Republicans, There Is No Downside to Defending Southern History

Republicans, There Is No Downside
to Defending Southern History

by Gene Kizer, Jr.

 

The Republican Party has committed a major unforced error by backing Elizabeth Warren's amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which changes the names of United States Army bases in the South named for Confederate officers.

Fort Benning, near Columbus, Georgia, entrance.
Fort Benning, near Columbus, Georgia, entrance.

That mistake could cost Republicans the election, which promises to be close.

Republicans may now lose the electoral votes of some or all of the following states because changing Confederate named bases in the South right before the election, which is just 95 days away as of July 30, will put a horribly bad taste in the mouths of millions of Republican voters, and Democrats are sure to make that taste as close to raw sewage as they can get with constant hate and agitation on the issue:

1) Texas, where two bases are located: Fort Hood near Killeen, and Camp Maxey, near Paris.

2) Virginia, a purple state with four bases: Fort A. P. Hill, near Bowling Green; Fort Lee, in Prince George County; Camp Pendleton, in Virginia Beach; and Fort Pickett, near Blackstone.

3) North Carolina, a purple state where Fort Bragg is located, near Fayetteville.

4) Georgia, where two forts are located: Fort Benning, near Columbus; and Fort Gordon, near Grovetown.

5) Louisiana, where two bases are located: Camp Beauregard, near Pineville; and Fort Polk, near Leesville.

6) Alabama, where Fort Rucker is located, in Dale County.

Fort Hood, near Killeen, Texas.
Fort Hood, near Killeen, Texas.

President Trump does not want the base names changed, and there may still be a way.

Trump tweeted July 24th that he had spoken to Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe, Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, "who has informed me that he WILL NOT be changing the names of our great Military Bases and Forts, places from which we won two World Wars (and more!)."1

Still, stupid Senate Republicans have put themselves in a bad position. Inhofe shepherded the NDAA through the Senate with Elizabeth Warren's name change required within three years.

A committee of negotiators from the House and Senate has to reconcile the House and Senate versions. The House calls for the base names to change in one year.

Because the name change is in the bill the Senate passed, they can't just disregard it but Inhofe says "We're going to see to it that provision doesn't survive the bill. I'm not going to say how at this point."2

This is all hands on deck for Southerners who are FED UP with the Democrat Party/news media war on Southern history.

Call and write every senator in the United States Senate and every House member too. Get your camps and chapters organized and pump out some letters and calls.

Use the documented historical information in this article and on my blog as well as on the Abbeville Institute website at https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/, and historian Phil Leigh's website at https://civilwarchat.wordpress.com/.

Tell them those bases are in some cases 100 years old. As President Trump said, we won two World Wars out of those bases.

Even people like Gen. Jack Keane, a New Yorker who has no affinity for Confederates, does not want the base names changed.

I am sure there is broad support among the electorate for leaving the base names as they are. Millions of our veterans have gone through those bases at one time or another.

If we could get a victory on this, it could be a turning point in this Democrat propaganda war against Southern history.

President Trump is with us all the way.

He respects Southern history and the Founding Fathers from the South such as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison.

President Trump supported Gen. Robert E. Lee's monument in Charlottesville and has been falsely smeared and lied about by the media ever since.

Trump stated that the Confederate battle flag is a proud symbol of the South: "When people had their Confederate flags they're not talking about racism. They love their flag, it represents the South."3

He has blasted NASCAR for putting the wishes of one selfish driver, Bubba Wallace, who is black, over the wishes of thousands of NASCAR fans for whom the flag is an important tradition.

Bubba Wallace complained about the flag, so bigoted NASCAR banned it at NASCAR events, though the SCV and private citizens have been flying small planes around NASCAR events trailing a huge banner with the battle flag and different messages on it.

Defund NASCAR banner behind a plane at a NASCAR event.
Defund NASCAR banner behind a plane at a NASCAR event.
SCV.org banner behind a plane at another NASCAR event.
SCV.org banner behind a plane at another NASCAR event.

Of course, NASCAR is OK with Bubba Wallace putting Black Lives Matter all over his car though they are a violent, radical organization that believes the family is bad and should not be emulated in the black community, contrary to the beliefs of accomplished black intellectuals such as Robert Woodson, Shelby Steele, Walter Williams, Thomas Sowell, and many others.

Bubba Wallace's Black Lives Matter car.
Bubba Wallace's Black Lives Matter car.

The lack of black fathers in black homes has been acknowledged for decades as a major problem in the black community.

President Trump has supported Confederate monuments repeatedly, along with the monuments to our Founding Fathers and others such as Christopher Columbus.

Republicans just do not know their history.

If they did, they would be able to defend us easily. There is no downside to defending truthful Southern history.

Republicans think Southern history is what their Democrat colleagues portray to them and what they hear in the fake news media, which is overwhelmingly Democrat and politicized.

It is not history Republicans are hearing. It is political propaganda.

The Democrat interpretation of the past is political propaganda designed to promote unjustified hate against the South so they can keep blacks on the Democrat Party plantation, though thanks to organizations like BLEXIT,4 which is the opposite of Black Lives Matter, there is pushback by blacks against Democrats.

BLEXIT is an upbeat organization promoting the empowerment of black individuals, and they are making a different. They are not out there rioting and looting. They are working hard, making money, accomplishing things and living successful happy lives.

Eugene D. Genovese,5 one of America's greatest historians before his death in 2012, explains how Democrats with their 100% politicized history, and the news media, give a fraudulent interpretation of Southern history. He wrote this is 1994:

Rarely, these days, even on Southern campuses, is it possible to acknowledge the achievements of the white people of the South. The history of the Old South is now often taught at leading universities, when it is taught at all, as a prolonged guilt-trip, not to say a prologue to the history of Nazi Germany. . . . To speak positively about any part of this Southern tradition is to invite charges of being a racist and an apologist for slavery and segregation. We are witnessing a cultural and political atrocity.6

Dr. Genovese goes on to say that this cultural and political atrocity is being forced on us by "the media and an academic elite.7

There is no truth to the portrayal of Southern history today that Democrats are pushing. It is 100% political propaganda.

Democrats are also pushing The New York Times' 1619 Project despite major historians like James M. McPherson labeling it, basically, fake history.

It has the American Revolution being fought by white supremacist colonists so they could keep slavery, though the 1619 Project does not offer a single iota of proof of that . . . because there is none.

Not a single statement by a single person, no letter, no document, not a shred of evidence supports the false premise of the 1619 Project, that the American Revolution was fought so white supremacist colonists could keep their slaves.

The Democrat Party thinks their political narrative of hatred of America and our founding will help them with their racist identity politics.

We live in a twisted world when The New York Times, the most biased newspaper in America, full of fake news, is now the arbiter of American history.

There is significant pushback on this. Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton has a bill that would deny federal funds to schools that teach the hate-America, fake history 1619 Project.

Even the 1619 Project founders have now admitted that it is not history, but "journalism" though fake journalism at that. Best to call it what it is: leftist political propaganda.

For Republicans and fair minded Democrats, there is no downside to defending Southern history. No Confederate memorial of any type, anywhere, should be removed, ever. Any that have been removed or destroyed should be replaced forthwith.

Here's your cover enabling you to defend Southern history, and it is impenetrable. Take a lesson from Ike.

Eisenhower speaks with some of the 101st Airborne Division June 5, 1944, the day before the D-Day invasion.
Eisenhower speaks with some of the 101st Airborne Division June 5, 1944, the day before the D-Day invasion.

Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1st Supreme Allied Commander, Europe, in World War II, later president of the United States for eight years, had a picture of Gen. Robert E. Lee on his wall in the White House his entire time there. Like President John F. Kennedy, Eisenhower had great respect for Gen. Lee and his cause, and he appreciated Lee's efforts to bind up the nation's wounds after our bloodiest war.

On August 1, 1960, a New York dentist, Dr. Leon W. Scott, wrote an angry letter to President Eisenhower excoriating him for having that picture of Lee in his White House office. Scott wrote: "I do not understand  how any American can include Robert E. Lee as a person to be emulated, and why the President of the United States of America should do so is certainly beyond me. / The most outstanding thing that Robert E. Lee did, was to devote his best efforts to the destruction of the United States Government, and I am sure that you do not say that a person who tries to destroy our Government is worthy of being held as one of our heroes."8

President Eisenhower wrote back on the 9th:

Dear Dr. Scott:

Respecting your August 1 inquiry calling attention to my often expressed admiration for General Robert E. Lee, I would say, first, that we need to understand that at the time of the War between the States the issue of secession had remained unresolved for more than 70 years. Men of probity, character, public standing and unquestioned loyalty, both North and South, had disagreed over this issue as a matter of principle from the day our Constitution was adopted.

General Robert E. Lee was, in my estimation, one of the supremely gifted men produced by our Nation. He believed unswervingly in the Constitutional validity of his cause which until 1865 was still an arguable question in America; he was a poised and inspiring leader, true to the high trust reposed in him by millions of his fellow citizens; he was thoughtful yet demanding of his officers and men, forbearing with captured enemies but ingenious, unrelenting and personally courageous in battle, and never disheartened by a reverse or obstacle. Through all his many trials, he remained selfless almost to a fault and unfailing in his faith in God. Taken altogether, he was noble as a leader and as a man, and unsullied as I read the pages of our history.

From deep conviction, I simply say this: a nation of men of Lee's caliber would be unconquerable in spirit and soul. Indeed, to the degree that present-day American youth will strive to emulate his rare qualities, including his devotion to this land as revealed in his painstaking efforts to help heal the Nation's wounds once the bitter struggle was over, will be strengthened and our love of freedom sustained.

Such are the reasons that I proudly display the picture of this great American on my office wall.

Sincerely,
Dwight D. Eisenhower9

The official White House portrait of Dwight D. Eisenhower by James Anthony Wills.
The official White House portrait of Dwight D. Eisenhower by James Anthony Wills.

Republican senators in states that aren't in the South like Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst, and Colorado Sen. Cory Gardner, who might be tempted to vote for base name changes, better think about the entire party.

United States electoral map showing clearly that the South is where Republican Party power is. It is time to stand up for Southern history. Have no fear. Democrats can't hurt you at all but you can hurt them when you are united with your Southern base.
United States electoral map showing clearly that the South is where Republican Party power is. It is time to stand up for Southern history. Have no fear. Democrats can't hurt you at all but you can hurt them when you are united with your Southern base.

Without the South, where Republican red state strength is located, other Republicans are dead because they will be a powerless minority party.

All the judges President Trump has been appointing, and the sure Supreme Court picks that will occur over the next four years will now go to the Democrats.

Our country is not in a good mood.

We have had to endure months of COVID-19 as well as three straight months of non-stop violent riots plus the constant hate and false charge of racism in the media against people who are not racist in the least.

There is a feeling that the country is coming apart.

Over 200 monuments have been destroyed, vandalized or removed since May with most being to Confederate dead here in the South, the ancestors of today's Republican voters.

The military valor of the South is unsurpassed in the history of the world, and that's why Confederate named bases need to stay Confederate. That is what President Trump knows.

The death statistics in the War Between the States are now between 650,000 and 850,000. These are the widely accepted statistics of historian J. David Hacker of Binghamton University.10

Drew Gilpin Faust in her excellent book, This Republic of Suffering, Death and the American Civil War, uses the earlier statistics of 620,000 total deaths compiled by William F. Fox, and she writes that those deaths were "approximately equal to the total American fatalities in the Revolution, the War of 1812, the Mexican War, the Spanish-American War, World War I, World War II, and the Korean War combined."11

If you use Hacker's statistics, you'd have to add Vietnam, both Gulf Wars, Afghanistan and the war on terror; in other words, deaths in the War Between the States were higher than all other American wars combined with plenty of room to spare.

Faust says the rate of death "in comparison with the size of the American population, was six times that of World War II. A similar rate, about 2 percent, in the United States today would mean six million fatalities."12

Confederate soldiers "died at a rate three times that of their Yankee counterparts; one in five white Southern men of military age did not survive the Civil War."13

Faust quotes James McPherson who writes that "the overall mortality rate for the South exceeded that of any country in World War I and that of all but the region between the Rhine and the Volga in World War II."14

To personalize some of those statistics, Confederate Col. George E. Purvis was quoted in Confederate Veteran magazine, March, 1897, from an article he had written about Union Gen. Henry Van Ness Boynton and the Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park.

Gen. Boynton, with great respect for the courage of the Confederates he faced, wanted to make it a sacred memorial, not just to Union valor, but American valor.

Col. Purvis writes that Gen. Boynton and a friend had visited the Chickamauga battlefield on a quiet Sunday morning in the summer of 1888 and heard singing in a church nearby. The general's thoughts went from those sweet sounds to the hellish and "fearful horrors of that other Sunday, when the very demons of hell seemed abroad, armed and equipped for the annihilation of mankind" almost a quarter of a century earlier:15

They saw again the charging squadrons, like great waves of the sea, dashed and broken in pieces against lines and positions that would not yield to their assaults. They saw again Baird's, Johnson's, Palmer's, and Reynolds's immovable lines around the Kelley farm, and Wood on the spurs of Snodgrass Hill; Brannan, Grosvenor, Steedman, and Granger on the now famous Horseshoe; once more was brought back to their minds' eye, "the unequaled fighting of that thin and contracted line of heroes and the magnificent Confederate assaults," which swept in again and again ceaselessly as that stormy service of all the gods of battle was prolonged through those other Sunday hours.

Their eyes traveled over the ground again where Forrest's and Walker's men had dashed into the smoke of the Union musketry and the very flame of the Federal batteries, and saw their ranks melt as snowflakes dissolve and disappear in the heat of conflagration.

They stood on Baird's line, where Helms's Brigade went to pieces, but not until three men out of four - mark that, ye coming heroes! - not until three men out of every four were either wounded or dead, eclipsing the historic charge at Balaklava and the bloody losses in the great battles of modern times.

They saw Longstreet's men sweep over the difficult and almost inaccessible slopes of the Horseshoe, "dash wildly, and break there, like angry waves, and recede, only to sweep on again and again with almost the regularity of ocean surges, ever marking a higher tide."

They looked down again on those slopes, slippery with blood and strewn thick as leaves with all the horrible wreck of battle, over which and in spite of repeated failures these assaulting Confederate columns still formed and reformed, charging again and again with undaunted and undying courage.

We need to stand with President Trump and win this battle over Confederate named bases in the South.

We need a full court press, all hands on deck, everybody call and write everybody in the United States House of Representatives and especially every senator in the Senate and tell them you do not want Confederate named bases to change, that those bases are significant in American history exactly as they are, and they are named for generals but represent the common soldier of the South who was often hungry and barefoot but fought with a ferocity and willingness to die like the bravest in world history.

The soil of the South is soaked with the blood of these patriots, and Republican voters in the South are their progeny.

They are Americans. We were the Confederate States of America.

They were as gallant and honorable as the Union soldiers they faced on the battlefield, most of whom had great admiration for their Southern counterparts.

This is a victory we can win because we have the president of the United States of America on our side.

Let's make this the turning point in the war on Southern history, whereupon we start regaining the ground lost in the past 60 years.

Our country will be a much better place for it.

 

NOTES

1 "President Trump, GOP ally vow Confederate base names won't change", July 24, 2020, https://fox6now.com/2020/07/24/president-trump-gop-ally-vow-confederate-base-names-wont-change, accessed 7-29-20.

2 Ibid.

3 "Trump says Confederate flag proud symbol of U.S. South" by Doina Chiacu, Reuters, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-confederate/trump-says-confederate-flag-proud-symbol-of-us-south-idUSKCN24K0I0, accessed 7-29-20.

4 Here's the founders' statement on the BLEXIT website: "Founders Candace Owens and Brandon Tatum came together because of their shared desire to build a better future for America. Candace and Brandon seek to educate minorities across America about the history of our great country by highlighting the principles of the Constitution of the United States and the importance of self-reliance. The two believe it is time to take criminal justice reform seriously to stop the over-incarceration of minorities, to build strong families in the minority communities, and to value the life and the sanctity of every individual." https://blexitfoundation.org/, accessed 7-29-20.

5 Genovese was a brilliant historian as the following paragraph illustrates. It is the opening paragraph of an essay in The Journal of Southern History, Volume LXXX, No. 2, May, 2014 entitled "Eugene Genovese's Old South: A Review Essay" by J. William Harris: "The death of Eugene D. Genovese in September 2012 brought to a close a remarkable career. In the decades following his first published essay on Southern history, Genovese produced an outstanding body of scholarship, based on a rare combination of deep research in primary sources; a mastery of the historical literature, not only in Southern history but also in many complementary fields; a sophisticated command of methodological issues; and often sparkling prose. And Genovese's reputation reached far beyond specialists in Southern history, and even beyond the academy. In 2005 a reviewer in one magazine for a general readership called Genovese the 'Country's greatest living historian' and his Roll, Jordan, Roll 'the most lasting work of American historical scholarship since the Second World War.'"

6 Eugene D. Genovese, The Southern Tradition, The Achievement and Limitations of an American Conservatism (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994), Preface, xi-xii.

7 Ibid.

8 Dwight D. Eisenhower in Defense of Robert E. Lee, August 10, 2014, Mathew W. Lively, https://www.civilwarprofiles.com/dwight-d-eisenhower-in-defense-of-robert-e-lee/, accessed 5-3-20.

9 Dwight D. Eisenhower letter, August 9, 1960, to Leon W. Scott, in "Dwight D. Eisenhower in Defense of Robert E. Lee," August 10, 2014, Mathew W. Lively, https://www.civilwarprofiles.com/dwight-d-eisenhower-in-defense-of-robert-e-lee/, accessed 5-3-20.

10 See Rachel Coker, "Historian revises estimate of Civil War dead," published September 21, 2011, Binghamton University Research News - Insights and Innovations from Binghamton University, http://discovere.binghamton.edu/news/civilwar-3826.html, accessed July 7, 2014. Hacker's range is 650,000 to 850,000. He uses 750,000.

11 Drew Gilpin Faust, This Republic of Suffering, Death and the American Civil War (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2008), xi.

12 Ibid.

13 Ibid.

14 Faust, This Republic of Suffering, xii.

15 "American Valor at Chickamauga", Confederate Veteran, Vol. V, No. 3, March, 1897.

The Associated Press Is a Racist and Ignorant of History

The Associated Press Is a Racist
and Ignorant of History

by Gene Kizer, Jr.

 

The Associated Press, one of the most leftist institutions in America, is now also racist.

In fact, it has skipped racist and gone straight to Nazi.

The associated press now capitalizes the word "black" when talking about black people, but does not capitalize the word "white" when talking about white people.1

As a result of the associated press's obsession with race and bigotry against white people, I can no longer capitalize the words "associated press" or its "stylebook" or any other words or initials associated with the a p.

In fact, I will use the abbreviation "ass. press" for the associated press, from now on.

The ass. press started capitalizing black June 19, but did not make a decision on capitalizing white at the time. They wanted to think about it. 2

But in the past few days they have made the deliberate decision not to capitalize white.

Their racist instructions are published in the ass. press's famous stylebook, which has enormous influence in the world of writing and publishing.3

Capitalizing the adjective black, but not white, looks weird in sentences and seems very unliterary and unprofessional, like something Louis Farrakhan would do in his mosque newsletter.

Here are a couple examples from an ass. press story in the Charleston Post and Courier, July 6, 2020:4

That includes white people from other parts of the country, Black families returning generations after the Great Migration north . . . . Harrison noted that even younger native Southerners, Black and white, are less wed to hard-partisan identities . . . .

Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton were native Southerners who, with whiter, less urban electorates, attracted white moderates and Black voters.

The bias of the ass. press is nothing new. Its reporters are required to have a copy of the Democrat Party Stylebook on their desk next to their copy of Das Kapital, Rules for Radicals, The Communist Manifesto, and their pictures of George Soros, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, so they can portray, what is to them, an "unbiased" perspective.

The concept of unbiased journalism and knowing American history before writing about it, is foreign to the ass. press because that's not how they do it in New York.

In New York, they do it like The New York Times' 1619 Project whose founder, Nikole Hannah-Jones, called the white race "the biggest murderer, rapist, pillager, and thief of the modern world. . . . Christopher Columbus and those like him were no different than Hitler."5

She still won a Pulitzer Prize from another bunch of PC northeast liberals for her fake history that asserts that America is so bad, even the Revolutionary War was fought so white supremacist colonists could keep their slaves, even though there is not a shred of evidence of that.

I mean, there is not even a molecule of evidence. There is no writing, no document, no nothing, by a single person.

In other words, it is unsourced fake history, like much of the unsourced fake news in The New York Times.

The intelligence of people in New York is already suspect after twice electing Bill de Blasio mayor.

Unfortunately for Hannah-Jones and The New York Times, a Southerner named Thomas Jefferson wrote this little thing called the Declaration of Independence outlining exactly what the colonists were fighting for and why, and nowhere does it state that they were concerned about the British ending slavery in the American colonies. Not a single word even implies such an absurdity.

The Declaration of Independence says things like:

Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,--That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

That was the most widely quoted phrase of Southerners in the secession debate in the South in the year prior to their seceding.

The 1619 Project, while bringing up some good points such as Abraham Lincoln's racism and desire to ship black people back to Africa or somewhere away from America where they'd have a chance to survive, has been heavily criticized by historians and is not credible.

It is highly regrettable that it is in hundreds of schools. That must come to an end without major historical corrections to the 1619 Project, which Hannah-Jones is unlikely to make, especially now that she has Oprah Winfrey and all her money and movie making behind her.

Also, in fairness to Abraham Lincoln, he was a man of his time. There was nothing out of the ordinary about his way of thinking about race.

By the 19th century, the white civilization of Europe that started with the Greeks and Romans, was well established here, based on capitalism, science, technology, freedom and opportunity.

It was just too different from the tribal civilizations of Africa. It would take a while for all Americans to look upon each other as equals. That's just human nature.

Despite slavery, race relations were still better in the South than anywhere in America. Alexis de Tocqueville said, in Democracy in America, that race relations were bad in places where slavery had been abolished, and the worst in places that had never had slavery.

Despite the odds, some free black people did well during the time of slavery and many more did well afterward. William Ellison, the famous black cotton gin maker from Sumter County, South Carolina was well respected and owned over 60 slaves before the war.

Of course opportunity for blacks, with all the turmoil of Reconstruction, was severely limited for a long time, but the promise of the Declaration of Independence was there and today opportunity is unlimited for everybody in America, which is why people from all over the world will risk everything to get here.

I know that doesn't fit with the left's victimology politics but those who reject the false narrative of systemic racism, which Dr. Thomas Sowell said does not exist and is like the propaganda tactics of Hitler and Goebbels,6 can succeed wildly in America.

The only thing holding anybody down is their own mind. As Henry Ford said, whether you think you can do a thing, or not, you are right.

American history has been politicized since the 1960s and Southern history is the worst.

The ass. press is despicable on Southern history. Like the great historian, Eugene Genovese, said, the fake history pushed by the ass. press and other liberals is a "cultural and political atrocity" that has been forced on the public by an academic and media elite.7

The ass. press is not concerned with truth. It is concerned with leftist politics.

Many of the articles on the recent riots are fake news. They portray the demonstrators as peaceful while buildings burn in the background. Much of this mayhem is caused by anarchists who hate America and want it to crumble.

If it really did crumble, they would regret it because at some point, the public is not going to put up with it any more.

Thank God we have a Second Amendment, though the left and Democrat Party hate it and have done everything they can to weaken or destroy it so that the public will be at the mercy of violent Democrat Party mobs.

To the dumb ass. press, everybody who lived before today is a white supremacist even though they were regular people living in their times, working, raising families, fighting in the nation's wars.

Real historians know that you can't use today's standards to judge the people of the past. To the people of the past, it was their present. You have to judge people of the past within the context of their own times.

Anything else is not history but filthy politics.

The woke crowd is at total war with the past. There are unlimited opportunities for the left to dig up instances of hate and abuse from centuries ago and use it to promote hate and abuse today for some political advantage.

Anybody the ass. press wants to slander, they slander, with the most sweeping generalizations you can imagine. The ass. press promotes hate for the political advantage of Democrats.

In an article entitled "Historical figures under attack following death of George Floyd" on June 12, 2020, the ass. press wrote:

Protests and, in some cases, acts of vandalism have taken place in such cities as Boston; New York; Paris; Brussels; and Oxford, England, in an intense re-examination of racial injustices over the centuries. Scholars are divided over whether the campaign amounts to erasing history or updating it.8

An "intense re-examination of racial injustices over the centuries"?

What the hell is the mob examining?

Nobody alive today did anything two centuries ago that the mob needs to avenge today.

Nobody alive today did anything to hold black people down. Nobody alive today operated a slave ship. Most people are appalled at slavery.

Many of us just want the truth told. The South gets blamed for slavery but New England Yankees brought all the slaves here with help from the British before them.

Boston's Peter Faneuil, of Faneuil Hall, the Cradle of Liberty, was a major slave trader helping the economy of Boston enormously in its early days. One of his slave ships was the Jolly Batchelor but it wasn't too jolly for the poor Africans he forced into the horrendous Middle Passage and a life of slavery.

And New York City, together with the aforementioned Boston, loved slavery and slave trading so much that they were the largest ports for the slave trade on the planet in 1862, a year into the War Between the States, and 54 years after the slave trade had been outlawed by the United States Constitution.9 They continued slave trading until the last country, Brazil, abolished slavery in 1888.

Six slave states fought for the North the entire war: Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, and West Virginia, which came into the Union as a slave state during the war. They were among the last to end slavery, and two had slaves until the 13th Amendment finally freed them in December, 1865, months after the war.

Four of the Southern states that seceded - Virginia, North Carolina, Arkansas and Tennessee - in which 52.4% of white Southerners lived, seceded over nothing to do with slavery. They did not secede until Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers to invade the South, then Virginia seceded immediately, followed in weeks by the other three.

Doesn't matter anyway.

The South had the right to secede and they did so properly. No historian will deny the right of secession so every accusation you hear that Confederates were traitors is a fraud. Real historians know this. President Eisenhower knew it which is why he had a picture of General Robert E. Lee in his office the whole eight years he was president. Gen. Lee's honor and courage no doubt inspired Gen. Eisenhower to win World War II, as he said.

We are not having an "intense re-examination of racial injustices over the centuries." That is absurd. All we are having is criminal activity that weak Democrat mayors tolerate and encourage, then excuse, by saying it is an "intense re-examination of racial injustices" therefore you better give me what I want politically. All of the cities with riots are liberal cities with liberal Democrat mayors. That's what's in store for the rest of America if Democrats ever rule again.

The ass. press is ignorant of Southern history in most cases, and deliberately tells lies in others. In that same article quoted above, they wrote:

The Davis monument and many others across the South were erected decades after the Civil War during the Jim Crow era, when states imposed tough new segregation laws, and during the Lost Cause movement, in which historians and others sought to recast the South's rebellion as a noble undertaking, fought to defend not slavery but states' rights.

That is a popular technique of the propagandists in the news media and especially the ass. press. They falsely equate monument construction with Jim Crow, which is a fraud.

Over 750,000 people died in the War Between the States and over 1,000,000 were maimed out of a total national population of only 32 million (23 million in the North, nine million in the South, of which 4 million were slaves, so, what you really had was five million Southerners in an agricultural society against 23 million Northerners with unlimited immigration in an industrial society that had an overwhelming advantage in weapon manufacturing, railroads, an army, navy, solid financial system, etc.). Southerners had to start everything from scratch.

Contrast that with World War II when we had a national population of around 150 million, yet only 400,000 were killed, and 650,000 wounded.

That's 750,000 killed out of a population of 32 million verses 400,000 killed out of a population of 150 million.

The South was almost entirely destroyed. It took 75 years for the South to recover, and 94.3% of white Southerners did not own slaves. Would 94.3% of Southerners sacrifice all that so 5.7% could keep their slaves?

Hell no.

Every Confederate monument went up for the most noble reason, to honor war dead after a devastating war. Not a one went up to proclaim the ass. press's fantasy of white supremacy.

What's happened today with Confederate monuments is the most disgraceful period of American history, led by the ass. press and rest of the liberal media. I hope history judges them harshly.

Read any of the 40 years of the original Confederate Veteran magazine and you will see that every single penny that was raised came from school children, raffles, bake sales and such, in an impoverished region. That is how the monuments went up, and both whites and blacks loved them.

Today's hatred is a construct of the hate-monger leftist media led by the ass. press and the Democrat Party.

If slavery was the true cause of the war, it would have ended in a few months because nobody would sacrifice that much death and destruction so 5.7% could own slaves, but all of them would fight to the death for independence just as the colonists were willing to do.

Besides, Southerners could have negotiated an end to the war and kept their slaves anytime within the first two years of the war (and probably after that) if they had wanted to. Lincoln was fine with that.

Southerners were fighting for independence and all that meant, and Northerners were fighting for Union as Abraham Lincoln said over and over. The reason Northerners were fighting for Union was because all their enormous wealth and power was tied to the Union.

They would rather take what they wanted than have to compete against the South with 100% control of the most demanded commodity on the planet, cotton, and strengthened greatly by military and trade alliances with Great Britain and the rest of Europe.

In such a scenario, the North could not have beaten the South, and Lincoln knew it. That's why he started his war as quickly as he could, then set up a naval blockade.

In two bald-faced lies in one paragraph, the ass. press wrote in an article "Confederate battle flag losing prominence 155 years after Civil War" on July 1, 2020:

Georgia - which added the battle emblem to its state flag in 1956 in response to U.S. Supreme Court decisions to desegregate public schools - adopted a flag without a rebel banner in 2003.10

In the first lie, the adding of the Confederate battle flag to the Georgia state flag in 1956 did not have one iota to do with school desegregation. I had some correspondence with the man responsible, Judge John Salmons Bell, who changed the flag because the old Confederate veterans were dying out and he had attended Confederate veteran reunions when he was a boy. He was proud of his family that fought for the South.

Also, the centennial of the War Between the States was coming up and President Eisenhower had directed the states to prepare their commemorations. This was on the minds of people back then.

Those like the ass. press who say the flag was changed in Georgia in defiance to integration can provide no proof of that, and if it was true, there would be a ton of proof because people in those days had no problems making racist statements when they felt like it.

In the second lie, the Georgia state flag adopted in 2003, is not, as the ass. press says, "without a rebel banner" but is almost exactly a rebel banner, the Stars and Bars, the first Confederate national flag. (See pictures of both flags at the bottom of this article, below the endnotes).

The liars in the ass. press and other media have said South Carolina also raised the Confederate battle flag above its State House in the early 1960s in defiance to integration.

It wasn't true. The man responsible for flying the battle flag over the South Carolina State House was John Amasa May, a legislator from Aiken County and a World War II hero, a Bronze Star winner, lawyer, historian, and head of the Confederate War Centennial Commission in South Carolina.

The battle flag went up over the South Carolina State House to honor the 40,000 out of 60,000 South Carolina Confederate soldiers who were killed or wounded in the war. Around 20,000 were killed.

Again, the ass. press is a filthy liar as are most in the media when it comes to Southern history. Just like Genovese said, a media and academic elite have turned the history of the South into a "cultural and political atrocity."

The ass. press is a racist.

They know by capitalizing black, and not capitalizing white, they are building up black people who vote Democrat as they do, and they are demeaning whites, which is revenge for what Northern slave traders, and slaveholders in the North and South did 150 years ago, but nobody who has lived in the past century has done.

In a June 30, 2020 article "Many newsrooms are now capitalizing the B in black. Here are some of the people who made that happen", Aly Colon is quoted from 2003 saying:

To me, it's an issue of respect, fairness, equality, and parity. When we use a lowercase letter it makes the word less visible, less prominent, and maybe less important. It's the diminutive form. My name is written with an upper case 'A' and 'C' for "Aly Colon." I consider that a sign of respect.11

Only a virulent, vile racist would divide our country over a racial issue like this at a time when we are already so divided.

The ass. press doesn't care. They think it helps the Democrat Party politically and that's enough.

Capitalizing black is fine as long as white and brown are also capitalized so it shows proper respect for all Americans.

You saw earlier in the two examples from the newspaper how stupid it looks to have black capitalized and white in lower case in the same sentence. It is improper English to capitalize adjectives like that but if everybody is treated the same, then fine.

However, capitalizing black and deliberately not capitalizing white is a racist statement, which makes the ass. press a racist as well as an historically ignorant purveyor of fake news.

When you see black capitalized in an article, and white not capitalized, you know that article is written by virtue signaling racists and that is the viewpoint it is written from.

Newspapers don't have to follow the ass. press's lead.

Fox News will capitalize both black and white.

Others like me will continue to use proper English and not capitalize either.

If I do decide to capitalize something in the future, all will be capitalized, black, white and brown, because I believe all Americans are equal, and we should come together as a great nation whenever we can.

All decent people should encourage that, and not do like the ass. press and promote racial hate and division.

 


1 "ap changes writing style to capitalize "b" in Black", June 19, 2020, https://apnews.com/71386b46dbff8190e71493a763e8f45a, accessed 7-14-20; "The decision to capitalize Black" by john daniszewski, vice president for standards, June 19, 2020, https://blog.ap.org/announcements/the-decision-to-capitalize-black, accessed 7-20-20; "Why we will lowercase white" by john daniszewski, vice president for standards, https://blog.ap.org/announcements/why-we-will-lowercase-white, accessed 7-22-20; "The associated press announced it will not capitalize W in white" by Eliana Miller, July 20, 2020, https://www.poynter.org/reporting-editing/2020/the-associated-press-announced-it-will-not-capitalize-w-in-white, accessed 7-20-20.

2 "The decision to capitalize Black" by john daniszewski, vice president for standards, June 19, 2020, https://blog.ap.org/announcements/the-decision-to-capitalize-black, accessed 7-20-20.

3 ap stylebook, 55th edition, https://store.stylebooks.com/2020-ap-stylebook-print-edition.html, accessed 7-22-20.

4 "Democrats, Biden look to accelerate Southern political shift", associated press story by Bill Barrow in the Charleston Post and Courier, July 6, 2020.

5 "In Racist Screed, NYT's 1619 Project Founder Calls 'White Race' 'Barbaric Devils,' 'Bloodsuckers,' Columbia 'No Different Than Hitler'", June 25, 2020 by Jordan Davidson, https://thefederalist.com/2020/06/25/in-racist-screed-nyts-1619-project-founder-calls-white-race-barbaric-devils-bloodsuckers-no-different-than-hitler, accessed 7-8-20.

6 Fox News, Life, Liberty and Levin, July 12, 2020, "Thomas Sowell on 'utter madness' of defund the police push, wonders whether US is reaching point of no return" https://www.foxnews.com/transcript/thomas-sowell-on-utter-madness-of-defund-the-police-push-wonders-whether-us-is-reaching-point-of-no-return, accessed July 14, 2020.

7 Eugene D. Genovese, The Southern Tradition, The Achievement and Limitations of an American Conservatism (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994), Preface, xi-xii.

8 "Historical figures under attack following death of George Floyd", June 12, 2020, ass. press story in the Charleston, SC Post and Courier.

9 W. E. Burghardt Du Bois, The Suppression of the African Slave-Trade to the United States of America 1638-1870 (New York: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1896), 179.

10 "Confederate battle flag losing prominence 155 years after Civil War", July 1, 2020, ass. press article in the Charleston, SC Post and Courier.

11 June 30, 2020 article "Many newsrooms are now capitalizing the B in black. Here are some of the people who made that happen" by Kristen Hare, June 30, 2020, https://www.poynter.org/reporting-editing/2020/many-newsrooms-are-now-capitalizing-the-b-in-black-here-are-some-of-the-people-who-made-that-happen/, accessed 7-22-20.

The Confederate First National Flag also known as the Stars and Bars.
The Confederate First National Flag also known as the Stars and Bars.
The current Georgia state flag since 2003, exactly like the Confederate First National Flag, the Stars and Bars.
The current Georgia state flag since 2003, exactly like the Confederate First National Flag, the Stars and Bars.

“Systemic Racism” Is an Invention; Serious Questions About the Pulitzer Prizes Won by Nikole Hannah-Jones, The New York Times, and the Washington Post

"Systemic Racism" Is an Invention; Serious Questions About the Pulitzer Prizes "Won" by Nikole Hannah-Jones, The New York Times, and The Washington Post

by Gene Kizer, Jr.

 

On July 12, 2020, Mark Levin, on his show Life, Liberty and Levin on Fox News, said to Dr. Thomas Sowell, "You hear this phrase systemic racism, systemic oppression. You hear it on our college campuses. You hear it from very wealthy and fabulously famous sports stars. You hear it from media types. You hear it - first of all, what does that mean? And whatever it means, is it true?"1

Dr. Sowell answered:

It really has no meaning that can be specified and tested in the way that one test hypotheses. It does remind me of the propaganda tactics of Joseph Goebbels during the Age of the Nazis, in which he is supposed to have said that people will believe any lie if it's repeated long enough and loud enough, and that's what we're getting.

I don't think - it's one of many words that I don't think even the people who use it have any clear idea what they're saying. The purpose is served by having other people caving in.2

Dr. Sowell is exactly right.

Ever since Barack Obama became a two-term black president, which would be impossible in a racist nation, the left has been scrambling to find racism and hate behind every bush. When they can't find it, they invent it, and that's what the charge of "systemic racism" is about.

For years now, the American public, made up of mostly good, decent people, have had to endure for 24 hours a day, seven days a week, the Nazi-type false accusation of "systemic racism," as Dr. Sowell states, because the left needs to tell the big lie and repeat it over and over: America is racist and needs to change into the left's idiotic vision where the police are defunded and Democrat mayors in big cities allow crime against law-biding citizens.

All the riots and violence we have had in the past two months are not the result of an organic movement. They are the result of one thing and one thing only: Weak Democrat mayors allowing crime to happen.

Many of these Democrats (some aren't evil, they are just incompetent) don't give a damn about the good people who work every day and try to raise their families to be good people and citizens, the folks who love their country and serve in the military and respect law enforcement. Those people are racist hatemongers according to the left, cloaked in white privilege. The media are obsessed with it.

The left needs hate because it is not interested in ideas that benefit all Americans such as a great economy with unlimited opportunity for all to make money and succeed.

In fact, the left hates capitalism. They are mostly big-government socialists so that they can control everybody and everything. They want to give out the rewards and punishments.

The left hates the rugged individualism, the Horatio Alger tales of working hard and succeeding in a capitalist economy, of building a business. Remember Obama's "you didn't build that," though you did build it. You busted ass to build it. You maxed out your credit cards and went deeply into debt to build it. You didn't need Obama. You will never need somebody as mediocre as Obama and Biden.

The left is invested in racist identity politics, in tribalism, in skin color. They have done the math and are convinced that non-whites have a higher fertility rate than whites. To those non-whites, add Hispanics pouring across the southern border, and the future will belong to the Democrats. All they will have to do is pass a bill legalizing illegal immigrants and instantly bring millions of new Democrat voters into the fold.

Nancy Pelosi's House has already passed a statehood bill for Washington, D.C. which will give them two more Senate seats.

The possibility of being able to rule America forever as a one-party government has the left giddy with anticipation and in a white heat of desire. They know they can do this and now is the time. Even if they lose in four months, the future is still theirs. They no longer have to be civil. They can claim what they think is their birthright with violence and intimidation. That's why they've got Antifa and BLM.

As long as they can keep black people and other non-whites on the Democrat Party plantation, they got this.

Hate and racism work so it is OK for them to hate everything about America's founding.

Mark this in your diary because this is the first year in American history that the 4th of July is racist. Those bad old white people stole the land from the Indians, though the left never mentions that the Indians stole the same land from other Indians.

America was founded so white people could own slaves, says the left.

They don't understand that slavery was not an end in itself. It was 100% economic. It was a way to get the cotton picked because the wealth and power of antebellum America was based on King Cotton. Cotton alone was 60% of U.S. exports in 1860 and the South controlled it all.

That does not excuse slavery in the least, but it does help explain it.

Besides, New Englanders had been making huge fortunes on slavery from the beginning. They brought all the slaves here, and the British before them. Northerners were slave traders all the way until the last nations on earth abolished slavery: Cuba, in 1886, and Brazil in 1888.3

In 1862, during the War Between the States, 54 years after the United States Constitution outlawed the slave trade (1808), Boston and New York were still the largest slave trading ports on the planet.4

The North shipped Southern cotton and got filthy rich in the process, and it manufactured for the growers of that cotton and made even more money through federal tariffs, bounties, subsidies and monopolies given to Northern business and industry by the Federal Government. No wonder Northerners loved the Federal Government. They were the "Federals" in the war. The South was providing employment, wealth and power to the North.

Southern money filled the federal treasury but three-fourths of that money was spent in the North. How long do you think Yankees would stay in a Union in which they were paying three-fourths of the taxes, but three-fourths of the tax money was spent in the South?

The left never mentions that blacks owned slaves too. One of the largest slaveholders in South Carolina was the famous black cotton gin maker, William Ellison, of Sumter County who owned over 60 slaves.

The left never mentions that slavery started with blacks themselves in Africa, the result of tribal warfare. Black tribal chieftains had their poor captives lined up in places like Bunce Island off modern Sierra Leone, and in the barracoons mentioned by the famous African American anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston in her book Barracoon.5

The left never mentions that slavery was dying out and would not have lasted another generation. Machines to pick cotton were on the horizon with automobiles, airplanes and telephones. Southerners wanted to do like Yankees and hire and fire according to business demands, rather than taking on the birth to death commitment of slavery.

The left wants you to believe that white people would have owned slaves to this very day. With that kind of narrative it makes hate a lot easier.  That's why Confederate monuments are low hanging fruit to them, even though those monuments were put up a century or more ago to honor war dead in a horrific war in which 750,000 people died, and over a million were maimed.6

Drew Gilpin Faust in her excellent book, This Republic of Suffering, Death and the American Civil War, uses the earlier statistics of 620,000 total deaths compiled by William F. Fox, and she writes that those deaths were "approximately equal to the total American fatalities in the Revolution, the War of 1812, the Mexican War, the Spanish-American War, World War I, World War II, and the Korean War combined."7 If you use Hacker's statistics, you'd have to add Vietnam, both Gulf Wars, Afghanistan and the war on terror; in other words, deaths in the War Between the States were higher than all other American wars combined, with plenty of room to spare.

Faust says the rate of death "in comparison with the size of the American population, was six times that of World War II. A similar rate, about 2 percent, in the United States today would mean six million fatalities."8

Confederate soldiers "died at a rate three times that of their Yankee counterparts; one in five white Southern men of military age did not survive the Civil War."9

Faust quotes James McPherson who writes that "the overall mortality rate for the South exceeded that of any country in World War I and that of all but the region between the Rhine and the Volga in World War II."10

You have to ask yourself, would 94.3% of white Southerners, who did not own slaves, sacrifice that much so that the 5.7% who did could keep them?

Basil Gildersleeve answers that question for us. He is still known today as the greatest American classical scholar of all time. He was a Confederate soldier from Charleston, South Carolina. He sums it up nicely in The Creed of the Old South, published 27 years after the war:

All that I vouch for is the feeling; . . . there was no lurking suspicion of any moral weakness in our cause. Nothing could be holier than the cause, nothing more imperative than the duty of upholding it. There were those in the South who, when they saw the issue of the war, gave up their faith in God, but not their faith in the cause.11

The lie that Confederate monuments went up to proclaim white supremacy is easily disproven by reading any of the 40 year run of the original Confederate Veteran magazine. Every penny raised for Confederate monuments is in Confederate Veteran, penny by penny, and all of those monuments went up with pennies from school children, and such, in an impoverished region that suffered until World War II.

Talk about prejudice! How about the Yankee shipping differential that made it expensive to ship goods from the South to the North, but cheap from North to South. The shipping differential fertilized Northern industry but paralyzed Southern industry.

Maybe Southerners should dig that out of the past and start rioting and looting since that is the way to get what you want in today's America.

Since the riots, nobody has stood up the mob. Anything the mob wants it gets. It got the 125 year old John C. Calhoun monument here in Charleston after the city was vandalized and looted by a violent mob on May 30th and Democrat mayor John Tecklenburg got in political trouble.

The Charleston Post and Courier, which is part of the mob, agitated to remove the Calhoun monument at the mayor's behest. They made a hero out of the mayor for a few days but voters won't forget that Tecklenburg destroyed a big part of Charleston's history when he could have chosen the option to add another monument to celebrate some aspect of African American history.

That would have been inclusive and added to Charleston's history but he chose destruction instead, and it was the most dishonorable, disgraceful hour in Charleston history. It was completely unnecessary because we had the monument debate a year ago and had decided to leave all our monuments alone.

One good thing about the destruction of Ulysses S. Grant's monument. It proves the War Between the States was not fought to free the slaves because if it was, Grant's monument would have been spared. I mean, the mob knows about these things.

Luckily, the New York Times' 1619 Project will establish the truth of American history for us. The 1619 Project did have a rocky start when it claimed the American Revolutionary War was fought so the colonists could preserve slavery. That is an absurd proposition but that's how Nikole Hannah-Jones, the 1619 Project founder, thinks. She has been called out on it but that doesn't matter.

She won a Pulitzer Prize for Commentary for the 1619 Project and now Oprah is involved to give the project the "full Hollywood treatment":12

Under the deal, the controversial series of articles that sought to reframe American history around slavery will be adapted for the big and small screens - feature films, television series, documentaries, and various forms of unscripted content. Lionsgate will serve as the studio while Winfrey has come aboard as a producer.13

Hannah-Jones said last month it would be an "honor" if the murderous violent riots after the death of George Floyd "were remembered as the '1619 Riots'".14

Krystina Skurk writes that "The purpose of the [1619] project is to reframe American history by claiming that America's founding is based on racism instead of equality and liberty."15 She goes on:

[O]ne of the project's key historical claims, that the Revolutionary War was fought to preserve the slave system, had to be corrected . . . numerous renowned historians have criticized the project for relying more on an ideological narrative than on historical fact. Like Howard Zinn before her, Hannah-Jones chose a narrative and then bent bits and pieces of facts to fit into it.16

Skurk makes an excellent point when she writes:

It is fascinating that two of the most privileged women in America, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Hannah-Jones and media empire queen Oprah Winfrey, are advancing the claim that black people are still systematically oppressed. No reasonable person denies that there are still instances of racism and pockets of people with provincial racist attitudes, but to call fundamentally oppressive a country that has provided its citizens more opportunity than any society in history is nonsensical. Winfrey and Hannah-Jones' own success are a testament that, although there might be obstacles, success in this country is possible for anyone.17

And, of course, Barack Obama's election two times as a black president, regardless of how mediocre he was, proves America is not a racist country.

A Pulitzer Prize does not mean much these days.

The New York Times and The Washington Post both won one for "'deeply sourced' stories were phony" writes Peter Lucas in the Boston Herald18 last year:

It was all a hoax hatched by anti-Trump, pro-Hillary/Obama rogues at the FBI and the Justice Department. Unfortunately for President Trump and the country, the Trump-hating left-wing media con job of collusion by the papers set the tone for the media outlets across the country. They tried to bring down a president on fabricated stories all based on questionable leaks and anonymous sources. It almost succeeded. And in retrospect, it might have brought down a lesser man, but not Trump, the counter puncher.19

He says "the two papers were able to jointly win journalism's highest honor in 2018 for reporting as fact something that did not happen. And that was the hoax of Trump's collusion with the Russians . . .".20

How could this happen! How could The New York Times and Washington Post win Pulitzers for reporting on something that did not happen?

They won Pulitzer awards because "the two papers control the board that makes the awards, that's how. Talk about collusion."21

And corruption.

Look carefully at what's going on with Nikole Hannah-Jones and The New York Times' 1619 Project. The Pulitzer Center is "The 1619 Project's official education partner."22

As The 1619 Project’s official education partner, the Pulitzer Center has connected curricula based on the work of Hannah-Jones and her collaborators to some 4,500 classrooms since August 2019.23

Highlights of the Center’s 1619 Project education work include:24

* Tens of thousands of students in all 50 states engaged with the curricular resources, which include reading guides, lesson plans, and extension activities.

* Tens of thousands of copies of the magazine were shipped by The New York Times and the Pulitzer Center to students and educators at K-12 schools, community colleges, HBCUs, and other campuses.

* Five school systems adopted the project at broad scale: Buffalo, New York; Chicago; Washington, DC; Wilmington, Delaware; and Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

Does this pass the smell test?

The Pulitzer organization gives The New York Times and Washington Post a Pulitzer Prize because, according to Peter Lucas of the Boston Herald, The New York Times and Washington Post control the board that gives out the awards.

Next up is Nikole Hannah-Jones of The New York Times who wins a Pulitzer Prize for the 1619 Project, while the Pulitzer Center is an "official education partner" and involved intimately with the 1619 Project.

Then, Oprah and Lionsgate show up and now there will be films, TV series and a host of other things that will go on in perpetuity that will generate millions upon millions of dollars across the country. The New York Times will make a ton of money and have the prestige of having founded the 1619 Project.

The prestige of Pulitzer Prizes unquestionably helps Hannah-Jones and her 1619 Project and The New York Times, every step of the way.

Tucker Carlson or Peter Lucas or somebody like that should look into these incestuous goings-on and report on them thoroughly.

It might all be perfectly fine, but it doesn't look that way to me.

 


1 Fox News, Life, Liberty and Levin, July 12, 2020, "Thomas Sowell on 'utter madness' of defund the police push, wonders whether US is reaching point of no return" https://www.foxnews.com/transcript/thomas-sowell-on-utter-madness-of-defund-the-police-push-wonders-whether-us-is-reaching-point-of-no-return, accessed July 14, 2020.

2 Ibid.

3 Reuters, Chronology-Who banned slavery when?, March 22, 2007, https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-slavery/chronology-who-banned-slavery-when-idUSL1561464920070322, accessed July 15, 2020.

4 W. E. B. Du Bois, The Suppression of the African Slave-trade to the United States of America, 1638-1870 (New York: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1896), 179.

5 Zora Neale Hurston, Barracoon, The Story of the Last 'Black Cargo' (NY: Amistad, 2018).

6 See Rachel Coker, "Historian revises estimate of Civil War dead," published September 21, 2011, Binghamton University Research News - Insights and Innovations from Binghamton University, http://discovere.binghamton.edu/news/civilwar-3826.html, accessed July 7, 2014. Hacker's range is 650,000 to 850,000. He uses 750,000.

7 Drew Gilpin Faust, This Republic of Suffering, Death and the American Civil War (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2008), xi.

8 Ibid.

9 Ibid.

10 Faust, This Republic of Suffering, xii.

11 Basil L. Gildersleeve, The Creed of the Old South, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1915; reprint: BiblioLife, Penrose Library, University of Denver (no date given), 26-27.

12 "Oprah Winfrey, Lionsgate Team to Bring New York Times' '1619 Project' to TV and Film", https://www.breitbart.com/entertainment/2020/07/08/oprah-winfrey-lionsgate-team-to-bring-new-york-times-1619-project-to-tv-and-film, accessed 7-8-20.

13 Ibid.

14 Ibid.

15 "Oprah Joins Plot to Convince Americans Their Country Is Racist" by Krystina Skurk, The Federalist, July 14, 2020, https://thefederalist.com/2020/07/14/oprah-joins-plot-to-convince-americans-their-country-is-racist, accessed 7-14-20.

16 Ibid.

17 Ibid.

18 "Robert Mueller report not good news for N.Y. Times, Washington Post" by Peter Lucas, Opinion/Op-Ed, Boston Herald, March 30, 2019, https://www.bostonherald.com/2019/03/30/mueller-report-not--good-news-for-ny-times-washington-post, accessed 7-15-20.

19 Ibid.

20 Ibid.

21 Ibid.

22 "Nikole Hannah-Jones Wins Pulitzer Prize for 1619 Project" by Jeff Barrus, Pulitzer Center, Pulitzer Center Update, May 4, 2020, https://pulitzercenter.org/blog/nikole-hannah-jones-wins-pulitzer-prize-1619-project, accessed 7-8-20.

23 Ibid.

24 Ibid.

George Orwell and the NY Times’ 1619 Project

George Orwell
and the NY Times' 1619 Project

by Gene Kizer, Jr.

 

George Orwell gave us, perhaps, the most profound truth in all of human history when he wrote in his masterpiece, 1984:

Who controls the past, controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.

Nikole Hannah-Jones, founder of the 1619 Project, gave us a long, racist, anti-white screed that is published in its entirety at the end of this essay and includes:

The white race is the biggest murderer, rapist, pillager, and thief of the modern world. . . . Christopher Columbus and those like him were no different than Hitler.1

We are in the midst of a serious situation in America that I never would have thought could happen here.

We are in an uncharted territory of hate with massive forces arrayed against those of us who have always loved America and been proud of our country, whose main desire was to go after "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" by getting the education or training we needed, working hard, living in peace and contentment with friends, family, neighbors, voting, supporting our military, our police, our communities, and raising families to carry on that tradition.

I doubt if many on the left realize what they have done by unleashing the dark forces of hate and racism into American life, though, like President Trump said at Mount Rushmore, many know exactly what they are doing.

It has gone way beyond legitimate grievance. It is now political hate and intimidation.

This is one reason why the left hates the Second Amendment. Imagine if we had no Second Amendment and could not defend ourselves against the mobs we have all seen now for weeks terrorizing citizens with murder, beatings, arson, looting and vandalism.

Here in Charleston, run by Democrat Mayor John Tecklenburg, on the night of May 30, 2020, hundreds of calls to 911 went unanswered as downtown Charleston was terrorized by violent mobs shattering windows, business owners begging the howling mob not to destroy their businesses, terrified people hiding in the meat coolers of restaurants and for hours being put at risk of death and injury with no help from the police.

I don't care what a person thinks their historical grievance is, or what they think it entitles them to, they have no right to break the law. They have to abide by the law whether they like it or not. There is a political process for change.

It is a disgrace that here in Charleston the monument to our greatest South Carolina native son, John C. Calhoun, was removed by Mayor Tecklenburg and 12 cowards on Charleston city council, several of whom previously said they supported our monuments.

The worst, most dishonorable thing about what happened in Charleston was that we debated our monuments and especially the Calhoun monument over a year ago.

We had a public debate that started with Robert R. Macdonald, a transplanted New Yorker, writing a hit piece on Confederate monuments.

It was followed by much discussion, many appearances before city council by a lot of good people, a history commission with recommendations for a plaque for the monument, though it is hard to imagine anything better than "Truth, Justice and the Constitution," which was what the monument said.

How do you get better than that?

The Calhoun monument stood for Truth, Justice, and the Constitution, but that is not enough today.

In fact, that is why Calhoun had to go, because, of course, the United States Constitution and our country itself are racist to the core, founded on racism and the taking of other people's land (though those same people had taken it from others).

Our country has got to be radically transformed, as was Barack Obama's goal, and is now the goal of Joe Biden, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, Nancy Pelosi and the Democrat Party.

They have all affirmed that Washington, DC will be a state, giving them two more senators, and illegal immigrants will be made citizens and voters as quickly as possible.

Calhoun was one of the five greatest American senators of all time, as proclaimed by the United States Senate in 1957. Calhoun's other accomplishments besides vice president of the United States are too many to list here. He is a Founding Father. His monument had stood for 125 years.

The extensive debate we had over a year ago ended with historian Robert Rosen's excellent piece that looked at every monument here in Charleston and reached the conclusion that they were constructed by an impoverished, kind of sad, people, to pay tribute to their war dead.

Charleston endured one of the longest sieges in the history of warfare, some 587 days. The monument at the Battery is To the Confederate Defenders of Charleston and Fort Sumter, and it portrays a young man with sword and shield protecting a woman who represents his family and also the city of Charleston itself.

The issue of the Calhoun monument was tabled over a year ago and had not come up since. Everybody was happy in Charleston.

But Democrat Mayor Tecklenburg was in political trouble for allowing Charleston to be terrorized and looted for hours on May 30th so he used the death of George Floyd as an opportunity to resurrect his political career.

He agitated to have the monument removed, and the seething, rabid Charleston Post and Courier, basically a Democrat Party hate-sheet that is insufferably politically correct, supported him all the way and whipped up this hysteria of hate and anger that intimidated city council into voting to remove the 125 year old monument.

This is Charleston's most disgraceful hour thanks to John Tecklenburg.

In Charleston, we don't remove monuments. We build more monuments.

I told that to City Councilman Ross Appel when I saw him at the rally to preserve the Calhoun monument before the council vote. I was walking out with the speaker, Dr. Michael Kogan, and I called the councilman's name.

He turned and I said, "Mr. Appel, in Charleston we don't remove monuments. We build more monuments."

He seemed very sympathetic and said something like, "I know. I agree." He definitely said "I agree."

But he was not being truthful. He voted to remove Calhoun shortly thereafter, and there were others who made promises like that who did not keep them.

They should all be voted out of office because they are untrustworthy. Every one of them and especially Tecklenburg.

The pathetic disgrace that is happening to American history today by the left has been going on against Southern history since the 1960s. Esteemed historian Eugene D. Genovese,2 one of America's greatest historians before his death in 2012, wrote this in 1994:

Rarely, these days, even on Southern campuses, is it possible to acknowledge the achievements of the white people of the South. The history of the Old South is now often taught at leading universities, when it is taught at all, as a prolonged guilt-trip, not to say a prologue to the history of Nazi Germany. . . . To speak positively about any part of this Southern tradition is to invite charges of being a racist and an apologist for slavery and segregation. We are witnessing a cultural and political atrocity.3

Dr. Genovese goes on to say that this cultural and political atrocity is being forced on us by "the media and an academic elite."4

President Trump said in his July 3, 2020 Mount Rushmore address:

Against every law of society and nature, our children are taught in school to hate their own country, and to believe that the men and women who built it were not heroes, but that were villains. The radical  view of American history is a web of lies - all perspective is removed, every virtue is obscured, every motive is twisted, every fact is distorted, and every flaw is magnified until the history is purged and the record is disfigured beyond all recognition.5 (Bold emphasis added.)

This is exactly what the left has done to Southern history. Now, as predicted, they are doing it to all of American history.

The New York Times' 1619 Project is a perfect example. It is breathtaking in its inaccuracy and perspective (it has tried to say the American Revolution was fought so we could keep slavery). The current desire of its founder, Nikole Hannah-Jones, is reparations.

Nikole Hannah-Jones wrote a racist screed a few years ago. Her anti-white feelings have probably not changed.

The New York Times likes to hire white-hating racists. Remember Sarah Jeong who wrote on her Twitter account December 23, 2014:

Are white people genetically predisposed to burn faster in the sun, thus logically being only fit to live underground like groveling goblins6

Before that, on November 28, 2014, Jeong wrote:

Dumbass fucking white people marking up the internet with their opinions like dogs pissing on fire hydrants7

While studying slavery is an important part of our history, I hate to tell Hannah-Jones but it is not the central focus of American history.

Slavery existed, not as an end in itself, but as a way to get the cotton picked. It was 100% economic.

That does not excuse it in the least, but in the harsh world of the nineteenth century and before, it helps explain it.

With the advent of technology and machines to pick cotton, slavery would have ended peacefully within a generation of the War Between the States without 750,000 people dying and over a million being maimed, and a century of second class citizenship for African Americans.

It is a near-certainty that Nikole Hannah-Jones will not focus on the blacks in Africa who are the beginning of American slavery by selling other blacks, captured from tribal warfare, into slavery.

Those black tribal chieftains had those poor captives waiting on the beach for Yankee slave traders, and British before them, in places like Bunce Island off modern Sierra Leone, and in the famous barracoons, the slave forts referred to by African American anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston in her book, Barracoon.8

Hannah-Jones ought to study Jim Downs' book, Sick from Freedom, African-American Illness and Suffering During the Civil War and Reconstruction9 about the hundreds of thousands of blacks who suffered and died during and after the war because the Union Army really didn't give a damn about them. Yankees were primarily concerned with winning the war.

The poor ex-slaves "frequently begged for scraps of uneaten food, worn-out boots, and unused tents."10

These facts were deliberately covered up by the army, Northern journalists and the Federal Government because they did not fit the narrative the North wanted to put forward of happy ex-slaves. Federal Government agents "did not tell the stories of the tens of thousands of emancipated slaves who suffered and died during the Civil War from the explosive outbreak of epidemic disease. The names and experiences of these freedpeople were too politically problematic to be recorded."11

A typical example was "Chattanooga, Tennessee in January of 1865, [when] a military official reported that former enslaved people were 'dying by scores-that sometimes thirty per day die & are carried out by wagon loads, without coffins, and thrown promiscuously, like brutes, into a trench.'"12

In Helene, Arkansas the "bodies of emancipated slaves were placed in the same carts with carcasses of mules and horses to be buried in the same pit."13 Collecting dead bodies of former slaves shows that "Northerners, allegedly fighting for the freedom and dignity of those subjected to human bondage, were transporting black people like animals."14

I hope Hannah-Jones includes this part of the story because it is history too.

The fake news New York Times, hard left in its politics, completely committed to the Democrat Party, is now the chief arbiter of American history. The 1619 Project has spread all over the country as a curricula for American schools and children. It brags that it is in all 50 states.

Below, is the 1995 racist screed in Notre Dame's The Observer by Nikole Hannah-Jones (Nikole Hannah back then).

She has more power and reach than any American historian in all of American history, because she knows that history today is not history. It is 100% political, and 100% the politics of the hard left and Democrat Party.

Who controls the past, controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.

Of course, if you disagree with Nikole Hannah-Jones and the New York Times, you are a racist pig.

 

Modern savagery

Dear Editor,

I was shocked and disgusted when I read Fred Kelly's article in the November 9 issue of the Observer. What responsible editor would print an article that applauds and dignifies the white race's rape, plunder, and genocide of a whole race of people?

I find it hard to believe that any member of the white race can have the audacity and hypocrisy to call any other culture savage. The white race is the biggest murderer, rapist, pillager, and thief of the modern world. Europeans have colonized and destroyed the Indigenous populations on every continent of this plant. They have committed genocide against cultures that have never offended them in their greed and insatiable desire to control and dominate every non-white culture.

Christopher Columbus and those like him were no different than Hitler. The crimes they committed were unnecessarily cruel and can only be described as acts of the devil. Africans had been to the Americas long before Columbus or any Europeans. The difference is that Africans had the decency and respect for human life to learn from the Native Americans and trade technology with them. The pyramids of the Aztecs and the great stone heads of the Olmecs are lasting monuments to the friendship of these two peoples. But as David Walker wrote in his Appeal in 1829, the white men acted "more like devils than accountable men. . . whites have always been an unjust, jealous, unmerciful, avaricious, and blood-thirsty set of beings, always seeking after power and authority." It was not enough for whites to come to the Americas and learn, they looked upon the native people as inferior and a people to be annihilated. Their lasting monument was the destruction and enslavement of two races of people.

Using Christianity as their excuse, the white race denied the native people their humanity. Not only did they rape and murder the indigenous people of America, but they killed off many more by introducing diseases which came from filth and uncleanliness to the native people. The white race used deceit and trickery, warfare and rape, to steal the land from the people that had lived here for thousands and thousands of years. Over and over again whites made peace treaties with the Native Americans telling them that if they moved just this one last time and gave up their land to the greedy settlers just this one last time they would never had to move again. It was common knowledge that the white man's word could not be trusted.

Even today, the descendants of these savage people pump drugs and guns into the Black community, pack Black people into the squalor of segregated urban ghettos, and continue to be bloodsuckers in our communities. Yes, it was Columbus that set the platforms for these racist America institutions. A devil calling someone a savage is like the pot calling the kettle black.

But after everything that those barbaric devils did, I do not hate them or their descendants. I understand that because of some lacking, they need to constantly prove their superiority. Kelly felt threatened by NASA-ND's exposure of the true Columbus, so he felt it necessary to degrade their whole culture to maintain his security. Fred Kelly, I pity you for feeing that just because you are white and Christian, you can celebrate the destruction of another human being. In closing, a famous American, who was beat down by members of the Christian society, once said "Why can't we all just get along?" Why? because white America's dream is colored America's nightmare. To Kelly I say: It does not feel good to have your culture put under a microscope, does it?

Nikole Hannah
Sophomore
Breen-Phillips15

 


1 "In Racist Screed, NYT's 1619 Project Founder Calls 'White Race' 'Barbaric Devils,' 'Bloodsuckers,' Columbia 'No Different Than Hitler'", June 25, 2020 by Jordan Davidson, https://thefederalist.com/2020/06/25/in-racist-screed-nyts-1619-project-founder-calls-white-race-barbaric-devils-bloodsuckers-no-different-than-hitler, accessed 7-8-20.

2 Genovese was a brilliant historian as the following paragraph illustrates. It is the opening paragraph of an essay in The Journal of Southern History, Volume LXXX, No. 2, May, 2014 entitled "Eugene Genovese's Old South: A Review Essay" by J. William Harris: "The death of Eugene D. Genovese in September 2012 brought to a close a remarkable career. In the decades following his first published essay on Southern history, Genovese produced an outstanding body of scholarship, based on a rare combination of deep research in primary sources; a mastery of the historical literature, not only in Southern history but also in many complementary fields; a sophisticated command of methodological issues; and often sparkling prose. And Genovese's reputation reached far beyond specialists in Southern history, and even beyond the academy. In 2005 a reviewer in one magazine for a general readership called Genovese the 'Country's greatest living historian' and his Roll, Jordan, Roll 'the most lasting work of American historical scholarship since the Second World War.'"

3 Eugene D. Genovese, The Southern Tradition, The Achievement and Limitations of an American Conservatism (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994), Preface, xi-xii.

4 Ibid.

5 "Remarks by President Trump at South Dakota's 2020 Mount Rushmore Fireworks Celebration, Keystone, South Dakota, July 3, 2020, https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-south-dakotas-2020-mount-rushmore-fireworks-celebration-keystone-south-dakota/, accessed 7-5-20.

6 "In Racist Screed, NYT's 1619 Project Founder Calls 'White Race' 'Barbaric Devils,' 'Bloodsuckers,' Columbia 'No Different Than Hitler'", June 25, 2020 by Jordan Davidson, https://thefederalist.com/2020/06/25/in-racist-screed-nyts-1619-project-founder-calls-white-race-barbaric-devils-bloodsuckers-no-different-than-hitler, accessed 7-8-20.

7 Ibid.

8 Zora Neale Hurston, Barracoon, The Story of the Last 'Black Cargo' (NY: Amistad, 2018).

9 Jim Downs, Sick from Freedom, African-American Illness and Suffering during the Civil War and Reconstruction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 4.

10 Downs, Sick from Freedom, 4. The next three paragraphs of this essay come from the final draft of a great new book by historian Michael Bradley of Tennessee to be published soon by Charleston Athenaeum Press. It is entitled: The Last Words, The Farewell Addresses of Union and Confederate Commanders to Their Men at the End of the War Between the States. Please visit www.CharlestonAthenaeumPress.com in July, 2020 for more information.

11 Downs, Sick from Freedom, 6, in Michael Bradley, The Last Words, draft. Entire paragraph is from The Last Words draft.

12 Maria R. Mann to Elisa, February 10, 1863, Maria Mann to Miss Peabody, April 19, 1863, Maria Mann Papers, LOC, quoted in Louis S. Gerteis, From Contraband to Freedman: Federal Policy Toward Southern Blacks 1861-1865 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1973), 121, in Downs, Sick from Freedom, 27, in Michael Bradley, The Last Words, draft. Entire paragraph is from The Last Words draft.

13 Ibid.

14 Downs, Sick from Freedom, 27, in Michael Bradley, The Last Words, draft. Entire paragraph is from The Last Words draft.

15 "In Racist Screed, NYT's 1619 Project Founder Calls 'White Race' 'Barbaric Devils,' 'Bloodsuckers,' Columbia 'No Different Than Hitler'", June 25, 2020 by Jordan Davidson, https://thefederalist.com/2020/06/25/in-racist-screed-nyts-1619-project-founder-calls-white-race-barbaric-devils-bloodsuckers-no-different-than-hitler, accessed 7-8-20.

President Trump’s Executive Order Protecting American Monuments

President Trump's Executive Order
Protecting American Monuments

 

A Word from Gene Kizer, Jr.,
Charleston Athenaeum Press

I can not WAIT to celebrate the 4th of July this year!

I have always loved the 4th but this year it has special meaning as my personal protest against the hate-America mob that has wreaked havoc across the country in recent weeks.

I am going to think about every veteran who has ever served and especially our Confederate veterans who had the right to secede from what was, at that time, a tyrannical wealth-sucking government dominated by a region that sent terrorists into the South to murder Southerners.

They seceded with the greatest expression of democracy and self-government ever conducted on American soil, by conventions of the people which, like the ratifying conventions of the Constitution, were there to debate one issue: Secession.

I am so proud of the democratic republic they set up which was a true federal republic in which states were sovereign. In their government, the president served one six-year term so that he could concentrate on governing and not be constantly running for reelection.

Their constitution required bills to be labeled accurately and state exactly what the law was they were voting on.

Their constitution allowed free and slave states to join. It was up to the state what to do about slavery. This worried Lincoln to death because several states, especially along the Mississippi, would likely have joined the Confederacy because of its free trade and low tariff philosophy. Protective tariffs were unconstitutional in the South.

Below is the entirety, verbatim, of President Trump's June 26, 2020 "Executive Order on Protecting American Monuments, Memorials, and Statues and Combating Recent Criminal Violence."

Many thanks to the Georgia Division, SCV, for their press release June 29th publishing this important Executive Order, and to President Trump for issuing it.

It has teeth and quotes many different laws that can be used to prosecute vandals attacking not just monuments on federal property but in many cases on state property as well.

It appears that Democrat run cities, states and police departments that do not enforce the law as we have seen recently when police, under orders from Democrat mayors, stand around and watch violent mobs destroy monuments and other property, will face the loss of federal funds. Criminals will face prosecution for serious crimes.

The mob is specifically defined as "Anarchists and left-wing extremists" who "have sought to advance a fringe ideology that paints the United States of America as fundamentally unjust and have sought to impose that ideology on Americans through violence and mob intimidation."

You may want to have legal people in your camps study this order and the various laws quoted, and see how they apply to your area then use it to make sure Democrat mayors and city councils know what they face if they acquiesce with the mob.

In fact, keep an eye on these spineless "leaders" and report them to the Department of Justice if you have a good reason for doing so, and are on solid ground, then let these so-called leaders know they have been reported.

There are also many state and federal laws against destruction of headstones and monuments in cemeteries, and destruction of church property.

National SCV Headquarters should study this order as well as other laws protecting monuments and graves and tell us what we can do to be more aggressive in the fight.

I know SCV Divisions in several states are doing an outstanding job empowering their camps and compatriots. I appreciate and benefit from the press releases sent out by the Georgia Division and the things they do such as filing law suits and offering rewards for criminals.

Camp 129 in Waco, Texas assembled 200 compatriots at Belton Courthouse to guard the Confederate monument there, and with Texas's open carry law, many were legally armed and looked like they were ready to ride with Forrest and take on the entire Yankee army! Don't mess with Texas!

SCV Camp 129 of Waco, Texas at Belton Courthouse June, 2020.
SCV Camp 129 of Waco, Texas at Belton Courthouse June, 2020.

Fort Sumter Camp in Charleston, South Carolina has spearheaded the guarding of the Confederate Defenders of Charleston and Fort Sumter monument at the Battery with compatriots taking daytime shifts, and a security guard hired for the night. Secession Camp is contributing.

 

Confederate Defenders of Charleston and Fort Sumter Monument at the Battery, Charleston, South Carolina June 2020.
Confederate Defenders of Charleston and Fort Sumter Monument at the Battery, Charleston, South Carolina June 2020.

Camps should communicate with each other so they can assemble men when needed and the more the better.

The Southern Legal Resource Center has filed a Writ of Certiorari with the United States Supreme Court "asking that the Court recognize heritage groups as having standing to sue to defend threatened monuments AND that the class of persons with standing be broadened to allow someone to be able to fight to protect monuments in court." This would be a GREAT thing if they can get it. We should try to pass state laws that help in this way too.

Get on the Southern Legal Resource Center newsletter list and keep up, and support them financially: https://SLRC-CSA.org.

Ultimately we need political power and lobbying that can strengthen heritage laws. I know of the SCV's restrictions as a 501 (c) (3) but a lot of politicians need to be targeted for DEFEAT and are vulnerable because the public is fed up with the hate and violence these Democrats are promoting by coddling and encouraging the mob.

God Bless President Trump for issuing his Executive Order Protecting American Monuments and God Bless America!

Happy 4th of July!

Deo Vindice!

Gene Kizer, Jr.
Charleston Athenaeum Press

Executive Order on Protecting American Monuments,
Memorials,
and Statues and Combating Recent
Criminal Violence

Issued on: June 26, 2020

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered as follows:

Section 1. Purpose.

The first duty of government is to ensure domestic tranquility and defend the life, property, and rights of its citizens. Over the last 5 weeks, there has been a sustained assault on the life and property of civilians, law enforcement officers, government property, and revered American monuments such as the Lincoln Memorial. Many of the rioters, arsonists, and left-wing extremists who have carried out and supported these acts have explicitly identified themselves with ideologies - such as Marxism - that call for the destruction of the United States system of government.

Anarchists and left-wing extremists have sought to advance a fringe ideology that paints the United States of America as fundamentally unjust and have sought to impose that ideology on Americans through violence and mob intimidation. They have led riots in the streets, burned police vehicles, killed and assaulted government officers as well as business owners defending their property, and even seized an area within one city where law and order gave way to anarchy. During the unrest, innocent citizens also have been harmed and killed.

These criminal acts are frequently planned and supported by agitators who have traveled across State lines to promote their own violent agenda. These radicals shamelessly attack the legitimacy of our institutions and the very rule of law itself.

Key targets in the violent extremists' campaign against our country are public monuments, memorials, and statues. Their selection of targets reveals a deep ignorance of our history, and is indicative of a desire to indiscriminately destroy anything that honors our past and to erase from the public mind any suggestion that our past may be worth honoring, cherishing, remembering, or understanding. In the last week, vandals toppled a statue of President Ulysses S. Grant in San Francisco. To them, it made no difference that President Grant led the Union Army to victory over the Confederacy in the Civil War, enforced Reconstruction, fought the Ku Klux Klan, and advocated for the Fifteenth Amendment, which guaranteed freed slaves the right to vote. In Charlotte, North Carolina, the names of 507 veterans memorialized on a World War II monument were painted over with a symbol of communism. And earlier this month, in Boston, a memorial commemorating an African-American regiment that fought in the Civil War was defaced with graffiti. In Madison, Wisconsin, rioters knocked over the statue of an abolitionist immigrant who fought for the Union during the Civil War. Christian figures are now in the crosshairs, too. Recently, an influential activist for one movement that has been prominent in setting the agenda for demonstrations in recent weeks declared that many existing religious depictions of Jesus and the Holy Family should be purged from our places of worship.

Individuals and organizations have the right to peacefully advocate for either the removal or the construction of any monument. But no individual or group has the right to damage, deface, or remove any monument by use of force.

In the midst of these attacks, many State and local governments appear to have lost the ability to distinguish between the lawful exercise of rights to free speech and assembly and unvarnished vandalism. They have surrendered to mob rule, imperiling community safety, allowing for the wholesale violation of our laws, and privileging the violent impulses of the mob over the rights of law-abiding citizens. Worse, they apparently have lost the will or the desire to stand up to the radical fringe and defend the fundamental truth that America is good, her people are virtuous, and that justice prevails in this country to a far greater extent than anywhere else in the world. Some particularly misguided public officials even appear to have accepted the idea that violence can be virtuous and have prevented their police from enforcing the law and protecting public monuments, memorials, and statues from the mob's ropes and graffiti.

My Administration will not allow violent mobs incited by a radical fringe to become the arbiters of the aspects of our history that can be celebrated in public spaces. State and local public officials' abdication of their law enforcement responsibilities in deference to this violent assault must end.

Sec. 2. Policy.

(a) It is the policy of the United States to prosecute to the fullest extent permitted under Federal law, and as appropriate, any person or any entity that destroys, damages, vandalizes, or desecrates a monument, memorial, or statue within the United States or otherwise vandalizes government property. The desire of the Congress to protect Federal property is clearly reflected in section 1361 of title 18, United States Code, which authorizes a penalty of up to 10 years' imprisonment for the willful injury of Federal property. More recently, under the Veterans' Memorial Preservation and Recognition Act of 2003, section 1369 of title 18, United States Code, the Congress punished with the same penalties the destruction of Federal and in some cases State-maintained monuments that honor military veterans. Other criminal statutes, such as the Travel Act, section 1952 of title 18, United States Code, permit prosecutions of arson damaging monuments, memorials, and statues on State grounds in some cases. Civil statutes like the Public System Resource Protection Act, section 100722 of title 54, United States Code, also hold those who destroy certain Federal property accountable for their offenses. The Federal Government will not tolerate violations of these and other laws.

(b) It is the policy of the United States to prosecute to the fullest extent permitted under Federal law, and as appropriate, any person or any entity that participates in efforts to incite violence or other illegal activity in connection with the riots and acts of vandalism described in section 1 of this order. Numerous Federal laws, including section 2101 of title 18, United States Code, prohibit the violence that has typified the past few weeks in some cities. Other statutes punish those who participate in or assist the agitators who have coordinated these lawless acts. Such laws include section 371 of title 18, United States Code, which criminalizes certain conspiracies to violate Federal law, section 2 of title 18, United States Code, which punishes those who aid or abet the commission of Federal crimes, and section 2339A of title 18, United States Code, which prohibits as material support to terrorism efforts to support a defined set of Federal crimes. Those who have joined in recent violent acts around the United States will be held accountable.

(c) It is the policy of the United States to prosecute to the fullest extent permitted under Federal law, and as appropriate, any person or any entity that damages, defaces, or destroys religious property, including by attacking, removing, or defacing depictions of Jesus or other religious figures or religious art work. Federal laws prohibit, under certain circumstances, damage or defacement of religious property, including the Church Arson Prevention Act of 1996, section 247 of title 18, United States Code, and section 371 of title 18, United States Code. The Federal Government will not tolerate violations of these laws designed to protect the free exercise of religion.

(d) It is the policy of the United States, as appropriate and consistent with applicable law, to withhold Federal support tied to public spaces from State and local governments that have failed to protect public monuments, memorials, and statues from destruction or vandalism. These jurisdictions' recent abandonment of their law enforcement responsibilities with respect to public monuments, memorials, and statues casts doubt on their willingness to protect other public spaces and maintain the peace within them. These jurisdictions are not appropriate candidates for limited Federal funds that support public spaces.

(e) It is the policy of the United States, as appropriate and consistent with applicable law, to withhold Federal support from State and local law enforcement agencies that have failed to protect public monuments, memorials, and statues from destruction or vandalism. Unwillingness to enforce State and local laws in the face of attacks on our history, whether because of sympathy for the extremists behind this violence or some other improper reason, casts doubt on the management of these law enforcement agencies. These law enforcement agencies are not appropriate candidates for limited Federal funds that support State and local police.

Sec. 3. Enforcing Laws Prohibiting the Desecration of Public Monuments, the Vandalism of Government Property, and Recent Acts of Violence.

(a) The Attorney General shall prioritize within the Department of Justice the investigation and prosecution of matters described in subsections 2(a), (b), and (c) of this order. The Attorney General shall take all appropriate enforcement action against individuals and organizations found to have violated Federal law through these investigations.

(b) The Attorney General shall, as appropriate and consistent with applicable law, work with State and local law enforcement authorities and Federal agencies to ensure the Federal Government appropriately provides information and assistance to State and local law enforcement authorities in connection with their investigations or prosecutions for the desecration of monuments, memorials, and statues, regardless of whether such structures are situated on Federal property.

Sec. 4. Limiting Federal Grants for Jurisdictions and Law Enforcement Agencies that Permit the Desecration of Monuments, Memorials, or Statues.

The heads of all executive departments and agencies shall examine their respective grant programs and apply the policies established by sections 2(d) and (e) of this order to all such programs to the extent that such application is both appropriate and consistent with applicable law.

Sec. 5. Providing Assistance for the Protection of Federal Monuments, Memorials, Statues, and Property.

Upon the request of the Secretary of the Interior, the Secretary of Homeland Security, or the Administrator of General Services, the Secretary of Defense, the Attorney General, and the Secretary of Homeland Security shall provide, as appropriate and consistent with applicable law, personnel to assist with the protection of Federal monuments, memorials, statues, or property. This section shall terminate 6 months from the date of this order unless extended by the President.

Sec. 6. General Provisions.

(a) Nothing in this order shall be construed to impair or otherwise affect:

(i) the authority granted by law to an executive department or agency, or the head thereof; or

(ii) the functions of the Director of the Office of Management and Budget relating to budgetary, administrative, or legislative proposals.

(b) This order shall be implemented consistent with applicable law and subject to the availability of appropriations.

(c) This order is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person.

(d) This order is not intended to, and does not, affect the prosecutorial discretion of the Department of Justice with respect to individual cases.