Thursday, March 28, 2024

Let the book burning begin

Posted

Nothing has stirred up the American people lately like the current call by the America hating left to tear down monuments. The hypocrisy of such an action is apparently lost on the “progressives” demanding it.
Book burning has been practiced by some of the worst dictatorial regimes in history including Adolph Hitler’s Nazi Regime. According to Wikipedia, “the instance of book burning becomes emblematic of a harsh and oppressive regime which is seeking to censor or silence an aspect of a nation’s culture.
Tearing down monuments that might remind us of our history, no matter how uncomfortable that history might be is no different than burning books because we disagree with their message.
In this case it is the inclusive, tolerant and compassionate left that is calling for the destruction of symbols of our cultural heritage they find offensive. It’s not only hypocritical it is massively stupid.
We can eliminate any reference to the imperfect men who built our great country despite their imperfections, or we can try to learn from their mistakes. One thing we cannot do is make our country better by pretending those mistakes were never made.
In the eyes of the not so tolerant left the worst thing about America is it was built on the evil foundation of enslaving other human beings. Slavery was a horrible thing, however, it was not invented here. In fact slavery had been around since man’s earliest recorded history. Stories of slaves can be found in some of the earliest books of the bible.
The first public sale of African slaves was in Lagos, Portugal in 1444. Almost 50 years before Columbus sailed off to discover America. In fact the Portuguese built their first permanent slave trading post at Elmina, Gold Coast, now Ghana in 1482 – ten years before Columbus.
The first direct shipment of slaves from Africa to the Americas did not occur until 1518. That was 258 years before the American Revolution.
By the 1780’s the Trans-Atlantic slave trade had reached its peak and by the early 1800’s Denmark, Britain and the United States had passed laws banning the trading of slaves.
Banning the trading of slaves did not end the practice of owning slaves.
In 1777 following the war of Independence, Vermont became the first state to abolish slavery.
The Confederacy has long claimed that the civil war was about states rights not slavery. The reality is that the argument over slavery had driven politics in the 1860 election. Lincoln saw slavery as a moral problem that had divided the country far too long. He ran for President campaigning against slavery. Lincoln was the first Republican to be elected President but before he was inaugurated in 1861 seven southern states had seceded from the union and formed the Confederated States of America.
Two year’s later Lincoln emancipated American slaves.
Those who are calling for the removal of any reference to the unfortunate history of our country are ultimately diminishing the sacrifice Americans made in addressing the scourge of human history. Slavery was not a unique American experience. And it is factually inaccurate to say America was founded on a unanimous support for slavery. Slavery has been at the core of our divided national dialogue ever since its founding.
Ultimately, it will be those on the losing end of this tragic history that will be the biggest winners in the destruction of these monuments. Not because they can say they were able to diminish the impact of those who fought to continue it, but because they can erase the historical memory of the contribution their side had in continuing it.
Make no mistake about who worked to end slavery in America. It was conservative, white, male Republicans who fought valiantly against powerful forces aligned to continue it.
It was white southern Democrats who worked to create laws to keep black Americans poor and powerless. It’s Democrats who continue to make policies that enslave minorities to the state. It isn’t conservative Republicans.
Unfortunately most modern day Republicans have lost their nerve and their sense of history. Many have been cowed by a national media that use the politics of personal destruction to drive political thought even further left.
Trump’s opponents may not have seceded from the union but their efforts to disrupt his Presidency are no less treasonous.
It is time for our elected “leaders” to get behind him and go to work for the American people. Those who can’t should be honest and resign.

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