The cancel culture judges America by her mistakes, not her strengths

As the nation watches the riots and criminal behavior that evolved from protests over the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police, Black Lives Matter (BLM) has turned its attention to removing monuments to personalities from the Civil War that led to the end of slavery in the United States with the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1865.

But the mission to take down these monuments was confused from the beginning. It could have been a civil effort to have the “offending” items removed legally by petitioning the appropriate government agencies or property owners on which the statues reside, which is the proper way to do things. The statues could have been moved to museums or other places, if the proper authorities agreed with the petitioners.

But that wasn’t good enough for the cancel culture, which felt that the things must be removed now! And so, rioters — not protesters or demonstrators — turned their criminal behavior to destroying these historical items.

In addition to the monuments to southern Civil War personalities, they also blindly go after some who were on the same side of the slavery case as they are.

The statue of Ulysses S. Grant is one example. Grant was the 18^th President of the United States following the Civil War, from 1869 to 1877. But more illustrative of what a magnificent error it was to take down his statue, Grant was the Commanding General of the U.S. Army that defeated the hated Confederates — the targets of BLM — and won the Civil War, leading to emancipation of the slaves.

An even more astonishing mistake is the threatening to take down the Emancipation Memorial. Because this memorial features the likeness of Abraham Lincoln with a black man, Archer Alexander, in chains at his feet, it is regarded by the rioters as a symbol of slavery.

The former slave and now-famous American Frederick Douglass, however, predicted that members of his race “will think of [the Memorial] and speak of it with a sense of manly pride.”

Rather than being a passive, submissive slave, the Memorial was in fact designed to show Alexander at Lincoln’s feet exerting his own strength to break the chains that bound him.

Douglas said, “We have done a good for our race today. In doing honor to the memory of our friend and liberator [Lincoln], we have been doing highest honors to ourselves and those who come after us,” and “we may calmly point to the monument we have this day erected to the memory of Abraham Lincoln.”

And then there is Charlotte Scott, a former slave freed by Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, who said upon hearing of Lincoln’s assassination, “the colored people have lost their best friend on earth! Mr. Lincoln was our best friend, and I will give five dollars of my wages towards erecting a monument to his memory.”

Her contribution sparked a movement among freed slaves to raise money for a memorial to Lincoln which totaled more than $12,000. At that time $12,000, and even $5, was a lot of money.

Female RE-Enactors of Distinction (FREED) is a group of actors that is committed to accurately depict the role of African Americans, including the U.S. Colored Troops and their families during the U.S. Civil War.

Marcia Cole is a member of FREED who portrays Charlotte Scott. Regarding the Memorial, she told Washington, DC TV station WJLA, “I’m here to speak on behalf of the legacy of Charlotte Scott. I understand there’s a big campaign trying to raise money to either take it down or mend it, and I say ‘no’ on behalf of Ms. Charlotte.” 

But the rioters don’t know this history.

So, the historical figures and sites that the BLM wants removed will not be decided by the American people and their governments, but by a relative handful of the people, who don’t know history and don’t care about history. They care nothing about what others think and willingly, eagerly, turn to criminality to accomplish their goal.

That isn’t the American way. But America and her ways are a foreign language to most of these folks. They judge America by her mistakes only, ignoring her strengths. They apply his same myopia to Civil War figures. They see only a part of the lives of the individuals that they target. That small part is all that matters to them.

That sentiment was fairly clearly stated by Hawk Newsome, president of the Greater New York Black Lives Matter. “If this country doesn’t give us what we want, then we will burn down this system and replace it,” Newsome said in an interview on Fox News’ “The Story” with Martha MacCallum.

And so, what we really have is not merely a crusade by a relatively small group to cleanse the land and remove elements they dislike and that stain our history, it is to wreak havoc and impose their will on the rest of us.

In the wise words of Marcus Aurelius: “How much more grievous are the consequences of anger than the causes of it.”

Order must be restored, and those committing crimes must be held accountable.

Obama brought to tears talking about gun violence in America

In his comments last Tuesday prior to signing an Executive Order expanding background checks for gun purchases, President Barack Obama became uncharacteristically emotional and shed tears as he discussed children killed in mass shootings. His emotional reaction gave weight to his message, but some doubted the sincerity of his tears, seeing them as a device to increase support for his proposal. The Executive Order issued days later expands background checks for firearms purchasers, but is an action that would not have prevented the shooting that brought the tears, or other recent horrific shooting events.

This rare show of emotion calls attention to Obama’s lack of tears for other tragedies – such as the death of an innocent young woman at the hands of an illegal alien in California, or the San Bernardino murders by radical Muslims – as further evidence of his selective use of emotion for political purposes.

Emotion is the driver of liberal initiatives, which are highlighted by the generous use of false information and/or exaggeration, and the twisting of truth. Demagoguery and shaming are always close at hand, as well. If someone opposes abortion, they don’t really want to protect life, they just want to deny women control of their bodies. If someone opposes stronger gun control measures, it isn’t because they value and want to defend Constitutional liberties, it is because they don’t care that children and other innocents are being murdered daily. Although this tactic sounds like it was developed on an elementary school playground, a lot of people rely on it and fall for it.

Obama quotes the statistic that there are more than 30,000 gun deaths each year, and Democrat presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton breaks that down to an average of 90 gun deaths a day. Those large numbers surely catch one’s attention, but throwing out large numbers cheats the public of both perspective and true understanding of gun deaths. For example, roughly 19,000 gun deaths are suicides. How many of those severely troubled individuals would decide to go on living because they could not lay their hands on a gun?

About 1,800 are gang related, and 900 others are accidents. A majority – 80 percent – of the remaining gun-related deaths is attributed to urban problems. And, of course, some gun deaths are justified, as in cases of self-defense. The CDC reports that there are 3.5 gun deaths in the U.S. per 100,000 people while the number of all deaths is 821.5 per 100,000 people.

The self-defense aspect receives far too little discussion. In 2013, Obama ordered the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to assess the existing research on gun violence, and a report prepared by the Institute of Medicine and the National Research Council stated, in part: “Almost all national survey estimates indicate that defensive gun uses by victims are at least as common as offensive uses by criminals, with estimates of annual uses ranging from about 500,000 to more than 3 million per year … in the context of about 300,000 violent crimes involving firearms in 2008.”

Some suggest that three million is likely an unrealistically high number, but if guns are used defensively a half-million or more times a year, that is compelling. Given the record of people using guns to defend themselves from criminal activity and even death, wouldn’t it be appropriate for tears to be shed because so many have died in “gun-free zones,” where they were denied the ability for self-defense or protection from other people who were in the line of fire who were armed? There is a better than average chance that mass shooters would make a point to avoid places where they knew guns were being carried by their potential victims.

Americans are a rebellious lot; they don’t like to be controlled. Thus, in order to persuade them to go along with ideas like gun control, they have to be made to believe that existing laws are being enforced but that existing laws just aren’t enough, and we need more regulation. This is accomplished through various techniques, including heavy propaganda based upon myths.

Some examples: Background checks are not required for purchases on the Internet. Law enforcement is not present at gun shows, which are a free-for-all for prohibited individuals to obtain firearms. Obama has made firearms enforcement a priority, and his executive action on gun control will thwart criminals’ ability to obtain firearms. There is a general consensus in America that greater gun control is needed to prevent mass shootings in the United States.

Those statements are all false, and have been shown to be so by Senator Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, who wrote a commentary published on The Daily Caller online, listing and disproving 10 myths about guns, including those above.

Neither gun violence nor climate change is a critical problem for the United States. The threat of Islamic terrorism, a government too weak on the world stage, but grown too large and too controlling here at home, and a president who thinks he is an emperor, however, are critical problems. And that is why restoring conservative government is so important in the next election.