Posted on 08/25/2017 6:44:08 AM PDT by Kaslin
The virus seems to be approaching its breakout phase. We could be looking at a full-scale epidemic here.
Zika? Ebola? Flu?
Nope. We don't have a great word for this sickness yet. "Iconoclasm" -- i.e., the destruction of images and monuments that offend this mob or that -- comes close, but the toppling of statues is just one acute symptom of the fever.
Indeed, the fight over Confederate statues is just a discrete and more understandable eruption of the larger trend. This stuff has been happening for decades. One of the first outbreaks involved the word "crusader." The term hurt the feelings of people who didn't know what they didn't know. Left-wing historians (and the Islamists who love them) convinced themselves that the Crusades were a trial run of Western imperialism and colonialism. They were, in fact, largely defensive wars intended to beat back the aggression of Muslim colonizers. Even the organization Campus Crusade for Christ changed its name to "Cru" lest people get the wrong impression.
Sports teams -- most famously the Washington, D.C., NFL Franchise That Dare Not Speak Its Name -- have been under increasing pressure to drop any association with Native Americans. Columbus Day is outre. And statues of Christopher Columbus may be heading to the pyre, if recent developments in New York City are any indication.
My National Review colleague Kyle Smith reports that Mayor Bill de Blasio has ordered a 90-day review of "all statues and monuments that in any way may suggest hate or division or racism, anti-Semitism -- any kind of message that is against the values of New York City." Translation: de Blasio wants a carefully composed list of stuff to tear down.
Orderliness is the one concession de Blasio's brand of progressivism demands of the mob.
But fear not, de Blasio has made it clear that the iconic statue of Christopher Columbus in New York's Columbus Circle is "obviously ... one of the ones that will get very immediate attention because of the tremendous concerns about it." What's next, Smith wonders -- Columbia University? The District of Columbia?
In New York, the drive to purge Columbus from the historical memory (save as a pioneer of imperialism, racism and genocide) is gaining newfound momentum.
"There obviously has been ongoing dialogue and debate in the Caribbean -- particularly in Puerto Rico, where I'm from -- about this same conversation that there should be no monument or statue of Christopher Columbus based on what he signifies to the native population ... [the] oppression and everything that he brought with him," Melissa Mark-Viverito, the speaker of the New York City Council, said this week.
I wonder what Colombians think about all this.
What fascinates me about this civilizational auto-immune disorder is how superficial it is. Mark-Viverito is from Puerto Rico. More than 95 percent of the people there speak Spanish. The dominant religion of Puerto Rico is Catholicism (85 percent). As far as I can tell, Mark-Viverito, who is of mixed European ancestry (her mother, Elizabeth Viverito, was of Italian descent and a prominent Puerto Rican feminist; her father, Anthony Mark, was a prominent doctor), does not speak Taino, the native language of the Arawak tribes who inhabited Puerto Rico when Columbus arrived. Rather, she speaks the languages of her alleged oppressors -- Spanish and, of course, English. She even attended Columbia University. I could find no mention on the Internet that she has burned her diploma in protest.
My point is not that the world ushered in by Christopher Columbus has been very good to Mark-Viverito, though it obviously has. It is that toppling some statues or even incanting some nonsense about "cultural appropriation" cannot separate the iconoclasts from the culture they live in. The mobs of students -- and their enabling professors and administrators -- renaming buildings and bowdlerizing the language are still products of Western civilization. Even the poseurs who think Googling a few phrases from Karl Marx and wearing a Che Guevara T-shirt make them anti-colonialists are disciples of Western thinkers. Where does Mark-Viverito think her mother's feminism came from? The Arawaks?
For centuries, to the extent that educated Muslims talked about the Crusades at all, it was to boast about how they emerged victorious from them. But Osama bin Laden and his ilk read too much Noam Chomsky and caught the Western disease of victimization and resentment.
That is the plague sweeping the land now. And tearing down some statues and renaming some streets isn't a cure, it's a symptom.
I believe it was Robert Bork who pointed out in one of his books (it may have been The Tempting of America) that one of the most destructive problems in modern America is boredom.
This idiocy over these statues and monuments is a perfect example of what happens in a modern, affluent society that has conquered almost every problem that has afflicted the human race for thousands of years. When people don't have any problems to deal with, they'll go out and fabricate a bunch of them just to manufacture a sense of purpose in their empty lives.
Trump was elected, in part, because he opposed political correctness and because he loved America for what it was.
And Jonah Goldberg opposed him.
One of the things that confused early history is that each new ruler eradicated the statues and monuments to his predecessor. Eradicating and rewriting the past has been going on a lot longer than the past few decades. In the most recent case, one wonders what the eradicators will replace the past with. That there never was slavery, perhaps? Won’t that anger a few ambitious race baiters?
This is like the Calexit hysteria. They haven’t thought through the end game if they win. And, it is hysteria. It won’t last another year*. People are already tired of it. Also, they are attacking their own allies.
* Won’t last if the financing is stopped. Somebody is paying for the buses, food and lodging. That is the way to attack Antifa. Find out who is paying the freight and stop them.
Does that explain, the Disappearance of the Washington Base Ball Team?
Old western disease???
I can’t follow the logic of this guy. The old west was an escape form cities to fresh air and nature. It was not a riot of hate and destruction of the past. The disease seems to be a big city symptom of hate and destruction like what is going on in Chicago.
Complexity and Change vs. Simplicity and Continuity...No Contest!
Result: Overwhelmed! And that’s the point.... But that’s ok just keep voting for the supposed lessors of evils...
;(
But y’all know that already!
Gunny G @ Planet WTF!
*****
One of the things that confused early history is that each new ruler eradicated the statues and monuments to his predecessor. Eradicating and rewriting the past has been going on a lot longer than the past few decades. In the most recent case, one wonders what the eradicators will replace the past with. That there never was slavery, perhaps? Won’t that anger a few ambitious race baiters?
This is like the Calexit hysteria. They haven’t thought through the end game if they win. And, it is hysteria. It won’t last another year*. People are already tired of it. Also, they are attacking their own allies.
* Won’t last if the financing is stopped. Somebody is paying for the buses, food and lodging. That is the way to attack Antifa. Find out who is paying the freight and stop them.
I ask all those in favor of tearing down monuments...
Just how long has this been a major concern to you?...with a quick follow up....When was the 1st time you dared speak of it?
lol...they all just sheepishly grin...Like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar... (The MSM needs to be asked this every time they bring it up)
Exactly.
The irony here is that any one of the weakling RINOs this #NeverTrumper Jonah Goldberg supported would have caved to the mob in an instant in the face of this hysteria-induced monument destruction.
While I’m not sure Trump understands fully on an intellectual level the issues we are grappling with, I call him an “accidental statesman” as he seems to instinctively understand and oppose the forces that are trying to bring society down. He’s basically the only major figure standing between Western Civilization and the barbarians of the radical left.
Statues beening removed happen before “Cutrual Revolutions”, you know, like in Stalin’s Russia or Mao’s China.
Old western as in: Western world (how the US is usually referred to in this vernacular).
Shut up, Jonah.
This morning on Fox & Friends it was pointed out that Columbus Circle was commissioned after the notorious lynching of Italian-Americans in New Orleans last century. I didn’t know that.
AFGHANISTAN TALIBAN
AMERICAN TALIBAN
Good article! While it’s true that every repressive regime everywhere tries to destroy all monuments or records that reflect a time prior to its existence, I think the peculiar thing about the Western anti-monument purge is that it is supposedly being conducted on behalf of “freedom.”
New Yawk City values? ROTFL. De Blasio has to be joking.
Why isn’t anyone referring to these laws?
Confederate Soldiers Are Officially U.S. Veterans
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Confederate soldiers, sailors, and Marines that fought in the Civil war were made U.S. Veterans by an act of Congress in in 1957, U.S. Public Law 85-425, Sec 410, Approved 23 May, 1958. This made all Confederate Army/ Navy/ Marine Veterans equal to U.S. Veterans.
Additionally, under U.S. Public Law 810, Approved by the 17th Congress on 26 Feb 1929 the War Department was directed to erect headstones and recognize Confederate grave sites as U.S. War dead grave sites. Just for the record the last Confederate veteran died in 1958. When you remove a Confederate statue, monument or headstone, you are in fact, removing a statue, monument or head stone of a U.S. VETERAN.
18 U.S. Code § 1369 - Destruction of veterans’ memorials
(a) Whoever, in a circumstance described in subsection (b), willfully injures or destroys, or attempts to injure or destroy, any structure, plaque, statue, or other monument on public property commemorating the service of any person or persons in the armed forces of the United States shall be fined under this title, imprisoned not more than 10 years, or both.
(b) A circumstance described in this subsection is that—
(1) in committing the offense described in subsection (a), the defendant travels or causes another to travel in interstate or foreign commerce, or uses the mail or an instrumentality of interstate or foreign commerce; or
(2) the structure, plaque, statue, or other monument described in subsection (a) is located on property owned by, or under the jurisdiction of, the Federal Government.
Cold,
Dark,
Bottomless and
Empty lives.
Pure evil to tear down these things.
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