As We Destroy Confederate Monuments, Are We Also Not Destroying History For Good Or Bad?

If We Erase Our History, Who Are We?

Tuesday - August 15, 2017 at 12:48 am

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By Patrick J. Buchanan

When the Dodge Charger of 20-year-old Nazi sympathizer James Alex Fields Jr., plunged into that crowd of protesters Saturday, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer, Fields put Charlottesville on the map of modernity alongside Ferguson.

Before Fields ran down the protesters, and then backed up, running down more, what was happening seemed but a bloody brawl between extremists on both sides of the issue of whether Robert E. Lee’s statue should be removed from Emancipation Park, formerly Lee Park.

With Heyer’s death, the brawl was elevated to a moral issue. And President Donald Trump’s initial failure to denounce the neo-Nazi and Klan presence was declared a moral failure.

How did we get here, and where are we going?

In June of 2015, 21-year-old Dylann Roof gunned down nine Christians at an evening Bible study in Charleston’s Emanuel AME Church. A review of Roof’s selfies and website showed him posing with the Confederate battle flag.

Gov. Nikki Haley, five years in office, instantly pivoted and called for removal of the battle flag from the Confederate war memorial on the State House grounds, as a “deeply offensive symbol of a brutally offensive past.”

This ignited a national clamor to purge all statues that lionize Confederate soldiers and statesmen.

In Maryland, demands have come for removing statues and busts of Chief Justice Roger Taney, the author of the Dred Scott decision. Statues of Gen. “Stonewall” Jackson, President Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee have been pulled down in New Orleans.

After Charlottesville, pressure is building for removal of the statues of Lee, Jackson, Davis and Gen. “Jeb” Stuart from historic Monument Avenue in Richmond, capital of the Confederacy.

Many Southern towns, including Alexandria, Virginia, have statues of Confederate soldiers looking to the South. Shall we pull them all down? And once all the Southern Civil War monuments are gone, should we go after the statues of the slave owners whom we Americans have heroized?

Gen. George Washington and his subordinate, “Light Horse Harry” Lee, father of Robert E. Lee, were slave owners, as was Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe and Andrew Jackson. Five of our first seven presidents owned slaves, as did James K. Polk, who invaded and annexed the northern half of Mexico, including California.

Jefferson, with his exploitation of Sally Hemings and neglect of their children, presents a particular problem. While he wrote in the Declaration of Independence of his belief that “all men are created equal,” his life and his depiction of Indians in that document belie this.

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And Jefferson is both on the face of Mount Rushmore and has a memorial in the U.S. capital.

Another term applied to the “Unite the Right” gathering in Charlottesville is that they are “white supremacists,” a mortal sin to modernity. But here we encounter an even greater problem.

Looking back over the history of a Western Civilization, which we call great, were not the explorers who came out of Spain, Portugal, France, Holland and England all white supremacists?

They conquered in the name of the mother countries all the lands they discovered, imposed their rule upon the indigenous peoples, and vanquished and eradicated the native-born who stood in their way.

Who, during the centuries-long discovery and conquest of the New World, really believed that the lives of the indigenous peoples were of equal worth with those of the colonizers?

They believed European Man had the right to rule the world.

Beginning in the 16th century, Western imperialists ruled much of what was called the civilized world. Was not the British Empire, one of the great civilizing forces in human history, a manifestation of British racial superiority?

And if being a segregationist disqualifies one from being venerated in our brave new world, what do we do with Woodrow Wilson, who thought “Birth of a Nation” a splendid film and who re-segregated the U.S. government?

In 1955, Prime Minister Churchill, imperialist to the core, urged his Cabinet to consider the slogan, “Keep England White.”

Nor is a belief in the superiority of one’s race, religion, tribe and culture unique to the West. What is unique, what is an experiment without precedent, is what we are about today.

We have condemned and renounced the scarlet sins of the men who made America and embraced diversity, inclusivity and equality.

Our new America is to be a land where all races, tribes, creeds and cultures congregate, all are treated equally, and all move ever closer to an equality of results through the regular redistribution of opportunity, wealth and power.

We are going to become “the first universal nation.”

“All men are created equal” is an ideological statement. Where is the scientific or historic proof for it? Are we building our utopia on a sandpile of ideology and hope?

Nevertheless, on to Richmond!

The Purposeful Misleading Interpretation Of The Constitution. Great Compromise Gets Lost In History.

What the Constitution Really 

Says About Race and Slavery

David Azerrad / December 28, 2015 / 5 comments

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Referring to slavery, Abraham Lincoln wrote, "Thus, the thing is hid away, in the
Constitution, just as an afflicted man hides away a wen or a cancer, which he dares
not cut out at once, lest he bleed to death." (Photo: Gary Cameron/Reuters/Newscom)

COMMENTARY BY

David Azerrad

David Azerrad devotes his time and research to increasing public understanding of America’s founding principles. As director of The Heritage Foundation’s B. Kenneth Simon Center for Principles and Politics, he teaches the tenets of the American political tradition to policymakers, political leaders and the public at large, while connecting our founding principles to the thorny questions of the day.Read his research.

One hundred and fifty years ago
this month, the 13th Amendment officially
was ratified, and with it, slavery finally
was abolished in America. The New York
World hailed it as “one of the most important
reforms ever accomplished by voluntary
human agency.”

The newspaper said the amendment
 “takes out of politics, and consigns to
history, an institution incongruous to our
political system, inconsistent with
justice and repugnant to the humane
 sentiments fostered by Christian
civilization.”

With the passage of the 13th Amendment
—which states that “[n]either slavery
nor involuntary servitude, except as a
punishment for crime whereof the party
shall have been duly convicted, shall
 exist within the United States, or any
place subject to their jurisdiction”—the
central contradiction at the heart of the
Founding was resolved.

Eighty-nine years after the Declaration of Independence had proclaimed all men to
be free and equal, race-based chattel
slavery would be no more in the United States.

While all today recognize this momentous accomplishment, many remain confused
about the status of slavery under the
original Constitution. Textbooks and
history books routinely dismiss the
Constitution as racist and pro-slavery.
The New York Times, among others,
continues to casually assert that the
Constitution affirmed African-Americans
to be worth only three-fifths of a human being.

Ironically, many Americans who are resolutely
opposed to racism unwittingly agree with
Chief Justice Roger Taney’s claim in Dred Scott v. 
Sandford (1857) that the Founders’ Constitution
regarded blacks as “so far inferior that they
 had no rights which the white man was
bound to respect, and that the negro
might justly and lawfully be reduced to
slavery for his benefit.” In this view, the
worst Supreme Court case decision in
American history was actually correctly
decided.

The argument that the Constitution is racist suffers from one fatal flaw: the concept of race does not exist in the Constitution.

Such arguments have unsettling implications
for the health of our republic. They teach
citizens to despise their founding charter
and to be ashamed of their country’s origins.
 They make the Constitution an object of
contempt rather than reverence. And they 
foster alienation and resentment among 
African-American citizens by excluding them
 from our Constitution.

The received wisdom in this case is wrong.
 If we turn to the actual text of the Constitution
and the debates that gave rise to it, a
 different picture emerges. The case for
a racist, pro-slavery Constitution
collapses under closer scrutiny.

Race and the Constitution

The argument that the Constitution is
racist suffers from one fatal flaw: the 
concept of race does not exist in the 
Constitution. Nowhere in the Constitution
—or in the Declaration of Independence, 
for that matter—are human beings 
classified according to race, skin color, 
or ethnicity (nor, one should add, sex, 
religion, or any other of the left’s 
favored groupings). Our founding 
principles are colorblind (although 
our history, regrettably, has not been).

The Constitution speaks of people,
citizens, persons, other persons (a
euphemism for slaves) and Indians
not taxed (in which case, it is their
 tax-exempt status, and not their skin
color, that matters). The first
 references to “race” and “color”
occur in the 15th Amendment’s
guarantee of the right to vote, ratified in 1870.

A newly freed group of black men and a few children pose by
a canal against the ruins of Richmond, Va., after Union troops
 took the city on April 3, 1865. (Photo: Everett Collection/Newscom)

The infamous three-fifths clause, which
 more nonsense has been written than any
other clause, does not declare that a black
 person is worth 60 percent of a white person.
 It says that for purposes of determining the
 number of representatives for each state in
the House (and direct taxes), the government
 would count only three-fifths of the slaves,
and not all of them, as the Southern states,
who wanted to gain more seats, had insisted.
The 60,000 or so free blacks in the North and
the South were counted on par with whites.

Contrary to a popular misconception, the
Constitution also does not say that only
white males who owned property could vote.
 The Constitution defers to the states to
determine who shall be eligible to vote
(Article I, Section 2, Clause 1). It is a little
 known fact of American history that black
citizens were voting in perhaps as many
 as 10 states at the time of the founding
(the precise number is unclear, but only
 Georgia, South Carolina, and Virginia
explicitly restricted suffrage to whites).

Slavery and the Constitution

Not only does the Constitution not mention
 blacks or whites, but it also doesn’t
mention slaves or slavery. Throughout
the document, slaves are referred to as
persons to underscore their humanity.
As James Madison remarked during the
constitutional convention, it was “wrong
 to admit in the Constitution the idea that
there could be property in men.”

The Constitution refers to slaves using
three different formulations: “other persons”
(Article I, Section 2, Clause 3), “such
persons as any of the states now existing
shall think proper to admit” (Article I, 
Section 9, Clause 1), and a “person
held to service or labor in one state, under
 the laws thereof” (Article IV, Section 2, Clause 3).

Although these circumlocutions may not
have done much to improve the lot of
slaves, they are important, as they
denied constitutional legitimacy to the
institution of slavery. The practice
remained legal, but slaveholders could
not invoke the supreme law of the land
 to defend its legitimacy. These formulations
make clear that slavery is a state institution
that is tolerated—but not sanctioned—
by the national government and the
Constitution.

Reading the original Constitution, a
visitor from a foreign land would simply
 have no way of knowing that race-based
slavery existed in America. As Abraham
Lincoln would later explain:

Thus, the thing is hid away, in the

Constitution, just as an afflicted man

hides away a wen or a cancer, which

he dares not cut out at once, lest he

bleed to death.

One could go even further and argue, as
Frederick Douglass did in the lead-up to the
Civil War, that none of the clauses of the
Constitution should be interpreted as
applying to slaves. The “language of the
 law must be construed strictly in favor
of justice and liberty,” he argued.

Because the Constitution does not
 explicitly recognize slavery and does
 not therefore admit that slaves were
property, all the protections it affords
to persons could be applied to slaves.
 “Anyone of these provisions in the
hands of abolition statesmen, and
backed up by a right moral sentiment,
would put an end to slavery in America,” Douglass concluded.

Those who want to see what a racist and
pro-slavery Constitution would look like
should turn to the Confederate Constitution of 1861. Though it largely mimics the Constitution,
it is replete with references to “the institution
of negro slavery,” “negroes of the African
race,” and “negro slaves.” It specifically
forbids the Confederate Congress from
passing any “law denying or impairing
the right of property in negro slaves.”

Contrary to a popular misconception, the Constitution also does not say that only white males who owned property could vote.

One can readily imagine any number of clauses that could have been added to our Constitution to enshrine slavery. The manumission of slaves could have been prohibited. A national right to bring one’s slaves to any state could have been recognized. Congress could have been barred from interfering in any way with the transatlantic slave trade.

It is true that the Constitution of 1787 failed to abolish slavery. The constitutional convention was convened not to free the slaves, but to amend the Articles of Confederation. The slave-holding states would have never consented to a new Constitution that struck a blow at their peculiar institution. The Constitution did, however, empower Congress to prevent its spread and set it on a course of extinction, while leaving the states free to abolish it within their own territory at any time.

Regrettably, early Congresses did not pursue a consistent anti-slavery policy. This, however, is not an indictment of the Constitution itself. As Frederick Douglass explained: “A chart is one thing, the course of a vessel is another. The Constitution may be right, the government wrong.”

Congress and the Slave Trade

In his original draft of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson called the African slave trade an “execrable commerce” and an affront “against human nature itself.” Because of a concession to slave-holding interests, the Constitution stipulates that it may not be abolished “prior to the year one thousand eight hundred and eight” (Article I, Section 9, Clause 1).

Before the Civil War, Frederick Douglass said that nothing in the Constitution should be interpreted as applying to slaves. The “language of the law must be construed strictly in favor of justice and liberty,” he argued. (Photo: Everett Collection/Newscom)

In the meantime, Congress could discourage the importation of slaves from abroad by imposing a duty “not exceeding 10 dollars on each person” (Article I, Section 9, Clause 1). Although early Congresses considered such measures, they were never enacted.

Early Congresses did, however, regulate the transatlantic slave trade, pursuant to their power “to regulate commerce with foreign nations” (Article I, Section 8, Clause 3). In 1794, 1800, and 1803, statutes were passed that severely restricted American participation in it. No American shipyard could be used to build ships that would engage in the slave trade, nor could any ship sailing from an American port traffic in slaves abroad. Americans were also prohibited from investing in the slave trade.

Finally, on the very first day on which it was constitutionally permissible to do so—Jan. 1, 1808—the slave trade was abolished by law.

The law, which President Thomas Jefferson signed, stipulated stiff penalties for any American convicted of participating in the slave trade: up to $10,000 in fines and five to 10 years in prison. In 1823, a new law was passed that punished slave-trading with death.

Congress and the Expansion of Slavery

Banning the importation of slaves would not by itself put an end to slavery in the United States. Slavery would grow naturally even if no new slaves were brought into the country.

Although Congress could not prevent this, it could prevent slavery from spreading geographically to the territories from which new states would eventually be created.

Congress has the power “to dispose of and make all needful rules and regulations respecting the territory or other property belonging to the United States” (Article IV, Section 3, Clause 2), to forbid the migration of slaves into the new territories (Article I, Section 9, Clause 1), and to stipulate conditions for statehood (Article IV, Section 3, Clause 2).

In no way could the Constitution be said to be pro-slavery. The principles of natural right undergirding it are resolutely anti-slavery. Its language conveys disapproval of slavery.

Regrettably, early Congresses did not prevent the spread of slavery. Between 1798 and 1822, Congress enacted 10 territorial acts. Only half excluded slavery.

As a result, seven slaveholding states and five free states were admitted into the union. The seeds of what Abraham Lincoln would later call the crisis of the house divided were sown.

Slavery in the Existing States

As for the existing slaveholding states that had ratified the Constitution, what could Congress do to restrict the growth of slavery within their borders? Here Congress had more limited options. After 1808, “the migration” of slaves across state lines could have been prohibited (Article I, Section 9, Clause 1). This was never done.

In principle, slavery could have been taxed out of existence. However, the requirement that direct taxes be apportioned among the states made it impossible to exclusively target slaveholders. A capitation or head tax, for example, even though it would have been more costly for Southerners, would also impose a heavy burden on Northerners.

While one could perhaps have circumvented the apportionment requirement by calling for an indirect tax on slaves—as Sen. Charles Sumner, R-Mass., would later doduring the Civil War—such arguments were not made in the early republic.

There was one clause in the original Constitution that required cooperation with slaveholders and protected the institution of slavery. Slaves who escaped to freedom were to “be delivered up” to their masters (Article IV, Section 2, Clause 3). The motion to include a fugitive slave clause at the constitutional convention passed unanimously and without debate. This would seem to indicate that all knew it would be futile to try to oppose such a measure.

The debate instead focused on the wording. Whereas the original draft had referred to a “person legally held to service or labor in one state,” the final version instead refers to a “person held to service or labor in one state, under the laws thereof.” This change, Madison explains in his notes, was to comply “with the wish of some who thought the term legalequivocal,” as it gave the impression “that slavery was legal in a moral view,” rather than merely permissible under the law.

This remark by Madison captures the Constitution’s stance vis-à-vis slavery: permissible, but not moral. Legal, but not legitimate.

In no way can the Constitution be said to be pro-slavery. The principles of natural right undergirding it are resolutely anti-slavery. Its language conveys disapproval of slavery. And it contains within it several provisions that could have been and were at times used to prevent the spread of slavery.

This may not make it an anti-slavery Constitution. But even before the 13th Amendment, it was a Constitution that, if placed in the right hands, could be made to serve the cause of freedom.

Supreme Court Changed Its Position On "Marriage". Why Would They Do That?

AMERICA 'PUNKED' ON 'GAY MARRIAGE'

Supreme Court had to ignore its own words to reach conclusion

Published: 11 hours ago

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A well-known pastor says America was “punked” on homosexual “marriage,” and he is trying to rally resistance to the Supreme Court with what he believes is a “smoking gun.”

Carl Gallups, author of “Final Warning: Understanding the Trumpet Days of Revelation,” argues the Supreme Court ruled only two years ago the right to define marriage belonged exclusively to the states.

Then suddenly this year the justices found that contention was wrong – that the states did not have that right. Instead, the justices ruled 5-4 that the federal government has the right to redefine marriage – even to the point of throwing out the votes of millions of Americans.

Gallups says this “nefarious” legal reasoning opens the door for legislative action by the Republican-controlled Congress.

He said it was the case of United States v. Windsor in 2013 that overturned the Defense of Marriage Act.

There the issue was that the federal law provided that marriage was between a man and a woman, but in New York state, there was a demand to include same-sex duos in that designation. Thus, the Supreme Court threw out the federal law.

It found “the responsibility of the states for the regulation of domestic relations is an important indicator of the substantial societal impact the state’s classifications have in the daily lives and customs of its people.”

But now, Gallups notes, the Supreme Court is saying in 2015′s Obergefell v. Hodges case that homosexuals have an inherent “right” to marry and the state does not have the right to determine “domestic relations.”

Gallups says he finds it odd these same justices apparently didn’t notice this only two years ago.

Gallups, a former law enforcement officer, told WND, “The U.S. v. Windsor case is evidence to many who are examining the redefinition of marriage in America that there is a potentially nefarious agenda afoot with this entire issue. How can it be that the same five justices, who ruled against DOMA on the basis that the definition of ‘domestic relations’ belonged to the states alone, could just two years later could completely reverse their stance and with the gay marriage ruling declare that the definition of marriage was entirely a federal matter? In a sane world – it cannot be.

“These five justices declared in the DOMA ruling that to take the definition of marriage out of the states’ hands would be a ‘federal intrusion on state power’ and that it would be, ‘a violation of the Constitution because it disrupts the federal balance.’”

He said, “The matter is clear. The SCOTUS gay marriage ruling, in the words of SCOTUS itself, was unconstitutional and therefore – illegal.”

Some legal experts agree the Supreme Court is directly contradicting its reasoning from the relatively recent time frame of only two years ago.

Douglas Wardlow, legal counsel with the Alliance Defending Freedom, told WND the court’s recent imposition of “gay marriage” is “fundamentally lawless, not based on sound reasoning and isn’t good jurisprudence.”

Wardlow, who possesses a J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center and was admitted to the U.S. Supreme Court as well as the bar of the District of Columbia and Minnesota, argues the court was motivated by “the end they wanted to reach and not by sound reasoning.”

He observes, “The reasoning in the Obergefell decision says the court can determine new standards of liberty to overturn precedent and legal restrictions.”

The court’s decision, authored by Justice Anthony Kennedy, boasts, “Indeed, changed understandings of marriage are characteristic of a nation where new dimensions of freedom become apparent to new generations, often through perspectives that begin in pleas or protests and then are considered in the political sphere and the judicial process.”

Wardlow argues Obergefell was grounded in the supposed constitutional right to express one’s identity and be granted a sense of dignity.

“Apparently, the court is the body that can define what forms of identity are protected by Constitution,” he said.

But Wardlow warns the decision goes beyond even just redefining a core institution like marriage. Observing how easily the court was able to contradict its own reasoning in the two years from United States v. Windsor to Obergefell v. Hodges, Wardlow says the court has done nothing less than redefine liberty itself and undermine the rule of law.

“Liberty is now defined as the expression of identity, instead of liberty meaning freedom from forms of government control. Fundamental liberties are no longer defined by history or the traditions of the nation but are free floating concepts, concepts that the court can assess for itself,” he said.

Wardlow says such an approach to jurisprudence could prove dangerous.

“Just think of a fundamental right and the Supreme Court could expand it, redefine it, or shrink it. The reasoning of the decision fundamentally undermines the rule of law because rule of law depends on constancy of the law. Now, it becomes difficult for people to plan their behavior and you move toward a lawless state.”

Paul Kengor, a professor and author of “Takedown: How the Left Has Sabotaged Family and Marriage,” argues Kennedy’s “commitment to a relativistic, individualistic view of everything from marriage to life to existence to meaning itself ultimately won out.”

Kengor says Kennedy’s legal reasoning has put almost everything in the law up for grabs, “and that’s no exaggeration.”

“Really, if you want to understand what Justice Kennedy did in the gay-marriage decision, simply look at his ‘reasoning’ in the 1992 Planned Parenthood v. Casey decision that reaffirmed Roe in all 50 states. Kennedy wrote then: ‘At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.’”

He said, “That explains Kennedy’s willingness to redefine marriage. If Anthony Kennedy interprets liberty in America to mean that every American possesses his or her own right to define one’s own singular concept of existence, meaning, the universe, and life itself, then why can’t Americans come up with their definitions of marriage? Really, redefining marriage is small potatoes after all that.”

Wardlow says the rationale used to impose homosexual marriage “opens the door to a lot of different problems” because now the law seems to state, “whatever you want the world to look like, you can make it look like that.”

Bemoaning how “a concept ultimately destructive of social order” is now at the heart of constitutional law, Wardlow says the only way the decision is likely to be reversed is with better justices.

He argues, “It’s even difficult to make arguments to federal courts when the decision isn’t based on logic or reason or precedent, which are things lawyers traditionally use. It appears the governing standards are lawless themselves.”

Yet Gallups argues the answer is “reining in a runaway federal court through congressional action.”

He blasts Republican presidential candidates who are unwilling to take action to defend traditional marriage.

“What is particularly disturbing to many, is that the vast majority of the so-called ‘conservative’ Republican candidates running for president have declared that they would not seek a constitutional amendment to properly define marriage and nullify the SCOTUS decision. Their paraphrased consensus declaration is, ‘The law is the law. SCOTUS has settled the issue.’

“Hogwash! The SCOTUS also ‘settled’ the issue in Dred Scott, and it also ‘settled’ the issue in Roe v. Wade. Now, years later, we know the horrific consequences of both of these ‘settled law’ cases. To make matters worse, it seems that Congress is not going to intervene in this legal travesty as well. One has to wonder if Congress even knows about the legally inconsistent SCOTUS rulings that took place only two years apart. Where is the mainstream media on this travesty of constitutional law?”

See Gallups’ report:

Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2015/07/america-punked-on-gay-marriage/#SPBXERvXBWm0TAMJ.99Sup