How to Win a War Without Firing a Shot

 

Would you buy a used revolution from this face?

A Chinese student and I were discussing this past IELTS essay topic: “How much should government spend on the arts?” And he quoted what he claimed was a common Chinese saying: “If you want to destroy a country, first destroy its culture.”

This is a common Chinese saying? For they as actually tried to systematically destroy their culture themselves in the Cultural Revolution.

Perhaps this saying emerged from that experience.

Certainly now we ourselves in Canada, America, and Europe seem to be trying to destroy our culture. Pulling down statues, burning down churches, teaching our young that our culture is evil, and “patriarchy” or “white supremacy.” Reversing the meaning of the fairy tales. Rejecting "conventional morality." Abandoning beauty in art. Encouraging and funding any culture but our own: “multiculturalism.” 

It is all suspiciously like the Cultural Revolution in Maoist China.

China descended into this madness without any foreign interference. So I guess we too are fully capable of destroying ourselves without help.

But this is a warning that it is a really bad idea.

And is it possible too, if this is the common Chinese view now, that the Chinese government, as part of their asymmetrical “wolf-warrior diplomacy,” is doing what they can to encourage this? Funding things behind the scenes. Wheeling in Trojan Horses—like Tiktok?

Either way, if this continues, the CCP can look forward to supplanting us as the dominant culture, and toward owning us.

The Cat in the Hat Bites Back

 

My friend Xerxes always gives me something to talk about. He is my window into the leftist soul. Without him, I would find it utterly unpredictable, because it seems mad.

I think it is significant that, in his latest column, he has come out, if obliquely, against the banning of Dr. Seuss books. He even expresses some qualified regret at the passing of Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben. Sure, they “reek of southern slavery,” but he quotes a descendant of the original Aunt Jemima saying “"I wish we would take a breath and not just get rid of everything.” He is careful to put the sentiment in the mouth of a minority member, but still…

I am hopeful that, with Dr. Seuss, if not with Aunt Jemima, the book banners and the blacklisters may at last have gone too far. This is an attack on too many comfortable leftist people’s childhoods. 

For comparison, “conspiracy theory” was not always an automatic pejorative. It used to be fashionable to suggest conspiracies. I think the turning point came with Oliver Stone’s film “JFK.” It was so over-the-top with a particularly weak conspiracy theory that it discredited the entire genre for a generation or more. Now “conspiracy theory” is actually accepted as something immoral, and automatically worthy of banning. 

Something of the like may be happening with the attack on Dr. Seuss. Not a wise choice of target. It looks like overreach.

Xerxes terms this general movement to topple statues and ban books “revisionism.”

Revisionism, however, implies some reinterpretation of history. That is not happening here. Nobody before this wave of mass hysteria thought the South were in the right in the US Civil War, or that slavery or colonialism was fine. No vision has revisioned. I think it is safe to assert that nobody bought Aunt Jemima syrup or Uncle Ben’s rice thinking this was endorsing slavery. A more accurate term than “revisionism” would be “iconoclasm”; or, better yet, “memory holing.” This is a matter of erasing history, not changing our interpretation of it.

Erasing history is much more sinister than revisionism. It makes it easier to justify slavery or colonialism or Nazism in the present or future: the comparison, and the counter arguments, have been removed. Those who do not learn from history …

But I do not believe this is the actual motivation among the iconoclasts. That, after all, would be a conspiracy theory. It is just a fearful unintended consequence.

Xerxes points out that even great Biblical heroes did things wrong; even they could not withstand being judged by modern standards. He notes that King David was a murderer, a rebel, a terrorist.

This too is not the real explanation, however. It is not that morals have progressed, and we are judging our ancestors unfairly because “times have changed.” King David would have been as wrong to commit murder and adultery in his own time as in ours: check the Ten Commandments.

Nobody seems any longer to notice, but all the Old Testament patriarchs, and all the New Testament apostles, were sinners. Moses too was a murderer. Noah, as soon as he was rescued from the flood, got flaming drunk, then cursed his son. Lot got flaming drunk and had sex with his daughters. Abraham abandoned one son in the wilderness, and fully intended to slaughter a second. Having married his sister. . Isaac shamelessly favoured one son over another. Jacob cheated his brother Esau out of his inheritance. Solomon took a thousand concubines and sacrificed to Baal.

The Bible makes clear it is not condoning these sins. David may not build the temple; Moses may not enter the Promised Land. 

The point is that we are all sinners, even the most righteous among us. So long as we keep faith with God, our sins are not fatal—although they will not pass without punishment. 

The same error is often made by non-Catholics with respect to Catholic saints. Protestants object to Thomas More being canonized, because as Lord Chancellor he presided over the execution of Protestants for heresy. Is the Catholic Church supporting such practices? 

No. No Catholic saint is believed to be without sin; that would be the worst possible blasphemy. Canonization recognizes not the absence of sin, but positive acts of “heroic virtue.”

The same standard should obviously be applied to any figure from our past; no other standard is possible among humans. Robert E. Lee was a great general, and deserves recognition for that alone. Moreover, he sacrificed his own interests in refusing command of the Union Army rather than abandon his homeland, Virginia. He again behaved nobly in refusing to continue the fight as a guerilla war, and urging Southerners to lay down their arms and seek reintegration. Washington owned slaves; but he deserves eternal respect if only for declining absolute power when he might have seized it. This was heroism. Jefferson owned slaves too, but deserves eternal respect for having drafted the Declaration of Independence and the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom.

I do not care so much for fictional characters with no story, like Aunt Jemima or Uncle Ben. But their disappearance is disrespect to the countless honest working people they represent, the many good-hearted nannies and waiters and cooks. And all for no fault of their own, but only because they remind others of sins against them.

And perhaps that is the key. It is not enough that the people we choose to remember must never have sinned. They must not remind us of any sins. 

It is not, then, that those doing the statue-toppling, banning, boycotting, and deplatforming, imagine that they themselves are without sin. This seems too improbable to be believed, or too monstrous. We all have a conscience, and know we have violated it. Unless, perhaps, these leftist mobs are all psychopaths. 

More probably, they hate to be reminded of sin, of the very existence of sin, because they are too aware of having sinned. And the sin our generation is conscious of is not slavery, and not colonialism--those were generations long ago. And so those are safe sins to condemn.

Aunt Jemima, Uncle Ben, and Dr. Seuss are being scapegoated. The sins of the community are being cast on them, and then they are driven out. It is the eternal way with scapegoating.

Dr. Seuss is being crucified for our sins.

The Iconoclasts Zero in on Catholic Churches

https://aleteia.org/2020/07/17/catholic-churches-across-u-s-suffer-week-of-vandalism-and-arson/

https://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/satanic-symbol-painted-at-church-in-new-haven-parish-where-knights-of-colum

More on Statue-Tipping and Bust Trusting

Image of unknown provenance forwarded by Diana Roney

The statue hysteria continues. I learn of local initiatives to rename Winston Churchill Road and Dundas Street. 

These examples show clearly enough how illegitimate the entire enterprise has been. Strike out the name of Winston Churchill? The man who, less than a century ago, saved civilization?

It seems to me conceptually impossible to pull down Churchill without, implicitly, endorsing Adolph Hitler and all the latter stood for. That is the necessary symbolism. Anything else about Churchill must pale in comparison. And those who want to do so, at some level, know this. At some level, they prefer Hitler.

Just as those who pulled down statues during the Cultural Revolution did so implicitly in support of Mao Zedong, a worse mass murderer than Hitler. Just as Winston Smith put inconvenient history down the memory hole. Pulling down the heroes of the past is, again symbolically, pulling down all restraints on behavior in the present.

And Dundas Street? That would, in the first place, be viciously destructive. Yonge-Dundas Square has become the symbolic heart of the city; it would be like, in New York, renaming Times Square, or, in London, Piccadilly Circus.

Henry Dundas was a leading Scottish abolitionist. I would assume this is why he was commemorated here, by Lord Simcoe, another passionate abolitionist. As a barrister, Dundas got slavery declared illegal in Scotland; his summation was historic, praised by Boswell and Johnson. 

Henry Dundas, First Viscount Melville.

"As Christianity gained ground in different nations, slavery was abolished … I hope for the honour of Scotland, that the supreme court of this country would not be the only court that would give its sanction to so barbarous a claim.…. Human nature, my Lords, spurns at the thought of slavery among any part of our species.”

Then he shepherded legislation through the Commons to ban it throughout the British Empire.

It is hard to interpret removing his recognition as anything other than a tacit endorsement of slavery. The official alibi is that he sponsored an amendment to the anti-slavery bill to make its abolition “gradual.” This was transparently a strategic move: the bill had previously been soundly defeated without this amendment. By adding it, he got the bill through.

This is not worthy of our respect? It can only be attributed to envy. There is no other possible explanation. These men are to be brought down not because they did something wrong, but because they did something very right.

So what are we to do for our fellow citizens who say they are offended by having to see these statues?

I have often heard the suggestion in recent days that such controversial statues should be moved to museums, out of the public eye. This is not a practical solution; the statues are too large and too numerous to be exhibited in the typical existing. Realistically, if they are not simply to be mothballed, you’d have to build a lot of new, specially designed museum space.

Most of these statues were originally private donations to the public, financed by public subscription. If some of us want to be protected from them, then fairness and decency dictates at a minimum that such people should show respect for their fellow citizens, and for the generosity of the original donation, by funding the construction of some new museum space to exhibit them in a suitably dignified manner. And the cost of moving them.

I do not see anyone setting up such crowdfunding sites.

Someone suggests they be replaced with statues of Jesus. Surely we can all agree on Jesus as a good man? One would think so, but of course, the demand came only a few days ago to smash all images of Jesus.

Nor is the demand new. When it comes to the public square, it was where this all began. Years ago, the US Supreme Court ruled against displays of religion in the public space. On the perfectly spurious grounds of “separation of church and state,” a concept that appears nowhere in either the US or Canadian constitution, but was read in by the courts. Jesus was actually the first figure we tore down, as well as the ultimate target. Perhaps all else has followed.

Another suggestion often heard currently is “replaquing.” The government is supposed to put new plaques on such “controversial” statues to give a balanced view.

I doubt this idea is workable, and it is disturbing to begin with: it is the government telling us what to think. Those who, say, admire Columbus as a fellow Italian, will probably see such a plaque as a defacing of his monument. Those who think he was a monster will probably not be mollified by such a plaque, so long as the statue still stands—after all, a statue does not necessarily imply unqualified or even qualified support in the first place. Only that the figure is culturally or historically important, worth remembering.

There is a simpler solution, if those who dislike the statues were prepared to respect their neighbours. Simply let people develop enhanced reality apps keyed to all such monuments, locally or nationally, offering a choice of politically acceptable interpretations to interested onlookers. Those who are passionately opposed to Winston Churchill can happily point their smartphones at his effigy, and hear all about the horrible fellow he was. While those who cherish his memory can point their cell phones, and hear a selection of his great speeches. 

She

Something like that has actually long been done with public monuments in Asia. For any given major cultural site, there seems to be a Buddhist interpretation, a Taoist interpretation, a Hindu interpretation, a Confucian interpretation, a Muslim interpretation, and/or a Christian interpretation. This foot print on a mountaintop was left by Adam; or it is Rama’s; or the Buddha’s. This figure is Kwan Yin, the goddess of Mercy; or it is the Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara, or it is Mary, the mother of Jesus. As you prefer.

Civilized people do not tear down art. Civilized people do not tear down one another’s most precious memories.

Black Lies Matter

Traditional Ethiopian portrayal of Jesus..

The inevitable call has come, from Shaun King, a media heavy in residence at Harvard, with ties to Black Lives Matter: smash all the images of Jesus and Mary. Smash all the stained glass windows.

This, of course, was the target all along: God.

The premise, of course, is that Jesus is always portrayed as “European,” and this is racist.

"Yes, I think the statues of the white European they claim is Jesus should also come down. They are a form of white supremacy. Always have been."

"In the Bible, when the family of Jesus wanted to hide, and blend in, guess where they went? EGYPT! Not Denmark. Tear them down."

This is nonsensical on its face. He refers to statues. How can one really distinguish, in an unpainted statue, whether the figure portrayed is from some European country or from a Hellenized area of northern Palestine? A slight difference in skin tone? We do not even know whether the skin tone would be different.

And on an unpainted statue?

Why did Mary and Joseph flee to Egypt, and not to Denmark? It may have had something to do with Denmark not yet existing. Egypt, on the other hand, aside from being the country next door, had the ancient world’s largest Jewish population outside Palestine. Two of Alexandria’s seven districts were Jewish—traders, mostly, no doubt, often coming and going. I think the holy family indeed had a decent chance of blending in.

Not that other Egyptians looked very different from either Palestinian Jews or European Greeks. There were a lot of Greeks in Egypt too. Cleopatra was Greek.

You would think a Harvard man would know such things. That would have been so, long ago.

The conventional image of Jesus comes from fairly early models. There is at least some warrant to think it is accurate. And he could indeed probably pass for a modern Lebanese, say.

If there are some blond Jesuses, racism is an implausible explanation for it. Rather, this is a natural consequence of the artists being themselves European, having only European models to work from, and having little idea or reason to care what a Palestinian of the First Century looked like. Black hair is rare in Northern Europe. For the same reason, in Ethiopia, Jesus is distinctly African in appearance. 

Our Lsdy of the Gate of Dawn, Vilnius, Lithuania

There are no comparable ancient standards for portraying Mary, and her images are far more variable. Mary is often portrayed in Europe as blonde or a red-head--just as she is shown with Asian features in Asia, or with indigenous features at Guadaloupe, her most popular shrine. A non-racist might nevertheless have noticed that even in Europe, “Black Madonnas” are given special veneration. There are famous examples, sites of major pilgrimages, in France, Belgium, Czechia, Germany, Ireland, Lithuania, Russia, Sweden; rather white countries, on the whole. Perhaps most famously at Częstochowa in Poland and at Montserrat in Spain. Whatever reason this is so, it cannot be due to any notion of white supremacy or anti-black racism. 

Our Lady of Guadalupe.

The real problem for King and his acolytes can only be, not that these beautiful works of art show Jesus or Mary as European, but that they are beautiful works of art. Worse, they are beautiful works of art made by Europeans. Worse still, they imply some fundamental truth and the moral law.

Make no mistake. What we are seeing in America now is the battle of good and evil. And all the racism is on the side complaining of racism.

Down with Everyone and Their Mother

Turkish talisman against the evil eye

In all the rapidly rising fever of bust-busting, I see nobody speaking of the real reason it is happening.

This is important, because the true cause is arguably the deadliest of the Seven Deadly Sins. Envy is the one sin that never dare speak its name; making it especially difficult to root out. For this reason, it is vitally important to see and name it when it appears. It is sinister that nobody is in this case. And it is fantastically common. Most folk cultures worldwide are vitally concerned with the “Evil Eye.” It is envy they are talking about.

The nominal reasons these statues are being torn down are obviously spurious: they differ statue by statue. Nor is there any sense that the statues torn down represent the worst offenders, of whatever crime they are charged with. It is perhaps worth mentioning that there is a mural of Benito Mussolini still displayed inside a Montreal church. Nobody has called for its removal. Not even during the World War.

Benny Muscles visits Little Italy.

It goes without saying that any possible mortal could be accused of some moral depravity. It is always possible to find such a reason to tear down a statue. Mobs have now torn down effigies of Mahatma Gandhi, Francis Scott Key, Ulysses S. Grant, Saint Junipero Serra. It is not that we are not all saints—there is not even a saint without sin. Moses murdered a man. St. Paul probably murdered many. If sinlessness is suddenly the standard, all statues must come down.

No, this pandemic of statue-tipping is because of envy. Nobody paints over Mussolini, because nobody envies him. The fact of a statue proclaims that someone has done something worth notice with their life. That is intolerable to any narcissist who has not. The same motive is behind assassination: you want to kill John Lennon or John Kennedy not because of their politics, but because they are famous and you are not. The same motive is behind our hysterical cancel culture. It is an epidemic of envy.

But statues, for the narcissist, are especially seductive: one is not only attacking the person commemorated, but the sculptor, his talent, his achievement. Destroy it all!

The instinct toward envy necessarily ends in the ruin of all good things. It is always easier to pull down than to build.

This is the way we are now headed: the deadliest sins running wild in the streets

Iconoclasm

They have pulled down a statue of Thomas Jefferson in Portland.

I am fundamentally opposed to pulling down any statues. The world has too little art, and too little history. Pulling down any statue is a crime against our children and grandchildren; while any sentient being should be able to understand it does no harm to the historical person we are trying to insult. It is an act of despicable cowardice to assault the dead.

Statues of Churchill and Lincoln are also being defaced in London, and statues of Gandhi removed.

There are, of course, known arguments for each; arguments made by people trying to have such statues removed legally. Jefferson was a slaveowner. Churchill was callous in his dealings with both Ireland and India; he believed in the British Empire. Gandhi was racist towards Africans. Lincoln? I’m sure there must be something.

The comment often heard, at least concerning statues of Confederate generals, is “After all, we don’t have statues of Hitler.”

For what it’s worth, I have never seen a photograph of any statues of Hitler actually being pulled down. Perhaps there simply weren’t any?

I recently learned that there is a mural featuring Mussolini on horseback in a church in Montreal. Nobody has been troubled by it, apparently, even in the 1940s. Moreover, it is meant to honour him—it is a commemoration of his signing of the Concordat with the Vatican. The Ontario town of Swastika never changed its name. 

For the record, I would be utterly opposed to defacing the Mussolini mural, or renaming Swastika, or pulling down any statues of Hitler. None of this would do anything but harm.

We did see many pictures out of Eastern Europe, when the Warsaw Pact and then the Soviet Union dissolved, of mobs pulling down statues of Stalin. This was perhaps in reaction to that dictator’s tendency to put up statues of himself everywhere; in such a case, it might be aesthetically justified. It was also a bit of payback, perhaps, for the modern tradition of pulling down statues of former rulers seems to have begun with the Russian Revolution of 1917.

A common claim made against the statues of Confederate generals is that it is wrong to erect statues of traitors. They fought against their own government.

This is historically false: from their perspective, and according to the US Constitution as written, sovereignty was retained at the state level. The Union forces were an invading army; just as if the EU landed a force at Dover today. The moral duty was to take up arms to defend their homeland—regardless of what they felt about slavery.

And as to slavery, it seems to me unfair to blame Jefferson, or Lee, for owning slaves. The problem was systemic. Had they, as southern landowners, gone without slaves, it would simply have meant surrendering their livelihood. They could not compete against their neighbours. Perhaps they should have, but it is a lot to ask.

Let’s allow that logic, that traitors should not be honoured. That does justify tearing down statues of Jefferson, and Washington, for they too, at least as much as Lee or Beauregard, took up arms against the government. But then Canada should also not feature a statue of Louis Riel in front of the Manitoba Legislature. He rebelled twice, and was actually convicted and executed for treason. None of the Southern generals honoured were ever so charged. Because they were not in fact guilty of treason in US law. The government considered charges, and realized they would be unable to convict, and would only end up justifying their enemies. 

We also have numerous statues and commemorations of William Lyon Mackenzie and Louis-Joseph Papineau, both of whom rose in arms against the Canadian government. 

We are obviously being inconsistent.

There is a fundamental error in supposing that, if we erect a statue of someone, or just leave it standing, it means we endorse them. Explain then, if you can, the many carvings of demons and gargoyles that adorn medieval cathedrals, or stand at the entrance of any Buddhist temple. It is remarkably simple-minded to suppose remembering someone means honouring them.

And it is a second error, as bad as the first, that you must not honour anyone unless they are without sin. No one, it should go without saying, is without sin. If you think your own heroes are, you are yourself guilty of the sin of idolatry.

This is a common misunderstanding, by the way, among non-Catholics, regarding the saints. The standard of sainthood is not, and has never been, sinlessness. We could not have statues or paintings of anyone, on that basis. The standard is a display of heroic virtue. Virtue, sadly, is a concept we seem to have lost.

Jefferson, Churchill, or Gandhi obviously pass that test. Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence and the Virginia Bill Establishing Religious Freedom, and was prepared then to stake his life on defending them. Churchill saved the world from Nazism, for a time standing almost alone against Hitler. Gandhi stood against the British Empire, and ended the era of European Imperialism.

If anyone is worthy of a statue in their honour, it is one of these three.

But if we are going to tear down statues and commemorations, let’s at least be even handed. Martin Luther King Jr. has to go too, right? We have credible reports that he was present at a rape, and even urged it on. His womanizing was well known even at the time.

How about Canada’s “Famous Five,” prominently displayed in downtown Calgary, on Parliament Hill, and in Winnipeg—not to mention on the currency? 

Emily Murphy was a genuine white supremacist. It was at least as prominent a theme of her writings as women’s suffrage.

She wrote: "One becomes especially disquieted -- almost terrified -- in the face of these things for it sometimes seems as if the white race lacks both the physical and moral stamina to protect itself, and that maybe the black and yellow races may yet obtain the ascendancy."

She wrote an entire book, The Black Candle, about the threat of the Chinese.

All five were aggressive advocates of eugenics and forced sterilization, in defense of the ethnic purity of an imagined Anglo-Saxon race. They got a forced sterilization act passed in Alberta, which seems to have been used predominantly to sterilize Indian (First Nations) women.

There are really only two defensible positions here: the traditional Jewish or Muslim one, to tear down all statues and paintings of anyone, or the traditional Christian one, of support for the visual arts.

The Statues Debate Summarized

I think the tide of popular opinion is now running well against the idea of tearing down monuments. Even my friend Xerxes the left-wing columnist has now come out against it.

In doing so, he also recaps all the arguments that have been presented in favour of destroying them. And he does not actually disagree: he only sees them as insufficient reason.

Let’s go through them one by one:

1. Why would we put up monuments to traitors? Lee took up arms against the government. Do we have monuments to Benedict Arnold?

Memorial to Benedict Arnold at Saratoga, New York

Comparing Robert E. Lee to Benedict Arnold is a false moral equivalence. Arnold did not just take up arms against the government. That would be George Washington. Arnold was also a turncoat, a saboteur, and a spy. Lee could be accused of none of those things. The only thing that separates him from Washington, or Sam Houston, or Paul Revere, is that his cause failed, and theirs succeeded.

Even this may not be fair to Lee. It was far clearer in Washington’s case than in his that he was indeed taking up arms against the duly constituted government. After all, in the minds of most Southerners at the time, the states were sovereign. That is pretty much what the US constitution says; and that is why they are called “States.” Lee’s nationality, then, was Virginian. Had he taken up arms against Virginia, he would have been a traitor. Defending it, when it was invaded, he was a patriot.

He had, incidentally, no hand in secession; he was against it.

The situation from the point of view of a Southerner of the time is comparable to the situation if when Britain left the EU, the rest of the EU invaded to prevent this. Would you call a Brit who took up arms in these circumstances a traitor?

If the rule is to be “no memorials to those who took up arms against the federal government,” it would mean also tearing down our memorials to Louis Riel, who is honoured with a statue in front of the Manitoba legislature; or Louis-Joseph Papineau, after whom many places are named in Quebec; as well as most prominent native leaders in the US. No memorials to Crazy Horse—awkward, because the largest monument to any human being ever is currently under construction in his honour. No Pontiac, Michigan. No Sitting Bull memorial. No Chief Joseph memorial. No Geronimo memorial. And so on.

How would that sound? Would that seem proper or honourable?

2. Lee lost. We do not put up memorials to losers.

Monument to King Leonidas, Thermopylae, Greece

 No monuments to losers? That too would be novel; and the underlying message, surely, would then be “might makes right.” Leonidas lost at Thermopylae; yet he is remembered. Carson, Bowie, and the rest lost at the Alamo; yet they are commemorated. In Canada, this would mean no honours to Montcalm—he lost on the Plains of Abraham. No memorials in Scotland to Bonnie Prince Charlie. No memorials in Ireland to Michael Collins--his side lost that Civil War. Not to mention, no memorials to Pearse, or Wolfe Tone, or Emmet, or just about any of the other heroes of Irish independence.

And, if we are to ban the Stars and Bars on these grounds, we ought also by that logic ban the fleur de lys on any Canadian flags or public monuments, as it was the symbol of the defeated regime.

Think that would promote unity? Does that sound like tolerance? Why would anyone think banning Confederate symbols is?

3. Confederate monuments celebrate slavery.

This is the only argument, surely, that can justify the elimination of Confederate references. Slavery has to be the key.

Not the mere fact that the South practiced slavery, either. Just about everywhere and everyone did, up until that time or soon before; and some well after. The Confederacy was not special in this regard.

The argument must be that the Civil War was about ending slavery, and moreover that slavery was the raison d’etre of the Confederacy.

It is possible to make that argument. But there is no consensus among historians; there are arguments that the key on the Southern side was states’ rights, discriminatory tariffs, and/or a Southern right to self-government; and that, on the Union side, the main objective was to preserve the union, not to end slavery. No one faction has no right to impose their interpretation of history on the other. To you or to me, it might have been about slavery. Fine, that is a good reason for us not to put up monuments. But we have no right to insist that everyone agree and conform.

But let us suppose the war was indeed about slavery. Even so, that war ended over 150 years ago. There has been no slavery in the US for that long. Slavery is not today a very current or pressing issue. Slavery is banned worldwide. There is not a single voice being raised, no prominent public intellectual, political commentator, or politician, anywhere in the world who is now advocating a return to slavery. What then has suddenly changed? Why now is it suddenly a problem?

There is nothing useful or humanitarian or brave about publicly opposing slavery now. How courageous or deeply symbolic is it to shoot a dead horse? To desecrate a corpse?

Accordingly, what is the real case for removing these monuments? For the reason cannot be opposition to slavery. Everybody opposes slavery. By removing then, you are not doing anything against slavery. If you want them to stay, your motive is manifestly not to support slavery. The only plausible motive seems to be to bully and humiliate a minority group: American “white” Southerners. Or else to cop a cheap sense of moral superiority at no cost to yourself, but only to others. Pharisaism, in New Testament terms.

The flag that some Southerners still fly is not the flag of the Confederacy. It is the battle flag of the Army of Northern Virginia, Lee’s command. It cannot, therefore, be fairly taken as representing any policy of that government. The person commemorated is generally not Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy, who is not fondly remembered, or any political figure, let alone one who endorsed slavery as policy. It is Lee, or some other military figure: Jackson, Beauregard, and so forth. This strongly implies, if it were not already evident to common sense, that Southerners themselves are not being political about this. Those who want to preserve the memory of the Confederacy seem to have already taken pains to reject any support of slavery. The memorials and the flag celebrate the bravery, the gallantry, and the resourcefulness of the Southerners who fought and often won against long odds. And died in their hundreds of thousands.

Like Canadians, Southerners like to think of themselves as culturally different from Yankees, with their own distinct history and folkways. Surely they have the same right to think so as Canadians.

4. What about Cornwallis in Canada? Should his statue come down for calling for the killing of Indians?

A 19th century survivor of scalping by Sioux Indians

There was a war, or rather, an insurrection, on. He had a duty to preserve the peace. His crime, in the minds of the protesters, was that he put a bounty on Indian scalps. And this indeed sounds (and was) inhumane; but it is unfair to target Cornwallis here. Scalping was the established Indian practice. Anyone fighting against Indians more or less had to follow suit, or fight with one hand bound. Just as, in WWI, when one side used poison gas, all did; when one side introduced flamethrowers, all had to use them. It is the way with war. Not to follow suit would be a betrayal of your own people. If there is any blame for the practice of scalping, which was indeed inhumane, it falls on the Indians; yet they are the ones protesting Cornwallis. This is pure racism, surely.

5. What about Sir John A. Macdonald? Wasn’t he a racist?

I have seen no good evidence of Sir John A being “racist.” Somewhat corrupt, sure, but not racist. He seems to have been a rather moderate and tolerant sort. Sometimes the critics cite the residential schools, which makes no sense, since they were created for the benefit of the Indians and at their request. Usually people seem to just make the charge without any attempt to substantiate it. It looks to me like no more than the eternal human instinct to tear down others, out of envy for their accomplishments.

Incidentally, here my friend, despite his piece presumably passing through the newspaper’s editorial process, spells Macdonald’s name incorrectly, as “MacDonald.” He is a well-educated man, an opinion leader. His editors are professionals who are supposed to spot and correct any such errors. Wouldn’t you think the name of the country’s founder is a detail every schoolboy ought to know?

This illustrates the point that we know too little of our history. Yet this urge to tear down monuments is, beyond any other considerations, a new attack on anyone knowing history. How is that a good thing? Is ignorance better than knowledge? Is education a disease?

Beware any movement that seeks to keep the population ignorant.

We in North America also suffer from an absolute lack of history in the first place, compared to just about any other part of the world. Shared history is what builds a culture and a nation. How is it a good thing, then, to try to erase what little we have?

We also have too little art in our lives. How is it a good thing to tear down any public art we see? The better to keep all our noses to the grindstone?

6. What about Columbus? Wasn’t he a slaver? Didn’t he bring slavery to the Americas?

I hold no brief for Columbus. I have always thought his role in history has been overblown. But he is important to Italian-Americans and Italian-Canadians; and to Hispanic-Americans. He gives them a pride in their heritage and a sense of belonging in the New World. And in an American society in which they have not always been welcomed: Catholic immigrants were the main target of the Ku Klux Klan, not to mention of the Freemasons, the Know-nothings, and other nativist groups. To remove monuments to him, usually funded as a public service and a gift to their fellow citizens by Italian-American groups, is an attack on another minority and their sense of pride. It too ought to be offensive to anyone who believes in diversity and tolerance. You want monuments to your heroes too, fine. Just don’t tear down those of other people.

Nor did Columbus “bring slavery to the Americas.” Slavery was a feature of most, if not all, indigenous cultures in the Americas. Christian Europe was the odd man out in this regard. Columbus was adopting native practices. Changing the name of Columbus Day to Indigenous Peoples Day simply substitutes commemoration of one slaver with commemoration of several million slavers. How is that better?