised the Ku Klux Klan and showed the pro-Klan movie “Birth of a Nation” at the White House.  He ordered photos to be attached to all job applications in the federal government and student applications at Princeton — when he served a President of the University — so that Negroes could be identified and rejected.

But he is still an honored icon among leftwing Democrats.  In fact the major Washington Progressive think-tank is the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.  Wilson’s statues and plaques remain undisturbed – although some Princeton students have objected.

Then there is the premier Democrat icon, President Andrew Jackson – a white supremacist of the first order.   Not only was he a slave owner, but he is the only President known to enjoy personally whipping his slaves – even killing some.  

You may recall that he was responsible for the “Trail of Tears” that relocated Native Americans from their home reservations in a forced march that killed many.  He is also reported to have murdered  Native Americans.  According to Indian Country Today, “Jackson slaughtered thousands of Native families during his lifetime. He murdered men, women and children because they stood in the way of progress.”

Jackson is so important to Democrats that they hold Jackson Day Dinners across the country.  When Biden looks out the White House window, he gazes upon a Jackson statue across the street in Lafayette Square (pictured above).  He is memorialized on the twenty-dollar bill.  Efforts to replace him with slave to slave-emancipator Harriet Tubman have been stalled in Congress.

Demonstrators did try to topple the Jackson statue during a recent riot.  They were unsuccessful and there has been no official effort to remove it to a less honored and conspicuous location.

Personally, I supported the removal of Confederate statues and memorials from places of honor – to be relocated to historic locations, such as museums.  Republicans began that process long before Trump took office.

Trump, however, used his first days in office to hang a portrait of Jackson in the Oval Office and even had a Native American delegation photographed with Trump in front of the Jackson painting.  A little tone deaf.  He made a pilgrimage to Jackson’s burial site.  I wrote a highly critical commentary – blasting Trump for a bone-headed move that took Democrats off the hook for their admiration of Jackson.

Nowhere is the hypocrisy of the left more apparent than in their campaign to cancel American history along partisan lines.  If they were honest, Wilson, FDR and Jackson would be high on the list for political nullification.

So, there ‘tis.