Defcon 1: Time to Take a Stand
ric...@langworth.name
The Hillsdale College Churchill Project has been working with other groups and individuals in defense of the good. The good in this case is the name and legacy of Sir Winston Churchill.
Who would have thought, a few weeks ago, that anyone would suggest moving his statue from Parliament Square? Because it was defaced? Statues of Lincoln and Gandhi also suffered. Even the statue of Nelson Mandela is boarded up—a defense in his case from neo-Nazi demonstrators. What a world we live in.
Don't miss Andrew Roberts’ “Stop this Trashing of our Monuments—and our Past” —one of the finest pieces he has written.
Brett Weiss
Perhaps I have a somewhat different perspective, living on the US side of the pond.
Here, the vast majority of the statutes and place-names that are being defaced, destroyed, or replaced are those honoring the Confederate heroes of the US Civil war. Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, Braxton Bragg, confederate soldiers, etc. See https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/09/us/confederate-statues-removed-george-floyd-trnd/index.html
The vast majority of the statutes were erected, not in the aftermath of the Civil War, but when Jim Crow (racial segregation) laws were being introduced in the late 19th century and at the start of the 20th century or during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. They were built less to honor the men and soldiers who fought for the Confederacy than as a reminder to African-Americans to “remember their place” and as a threat of what would happen to them if they did not.
The bases, all in former Confederate states, were named with input from locals in the Jim Crow era. Three of the biggest bases in the United States--Fort Bragg, Fort Benning, and Fort Hood--are named after Confederate military leaders, including some who were famously inept. Again, the purpose was intimidation and a reminder of the comparative powerlessness of most Black members of society.
I feel it is perfectly appropriate to remove such statutes and place-names. There is no reason to honor traitors and racists who lost a war that divided our country. Would the UK erect a statute to honor Kim Philby, Donald Maclean, or Guy Burgess? Would it name an army base after Guy Fawkes?
There is a difference between being someone who, as was Churchill, a “member of his times” in his attitudes towards minorities (although some of Churchill’s writings indicate a more nuanced view [other than towards Gandhi]) and someone who was an abject racist and traitor to his country. Churchill was neither. Even though our heroes are not perfect, failing someone’s purity test should not be grounds to tear down or deface monuments to our heroes. But monuments to oppressors and traitors fall into a different category, and when those who were oppressed or speak for those who were oppressed target structures that honor the oppressors, we should not be surprised.
Take care.
Brett Weiss
The Weiss Law Group, LLC
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ric...@langworth.name
ROGER PENCE
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ric...@langworth.name
In 1906 a poor African pygmy named Owa Benga was caged with an orangutan in the Bronx Zoo Monkey House for visitors to watch. African-American newspapers and clerics protested. The New York Times editorialized: “We do not understand all the emotion…It is absurd to make moan over the imagined humiliation and degradation Benga is suffering. The pygmies…are very low in the human scale, and the suggestion that Benga should be in school instead of a cage [is something from which] he could draw no advantage whatever. The idea that men are all much alike except as thy have had or lacked opportunities for getting an education out of books is now far out of date.” Perhaps the newspaper which now supports the defacing and destruction of statues of people who lived long before Owa Benga should deface its own building? “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone…” -John 8:7
In a civil society there are provisions for expressing the public will, and the disposition of monuments is a matter for local jurisdictions. In Charleston, SC, for example, a majority would favor removing the statue of John C. Calhoun, who expressed the most virulent racism of the antebellum era. There is something faintly Bolshy about mobs tearing down statues, and if the standard allows only those on which ALL agree, then there will be no monuments, no history, no past to learn from, only a levelized present. Orwell wrote something about that.
Andrew Roberts writes: “Nobody alive today knows anyone who knew anyone who knew anyone who was a slave, so this ought to be a discussion that can be conducted with rationality and evidence, not by anarchy and mob rule.” Having done that here, may we now get back to the subject of Winston Churchill?
L Whitten
Before being a general for the confederacy of course he was active and a respected US citizen and patriot.
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Quinn Bastian
To: ChurchillChat <church...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [ChurchillChat] Defcon 1: Time to Take a Stand
In 1906 a poor African pygmy named Owa Benga was caged with an orangutan in the Bronx Zoo Monkey House for visitors to watch. African-American newspapers and clerics protested. The New York Times editorialized: “We do not understand all the emotion…It is absurd to make moan over the imagined humiliation and degradation Benga is suffering. The pygmies…are very low in the human scale, and the suggestion that Benga should be in school instead of a cage [is something from which] he could draw no advantage whatever. The idea that men are all much alike except as thy have had or lacked opportunities for getting an education out of books is now far out of date.” Perhaps the newspaper which now supports the defacing and destruction of statues of people who lived long before Owa Benga should deface its own building? “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone…” -John 8:7
In a civil society there are provisions for expressing the public will, and the disposition of monuments is a matter for local jurisdictions. In Charleston, SC, for example, a majority would favor removing the statue of John C. Calhoun, who expressed the most virulent racism of the antebellum era. There is something faintly Bolshy about mobs tearing down statues, and if the standard allows only those on which ALL agree, then there will be no monuments, no history, no past to learn from, only a levelized present. Orwell wrote something about that.
Andrew Roberts writes: “Nobody alive today knows anyone who knew anyone who knew anyone who was a slave, so this ought to be a discussion that can be conducted with rationality and evidence, not by anarchy and mob rule.” Having done that here, may we now get back to the subject of Winston Churchill?
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