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Posted on 11/08/2001 2:40:27 AM PST by shuckmaster
THE MUSLIM WOMEN are back. For several weeks after September 11, they had vanished from the streets of my neighborhood. Now they walk without fear, in their robes and veils.
I am glad they are back.
Many of those women may hate me. Some may have personal ties to the terror networks.
If New York is hit again – say, by a suitcase nuke – it is not impossible that some of those women may end up dancing and ululating in triumph over my ashes.
All of that is possible. Yet I am proud that they can walk the streets of New York unmolested.
An Indian writer recently noted that any massacre by Muslims in India comparable to the Twin Towers attack would likely have resulted in a fearsome slaughter of Muslims throughout India.
We do things differently here in America. We rain death on the guilty. But the innocent may walk among us in peace.
We owe our magnanimity, in large measure, to the example of our forefathers. One of these was General Robert E. Lee.
Lee has taken a beating in recent years. Because he fought for the Confederacy, his image is being removed from public places all over the south, as a symbol of "hate" and "racism."
Yet, a remarkable book called Robert E. Lee on Leadership by H.W. Crocker III has convinced me that "Marse Robert" would have been the first to protect innocent Muslims on the streets of New York.
The book gives life and flesh to Lee’s greatness. It explains why Winston Churchill viewed Lee as "one of the noblest Americans who ever lived," why British Field Marshall Viscount Wolseley called him, "the most perfect man I ever met," and why Theodore Roosevelt honored him as, "the very greatest of all the great captains that the English-speaking peoples have brought forth."
Lee was a terror to his enemies. In battle after battle, he routed well-fed, well-equipped Federal forces two and three times the size of his own starving, threadbare army.
Yet, like George Bush today, Lee was criticized for being too soft on the enemy.
Union commanders were notorious for their abuse of southern civilians. They encouraged their men to burn and loot at will.
When Lee invaded Pennsylvania in 1863, many southerners hoped the Yankees would get a taste of their own medicine. But that was not Lee’s way.
He prohibited "wanton injury to private property" and ordered his soldiers to pay for any supplies they took from civilians.
The Yankees were not grateful. They appreciated Lee’s gallantry no more than Osama bin Laden appreciates Bush’s. Their only response was to send General Sherman burning and looting his way through Georgia.
Today’s historians and teachers seem as hard-hearted as Sherman himself. Dismissing Lee’s virtues, they accuse him of fighting for an evil cause – the preservation of slavery.
Yet, Lee opposed slavery.
In 1856, he wrote to his wife, "In this enlightened age, there are few I believe, but what will acknowledge, that slavery as an institution, is a moral and political evil in any Country."
Lee believed that slaves should be emancipated gradually, their owners compensated, and the slaves trained and set up in steady jobs.
When Lee inherited some slaves from his father-in-law’s estate, he put his theory to work, freeing them all, but in slow, gradual stages. By the time Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, the last of Lee’s slaves had already been freed.
Lee once urged Confederate president Jefferson Davis to emancipate all southern slaves and to allow "the use of… negroes as soldiers" to fight the Yankees. Davis rejected the plan.
After the war, Lee continued to set an example in treating black freedmen as equals.
At a service in St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Richmond, a black man created a stir by rising to receive communion.
One witness reported that the parishioners "retained their seats in solemn silence and did not move," while the priest looked "embarassed."
It was Robert E. Lee who broke the ice. He strode up the aisle and knelt beside the black man to take communion. Others then rose and followed his lead.
Men of such magnitude are rare in history. They come but once in a century.
It is time to replace Lee’s portraits, wherever they have been taken down, time to restore Marse Robert to the schoolbooks, and to honor him as the great American he truly was.
Never again should we squander our heritage so recklessly and to so little purpose.
BUMP
For example, is it not too taboo for the U.S. to knock on each and every middle eastoner's door and ask him questions? If Americans were living in the middle east and THEY had been terrorized by Americans, how do you think Americans would be treated? Yet we cannot even ask questions without "probable cause."
Thanks Shucks and thanks for your web site. I visit it often.
Rebel
I once read an article about the Viscount and he may well have been the greatest soldier the British Empire ever produced.
Here is his total quote re: Lee
"I have met many of the great men of my time, but Lee alone impressed me with the feeling that I was in the presence of a man cast in a grander mold and made of a different and finer metal than all other men. He is stamped on my memory as a being apart and superior in every way- a man with whom none I ever knew were worthy to be classed.
I have read some of the letters Lee wrote to his wife and children during the Mexican War. I was tremendously impressed at how affectionate he was toward both his children and wife. He clearly loved them dearly.
By the way, nonsensical, I saw your bs on another thread, and just for the record, I vehemently oppose the use of Southern symbols like the battle flag by hate groups like the KKK, even more than I hate narrow-minded bigots like you. You see, we Southerners aren't still fighting the war, we fight the on-going prejudices and injustices committed by aholes like you. In fact, all we want is to be left alone to celebrate the noble parts of our heritage in the same way we are proud to celebrate the nobler parts of our American heritage. It's people like you who inject themselves into our culture and try to denigrate it who are "still fighting the war." The only war we are "still" fighting is the one against ignorance and injustice committed by people like you.
This is called a preemptive strike, folks.
God bless Robert E. Lee.
Atlanta is an African Peoples' Democracy with a political system that was apparently inspiried by Lagos, Nigeria. Voters are paid to vote for the right candidate (not just the Democrat, but the proper Democrat). The primary spoil is the Atlanta airport which has more traffic that O'Hare and generates tons of loot for those in charge and their friends and accomplices.
The letter was actually to a friend and let's examine the entire quote, shall we?
"There are few, I believe, in this enlightened age, who will not acknowledge that slavery as an institution is a moral and political evil. It is idle to expatiate on its disadvantages. I think it is a greater evil to the white than to the colored race. While my feelings are strongly enlisted in behalf of the latter, my sympathies are more deeply engaged for the former. The blacks are immeasurably better off here than in Africa, morally, physically, and socially. The painful discipline they are undergoing is necessary for their further instruction as a race, and will prepare them, I hope, for better things. How long their servitude may be necessary is known and ordered by a merciful Providence. Their emancipation will sooner result from the mild and melting influences of Christianity than from the storm and tempest of fiery controversy. This influence, though slow, is sure. The doctrines and miracles of our Saviour have required nearly two thousand years to convert but a small portion of the human race, and even among Christian nations what gross errors still exist! While we see the course of the final abolition of human slavery is still onward, and give it the aid of our prayers, let us leave the progress as well as the results in the hands of Him who, chooses to work by slow influences, and with whom a thousand years are but as a single day."
Harly a ringing condemnation of the institution of slavery, "Yeah, it's bad but..." Leave it in God's hands. Don't take steps to hasten its end, God will provide.
I also love the fact that Lee's dad (Light Horse Harry) was a friend of the General's.
Thanks for posting.
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