Posted on 08/11/2021 5:19:39 AM PDT by Kaslin
From his first day in office, Joe Biden committed to putting freedom pioneer Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill, and some time around 2028, it might happen. In her perilous role as a scout and spy for the U.S. Army during the Civil War, and as an abolitionist and humanitarian, she earned it. She risked re-enslavement at least 19 times in helping others to escape.
Tubman would replace Andrew Jackson, a favorite target of those who rail against his slave ownership – perhaps totaling up to 150 people – while ignoring the context. Nearly everyone in Jackson’s environment was racist at the time. Jackson championed the Indian Removal Act that displaced nearly 46,000 Creeks, Chickasaws, Cherokees, Seminoles, and Choctaws from their ancestral lands. Having ascended to the presidency, perhaps it is time for him to vanish from our currency.
Villains as Viewed in the Future
Nearly everyone has transgressed to some extent, so perhaps the vital issue is, “At what point does the transgression overcome the good?” Or put more positively, “At what point does the good a person has done outweigh the misdeeds?” Suppose that Hispanics working in America today as house cleaners, maids, nannies, gardeners, and lawn keepers, 200 years from now, are regarded as having been exploited.
What if 200 years from now, whatever deeds that Hispanic domestic exploiters otherwise accomplished, are looked upon with disdain. This is not fair, you say? “You don’t understand the context.” “We gave them employment, and we helped their families to prosper. It was all for the good.” Tell that to future ‘progressives.’
Besides Andrew Jackson, who else should be defamed? Let’s explore some recent notables in American history and see what laurels should be stripped from their legacy.
Transgressions Abound
John F. Kennedy’s transgressions are legion. Besides being a serial philanderer, his constant patronage of prostitutes put him in the path of extortionists. He also initiated sex with White House interns (as young as 18) on numerous occasions. A former JFK intern, Mimi Alford, among many others, has documented his unforgivable behavior.
Great men are not always good men and the corollary is true for women as well. If we’re embarking on a witch hunt of the famous men and women in history, and then defaming them when we find something heinous, or merely unpalatable, we might have no one left.
JFK’s likeness remains on our 50¢ piece and the so-named Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts sits un-mired on the Potomac River in Washington. The so-named JFK Airport in New York, JFK Federal buildings, schools, libraries, awards, and distinctions all named after him remain intact.
Mostly Good?
“Wait,” you say. According to many people JFK was a force for good. Is that so? During his time, and even today, according to many people, Andrew Jackson was a force for good, otherwise he would not have become the standard bearer on the $20 bill in the first place.
What about Ted Kennedy? He was negligent in the suffocation death of Mary Jo Kopechne. Forensic evidence, suppressed at the time, reveals that she suffocated slowly; she did not drown. Kennedy had time to save her, but waited an astounding nine hours before reporting the incident to the Edgartown authorities.
In 2009, A non-profit educational institution and museum was named for him: the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the U.S. Senate. Years before Mary Jo, Ted Kennedy was concerned about his athletic eligibility at Harvard for the coming year. He arranged to have a friend sit in for him to take a Spanish language final examination.
The ploy failed and Kennedy was expelled. Nothing stopped a majority of voters in Massachusetts from continually re-electing him and enabling him to become the fourth longest serving senator in United States history, lasting nearly 47 years, ending with his death.
Undeserving and Honored
If you’re steadfast in outing historical figures that are undeserving of posthumous accolades, consider J. Edgar Hoover. He became a life-long career criminal who incessantly hounded Martin Luther King, Jr.
Hoover kept his post intact for decades by extorting one U.S. President after another. After all the revelations of Hoover’s lifelong propensity to break the laws that he was entrusted to enforce, why is the FBI building still named after him? If you can answer that one, we can get back to Andrew Jackson.
Look at all those villains way back when.
Don’t you DARE look at any of the current villains!
And all i can keep thinking is “those bastards”. At least LBJ isn’t on the EBT cards.
I think that he could have gone another 10 paragraphs of the evil deeds of Ted Kennedy and have only scratched the surface.
Saye Colstokayo was the African who betrayed his clan and permitted the superior Wehuya to carry them off into slavery.
Saye is the reason for black America
Modern Saudi Arabia doesn't have an 'Afro-Arabian' problem.
Why?
Arab muslims preferred their slaves fully emasculated, nothing between the anus and a small hole to pee but scar tissue.
One wonders why any American Black feels a need to declare fealty to islam...
They work on division, making someone or group appear evil to another helps them play off one person/group against another.
They need that distinction - good/bad thus becomes support/cancel.
Evil people are easy to de-humanize. Once they've achieved that, good people will support or at least ambivalently allow all kinds of bad things to happen to the "evil."
If they can't find them, they will create them by blowing up trivial issues into end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it if we don't DO SOMETHING! About this RIGHT NOW! (remember bakers? Remember wedding photographers? Remember statues?)
If they can't create them fast enough or convincingly enough today, they can go back through history because there have always been and always will be bad people. Some of the worst people today are even looking for other bad people in the history books right now...
The left needs this steady stream - not because they really want to do anything about it. Not because there are any lingering wrongs to correct. They merely want to keep training the sheeple "Look to us, your betters, we'll tell you who is good and who is evil!" It is merely ongoing conditioning. That is truly evil.
Tubman, a pro-gun Republican who shot Democrats. I’m not seeing a downside.
“The left needs villains.
They work on division, making someone or group appear evil to another helps them play off one person/group against another.”
Funny thing is that Kennedy and Jackson were both Democrats.
“ Suppose that Hispanics working in America today as house cleaners, maids, nannies, gardeners, and lawn keepers, 200 years from now, are regarded as having been exploited.”
Almost all of those same Hispanics are descendants of indigenous people who made slavery, ritualistic murder, torture and cannibalism a part of everyday life. Some are also descendants of Spanish colonizers who were not exactly peaceful saints either.
Bottom line is that in today’s crazy world anybody and anything can be cancelled if you dig deep enough. As for the future, we all might be condemned because we denied our pets the right to vote. Who knows.
Nearly everyone has transgressed to some extent, so perhaps the vital issue is, “At what point does the transgression overcome the good?” Or put more positively, “At what point does the good a person has done outweigh the misdeeds?”
That’s a question for a formal debate. But as a political question it will never be honestly debated because neither party has any interest in resolving it and moving on.
Personally, I have no problem with Harriet Tubman being recognized on the Twenty. But Andrew Jackson’s presidency was the birth of the Democrat Party. If the Democrats want to lead the charge to pull one of theirs off the currency then maybe it’s time?
The country will never be whole until the words and actions of Henry Clay are erased from history.
Y’know, if Harriet Tubman hadn’t been feeling sick around October 16, 1859 she would be a villain, too, and hanged along with John Brown, assuming she wasn’t killed in the fighting at Harper’s Ferry.
John Brown asked both Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman to join him in the attack on Harper’s Ferry. Douglass declined (but didn’t bother to warn anyone of the murderous attack) and Tubman accepted. When the time came, Tubman was ill and had to miss John Brown’s raid.
That is is how fine the line is between hero and villain.
His childish take on Andrew Jackson is annoying. Look at his life and his revolutionary war experiences. His father died in a logging accident three weeks before he was born. He had a rough life on the frontier. He lost two brothers and his mother in the revolutionary war. A British officer slashed him on the face with a Sabre and left him with lifelong scars because Jackson refused to clean his muddy boot. He fought with distinction in the Creek war (yes, the eastern Indian wars were very real and very deadly)
He pretty much saved the nation at the Battle of New Orleans. Yes it was fought a few weeks after the war of 1812 was “finished”. But no serious historian thinks a Brit victory at New Orleans would have done anything but cause the Brits to dive right back in.
The low life evil man then adopted three sons, one of whom was a creek Indian boy. He saved America from a national bank. He paid his slaves, built them far better than average quarters where they lived as families, and he even armed them.
Disgusting to see this snowflake writer raised in comfort trash Jackson. Tubman is very worthy of being honored. But you don’t need to trash Jackson to do so. It’s rather interesting that central bankers cannot wait to remove Jackson from the currency!
This really started in earnest when Bill Clinton was caught with Monica Lewinsky.
The left resurrected the stories about Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemmings in order to deflect from Clinton with the "everyone does it, even Presidents" angle.
However, in the broader sense, the left has been on a mission to disconnect "America" from Americans. Tearing down statues, renaming schools, rewriting history, and condemning Founding Figures are all attempts to detach the history of the land from the natives who live on it.
The British lost England, the French have lost France, the Italians are on the way towards losing Italy. And the left is on course to steal away America from Americans.
-PJ
bkmk
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