Topic: WorldNetDaily
Even more WorldNetDaily columnists had meltdowns over the removal of a Confederate memorial at Arlington National Cemetery. Jim Darlington attempted a little Civil War revisionism in a Dec. 19 column:
Amazing! Now we are waiting to see if reason prevails or will the autocrats of our "Rich Men North of Richmond" drive the final nail into the coffin of both national and racial unity? Thankfully a stay of execution has been granted by a Trump appointed judge for the planned destruction of the Reconciliation Monument crafted by the Jewish sculptor Moses Ezekiel – a great monument meant to celebrate America's national reunification after the War Between the States and honoring those who fought and died on both sides. Why would the government desecrate Arlington National Cemetery and do such violence to our history?
Those advocating for such destruction claim that they only to want an end to racism, and to honor the South is to affirm racist values.
But was the Civil War fought over the question of slavery? As a "Yankee" who moved to Alabama, I've had to try and consider the contrary points of view. I think that for the Northerners, it's true enough. Many were willing to fight against the thoroughly demonized Southern slavers. Harriet Beecher Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin" had flown off the shelves, sure enough. But I wonder if it holds true of the Southerners, that preserving slavery was enough for them to fight and die for?
[...]
Was the continuation of slavery a matter of pride for all Southerners? Maybe not. Less than 5% of them actually held slaves, and the keeping of those slaves very negatively affected the wages of the rest of Southern workers. Did Southerners see the condition of slaves, who, at least from their perspective, were fed and housed, as necessarily worse than the conditions of similar numbers of factory workers up North, who were paid less than it cost to live decently, were often under-fed and forced to live in violent and dangerous slums (sort of like the slaves' descendants do now)?
In fact, several Confederate states specifically cited slavery as a reason for leaving the Union in their secession statements, meaning that, yes, the Civil War was largely, if not entirely, about slavery. Darlington concluded by ranting that theremoval of the monument was the work of a "usurping regime,"' whatever that means:
In the end, the continuation of slavery benefited a small wealthy minority of Southerners, but a fear of the possible consequences, of its discontinuation, permeated the society as a whole.
In the end, the emancipation of the slaves was something the North celebrated and the South came, sometimes grudgingly, sometimes gladly, to accept. But the wish to become, again, the United States of America became universal.
The intended removal of the Reconciliation Monument is an assault on our unity as a nation, and yet one more declaration by the present usurping regime in Washington of the intention to divide and destroy us.
Actually, it's the monument itself that is a symbol of division and destruction, not its removal.
A Dec. 21 column by Mike Pottage invoked the monument's removal -- but didn't use the word "Confederate" to describe it -- in ranting about Democrats:
The Democratic Party has a history of calling off elections and seizing control of government. It did so in 1861 as 11 states went off on their own, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans. The confrontation is called "the Civil War." Then, Democrats were all about "states' rights." Today, Democrats prefer the term "insurrection." What is important for people to note is the fact it was the Democratic Party then, and today it is the same Democratic Party, running away from constitutional order and plunging the nation into chaos.
Setting aside the obvious voter disenfranchisement in Colorado, Democrats of the mid-1800s were fixated on race. Nothing much has changed.
The most important aspect of the post-Civil War era was "reconciliation." And today's Democrats are roaming about Arlington National Cemetery at this very moment overseeing the removal of the "Reconciliation" monument, a symbol of one nation reunited. Why destroy unity in favor of disunity?
If enough voters figure this out, the Democratic Party will find itself on a pathway to suicide. Democrat voters ultimately may choose the nation over the party.
Both Darlington and Pottage made a point of calling the monument a "reunification" monument when it really wasn't: The cemetery's own website states that "The elaborately designed monument offers a nostalgic, mythologized vision of the Confederacy, including highly sanitized depictions of slavery," and that the only two African-American figures are stereotypical -- a "mammy"-type figure and an enslaved man following his owner to war. It was also pointed out that the monument carries an inscription of the Latin phrase "Victrix causa diis placuit sed victa Caton" ("The victorious cause was pleasing to the gods, but the lost cause to Cato") that "construes the South’s secession as a noble 'Lost Cause.'" That doesn't sound very reconciliatory.
WND also ran a couple outside articles on the monument's removal and a brief injunction against it.
