Aug 14, 2017

Stoking The Fire


What occurred in Virginia over the weekend is certainly a tragedy. I don't watch cable news as most people do, my television viewing is very restricted. From the headlines; Three Killed By Supremacist March. Only later did I learn that one pedestrian was killed by the car ramming, and two policemen died when their helicopter crashed.

The march started as a protest to removing the statue of Robert E. Lee. It was originally conceived by the University Of Virginia itself, as a Day Of Reflective Conversation. The white national group's participation was defended by the American Civil Liberties Union.  No less of an informed American than Condoleezza Rice has spoken out previously against revising Confederate history. History is something you add to, not take away from.  The march also did attract neo-nazi's and the KKK. These subgroups are opportunists.

The person who weaponized the car is supposedly a Trump supporter. Juxtaposition Trump's weak comments with that person's background, and you have a media storm which will last indefinitely.  The media pundits are holding Trump responsible for the death.  Nobody of course would attribute any blame to Cornel West, the Princeton/Harvard professor who encouraged the counter demonstration.

ADDENDUM:  On August 16 I received the following note by email from a local reader/college professor.  Although, I don't find his sources any more substantial than mine,  I present his objection to above post.

The march/protest to removing statue was, of course, *not* originally conceived by the University—a day of reflective conversation was. Unite the Right organized the actual protest, which — obviously no one disputes this, including the groups themselves—is a coalition of neo-nazi, white supramicists, and the KKK. It is flat-out inaccurate to say “The march also did attract new-nazi’s and the KKK.” It was organized by them. A correction is called for, in my opinion. The stakes are obviously high on this.

13 comments:

  1. Mike,

    The way the media and the left are acting one might think they got exactly what they wanted out of Charlotte. Note the police allowed protestors who were clearly armed and wore defensive gear to gather, were told to stand down and actually left the scene when the rioting started. Who ordered that? Had to be the mayor.
    That said,Sadly, there are too many on the left who are now teachers of hatred. The hate on the left far exceeds the few knuckle heads who call themselves "white nationalists". My guess is the group that was in Charlotte yesterday came from far and wide in order to achieve a crowd. Contrast that to the massive, well organized and violent demonstrations the left can produce on short notice almost anywhere. These left wing thugs are given tacit support by the Democratic Party, intellectual elites, and mainstream media. No one is providing similar cover for white nationalists. No one in the mainstream right, the conservative movement of Republican Party gives any quarter to those ugly morons.This is an important difference. No one on the right owes anyone an apology for what happened in Charlotte. We didn't have a horse in the race. The left however had two of their now mainstreamed allies present, Antifa and Black Lives Matter. These people have a clear record of demonstrated violent behavior and decisive rhetoric, yet neither has ever been denounced by the Democratic Party, or the mainstream media.

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  2. I agree with you that the attempt to revise history by moving statuary is pointless and fundamentally dishonest, though I would be happy with the addition of plaques (or whatever) to point out the moral failings of the historical figures in question.

    But I totally disagree with your comments about the ACLU and Trump’s refusal to condemn the alt-right marchers. The First Amendment protects the right to express hateful ideas, but it most certainly does NOT require us to accept these hateful ideas without criticism. I admired the ACLU for defending the neo-Nazis’ right to march in Skokie back in 1977, but this did not immunize the neo-Nazis from criticism and counter-demonstrators. President Trump’s cowardly refusal to take a moral stand against white supremacy and neo-Nazism has nothing to do with the First Amendment rights of the marchers. Both the alt-right marchers and the liberal counter-demonstrators had a right to be there -- that is not what is at issue in the storm surrounding the President’s callow response.

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  3. You wouldn't find me within five miles of any of these demonstrations against history. Our family has been in Pennsylvania since before the Revolution and family members fought on both sides of the Civil War, as a branch of the family moved to South Carolina in the 1840s to open some grist and later cotton mills .

    It's unlikely you will find any more than possibly a handful of statues to Confederate leaders here, but in the south, they're pretty common. Most small towns have a square with a statue of a Confederate soldier looking to the north. It's a part of their history, just as statues of Grant and Hancock and others are a part of ours.

    It's also clear that we don't really know all of what happened yet in Virginia over the weekend. President Trump has stated he ordered the justice department to look into the matter and the sooner the better. Once the fog of current events passes and all of the passions cool down, then we can start to point fingers and the recriminations can begin.

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  4. Two points, it is the template of the media/left/Democratic Party to blame everything on Trump and to find some fault in his every utterance. It is also worth noting that the union victors allowed the vanquished south to honor its heroes to facilitate reconciliation and peace. Undoing these statues is having the opposite effect.
    By the way, I was never an admirer of the confederacy or any of its leaders. My family tree is filled with men who fought and died for the union. I also have documents of two members who as officers were on their way, towards the end of the war to enlist in the then called "colored unites". They were both abolitionist. Neither made it. One died of wounds and the other diapered in the battle of the wilderness. Their sister was my fathers, father,grandmother.

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  5. The political violence in Charlottesville was predictable. It is all about the political and culture wars in the US.

    This is a reaction to the attack on every aspect of American life, from religion and family life to sex and sexuality, from bathrooms to schools to the workplace, to sanctuary cites, pure negativity about the US in major universities, social justice, BLM endlessly repeating a false narratives - hoping it will become fact.

    I see nothing wrong with the 'right' expressing themselves - but they need drop the Nazi and KKK affiliations - very old - very nonintellectual.

    Us conservative folks never march or demonstrate. We're too busy working, paying taxes, doing something constructive with our time/families. Almost every demonstration on the left is about wanting something (namely money - directly or indirectly).

    IMO - the city should never had allowed a counter demonstration. Then the mayor? Doubled down and told the police to stand off.

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  6. I guess I'm a bit confused as to why organizing a counter demonstration is as reprehensible as running over a person with a car?

    There seems no limit as to what we'll blame on the media these days.

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  7. I'm sure the supremacists had a permit. Let them have their march. No matter how inane.

    Surely the counter protesters were there without a permit. Obviously they are there looking for trouble. And they got trouble. A single individual running over people, is just that, an act of a single individual.

    This is the fault of the media. Journalism is dead. The great majority of journalist are ultra-liberal. They write opinion as news. Most all people get along, everyday. But that is boring. So the media manufactures / focuses on divisive issues - about so many things. Just to sell news = ad revenue.

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  8. Once we get past the emotions of what happened on Saturday, let's remember some facts.

    We do possess in our Constitutional Republic a freedom of speech and freedom of expression.

    It appears that a group of individuals who didn’t wish to see the statue of Virginian, General Robert E. Lee, who was a commissioned U.S. Army officer, graduate of West Point, and served the nation in the Mexican War, taken down did apply for a permit to hold a rally. We can dislike these individuals, but they took proper measures to secure permission to express their First Amendment right.

    In addition, it appears that the word went out for a counter-protest to occur which included groups from a different side of the political spectrum. It should be noted that this group has in the past also been very guilty of hateful rhetoric and violence.

    What clearly should have happened is that these two groups should have been kept miles apart. I do not understanding why any local law enforcement agency in the Commonwealth of Virginia would allow these two groups close proximity.

    What has not been determined, and we must also ascertain, did the counter-protest group seek permit or did they just “show up” in order to provoke, and elicit a response they could use “politically” ?

    Motivations are important to understand in this case, if we’re serious about getting to the bottom of what happened in Charlottesville and not just the typical media-driven frenzy.

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  9. --If Rome took down and destroyed all statues of people who were less-than Christ-like my guess is Rome would be barren.

    --How do we justify hundreds of Malcom X roads and statues all over the country?

    --Just like in Behghazi we have another liberal calling for a 'stand down' order and the results are disastrous.

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  10. No one is urging that Confederate statutes be destroyed or that southern history be "revised."

    What is offensive to many is that statutes honoring Confederate Generals, who, after all, committed treason against the United States and fought to preserve slavery, are in front of court houses and other public facilities that ostensibly serve & deliver justice & services for all citizens. Hence, the desire that such statues be removed to non governmental locations.

    No one would question the propriety of removing statues of Benedict Arnold, who was a hero early in the Revolutionary War, or of Aron Burr who served as Vice President of the United States prior to his later infamy, from public buildings, or of the many state Governors who remained loyal to the Crown during the Revolutionary War.

    The place to honor such individuals for their service and in recognition of their place in history, including Confederate Generals, is private historical museums and the such, not governmental institutions.

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  11. Gotta love The Morning Call's front page photo of the person holding up the "Love Trumps Hate" sign. Shouldn't that be "Trump's"? A useful idiot if there ever was one, I'd say. But I must confess that I hold no academic degree in English so I do stand ready to be corrected, if necessary. I must also admit that I find the sign in the very same front page photo, the one that says, "Legislate Against Hate", to be rather thought-provoking, as all great literary works are supposed to be. Because last time I checked, criminals were not particularly noted for their willingness to follow the laws as set forth by society. In other words, a deranged lunatic who is of the mindset to plow his car into a group of people probably is not very likely to comply with any 'anti-hate legislature' that a local/state/federal government could pass anyway. But, hey, I must also confess that I hold no academic degree in criminal psychology either, so perhaps I do not really know what would deter whom at the end of the day. The good news, though, is that, at long last, I've finally drummed it into my head that if a lefty shoots up a Republican baseball practice, clearly it is the work of a "lone wolf" but if a righty runs a counter-protester, who was part of a group that may or may not have followed the law by applying for the necessary permit(s), over with a car, then clearly this is irrefutable evidence that President Donald Trump explicitly encouraged if not outright called for one of his 'fellow Nazis' to viciously kill a woman by any and all means necessary.

    I think I'm finally starting to get the hang of this Post-Modern America stuff, but I'm almost certain that my virtuous thinking still needs a little more time to evolve correctly while I'm living here in Allentown.

    ROLF OELER

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  12. Some of us still believe that people with different opinions are not necessarily bad people, they are just people who happen to see the world differently than we might. So we avoid describing huge groups of people with ugly terms in an effort to argue the rightness of our own point of view.

    Some of us also believe that it's possible to have a conversation about what historical figures we would like displayed in prominent public places without resorting to name-calling or violence.



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  13. Ironpigpen--Consider yourself corrected. "Trump" is a verb (override, exceed, etc.). And "Trumps" is the grammatically correct form. You can look it up!

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