Dakota Beacon

Right now it’s all the rage to shut everyone - living or dead - up.  We see it in Hong Kong, now that their freedom has been extinguished by the Chinese Communist Party, where the Party thugs are busy purging books and arresting people who are not in full agreement with them.  We have seen it in the past.  Hitler had a more dramatic flair for it - his minions stoked huge bonfires with piles and piles of books.  We have two forms of it in America right now - we are banning people - firing them from their jobs, publicly shaming them, outright censoring their comments - and in allowing street mobs run by foreign influence money to tear down our statutes.  It would be an unusual day, indeed, to get through without one more of our country’s monuments or statues destroyed.  Today’s was a statue of Columbus which was toppled and thrown into Baltimore’s harbor.  It’s just the thing to do.  Does your town have a statue?  (Hint:  it doesn’t even have to be of a person - an elk or perhaps a turtle would do.)  If so, you, too, can become a part of this exciting movement to remove every trace of our nation’s culture and history.  

The first ones to go were a few years back and the wimpy and stupid Republican (and other) response was . . . well, no response.  Just let them go.  In fact, like the execrable Nikki Haley, endorse their removal.  These were “bad guys”.  Funny, how in every other sense we are not allowed to identify things as “good” or “bad” any longer, how we’re not supposed to judge anyone’s life or lifestyle.  But the people we never had the chance to actually know - people dead before we were born, like Stonewall Jackson, General Robert E. Lee and other distinguished persons associated with the Confederacy, well, they were just bad and it doesn’t matter if they were an important part of our history - they just have to go.  No one ever stood up to defend these works of art commemorating people from our past, no one stuck up for the beauty these works of art imparted to our cities either.  Donald Trump had warned when it became popular to remove Confederate statues that it would soon be the nation’s founders - Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton.  He was ridiculed for this opinion, but now we have seen it vindicated, as indeed, no one, from figures representing abstract values ("Forward") to wild animals to Teddy Roosevelt, is safe.  Today we are hearing from those who would get rid of Mt. Rushmore, one of the wonders of the world - presumably by blowing it up.  Last week it was an iconic sculpture of an elk.  

I have repeatedly said that it is folly to remove any of these statutes.  It has nothing to do with whether we approve of everything or anything they did in life.  The fact is they were a part of the story of America.  Those who are advocating for removal of all of these “approved-for-destruction” Confederate monuments - squishes like Nikki Haley, who had no ancestors in America at that time - and other  symbols, such as state flags, are no better than the book-burners in Berlin who struck on Kristallnacht, or the CCP’s purge of Hong Kong’s libraries and bookstores, or, for that matter, the information cleansing that has gone on in Russia.  You can see how far we have come.  In 1988, we, and the rest of the civilized world, were shocked at a fatwa put out on author Salman Rushdie for publishing his novel, The Satanic Verses.  “You can’t do that!” we screamed back at the Ayatollah.  Today we have no problem firing or banning people for saying, “All lives matter.”

I was disgusted at the performance of American soldiers who were participating enthusiastically in the destruction of the statue of Saddam Hussein many years ago.  This is not because I admired or could ever have been in support of Hussein.  It was because he was a part of the history of Iraq and the Middle East and, in fact, part of our history as Americans.  Why should we be cheering like a mindless mob as this statue was torn down?  It is nothing more nor less than an attempt at purging history.    Some of those who would protect statues of people they admire - Churchill or Jefferson, etc., would still be down with destroying statues of Lenin.  Finally someone else with sense - Allen West, who always shows good sense - has said it accurately:  “History is not there to like or dislike.  It is there to learn from.”

It is inherently dangerous for those who like to pick and choose who, in the parade of our past, “deserve” to be remembered - idiots like Nikki Haley, who want to virtue signal with other people’s property - because first, it leads to a “cleansed” version of history - the history we might prefer to have had, rather than truth - and second, because once we decide it’s okay to destroy statues of people we don’t like, we will find that statues of people we do like that someone else doesn’t like - George Washington, for example - will be next to fall, perhaps with a burning American flag wrapped around his head, defaced with graffiti.  Finally, let me say a word for the incredible artists who created this visual history.  We don’t have enough great art left.  We certainly should be respecting and protecting what we do have.

I have an old samovar - it’s from an era long ago, Tsarist Russia.  It’s not that it is really rare or anything, but when I look at it I become aware of life in another time and place.  A family once sat around a table outdoors on a summer’s day, drinking tea from this old samovar. It encapsulates a whole world of images.  When we look at a statue of a famous person or even a mythical figure we are often inspired to learn something about the subject - what did he or she do?  What did he create or what did he stand for?  How did this statue come to be created and why is it here?"  If we are going to require a person be “perfect” to allow his statue to be seen, it leaves only Jesus, perhaps.  Oh - oops!  Now statues of Jesus are “offensive”, to say nothing of his mother, Mary.  

All of this is an attempt to shut down discussion - discussion not only of our history, our past successes or mistakes, but all discussion.  This war on our past is also a war on our present and our future.  Renaming military and naval bases, cities (Columbus, OH, is to become “Flavortown” - I kid you not), censoring our writing and our speech, attempting to shut down youtube communication that doesn’t “fit”, destruction of our monuments and statues and public attractions dedicated to or by people from our past - it’s all part of the same thing.  Republicans and Democrats as well as everyone else should recognize this:  Black Lives Matter, like Antifa, is not about anyone’s life mattering or about racism or disadvantage or justice or anything like that - it is part of a movement to destroy not our statues but our country, bring to an end our experiment in freedom and return us to the universal enslavement we see in places like Iran or China.  We should give no ground to this.  We should, instead, say, “America has never, from its first day, pretended to be ‘perfect’.  On the contrary, our founders saw this as a great experiment in creating a society where freedom could eventually flourish and endure.  Our history is of human endeavors.  Humans being flawed, have written a history flawed with occasional injustice.  It is our task to acknowledge both the good and the bad and learn from both.  We will not tolerate destruction of monuments to our past or images of people who played a part in our history”  We can’t do that if our history is reduced to stumps in a pile of gravel.   We must no longer tolerate the destruction of our culture.  It is time to stop "supporting protestors".  These people are not protesting - they are destroying.  They are not virtuous, they are not civic-minded. They are not capable of any creativity of their own so they destroy.  And the ones leading them have other plans for the place called America.

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