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Welcome to Conversations at That Matter Podcast. My name is John Harris. We're going to take a break today from Southern Baptist stuff. There's more that we could discuss, but we've been talking about it so much, I don't want to beat a dead horse.
Some of the same issues have just developed. I actually posted an article this morning. If you follow me on social media at any of the websites, Facebook, YouTube, Gab, trying to think what other websites.
There's a bunch. I think I have seven different social media websites, but I try to post on all of them when I can. I posted an article by Mark Devine, a Federalist. He talked about just giving a summary of the last few weeks.
For those who are confused on what's happening in that particular denomination, which is the largest Protestant denomination, you can go check that out. I think it'll help you, bring you up to speed. I know the Presbyterian Church in America is also meeting today.
They've been meeting for the last few days. I tuned in for a few minutes yesterday, but I was pretty lost. We're going to have some material on the PCA later this week or early next week, probably later this week.
I'm a little bit of an outsider to that. I know some of the people that are involved, but I don't understand how the denomination works. We will find out some of that together. I'm going to have a guest on to explain what's happening in the PCA.
Today, though, I wanted to talk about something else, something in my local backyard, something that perhaps is in your backyard, depending on where you live. That's the monument statue issue, and specifically on Confederate monuments, monuments to Confederate soldiers, generals, et cetera.
I've talked about it before. Some of you know that. This is a story, though. This is a situation that keeps developing as well. In my own backyard, so about an hour and 15 minutes from where I live right now in Charlottesville, this happened just recently.
I'll blow this up so you can all see it. The city council voted to remove Confederate statues that were the focus of the violent 2017 Unite the Right rally. Were they the focus of it? Actually, I think where they were lighting those tiki torches was by the Jefferson statue, Thomas Jefferson.
The left really wants to make those, right now at least, the focus until in five minutes they'll make the founders the focus or colonialists, I don't know, William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt, and I don't know who they'll make the villains next time, Woodrow Wilson.
Right now, this is still, until they remove all of these Confederate monuments from public view, that's one of their main focuses is trying to get these down. This particular person who fashions himself as a historian, but really more of an activist, that's for sure, Kevin Levin says, I do hope the city council thinks carefully about relocation.
These monuments are toxic. If it is wrong to display them in Charlottesville, and I cut it off, I guess, I don't know, maybe my program cut it off. He basically says it's wrong to display them anywhere else.
I've seen these monuments, by the way, in Charlottesville, Virginia, and it's sad. There really is nothing, and I've seen hundreds of these, there's really nothing racially insensitive written on them.
There's nothing about slavery written on them. It's really just two men who commanded armies, men who represented the soldiers who fought under them. Many of them died, many of them maimed, giving incredible sacrifices, showing incredible bravery, defending their homes, which is, of course, the one pictured here is Robert E. Lee, and Robert E. Lee, that was his motivation for siding with Virginia, was to defend his home.
And that's really all there, too. That's the purpose of them. That's the meaning. That's the authorial intent, if you want to use a hermeneutical phrase. This is what these monuments were there for according to the authors of them, according to those who erected them.
That's what they were trying to do. Now, whether or not they had other views that would not be agreed upon today by myself and the majority of the population, that's really irrelevant. The relevant thing is, what's the purpose of them?
And the purpose of them was to honor fallen men, to honor great men who had character, that kind of thing. And we've talked about Robert E. Lee before. I want to talk about him, though, in the words of people who you would not expect, perhaps, and especially in today's climate with the limited information coming out about him, people who were not in the South, people who respected Robert E. Lee, who you would not think of as being those who would be the prime people to respect Robert E. Lee, people from the North, people from other countries, even former slaves, this kind of thing.
And so we're going to talk about this because up until very recently, Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson were very respected men, just in general. They were part of the American, the Lincolnian America, the United America that respected Abraham Lincoln, but also Robert E. Lee, and saw the good and valuable things in both.
That America is gone, and that's what I think, that's what led to Trump's re-election, not that issue specifically, but that America kind of dying, or the next generation, the Millennials and Gen Z wanting to rip down that America that was united, and saw themselves as one people, saw themselves, especially during the Cold War era, I think is where this really was hardened, and the World Wars, but the Cold War era especially, where America stood for something good, it was opposed to the evil empire, in Ronald Reagan's words, and that was an America that included things like Confederate monuments, and of course it included a whole bunch of things, but that was one of the things, and so people who defend these things, people who don't want them to come down, it's not so much all the time that they're just neo-Confederates, or really, in the words, and that's a scare tactic at this point, that's a scare word, it's something that, it's like Odorno's F-scale, it's trying to get someone to be a racist, or pro-slavery, or something like that, pro-American slavery, because they defend these things, or because they admire some of these men, or because they display some of these symbols, when in reality, most of the people who would defend these things are just people who want that America back, America that included people who wanted to honor their ancestors in peaceful ways, which is what these monuments represent, they're actually symbols of reconciliation, at many of them, Union soldiers would come and be part of the dedications to them, vice versa as well, they were considered symbols of America itself, and the nation uniting, and this is why, up until very recently, up until really, I guess Bill Clinton, you saw symbols from the South, you saw even, there's a lot of pictures, just go on a search engine, if Google hasn't taken it out yet, and type in Jimmy Carter Confederate Statue, type in Bill Clinton Confederate Flag, you're gonna find these things, you'll find it even with Ronald Reagan, Republicans too, so my only point is that, what I'm about to show you, the things that I'm about to present to you, it's the universality of respect and admiration for some of these great men, the way that it's being portrayed now, is if anyone had anything positive to say, let's say about Robert E. Lee, they must be, they must love beating up slaves, or just they hate minorities or something, that's such a lie, and that's the lie that's being, it's being bought by people that are my age and younger, because of the education system, and they're told this repeatedly, constantly, and unless they have a strong family background, unless they have parents who are willing to stand up to that, to the media, and to the education establishment, then they're not gonna know the truth, and so I wanna give you some resources, I wanna bring you through some things, I'll talk a little bit about homeschool curriculum, I'll talk a little bit about what you can do if this is an issue that concerns you, I'll talk about why this is an important issue as we move forward, and I'll give you the information that I just talked about, the universality of respect for some of these men.
Now I wrote something on Facebook I wanna read as a launching point for the podcast today. I said, and this was last night, I posted it on all the, it wasn't just Facebook, all the social media platforms that I have, just about, we need to take down these monuments to treason.
That's right, the colonists who took arms against England, like Washington and Adams, must come down. Think about it, if you're going to say that any monuments that included people who were committing treason in the eyes of the central authority or the government or something like that, that would include our founders.
That would erase the whole, all the founding documents. These were men that, from England's standpoint, from their perspective, would have been treasonous. So you have to make the distinction. Who's the one that's actually committing treason or is being unlawful or is going against the tradition and the laws and expectations, et cetera, of their office?
Is it those who are in power who are abrogating their responsibilities, who are making war on the people that they're supposed to protect or they're not doing their job, in other words, or is it those who would want to leave, peacefully leave, which is what the colonists wanted to do in 1776.
They wanted to peaceably leave. They didn't say, we declare war on England. They said, we're gone. And then England said, no, you're staying. It's the same, it's a parallel situation from that standpoint, if you want to talk about the Civil War in those terms.
So if you're going to take down monuments to treason, then the logic is going to then apply to the founders as well. You can't escape that. We need to take down these monuments against people who took up arms against the United States.
So this would be what, Geronimo and other tribal leaders as well, take those monuments down. Are those not fit? And then there are some of those monuments in certain Western states, especially, those monuments exist.
So if you're going to do that, then you have to take them down as well. You can't, the logic, you can't escape it. When you take down these monuments to white supremacy, okay, that will make a distinction between Confederate monuments and other monuments, right?
Well, except for the fact that, and I could give millions of examples. Well, millions is a little over exaggeration. I give a lot of examples, but let me give you one. How about World War II vets? Because some people still have grandpa or great grandpa.
You remember World War II vet fought against the Japanese in a segregated army with commanding officers who use racial slurs from a country that put Japanese in internment camps and then dropped the first atomic bombs ever in history on a civilian population.
And from a US standard, they would have been minorities. And that's, and the way critical race theorists think and postcolonial thinkers, they, they, that's what, how they think minorities or victim categories in a global context.
Well, if, if you put all those together, what does that mean for the World War II veterans? If you want to defend the World War II vets, and I'm saying really it's, it's a lot more than that. Really the Vietnam vets, if you want to defend revolutionary war or civil war veterans from the North, if you want to defend Spanish American war vets, it almost doesn't matter.
War on terror, because that's going to be, just wait, just wait 50 years to see. I mean, you already can see what's happening in academia, how they're being portrayed, but just wait and you'll see how that, that narrative really sets in, in progressive circles.
If you, if they're all going to be monuments to white supremacy and, and they all are to the hard left at this point. So if you want to head that argument off, then don't give them the logic they need to take down everything.
So this is what I said, realize that this is what establishment Republicans sound like when they try to make distinctions between monuments to Confederate soldiers and other American monuments, whatever rationale they use, it eventually eats into everything else.
It's way better to just say, no, we're not taking any down. And the ones that have been taken down should be reinstalled or replaced. The fact is most of America's monuments are to men who possessed heroism, sacrifice, bravery, exploration, leadership, character, fortitude, achievement, and other values we could use a lot more of today.
And that's the reason that they were put up in the first place. Monuments to Columbus, exploration, monuments to soldiers, bravery. So, so this is the kind of thing, this is, this is the reasoning I've had from really the beginning is we honor the, it's so, and it's so much easier to make this case.
We honor the, the valuable things that men who did valuable things and were known for valuable things at the time in which they lived history on its own terms, not presentism, but we honor the things that made men great.
We honor them because of the, of who they were as men, where they came from, local histories, et cetera, being part of this. But, but, but these are, these are the kinds of characters that we want to instill in the people of our country.
When foreigners come and they say, well, what makes your country great? What, what's, what is it about your country that makes it different? These are the kinds of things we want them to see. And it's, it's the full spectrum.
It's not just one particular type of person from one region. It's, it's all regions. It's all, it's, and if you want to put more monuments up to different people who had exemplary traits then do that.
But ripping down the past, it's like Chesterton's fence. You, you don't have a replacement for it. What are you going to replace it with? And I think the left has in their mind sort of a replacement, but it's not really a replacement.
They think that if they put up monuments to those who forwarded equality in different ages, especially those since the civil rights era and moving forward, if they can put up monuments to, to those people, if they can, and this includes the LGBT stuff, this is why the Stonewall, there's a Stonewall monument now in New York, monument to Ruth Bader Ginsburg, monuments to there's now there's like an African, I went over it in a show of probably a few months ago now, but they're in New York city.
They unveiled this, this African American monument thing. That's it's, it's frankly, it's more African. It looks like an African idol more than anything else. It's not so much American as it is African, but but these are the kinds of things that they're doing.
And it's, it's what it does is it does not replace the things that were being honored in the men that were being taken down, sacrifice, bravery, you know, fighting for home, fortitude, perseverance, leadership, character, exploration.
Some of these character traits, they're not represented. At least all of them aren't. Some of them may be a little bit here or there, but they're not represented in the monuments that are going up, whichever ones are.
And that's part of the, that's part of the danger. There's pro there's more to it, but that's part of it. And, and that's an easy, I think argument to make is that these represented our country or our region or this area at a certain time.
And the intent behind them was to honor these principles that these men exemplify, they embodied them. And for whatever other weaknesses they may have had, some of them, that's not why they're there. And same thing, you could, you know, use the parallel of MLK if you want to say, look, let's, let's go over all the things that MLKs we just talked about it recently because of the plagiarism scandal in the SBC, but plagiarism and womanizing, and it's more than womanizing.
These are things that are we saying when we, you know, name a street MLK Boulevard that, well, we just really want to honor those things. Well, no, I don't think that's what people are. That's not what they mean by it.
So let's keep going here. And I will respond to, well, I'll, I'll let you know. Part of the reason this is coming up as well here is not just what's happening in Charlottesville in my own backyard, but what's happening on a national level.
The house votes to remove Confederate statues from the Capitol. And I'll just read through, this is a story. The house overwhelmingly voted Tuesday of this week in support of legislation that would remove statues of Confederate officials from the Capitol, as well as the bust of the Supreme court, chief justice, who penned the 1857 opinion in the Dred Scott ruling and said, black people weren't citizens.
In a 285 to 120 vote, lawmakers backed a resolution that would direct the removal of certain statues or bus publicly displayed around the Capitol. Those who voluntarily served in the military or the government of the Confederacy or a state while it was in rebellion with the U .S., the architect of the Capitol would be tasked with identifying the statues while the joint committee on the library would be responsible for taking them off the grounds.
So here's the thing you can already say, see from the beginning, this isn't just about Confederate officials and statues and soldiers. This is more than that because they're also removing a Supreme court justice, a chief justice of the Supreme court because of his participation in, and rendering the 1857 Dred Scott ruling.
And of course there's a lot more to his life than just that, but that's because of ideology, his life is being whittled down to just this narrow little thing. And it's really one question, were you for or against equality as we conceive of it today?
And if you weren't, then you are subject to termination. And that is, if you let that logic eat through, you're eventually going to have nothing before. I mean, Obama could be subject to cancellation, right?
He was for traditional marriage when he first got elected. So how far do you let this continue? Or do you just take the easy road, which is the road I take, and just say, look, there's men that represented our country at certain points that had certain things that were exemplary about them.
We don't agree with everything, but they're worthy of recognition because of the things that at the time made them great. And it's part of our country's history and our identity as a people. And sometimes that identity is going to contain warts.
Sometimes it's, I mean, there's no people that has a perfect track record. So we're going to have things that are good. We're going to have things that are bad, but it's, this is us, this is who we are.
And this is the glue that keeps us together. At least it should be our history. So that's a much easier way. And in a positive fashion, then you can say, here are the positive things about these men or these women, in some cases, that we honor.
And you don't have to go through all the things that people don't agree with about, you know, with them today on. You can, or the things that were legitimately wrong and evil. All you have to do is say, look, here are the things that, here are the reasons they were honored at the time.
And these are character qualities that we want instilled, et cetera. So I see this as a Trojan horse. I see this as an effort to, it's to get a foot in that door. And if you don't think they're going after the founders, if you don't think this is all about taking down the constitution and the declaration and the founding documents and principles, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, I don't think you're thinking too far into this, or you don't understand how subversive the left is.
So here's where Republicans though, can get complicit in this. The resolution sponsored by House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland also passed the House last year, but ultimately stalled in the Senate when it was led by Republicans.
In 2020, the measure passed in a 305 to 113 vote, but it divided the Republican conference. 72 backed it while 113 opposed it. On Tuesday, it once again garnered support from all Democrats press plus 67 Republicans.
So the Republicans are divided on this. And it's a pretty, you know, there's more that opposed it, but not by much. And this is surprising to some of you, I know. And I'll try to explain it, but this is what's happening.
And, you know, we let another few years go by. I think that number is going to go way up for the Republicans. They're going to be way more in favor of it. Here's Kevin McCarthy of California. I'll vote for this bill today, just as I voted for it before, but Madam Speaker, if we have not learned anything, we should not divide our nation based on race.
Really? That's a great... Kevin McCarthy of California. And he launched into a criticism of critical race theory curriculum. And this is the main, this is the interesting thing to me. You have these Republicans who now are on the rampage against critical race theory all over the place.
Many of them can't define it. And that's okay. You don't have to define it completely, but they know there's something wrong with it. They know at the very least, it's somehow making people feel guilty for being white, et cetera.
So they'll rip into this, but they don't realize it's critical race theory and the assumptions behind it that led to taking down these monuments in the first place. And someone says, well, you don't have to be a critical race theorist to think these monuments should go, which is the same thing they say about everything.
You don't have to be a critical race theorist to think that we need some more minorities in leadership here. You don't have to be a critical race theorist to think reparations should... they say that about everything.
The long and short of it is no one, even on the left, was talking about this 20 years ago, who is at least in serious, taken seriously. This is something recent and it's recent because critical race theory is also recent.
And it's the assumptions behind it that have led to this. So you can't be a Kevin McCarthy and be consistent. You can't launch into criticizing critical race theory, but let's say I'm going to vote to take down the statues.
Well, why then? Why vote to take down the statues? What's wrong with them? Well, they're to white supremacy or something. Really? Well, what makes you say that? Well, because obviously everyone knows that the Confederacy stood for slavery, et cetera.
That's the kind of juvenile logic that's going to be employed here. There are white supremacists, et cetera. But the fact is, if you look at the authorial intent, if you do actual historical research and you look at why some of these monuments were put up, the vast majority of them, it was because they were honoring character qualities in men.
They were honoring grandpa who lost his arm at Gettysburg. They were honoring people that they knew in their own communities who had character traits they wanted instilled in their children. Those are the kinds of things.
They wanted their memory to not fade. Look at the markers. Look at the interpretive plaques. Nothing to do with white supremacy, with slavery, with any of those things. You have to make a logical leap to get there.
You have to make a jump somewhere along the line, and that's what critical race theory allows you to do. Critical race theory is that jump. Well, you don't have to say it. You don't have to do things in the name of white supremacy for it to be white supremacist.
It just has to represent it. And it turns out everything represents it, just about. It applies to everything. So yeah, these are coming down, and it's the logic of white supremacy, or I'm sorry, critical race theory, bringing them down.
And Kevin McCarthy launches into a criticism of critical race theory, but can't seem to realize he's complicit in critical race theory when he votes to take these things down. And that's where a lot of the Republicans are at.
If they were really serious about getting rid of critical race theory, if the governor of Texas, the governors in these states were actually serious, if they really wanted to scale back critical race theory, that includes the governor of Florida, they would say all the monuments need to come back.
And if you've destroyed them, then we build new ones. But we're not letting these things come down because of assumptions that are derived from critical race theory. So I don't actually take this whole like anti-critical race theory thing among Republicans.
I don't take it as seriously as some do. I don't think it's as, I think it's a popular thing. It's something that they know they can win votes if they speak out against it, because people are finally so tired of it.
People that could be their constituents, moderates in the middle who are sick of their kids coming home and telling them that they're white supremacists. But like I said, they're not actually serious about it until they start defending these monuments, putting these statues back where they've been taken down, et cetera.
And I know some of you probably think I'm a hardliner on this, and maybe some of these governors want to do that. I kind of doubt it because I know a little bit about some of the, at least I've talked to local state representatives and so forth in some of these places, and it doesn't seem like it.
I think a lot of them are more politically expedient than anything else. Anyway, last section here. Passage of the resolution comes amid a national debate and reckoning over removing statues associated with the Confederacy.
According to a report from the Southern Poverty Law Center, 168 Confederate monuments and civils were removed across the U .S. in 2020. That's a lot. Noting that most were cleared out after George Floyd's death, because Derek Chauvin was completely influenced and motivated by Confederate monuments.
That's what motivated Derek Chauvin. In Minneapolis, of all places, way up in the North, that's really what motivated that. Anyway, this is what's going on on the national level. Someone on Facebook was asking me, saying, John, how can you say this is a Democrat issue?
How can you say the Republicans, Republican elites is the word I use, are part of this, or complicit in it, or this is their thing? I wanted to take one person, I'll take Ted Cruz as an example, of kind of the mixed signals over the years on this issue.
I'll start in 2015. Ted Cruz told the Associated Press, this was about the South Carolina state, the flag, the Southern Cross that was flying by their Confederate monument. He said, look, people from outside of the state coming in shouldn't dictate how they should resolve it.
It's their issue. He said he understood that some people saw it as a symbol of racial oppression and slavery, and others saw it as, remember, the sacrifices of their ancestors and traditions of their states, not racial oppression.
Sort of saying, I can see it from both sides. And this is, of course, trying to, I think, satisfy two groups of people. He's a politician. Okay. 2017. I think it's appropriate that different communities will make different decisions.
I don't think it's beneficial to go through and try to sanitize history and try to erase the Civil War. We have a history that needs to be presented fairly. It needs to be presented in context. It needs to be clearly enunciated the evils of slavery, but also a great many Americans fought and bled and died to end slavery.
Now, aside from sort of the righteous cause narrative that he's using there, because we, anyone knows who studied this issue in depth knows that the vast majority of soldiers weren't, that that wasn't their motive.
Yes, there were some who were, but they weren't dying to end slavery. That would have horrified a lot of them. They, that's not what they thought that they were doing, but in general terms. But where does this leave the monuments to Southern soldiers?
Really, there's no defense made here of that. The only defense is while you're trying to erase history. And that's really the only defense that it seems like a lot of Republicans have been capable of.
They can't do a positive. Well, you know, there were, there were certain exemplary characteristics that these men had and that's why they were put up and it's up to their local communities. Or if you don't want to do, I mean, really now that it's such a national issue and it's coming to the United States House of Representatives and Senate it probably should be that, you know, just leave it there.
Well, there's some great things about, about these men, but they're so horrified of being called racist. And that's one of the fears that Republicans got to get over. They're going to be called it anyway.
Just be yourself. Just say, state the truth. 2021. Here's, here's Ted Cruz in 2021. Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, even Dianne Feinstein, none are woke enough for the American radical left. This will never stop until Americans say enough and call it for the ignorant nonsense that it is.
So he's going after, but notice what's missing from that. Robert E. Lee's missing from that. American Taliban, he, he tweeted again in, this is end of 2020. So protesters took down a statue of Columbus and he says they're, they're American Taliban.
He can be really aggressive against them for taking down the statue of Columbus. He can be really aggressive of when people want to take down the founding fathers. But listen to some of the things he said, this is in 2020 about certain Confederate monuments, et cetera.
He says, first of all, he says it's wrong for the state of Tennessee to honor Nathan Bedford Forrest because he was a Confederate general. This is what he says. He's a Confederate general and delegate in 1868 Democrat convention.
He was also a slave trader and the first grand wizard of the KKK. Tennessee should not have an official day honoring him. Well, Ted Cruz is showing what he knows about Nathan Bedford Forrest. He, does he know that Nathan Bedford Forrest was actually an early civil rights leader?
Does he know that Nathan Bedford Forrest actually effectively gave the order to end the Klan? Does he know that Nathan Forrest, Bedford Forrest was converted to Christianity? Does he know that when Nathan Bedford Forrest was fighting and defending Tennessee, et cetera, his, his greatest soldiers in his cavalry were black slaves who were loyal to him, who he freed.
Does he know that Nathan Bedford Forrest's reputation even after the war in sharecropping was among black people that were sharecroppers was that he was an honorable man? Does he doesn't know any of these things?
He's just, he just spouting ignorance. And, and this is one of the problems too, is we have senators and congressmen who will talk about these things without really knowing much about them. And they're repeating the CNN line.
He says, American history is complicated. As a general matter, we shouldn't be tearing down historical States or statues or erasing our founders, even though they were imperfect men, but we should also provide context when we can.
And we shouldn't be issuing proclamations today, honoring Klansmen. Well, if you make, if that's just the barometer honoring anyone who had any affiliation with the Klan at any time, then it's going to bleed out into more than just that.
I mean, take down Woodrow Wilson. Now he probably wouldn't have a problem with that. Taking down Take down Robert Byrd. He probably wouldn't have a problem with that. But it's going to jump from that to just anyone who could be considered a white supremacist, et cetera, in the minds of modern elites, which is like everyone in American history.
You're giving them the very logic they need to rip it all down. This has been my point from the beginning. We'll finish up with Ted Cruz here real quick, and then we'll get to the meat of this podcast just for people who are waiting for it.
So anyway, he does the same. He trolls the Democrats quite a bit last year and this year. He talks about Ralph Northam, taking Ralph Northam, the governor of Virginia, took down the statue of Robert E. Lee, actually took down several statues of Robert E. Lee.
And then he basically calls them out because he says that, you know, Ralph Northam though, wasn't it, stood next to a picture of a Klansman in his yearbook in college. Yeah, that's the best Ted Cruz can come up with.
This is what we're used to at this point. We're just trolling these people. And I'm not saying trolling is always bad, but there's no positive defense made here. Ted Cruz says it's worthwhile to replace the statue of Nathan Bedford Forrest with Dolly Parton.
Little known fact, both Lincoln and Roosevelt were Confederate generals, he says with sarcasm, because the assumption is it's acceptable to take down Confederate general statues, but not Lincoln or Roosevelt.
But the social justice mob doesn't care. And that's what the Republicans don't understand. They will take down Lincoln and Roosevelt. I was just in Portland. The statues of Lincoln and Roosevelt are gone.
Statues to Jefferson have been destroyed. Statues to Washington vandalized. Statues to American veterans of all wars destroyed. The, you know, Pioneer statue vandalized. I mean, this is who these people are, guys.
If you don't start treating them like who they are and say, well, we can give them, we'll give them all the Confederates, and then they'll settle down. No, they won't. That'll embolden them. Ted Cruz, again, for eight long years, Obama refused to rename military bases named after Confederate generals.
Clearly, under the rules that have been established, Netflix must cancel Barack Obama. And this is silly. This is silly. Now, there's a point to be made here, and I'm sort of making it too. It's like, look, you got to rip down everything if you give them this logic.
But Ted Cruz has given them that logic. And this is why there's an inconsistency. He'll go after, well, we got to take this down. We got to stop this because this is, this is, this person was affiliated with white supremacy somewhere along the line.
But then, well, this horrible thing, the American Taliban, if they're taking down Columbus, it's wrong to take down George Washington. You can't have it both ways. You're going to have to make a choice of what you think constitutes, in the public square, honor to historical figures, or just recognition of historical figures of the past.
You're going to have to make a decision. And I say, stick with the tradition that's already been in place. You honor men and women who have been recognized for certain achievements, for certain things that they did, character that they had.
Make a positive case. And that way, you don't have to deal with all that, the negative stuff. You just say, yeah, you know, there's some negative things there as well, but we honor them because of this.
And that's why these statues were put up because this is what these, the people who erected them thought of them. And it's a lot simpler guys. It's a lot, you don't have to do all these. You don't have to calculate according to the political winds.
You don't have to constantly do surveys to find out what do people think or guess at what people think. All you have to do is just be honest. That's maybe, maybe I'm just not in politics and I don't understand, but we're going to go over because Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson are the two that are coming down in my backyard.
And so I just want to read for you. And this isn't Republican senators. This isn't Southerners primarily. These are people who are American heroes as well that would be honored today. They're still there.
They're in many cases and not in all the woke circles, but in many cases, even to Democrats, some of these people are still honored. I want to read for you what they had to say about Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson.
And then you ask yourself this question, are all these men that I'm about to read quotes from, are they also just white supremacists? Are they evil men? Are they, did they just not see what we in our enlightened age are able to see?
Did FDR and Ulysses S. Grant and Theodore Roosevelt, did they just not see what we can see today? And if not, maybe we should take their statues down, right? Well, no, no. I think, and this, I think will show you how played we have been in the last five years.
We have been so played. And, and this is this is what people had to say about Robert E. Lee. Winfield Scott, the general in chief and hero of the Mexican war. Winfield Scott, American hero, 1861. Describe Lee as the very best soldier that I ever saw on the field.
Ulysses S. Grant, Lee's most successful opponent described himself as sad and depressed when Lee surrendered and said he could not rejoice at the downfall of a foe who had fought so long and so valiantly and had suffered so much for a cause.
Well, Ulysses S. Grant was a Neo-Confederate. Really? Really? Because he's the one that defeated the Confederates. Interesting, huh? Theodore Roosevelt, the world has never been better, seen better soldiers than those who followed Lee.
And their leader will undoubtedly rank as without any exception, the very greatest of all great captains that the English speaking peoples have brought forth. General Lee has left us the memory not merely of his extraordinary skill as a general, his dauntless courage and high leadership and campaign and battle, but also of that serene greatness of soul characteristic of those who most readily recognize the obligations of civic duty.
Are those obligations around today, guys? Not much. Maybe someone like Lee can teach us about it. Roosevelt goes on, he says, once the war was over, he instantly undertook the task of healing and binding up the wounds of his countrymen in the true spirit of those who feel malice toward none and charity toward all.
And that's a quote, for those who don't know, from Abraham Lincoln's, I believe it's his second inaugural. Malice toward none, charity toward all. In that spirit, which from the throes of the Civil War brought forth the real and indissolvable union of today.
Theodore Roosevelt on Robert E. Lee. Was Theodore Roosevelt a neo-confederate? I mean, I don't think so. But this is what he thought of Lee. FDR praised Lee when he attended the unveiling of a statue of the general in Dallas, Texas, in 1936.
He said, we recognize Robert E. Lee as one of the greatest American Christians and one of our greatest American gentlemen. Hero of the Democratic Party, hero of the New Deal, hero of World War II, Franklin Delano Roosevelt from New York.
Is this, is he a Southern sympathizer? Is that what's making him say this? They just fooled him. They just duped him into thinking great things about Lee. How about President Gerald Ford? After the war ended, Lee applied for a restoration of his United States citizenship.
This application was tucked away and ignored by a clerk and lay undiscovered in the National Archives until 1975. Lee's full rights of citizenship were posthumously restored by a joint congressional resolution effective June 13, 1865.
At the signing ceremony on the 5th of August, 1975, President Gerald Ford, Republican Gerald Ford, said, in the 1970s, General Lee's character has been an example to succeeding generations, baking the restoration of his citizenship, an event in which every American can take pride.
Really every American. Gerald Ford. Well, he was just a white supremacist, wasn't he? That Gerald Ford. You really want to make that case? Is that what we're going for here? Or was there something else going on?
Dwight Eisenhower, born in Texas, but grew up in Abilene, Kansas, wrote this of Lee, General Robert E. Lee. And by the way, for those, I know there's some people who don't know. Dwight Eisenhower, hero of World War II, President of the United States.
This is what he said. General Robert E. Lee was, in my estimation, one of the supremely gifted men produced by our nation. He was a poised and inspiring leader, true to the high trust reposed on 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 together, 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, we, in our own time of danger in a divided world, 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.". He said this as President of the United States, I believe. I know he had a picture of Lee in his office as President.
This is from Dwight Eisenhower, of all people. Winston Churchill. Now, Winston Churchill, I mean, you think of Winston Churchill, defeated the Nazis. I mean, here's a real white supremacist for you there, right?
Winston Churchill, real Southern partisan too. This is what he said. Lee was the noblest American who had ever lived and one of the greatest commanders known to the annals of war. And Winston Churchill, there's a little known essay Winston Churchill wrote on kind of some alternative history if the Confederacy had won and what he thinks would have happened.
It might be good for those who are curious about this. I know a lot of people admire him like Al Mohler, for instance, admires Winston Churchill. Winston Churchill thought the world of Robert E. Lee. And he did not share the same views that most people in Southern Baptist elite circles today share.
How about the New York Times, right? They're really white supremacists, those New York Times. This is what they say in the obituary of Lee. Not long after his surrender, he was invited to become the President of Washington University at Lexington, Virginia, and was installed in that position on the 2nd of October, 1865.
Since that time, he has devoted himself to the interests of that institution, keeping so far as possible aloof from public notice. And by his unobtrusive modesty and purity of life, has won the respect even of those who most bitterly deplore and reprobate his course in the rebellion.
New York Times, they're real Neo-Confederates over there, right? How about the New York Herald and their obituary of Lee? They read, not to the Southern people alone shall be limited the tribute of a tear over the dead Virginian.
Here in the North, forgetting that the time when the sword of Robert E. Lee was drawn against us, forgetting and forgiving all the years of bloodshed and agony, we've long since ceased to look upon him as a Confederate leader, but have claimed him as one of ourselves, have cherished and felt proud of his military genius as belonging to us, have recounted and recorded his triumphs as ours, have extolled his virtues as reflecting honor upon us.
Robert E. Lee was an American, and the great nation which gave him birth would be today unworthy of such a son if she regarded him lightly. Never had mother a nobler son. In him, the military genius of America was developed to a greater extent than ever before.
In him, all that was pure and lofty in mind and purpose found lodgment without presumption, affable without familiarity. He united all those charms of manners which made him the idol of his friends and of his soldiers and won him the respect and admiration of the world.
From the hour that he surrendered his sword at Appomattox to the fatal autumn morning, he passed among men noble in his quiet, simple dignity, displaying neither bitterness nor regret over the irrevocable past.
He conquered us in misfortune by the grand manner in which he sustained himself, even as he dazzled us by his genius when the tramp of his soldiers resounded through the valleys of Virginia. And for such a man, we are all tears and sorrows today.
Standing beside his grave, men of the South, men of the North, can mourn with all the bitterness of four years of warfare erased by this common bereavement. Indeed, it is doubtful if there are many men of the present generation who unite so many virtues and so few vices in each of themselves as did General Lee.
He came nearer the ideal of the soldier and Christian general than any man we can think of, for he was a greater man than Major General Sir Henry Havelock and equally as devout a Christian. In his death, our country has lost a son in whom she might well be proud, the New York Herald.".
These are the people who were against him, the people who fought him, people from the North. This is what they thought of Robert E. Lee. Charles Anderson, Colonel of the 93rd Ohio Infantry. So this is someone who fought the Confederates.
This is what he said. And of all the officers or men whom I've ever knew, he came, Robert E. Lee, save one other alone, the nearest in likeness to that classical ideal. And if these, our modern commercial, mechanical, utilitarian ages, ever did develop a few of these types of male chivalry, people who have chivalry, virtues, those virtues, which we attribute solely to those ages of faith, Robert E. Lee was one of the highest and finest models.
Chivalric, I think I'm pronouncing it right. It's a tongue twister for some reason for me, I don't know why, but this is what an enemy of Robert E. Lee thought of him. Here's another one, Erasmus Darwin Keyes, U .S. Major General and veteran of the Civil War.
I doubt if Robert E. Lee ever excited envy in any man. All his accomplishments and alluring virtues appeared naturally in him, and he was free from the anxiety, distrust, and awkwardness that attend a sense of inferiority, unfriendly discipline, and censure.
John M. Schofield, another Union Commander of the Army of the Ohio. He, meaning Robert E. Lee, was the personification of dignity, justice, and kindness. He was respected and admired as the ideal of a commanding officer.
Are all these people just simply white supremacists? Are all these people just neo-confederates? Are all these people? No, they're not. And this is why Robert E. Lee was honored by so many. I hope you're starting to understand, but the Republicans of today can't seem to honor him.
The conservatives today don't seem to understand this, when his enemies did. How about Booker T. Washington, formed the Tuskegee Institute, wrote the book Up From Slavery. Here's what he said about Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson.
He said, the first white people in America, certainly the first in the South, to exhibit their interest in the reaching of the Negro and saving his soul through the medium of the Sunday school were Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson.
Where Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson have led in the redemption of the Negro through the Sunday school, the rest of us can afford to follow. Booker T. Washington. Yeah, but Booker T. Washington must have been a white supremacist, right?
That's what they say about conservatives today, who are black, African American, have African ancestry. They say that they're white supremacists, that they have conservative views, because it's not really about actual white supremacy.
It's about control. It's about ideology, and painting anyone who would resist the coming, and in the current, we're living in it, but the coming egalitarian push is to be labeled white supremacist, sexist, misogynistic, homophobic, etc.
And terms of derision are cast their way, put them on the offensive. It's time we just stop paying attention to that, and we say, no, you are. You're the one that's a bully. You're the one that wants to fundamentally remake society.
You're a Marxist. You're a revolutionary. You're against this country. You're a traitor. Those are the kinds of things that, if we're going to play hardball, that's what we need to start doing. You want to take down these monuments to men that were respected by Booker T. Washington, and all these presidents, and Winston Churchill, and all these northern generals?
You're against America. You're against this country. You want to subvert it. Who are you going to replace it with? Who are the symbols? What are the symbols you want to put up? And maybe you can put some of them up, but taking these down, this is not what we're about.
And make them the ones that are in shame over this. But Republicans seem to be cowering in shame themselves. They can't handle what the media might say about them. How about Stonewall Jackson? British Colonel George Francis Robert Henderson said this, from his boyhood onward until he died on the Rappahannock, he was a very model of a Christian gentleman.
Paradox, as it may sound, the great rebel was the most loyal of men. His devotion to Virginia was hardly surpassed by his devotion to his wife, and he made no secret of his absolute dependence on a higher power.
Every action was a prayer. Every action began and ended in the name of the Almighty, consciously and unconsciously. Indeed, as in word, in the quiet of his home, and in tumult of battle, he fastened to his soul those golden chains that bind the whole round earth about the feet of God.
Nor was there a burden heavy. He was the happiest man, says one of his friends, I ever knew. And he was wont to express his surprise that others were less happy than himself. E .L. Godkin, an essayist, a northerner, and a fierce Republican partisan, right?
Political enemy, said this, Jackson was the most extraordinary phenomenon of his extraordinary war. Jackson, let me try that again. Jackson was the most extraordinary phenomenon of this extraordinary war.
Pure, honest, simple-minded, unselfish, and brave. His death is a loss to the whole of America. For whatever be the result of this war, the United States will enjoy the honor of having bred and educated him.
How about George S. Patton? People know who George S. Patton is, right? The hero of World War II. Ike, you will be the Lee of the next war, and I will be your Jackson. He wanted to be Stonewall Jackson.
Chesty Pulley, a polar, the most decorated Marine in American history. This is what he said. He maintained, or this is what he did. He maintained a personal copy of Henderson's Stonewall Jackson with him until after the war in Korea.
Dirty and worn on every page with much of the text underlined and notes on all the margins. He studied it almost daily. The firm resolve of Stonewall Jackson, never take counsel of your fears, was written on every page.
Alexander Van Grift commanded the first Marine division to victory in the first ground offensive of the war, World War II, the Battle of Guadalcanal. He often, Stonewall Jackson often thought, or Van Grift often thought of his favorite historical military figure, Stonewall Jackson, a man whom he admired because he could do so much with so little.
It was indirectly through Jackson that he first became interested in military history and tactics. So here's the point. For 100 years, more than 100 years after the Civil War, men like Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson were heroes to many Americans, North and South, and even foreign observers.
People that weren't even part of the United States admired these men for their character. And people in World War II who fought generals, and this would apply to many of the soldiers who fought in World War II, would have been inspired, and World War I, and even Vietnam, where they were inspired by Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee to do what they did.
They drew inspiration from these historical figures. For years, presidents drew inspiration from these historical figures. Gerald Ford. I mean, these are quintessential American figures, or at least they were up until five seconds ago, and the Republicans are allowing this.
And I've said before, I think the two biggest mistakes of the last 10 years for Republicans, caving on same-sex marriage, caving on the monument issue, because both of them are done deals now. Republicans, I mean, the Republican Party of Virginia is now waving rainbow flags and celebrating Pride Month and saying how this is actually a Republican value.
Republican Party, you know, believes in these things because they're for equality, etc. This is the path that Republicans decided to go down when they just gave up on those issues. And in so doing, they gave up on just about everything.
They gave the logic to the left to tear down everything. You can make everything out to be racist, and you can destroy the family. Those are the two things that the left needed to commit the revolution that we're in the middle of now and to continue.
And the Republicans need to wake up. And I would encourage you, this bill to take down all these statues has not passed the Senate yet. Call your senator. Let them know what you think of it. Talk to your local representatives about this issue.
And if you want to do something that is important, that could help, fund the documentary that I'm helping to do. I'm helping produce and put out there on the monument issue. It's not just about Confederate stuff.
It's about all the American monuments that are threatened because the left is targeting so many of them, the vast majority of them, the left wants taken down. They want to fundamentally change America.
They want to build it up based on different heroes, totally different values. And so we're doing a defense of it because no one else seems to want to do it. And I'm exaggerating a little. There are people, but how many documentaries are on this issue?
How many conservatives actually even speak about this issue? They don't want to. And it is a key issue guys, whether you know it or not. And it does relate directly back into Christianity. It is the logic they need to take down Christians of the past.
If they can paint, if they can use the critical race theory assumptions by jumping, making these logical jumps to make everything out to be white supremacist, that's the way that they're going to make the preachers of the past, the revivalists of the past.
I mean, it's already happening. We've talked about Jonathan Edwards and George Whitfield. It's already happening to some extent, but this is the logic they need to rip down all of America's past. And it's just the foot in the door.
So if you care about the issue and care about what you're passing down to your children, what kind of America they're going to grow up in, consider helping us fund this documentary. We haven't got all the funds we need to do it yet.
We've shot a lot of it, but we do need some more funds to make it to the final stage. So I'll put the link in the info section. The link to American Monument Documentary funding that is in the info section.
I'm going to close with the trailer so you can watch the trailer to know more about it. And as well, if you want the slideshow that you just saw today on all those quotes, I'm going to include the slideshow and a reference.
A friend of mine helped put a lot of this together. I added some to it, but all those positive quotations about Lee and Jackson are in a Word document that will be uploaded to Patreon as well. So I'm going to include that post.
So if you're a patron, five bucks a month or more, that's all it takes. Then you can have access to that document and the slideshow as well. And you can use it for your own purposes, for whatever those might be.
I remember not too long ago I was driving. I'll close with this, then you can see the trailer to American Monument. I was listening to a Christian radio. It was Warren Weersbe. Many of you know Warren Weersbe.
He did a lot of the B series, they call it. It was Studies in the New Testament. And Warren Weersbe actually brought up Stonewall Jackson as an illustration in one of his sermons, as a positive example of character of someone who was brave on the battlefield.
And I thought that was interesting because he's not a Southerner, as far as I know. I don't think he was. He is well respected even today. And it wasn't that long ago he said what he said. It really wasn't.
And I wonder how many preachers, how many people would have been using illustrations from men like Jackson and Lee that now would never even come within 10 yards of talking about them. And that's a shame because they were great men.
And that's the reason that there are monuments to them. So check out the Monument documentary trailer, which I'm about to show you. Think about, prayerfully consider maybe supporting us in this. And also, if you want to get the slideshow and the quotes and the sources for the quotes, the link for that post on Patreon is available in the input section.
God bless you. And we'll talk about some more things later this week. And we will get to the PCA. We will talk about them some. So God bless. Have a good day.
Monuments have been important for not just centuries, but millennia. It is the way that human beings can mark something or someone as important. It's actually a biblical idea, right, that you have to remind yourself because we tend to forget.
These statues are symbols of the past.
And as the saying goes, he who controls the past controls the future. If you can paint American history as nothing but slavery, nothing but oppression and erase those symbols and make them dirty in the eyes of young Americans, you have disconnected them with their roots, their Christian heritage, the patriotism of the past, the heroes of the past.
And you can then start to reshape them. When people start actually tearing down.
Valuable, beautiful, ancient or venerable monuments, it's a bad sign in the culture that says that we don't value history. We want to rewrite history. You've got churchmen supporting.
This ripping down of statues. You know, we finally got the statue of Lee taken down in Lee Park and.
Churchmen falling over themselves to prove how anti-racist they are and how they're so ashamed of the founding fathers and all of these things. What that Confederate monument was doing was.
Bringing closure to the families who are living here who lost loved ones during the Civil War. It was not a statement of the South will rise again, you know, or nonsense like white supremacy. It was simply to help those families bring closure to a war that was very devastating.
Consider those losses. Consider if we were in a war today where we had five percent killed. How do you think we would react? It was certainly natural that they wanted to honor those.
Men, fathers, sons, brothers. These men did their duty. We had these states call their sons to serve them and give their lives if necessary to defend them. And many of them fell and they did give their lives and those mothers didn't get their darling sons back.
And for a veteran to be disgraced, it seemed like the most wrong thing and that was the Vietnam lesson for me.
There's none of us who doesn't have some sin or some mistake that we made. If you're defining somebody by that, that ultimately is a very dark, destructive way to live. It's just graceless. It's wrong.
We can look at history to see why it's wrong. People have very little courage. So I think if you have courage, you have an obligation to stand up and to say, no, we're not going to let this happen. But I really do think that a lot of the people in leadership in this country, they haven't seen how bad things can go.
They kind of think like, we'll be fine if we tear down some statues. Historically, if you understand history, you know that always ends in bloodshed.
