I want to admire and respect men like Tennessee Governor Lee and up and comers like Representative Dan Crenshaw (R., Texas). I probably want to love Ted Cruz. Tough as nails and sharp as a tack. But alas I cannot because these good Republicans and conservatives are allied with the Left in its determination to define the Old Confederacy as wholly racist, and to remove its emblems from public view.
You’ll recall the good Governor Lee recently voted to remove the bust of Nathan Bedford Forrest from the state Capitol. Nevermind that this homegrown Tennessean might be included on a list of the top 25 greatest cavalry commanders in the history of the world.
No, being a Confederate soldier was bad enough but he was also one of the small minority that owned slaves. And a prewar slave trader to boot! But his greatest crime was to be a central figure in the KKK after the war. Thus, like Ghengis Khan, he was evil incarnate and must be expunged. Though I challenge any American Liberal to go to Mongolia and deface their monument to Genghis.
Was General Forrest a racist? Most certainly but I say, so what? In 1860 virtually all whites were, North, South, East, and West, as were the men who defeated Hitler and Imperial Japan in WWII. As to his participation in the KKK I will remind the reader that it was 1865 and the South lay in smoking ruins facing chaos and starvation. Folks, the period that we call Reconstruction was really, really, really horrible for the South. We today have almost no understanding of the apocalypse that our ancestors (black or white) lived through, and we should be slow to judge, especially through a modern lens, that of which we are ignorant.
NBF was a fighter who defended his country in that age that is now so removed from us. I may remember his greatness without wishing to turn back the clock. Likewise the military greatness of Union General William Tecumseh Sherman, a homegrown war criminal if there ever one was. Should we remove his monuments as well? I say, no!
But rest assured the rising radical Left will say ‘Yes!’ Down with Sherman’s and Grant’s. Down with Jovian Lincoln, best and greatest! And mark my words, if they ever get the upper hand on us and carry the day, they’ll take the great canceling eraser to Martin Luther King, Jr. himself.
What Lee, Crenshaw, and Cruz do not appear to understand is that the Left cannot be appeased. Neither do they understand the supreme importance of history and myths in sustaining the morale of any people. And there is no people in the United States of America whose fighting spirit is more central in our war against the American Left than the Southern people.
The Left understands this, and thus their war on our past. And Lee, Crenshaw, and Cruz are playing right into their hand.
M.C. Atkins
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