A dangerous and dishonest purge
All across that once open-minded nation, the current victors in the never-ending culture wars are purging the past from public consciousness.
City after city has removed Confederate iconography. Baltimore is the latest to seek a new-found purity — even if it puts political correctness before honesty.
Removing the Robert E Lee and Thomas J “Stonewall” Jackson Monument from Baltimore in the middle of the night may satisfy a new puritanism but it suggests that America has failed to process its history in a way that allows it arrive at a rational conclusion about today — and empower it to prevent a resurgence of the inhuman values advanced by the Confederacy. Charlottesville proved this.
If, for even a moment, we were to indulge the same revisionism should we hide statues of Michael Collins because he had men shot in their beds? Should the Dingle bust of Charles Haughey be axed because he was corrupt?
Even if this foolishness was without consequence it would be intolerable but, because of the perversity of human nature, removing Confederate monuments will kick the sleeping dog and build support for the evil forces seen in action last weekend.
And there is the where-will-this-end question too. Will the Louvre be forced to remove Poussin’s The Rape of the Sabine Women because it depicts women as victims? This is a dangerous, slippery slope and America should know better.
