In Defense of Confederate Memorials and HBCUs; Trump OK’s Review of Statues ‘Improperly’ Removed
As a card-carrying member of the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War (Pvt. Nicholas Whiteman/Weithmann, 98th Pennsylvania Infantry), I don’t have much of a problem with Confederate monuments as well as the US Army formerly naming a number of bases in the Historic South after Confederate generals.
Why? For the same reasons as to why we should keep HBCUs (Historically Black Colleges and Universities).
Just a few things to consider;
1.) Those who want to pay tribute to their Confederate ancestors don’t want to glorify slavery, but instead to glorify (as they see it) their ancestors taking a stand against an invading army.
2.) Those that advocate HBCUs as public institutions don’t do so because black students are banned from any college or university in the United States, but because (as they see it) of the historical significance of the same.
Note the ‘Blue and Gray’ shoulder patch of the US Army’s 29th Infantry Division (National Guard units from both North and South) as portrayed in the film Saving Private Ryan.
Unfortunately, everything Confederate is being literally erased from history. Confederate history IS American history. Just like the history of HBCUs IS American history.
Along those lines, Pres. Trump has authorized VP Vance to “remove improper ideology” from the Smithsonian Institute. The VEEP also happens to be a member of the Smithsonian’s Board of Regents.
President Trump signed an executive order Thursday seeking to restore truth to American history through an overhaul of the Smithsonian.
The order, titled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” slams the Biden administration for ushering in an era of “corrosive ideology” in recent years and seeks to unfurl “divisive, race-centered” themes plaguing the institution.
Trump’s latest order on the Smithsonian, much like his Kennedy Center overhaul, is an attempt to wrest control of these institutions away from far-left ideologues that have turned them into political statements rather than places of cultural advancement and education.
Revisionism at its best.
The Smithsonian has engaged in such lunacy for quite some time.
Back in 2016, the institution excluded Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas from its National Museum of African American History and Culture. He was only mentioned tangentially as part of an exhibit on Anita Hill, who accused him of sexual harassment in the early 1990s. It was a story that had several holes and little basis in fact.
If you’re looking for the red meat issue that’s almost certain to make liberals pull their hair out, it’d be the section of this new executive order that directs Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum to review and “restore” any “public monuments, memorials, statues, markers, or similar properties” that may have been improperly removed in the past five-plus years.
A White House fact sheet states that their removal or any subsequent changes made to alter them were designed “to perpetuate a false revision of history or improperly minimize or disparage certain historical figures or events.”
After all, if tax dollars can still be used to remedy a wrong that was righted almost a century-and-a-half ago (The Second Morrill Act of 1890), then the same government shouldn’t have any problem just recognizing that many Americans want to recognize that their ancestors physically defended their families, homes and farms.
As a card-carrying member of the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War (Pvt. Nicholas Whiteman/Weithmann, 98th Pennsylvania Infantry), I don’t have much of a problem with Confederate monuments as well as the US Army formerly naming a number of bases in the Historic South after Confederate generals.
