The left is destroying the wrong monuments.
Liberals are toppling statues commemorating American heroes — some even anti-slavery — while ignoring those of racists and figures who contributed to human misery.
Those statues include their own heroes in history, beginning with Vladimir Lenin, whose adherence to socialism makes him the subject of reverence by Millennials and Democratic politicians.
The communist revolutionary ruled Russia with an iron fist from 1917 to 1924, plunging the Russian people into despair with an economic system that eventually crushed under its own weight 72 years after it was launched.
Nonetheless, there are no fewer than five statues in the U.S. commemorating Lenin — in Las Vegas, Atlantic City, New York City, Los Angeles, and the largest and most famous, a 16-foot bronze statue, in the Fremont neighborhood of Seattle, Washington.
Even more popular with the left is another communist revolutionary — Cuba’s Ernesto “Ché” Guevara. You can’t walk through a Midwestern mall, down a Manhattan street or into a Los Angeles sporting event without spotting at least one teen in a Ché t-shirt.
A statue of an actor portraying Ché was erected in New York City’s Central Park, a location that ironically would have been a radioactive wasteland had Guevara had his way. He made that clear after the Cuban Missile Crisis, which resulted in Russian nuclear-tipped missiles bound for Cuba being sent back to the Soviet Union.
"If the missiles had remained (in Cuba), we would have used them against the very heart of the U.S., including New York City,” he wrote in November, 1962 — one month after the event. “The victory of socialism is well worth millions of atomic victims."
In addition to his hatred of the United States, Guevara was a rabid racist who considered anyone of African descent to be lazy and the intellectual inferior of European descendants.
Accordingly, Sen. Marco Rubio found it hypocritical for entertainers Jay-Z and his wife Beyoncé to vacation in Cuba in 2013. The Florida Republican, himself a Cuban-American, made that clear on ABC News’ “This Week” afterwards.
Directing hatred toward statues of former slave-holders ignores the fact that until the mid 19th century, slavery was the norm throughout the world — not the exception. Black plantation owners, who were once slaves themselves, held slaves. Native Americans kept slaves — including black slaves. Should we then destroy the huge memorial to Crazy Horse now in progress in the Black Hills of South Dakota?
The indigenous people Christopher Columbus met upon his arrival in the Americas held slaves. Yet it was the explorer’s statue that was defaced with red paint last week in Houston, Texas.
The current wave of monument desecration began with a clash of wills in Charlottesville, Virginia, over the renaming of a park and removal of a statue dedicated to Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee.
Did Black Lives Matter and Antifa members bother researching Lee before their rush to judgment?
Lee considered the practice of slavery evil.
“In this enlightened age, there are few I believe, but what will acknowledge, that slavery as an institution, is a moral & political evil in any Country,” he wrote in an 1856 letter to his wife.
Yet the left is working pell-mell to destroy America’s rich history, starting with Civil War monuments, on to those honoring the founders and now even including a call to destroy Mount Rushmore.
In a Vice editorial headlined, “Let's Get Rid of Mount Rushmore,” Wilbert Cooper wrote that a 2015 visit to the monument filled him with both “wonder” and “disgust.”
While acknowledging that both George Washington and Thomas Jefferson freed us from England’s tyranny, Cooper added “they also enslaved their fellow man, committing special kinds of inhumane acts that should never be confined to footnotes.”
I’m not suggesting that the statues to Lenin or Guevara be dismantled, or the monument commemorating Crazy Horse be blown to smithereens. They’re works of an artist’s expression and are entitled to the same First Amendment protections as a peaceful demonstration, a political address or a Tchaikovsky composition.
If you’re repulsed by a statue the proper response is to research and learn from it. If you still feel triggered by the sight of it, avoid it altogether and seek professional help.
That Antifa wants them eradicated from the national landscape is one more indication that the “fa” in its name more appropriately stands for “First Amendment,” not “fascist.”
Antifa is anti-First Amendment, and as such, its members are the fascists.
Michael Dorstewitz is a retired lawyer and has been a frequent contributor to BizPac Review and Liberty Unyielding. He’s also a former U.S. Merchant Marine officer and an enthusiastic Second Amendment supporter, who can often be found honing his skills at the range. To read more of his reports — Click Here Now.
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