Free Republic

Under fire from ignorant iconoclasts, the Emancipation Memorial shows a former slave 'exerting his own strength with strained muscles in breaking the chain which had bound him.' Black Lives Matter Protesters have threatened to tear down the Emancipation Memorial in Washington. District of Columbia Delegate to Congress Eleanor Holmes Norton also called for the “problematic” statue’s removal from Lincoln Park, alleging the statue fails to note how enslaved African Americans pushed for their emancipation. Norton said former slave and abolitionist Frederick Douglass “expressed his displeasure” at its unveiling.In truth, Frederick Douglass predicted members of his race looking back at its...

To overthrow a free society from within, its citizenry must be brainwashed to reject its traditional principles, values and institutions.  Acting in support of the century-long progressive dream of turning America into a socialist-communist nation, Marxists in our midst are systematically destroying treasured symbols of America’s heritage.  A tiny slice of what’s been happening: ● Vandals tear down statues of Union general Ulysses S. Grant, national anthem lyricist Francis Scott Key. ● Watch: Statue of George Washington draped in burning American flag toppled by cheering protesters. ● Baltimore statue of Washington defaced with red paint, graffiti saying “Destroy Racists.”...

The age of reason was an important time in world history, when human beings made great strides in understanding the world around them and advanced the idea that logic matters, rational thought matters. Now reason and logic are out of fashion, replaced with, well, nothing. At least nothing that requires intelligence or rational thought. We are living in a time born from the hippie idea of “if it feels good, do it.” This bastard child of the 60s has given us the age of “no reason.” The killing of George Floyd was a unifying moment; no one looked at that...

What do George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, Ulysses S. Grant, Father Junipero Serra and Christopher Columbus have in common? None were Confederate generals, and yet all have had their statues torn down by mobs in the last few days -- or, in the case of Roosevelt, had New York's Museum of Natural History announce that a Roosevelt statue at the museum's entrance will soon be removed. The mobs ripped down statues in Portland, Oregon, San Francisco, Minneapolis, and several other cities without any fear of police interference. The police might as well have been defunded, for all they did...

The protests and riots we’ve witnessed the past few weeks have resulted in a number of historical statues being torn down. There doesn’t seem to be much of a standard for what statues are offensive. Statues of Christopher Columbus and Confederate generals have been defaced, destroyed and torn down, as have statues of abolitionists. A statue of Abraham Lincoln is actually being considered for removal in Boston, Massachusetts. The apparent lack of consistency with which these statues and memorials have been targeted has many asking “What’s next?” But perhaps the better question is “Why not this?” These protestors think their...

Rarified conservative arguments that we should remove Confederate monuments is tantamount to accepting the left’s vision of America as irredeemably racist. Last week, as statues of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson—among many others—were pulled down by angry mobs, conservative writers Rich Lowry and Philip Klein were penning throat-clearing columns explaining how it’s wrong to pull down monuments to the Founders but okay to remove Confederate statues, because you see, Confederates were traitors who fought for slavery.Which, of course they were. But at this point it would be hard to imagine an argument more detached from reality. Lowry and Klein—and all...

President Trump said Monday that he will soon issue an executive order meant to protect public statues and monuments from being damaged or destroyed by far-left and anarchist protesters. "We are going to do an executive order and make the cities guard their monuments," Trump told Eternal Word Television Network's Raymond Arroyo. "This is a disgrace." Arroyo, who is also a Fox News contributor, played a clip of the interview on Monday's edition of "The Ingraham Angle."

In response to protesters tearing down a 100-year-old statue of George Washington and vandalizing it, Washington's Mount Vernon warned that “we will lose the story of the United States” by failing to honor Washington, adding that without the founding father and former U.S. president, "there would be no United States" or U.S. Constitution. The Mount Vernon estate is a historic home of Washington, the first U.S. president, and is located in Fairfax County, Va. Protesters in Portland, Ore., on Thursday night spray painted "colonist" and "BLM [Black Lives Matter]" on the statue, wrapped an American flag around it and set...

In 2020’s version of the Bolshevik Revolution, almost any statue or monument that predates or doesn’t explicitly honor the Civil Rights era is a potential target for being defaced, damaged, or toppled entirely, Taliban-style. The woke social justice warriors who have somehow managed to seize the culture don’t seem to concern themselves much with whether these monuments honor Jefferson Davis, George Washington, Robert E. Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Winston Churchill, Christopher Columbus, or even famous abolitionist Matthias Baldwin. To them, these are just dead old white dudes who belong in the dustbin of history because, well, they were probably evil, engaged...

Statues and monuments related to the Confederacy have been vandalized and toppled in recent days across the country, and now a memorial has been destroyed in a church cemetery in Silver Spring, Maryland. The memorial marked the graves of 17 Confederate soldiers, many unidentified. It was spray painted earlier in the week and then toppled over Wednesday night by vandals at Grace Episcopal Church.

We’ve reached a breaking point with cancel culture. We’ve seen extremists topple and deface historic statues of Christopher Columbus and Sir Winston Churchill. Thousands have signed a petition to remove a statue in Boston featuring Lincoln and a freed slave. Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben are now canceled. Cancel culture has come for the children’s show “Paw Patrol.” They tried to cancel Domino’s Pizza simply for tweeting thanks to White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany 8 years ago for a compliment she tweeted at them. Next on the list will be classic shows like Seinfeld, characters like Barney Fife, and...

I am sick at heart that our entire political leadership is cowering before mobs of vandals seeking to destroy our collective memory of the past.  But now, we see mob rule imitating the tactics of the Red Guards of China’s Cultural Revolution, who destroyed that nation’s precious artistic and literary heritage in the name of revolutionary purity, and the Taliban in Afghanistan, who blew up ancient Buddhist statues – to almost universal condemnation outside the Islamic world. Slavery may be the ‘original sin” of America but until recent days, courage has been seen as more of an American virtue...

The board of trustees of the Institutions of Higher Learning, during its Thursday meeting, is expected to consider and approve a plan to relocate the Confederate monument at the University of Mississippi. Several sources close to IHL board members told Mississippi Today on Monday that the 12-member board, amid statewide and national protests about racial inequities in government and Confederate iconography, will vote to approve the university’s plan to move the monument at its Thursday morning board meeting. The meeting will be held virtually, and a meeting agenda will be released on Wednesday. Several representative bodies comprised of University of...

All across the country, monuments to the Confederacy, which lost a traitorous war waged for their right to own slaves, are being beheaded, toppled, and thrown into the river. The Southern Poverty Law Center has a map of where these monuments are located, if you were interested in such a thing.

A number of opposing petitions have been posted online to counter one posted Monday by a Lee University student that advocated for the removal of a Confederate statue that has stood at a downtown Cleveland intersection since the Jim Crow era. Differences in opinion regarding the statue have resulted in sharp, often bitter debate on the Cleveland Daily Banner’s Facebook page, highlighting the complicated history residents of Cleveland and other Southern cities share as they examine their pasts. SNIP The first Cleveland anti-statue petition, posted by Lee student Kelsey Elaine, listed several grievances against the monument, which was erected in...

The imagery couldn’t be more direct. Across the nation, rioting and unrest that has killed black Americans and destroyed black neighborhoods has included the defacement of historic monuments, including those to abolitionists.The last wave of monument destruction, in 2017, largely focused on Confederates and slave holders, erasing all the accomplishments of figures such as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson with a scarlet S, for slave-holder. This time, the ignorance has descended even further.The rioters are now tearing down and defacing memorials wantonly, apparently assuming that if someone is being celebrated that person is “probably a racist,” as the image...

In last week's memorial service for George Floyd, the Rev. Al Sharpton noted that the recent demonstrations against abusive policing were caused not just by Floyd's death after a white officer kneeled on his throat. Instead, it was the last straw after centuries of oppression. Mr. Sharpton noted, "Because ever since 401 years ago, the reason we could never be who we wanted and dreamed of being is you kept your knee on our neck." One weapon to suppress African Americans: monuments to white supremacists. Soon after the Civil War, Southern whites began reasserting their dominance. During the following 80...

Confederate monuments have been toppled in Southern states including Alabama, South Carolina, and Virginia during the historic George Floyd protests sweeping the country. On Tuesday morning the bronze statue of Confederate soldier 'Appomattox' was taken down in Old Town Alexandria, Virginia by its owners who feared it would be vandalized in demonstrations. The statue, erected in 1889 to honor Confederate soldiers, has been a point of controversy for years but remained standing despite repeated demands for removal, until this week. Alexandria Mayor Justin Wilson tweeted photos of the statue removal saying: 'Alexandria, like all great cities, is constantly changing and...

A new reserve group, inspired by the Monuments Men of the World War II era, will aim to protect antiquities and important cultural sites in war zones. It’s no secret that the war-ravaged nations where American soldiers have been enmeshed in conflict for nearly two decades are home to many of civilization’s oldest and most prized antiquities and cultural treasures. But in the heat of battle in Afghanistan or Iraq, how are troops to know whether they are taking their positions behind mounds of insignificant rubble or inside the precious remains of a 3,000-year-old temple complex? The Pentagon’s answer, announced...

After literally scrubbing references to the "Lord" from a memorial honoring fallen police officers, a "divided" South Carolina city has removed the monument outright. The City of Tega Cay City Council announced the decision to take down the memorial Tuesday in a Facebook post. Three references of "Lord" had been washed off the monument, which is a police officer's prayer and was in front of the police department, after some residents complained. But the decision to remove the three references to "Lord" also drew outrage. City officials said they removed the monument while they sought to find a solution that...