Sic Semper Proditores

The statue of Robert E. Lee in Richmond, Virginia was finally removed.

And some people have a problem with that.

Lee has been memorialized by Southerners and by conservatives in other parts of the country as an honorable, religious gentleman who fought for the lost cause of his people, despite his opposition to succession and his description of slavery as "a moral, political evil."  Donald Trump, in condemning the removal of the statue, called Lee a brilliant general who, had he been alive today, would have won the war in Afghanistan.

Umm, yeah.  Lee participated in armed insurrection against the government. And despite his feelings about slavery, he continued to own slaves and treat them rather badly.  And oh yes, he lost the Civil War.  He may have fended off McClellan, Burnside and Hooker, and he may have escaped Meade's pursuit from Gettysburg, but he met his match with Ulysses S. Grant, the greatest American general not named Dwight D. Eisenhower.   

As Andrew Jackson told the people of South Carolina when they nullified a tariff law in 1832, "Disunion by armed force is treason.  Are you ready to incur its guilt?"

Thirty-four years ago, I wrote a letter to my local paper making the same points.  It was the first of many letters of mine that would published in the newspaper.  I got an anonymous hate letter in response.  But it turns out that I was actually well ahead of my time.

Now they ought to find something to full the space on that pedestal.

How about a Buffalo Soldier? 😊  

The Depth Of Our Idiocy

I have a dream that when one of our greatest historical figures speaks out for what is important and pertinent in our lives, his quote will not be mangled by abridging it, which is what happened with a quote from Martin Luther King, Jr. on a wall at his memorial in Washington. King said, two months to the day before his assassination, "If you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice. Say that I was a drum major for peace. I was a drum major for righteousness. And all of the other shallow things will not matter." On the wall of the national Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial, only part of the quote was used: "I was a drum major for peace. I was a drum major for righteousness." It makes Dr. King sound like an arrogant braggart. That is, it makes him sound like a Republican.

I have a dream that, if engineers can't find a stone tablet strong enough to include the entire quote, they'll find a similarly suitable one that can be placed on stone tablet in thirty days, as Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has ordered the National Park Service to do. I have a dream that, when we honor someone else with a national memorial, the advisory board will be smart enough to exclude quotes too big for stone tablets and not place on such tablets truncated versions of said quotes taken out of context. Correcting a technical error after the fact is not how you erect a memorial. It's how you blog. :-p

I also have a dream that statues for future national memorials will not, as this one was, be carved in China. Ye gods, now we're outsourcing statues to the Chinese?

I have a dream that one day we'll be able to stand by an expertly crafted piece of public art, and join in the old American battle cry, "Made In the USA!"