On Tearing Down Statues

There is a movement in this country among the extreme left, and not so extreme left sheep who imitate all the left creates in its agendas, to tear down statues erected long ago by people they admired in the day. The wanted who  to honor the face on the statue, not to make a social statement about any matter in this age. Many leftists today want to erase that history as quickly as ISIS or Al Quida does the same when it enters and occupies an area. Tearing down statues to remove history that offends current sensibilities is the trendy social media cause of the day. But the reality is that tearing down history to soothe a current social agenda is idiotic and destructive to a society.

The recent frenzy, largely the result of politicians seeing votes in doing so and a media driven cause celeb to do it, has sparked a rash of take me down behavior, both legal and anarchical tear downs.  But if a society removes its outmoded memorials because of today's views, is it guilty of erasing its past? Is it fair to judge our once heroes by today's ethical standards? Or should we see these excisions as necessary to the nation's survival?  Never mind answering. Most answers are fueled by hate and frenzy, on both sides of the equation.

Today's villainous statue was yesterday's sacred one, and  and if left will be tomorrow's anything. When we remove a current historical monument because a single behavior of the hero at the time it honors is now regarded differently, negatively indicates we have lost faith in our ability to interpret history and apply it. instead we eliminate that which offends us, sort of a modern day book banning to "protect" society. 

Rewriting history is not new here or anywhere for that matter. Tearing down the statues of heroes of a past legacy, that a segment of the society sees as still a threat to its new agenda. From Roman statues being pulled by "liberated' populations" centuries ago, to as recently as the fall of the Soviet Union empire we saw the new wave remove the heroes of the old, pulling down statues on impulse or via a planned conspiracy, all in an attempt to say "We are in charge now and will determine what is history". It may not be democratic, but it seems to be a way for the new to erase the old before beginning the new era.

Removing statues to Thomas Jefferson and George Washington because they were both slave holders, the norm of the day everywhere in the world, would be like removing the statues to Martin Luther King because he had a proclivity to "dehumanize" women by patronizing prostitutes. Only the ignorant or fanatical judge the past by a current social norm. The worst of humanity is that segment that acts as moral judge and jury of the past in order to impose political correctness today. What is disheartening is not that there are haters of our civilization out there, the leftist statue removers, but that there seem to be fewer defenders of or cultural ideals.

The generous of statue removal is political correctness, a media that cheering the removals and sells more because of it and the lack of education of the populace. Those three drive the dictatorship of the few (the left) while the rest of us are silenced by threats to brand us as "haters" "racists" or "fascists". Language is beautiful when used properly and with a judicious agenda. When used to coerce and push hate, as the statue movement does, it is a threat to the society's health and welfare.

In a democratic republic, statues that offend or are outdated are removed because the collective wants them to be replace. It is done by the majority in the community, often by vote, not by a tyranny of the few. Today, liberal tyranny reflects how much society has degraded and how defenseless it is when those who oppose statue removals or any other of leftist hate agenda becomes a feel good cause that we shrug and accept because we fear the liberal scarlet letter, H (Hater). The canary in the mine today is mindless leftist hate such as we see in the tearing down history in order to more easily impose a bigoted agenda.

Ideally, a vote by the community would satisfy all parties. But today the extreme right and extreme left are like unsupervised children, demanding their way is the right way, and they will settle for nothing less that what they decide is right. In former times the extremists would eventually disappear due a lack of substance, but today a dishonest and empty media and the platform of the internet assures us that a small minority of haters will decide our culture. It's sad. Someone should build a statue to democracy before we forget complete what it is.