Posted on 02/12/2023 8:30:57 AM PST by robowombat
Created by the fiscal 2021 national defense authorization act, the Naming Commission’s duties included recommending procedures for renaming Department of Defense assets “to prevent commemoration of the Confederate States of America or any person who served voluntarily” with them. While nine U.S. Army posts named for Confederates have received the most attention, the commission’s “remit” extends much further. In fact, a logical end point to its (Diversity-Equity-Inclusion-inspired) work is nowhere to be found:
The Commission recognizes that [defense] assets commemorating the Confederacy or an individual who voluntarily served with the Confederacy will continue to be identified after the submission of the Commission plan. The Commission recommends the base rename, remove, or modify any such assets identified in the future [emphasis added].
The ramifications of the above remain to be seen, but already the U.S. Military Academy at West Point is undergoing a (shameful) transformation: its “Reconciliation Plaza” has begun to be dismantled and will soon be altered beyond recognition. The plaza, consisting of stone “markers” arranged on the academy’s grounds, was presented by the West Point Class of 1961 on the occasion of their fortieth reunion in 2001. Exactly a century prior to the 1961 members of the Long Gray Line, the school graduated two classes in 1861 – one in May, the other in June. Graduates served in both the Northern and Southern armies.
The precise purpose of Reconciliation Plaza was to “commemorate the reconciliation between North and South and dedicate this memorial to our classmates who died in service to our nation” [emphasis added]. The latter intent was traditional at military schools (including my alma mater, the Virginia Military Institute), and was non-controversial.
Not so the former. The markers, duly noted by the Commission, depicted “acts and events between 1861 and 1913 to serve as examples of reconciliation.” But given the atmosphere in official Washington since the fruitless extremism-in-the-ranks hunt in 2021, such a purpose is suspect, especially if white men were behind it.
At least two markers or exhibits described by the Commission deserve particular attention. They depicted the following acts or events:
“Marker 4 portrays a Confederate soldier providing water to a U.S. Soldier wounded by Confederate guns”; and,
“Marker 6 commemorates Confederate [Major General] Stephen Ramseur and two U.S. Army classmates from West Point who comforted him as he lay dying after a surprise attack by Ramseur’s army failed.”
Stephen Dodson Ramseur, who had sustained multiple wounds in battle prior to the October 1864 Battle of Cedar Creek – and, at 27, was the youngest West Point graduate to be promoted to major general – had just had his second horse shot from under him when he was hit in the lungs, a mortal wounding. Learning of his condition and subsequent capture by Union forces, several of Ramseur’s friends from West Point “came to his side,” among them his close friend, George Armstrong Custer. Ramseur, whose first wedding anniversary was days away, had just learned of the birth of his daughter.
Astoundingly, the Commission found the depiction of these acts to be within its remit and unacceptable to remain in place. Indeed, at West Point’s Reconciliation Plaza. What Purity-Tested entity determines the giving of water to a wounded soldier, and the comforting of a dying soldier by his friends, to be unacceptable depictions of reconciliation – particularly among the very soldiers who fought one another honorably on the field of battle? If the actual participants themselves were able to reconcile to such a degree during or immediately after the heat of battle, who in a later generation dares to dismiss and hold in contempt such acts of kindness?
Commemorate is but the latest politically weaponized entry in the lexicon of those who “love all words that devour.” In the 2021 defense act’s four main, relevant paragraphs in Section 370, some form of the word “commemorate” appears in each – and is prohibitive of the Confederacy and Confederates. Without debating the merits, and mostly demerits, of Congress’s mandate, it is enough to return to the Commission’s own words. The primary purpose of the Class of 1961’s gift to West Point was to “commemorate the reconciliation between North and South,” which the Commission quoted [emphasis added].
The Commission may have wished otherwise, but commemorating the Confederacy or Confederates was not within the Class of 1961’s stated purpose. The Commission’s accurate quotation of the purpose in its report is at odds with – and severely undermines – its own recommendations.
Eight decades ago, the United States fought Germany and Japan in a costly, four-year war. Today, both former adversaries are among our closest allies. Sixteen decades ago, the United States fought the Confederate States of America in an earlier, costly, four-year war. By the 1940s, North and South had been reconciled. With bitter irony, today that reconciliation is being undone by those who presume to have the national interest at heart.
recommended by
How To Get Rid Of Rats In Your Home Fast LEARN MORE
Will this Commission’s Reconciliation Plaza recommendation represent the philosophy or principle to be taught to cadets soon to be commissioned as second lieutenants in the United States Army? At storied West Point? Such an intentional position is at once surreal, outrageous, and yet another stark reminder of the thin veneer of civilization threatened by those whose leaders follow – wittingly or otherwise – in the path of Italian political thinker Antonio Gramsci, who in the 1920s and 30s foresaw cultural Marxism as a potential game-changer in the West.
The Commission’s “anti-racist” work harms the U.S. military generally, and the Army particularly: the latter assessed as “Marginal” by the respected Heritage Foundation; struggling to accession recruits adequate in numbers and quality – and whose primary adversaries, China and Russia, can hardly believe their good fortune stemming from America’s self-inflicted, divisive policies.
Forrest L. Marion, Ph.D., is a retired U.S. Air Force officer and military historian. He is the author of Flight Risk: The Coalition's Air Advisory Mission in Afghanistan, 2005-2015 (Naval Institute Press, 2018), and (forthcoming), Standing Up Space Force: The Road to the Nation's Sixth Armed Service (Naval Institute Press).
you hear that confederates? Your government can’t stand you-
I had to look up the word “contumely”.
And in the next century, the name-changers will be demanding changes to the names the current name-changers have ‘corrected’ for history.
They are never going to stop. They are perpetual instigators who will always find something to complain about. Confederate statues, statues, building names, guns, the flag, food/drugstore deserts, colors, yada yada yada.
These idiots ignore the fact that slave owners with a certain number of slaves were exempt from conscription into the confederate army, hence the complaint “rich man’s war, poor man’s fight”.
What then are we to say who are the descendants of the men in butternut and gray to the nation whose flag we pledged allegiance all through our school years?
First, name the TRAITORS to the Republic, it people
and true military.
Second, accountability ...
Good word.
Tell them California is a great place to live.
The Naming Commissions are a bunch of pathetic busybody fags. They need to get themselves some real jobs. They took away the Cleveland Indians’ name because they thought the team was named after “Native Americans”. These same piggies are the idiots who told everyone to stop calling their “Native Americans”, Indians. Fortunately, the Indians from India never complained once about the Cleveland team being called the Indians. Embrace the suck of the RATS’ new “Amerika”.
“Arnold” bread, “Lee jeans” must be banned and stonewalls should be dismantled. Gotta get it right.
However, most of the upper class did participate, Wade Hampton, possibly the richest man in the South did as did all his sons. When the yankee general Wadsworth fell at the Wilderness rebs stood around to look at this elegantly turned out, obviously rich man in his beautiful bespoke uniform. A dead rich yankee general was a real novelty. The same when the wealthy litteratuer BG William Haynes Lyttle fell at Chicamauga trying bravely to stop the rout of his brigade a Confederate colonel riding over the field shortly after he was killed ordered a reb sergeant to stand watch over the fallen foe. Other Confederate officers noted this and the circle of rebel soldiers eyeing the immaculately groomed and well turned out yankee asked who he was and one confederate officer said “I knew him, he is William Lyttle, who I knew in Cincinnati before the war. He was always an elegant and high toned gentleman.
the liberal run government, the left and their vile ilk seem to be telling them that they are not welcome-
> They are never going to stop. <
They will only stop when the silent majority finally rises up and starts to push back.
I kid, of course. The silent majority will never rise up. Quite the opposite. As the years go by, continuous indoctrination will make the silent majority even more pliable.
So the Stalinist purity march will continue. Today’s hero will be suspect tomorrow, and then erased the day after that.
I wonder when they will erase Democrat Sen. Robert Byrd and civil rights leader Martin Luther King. Both men are protected now. But Byrd was a klansman. And King wrote that homosexuality was a mental disorder.
So they gotta go!
Never forget it was Nikki Haley who started this entire process of tearing down monuments for cheap political theater after the Charleston shooting.
My congresscritter often brags about supporting the latest incarnation of the NDAA. Those bills always have some woke BS attached.
The entire south was given amnesty. Obama started this destructive cr**.
Obama really started it with the shooting in a church.
no ... stinky nikki did ...
Also, my sorry MoC Steve Scalise was the first in Congress to propose renaming bases. As his stupid aide said”Well its only four bases.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.