Editor’s Note:
Conservative Cowards Are To Blame For Falling Statues
Every conservative who compromised on tearing down confederate statues is complicit in the destruction of art across the country.
There is no need to name names. The so-called conservatives who have been coddling mindless calls to destroy public art know who they are. So do the rest of us. These are the reasonable conservatives, the good ones, so ever careful not to be called racist. They had a compromise in mind because they always do. Throw the Confederate statues under the bus and we can save the rest. Well.
Friday night, a statue of Ulysses S. Grant was toppled. Also the statue of a Catholic saint. Do you know who is to blame? It is not the hordes of progressives with ropes and chains; it is every conservative who thought those Jacobin lunatics could be appeased by just tearing down certain statues. It is a metaphor for the fecklessness of an American right too cowed to stand up for itself.
I get it. You see, these conservatives don’t want to be called names. I mean, nobody enjoys that. But here’s the thing: after you write your little op-ed about how of course the evil Confederate statues have to come down, they still think you’re a racist. They just think you are a spineless one.
George Orwell wrote a book once called “1984.” Let me know if this sounds familiar: “Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day-by-day and minute-by-minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.”
Almost everyone who reads “1984” makes the same fundamental mistake. They think that they are Winston, the protagonist who senses the evil around him. It never occurs to most people that they are far more likely to be almost everyone else in the book. And the shallow conservatives, who thought by damning Robert E. Lee they could save Thomas Jefferson, are doing little more than suggesting that maybe two plus two equals four and a half, or something.
As the little fascist leftists like to say, “We see you.” We see the retweets from writers at Vox; we see the protestations that you are “one of the good ones.” And what are the wages of these sad genuflections? What did you get out of the deal? Are they going to come support you now that the Founding Fathers are up against the wall? Nope. They will throw you right up against the wall with them as you insist how reasonable you are.
To these fair-weather friends, I have a message: This is your fault. And you were well warned. For years, those of us with the courage to open our eyes knew exactly where this was going. It was never about the Confederacy, or slavery, or racism. It was always about destroying the very concept of America and replacing it with a Marxist utopia. That’s who you decided to compromise with.
What’s done is done, but it is not too late. Now that you have seen the miles the left takes when offered an inch, you are welcome to get back in the fight for freedom. They burned you, made you look like fools. Be angry. Otherwise your silence is complicity with mobs that would destroy not just statues but the very foundations of our liberty.
In some sense, the story of the Confederate statues, and Jefferson, Lincoln, Churchill, and Gandhi, are stories of forgiveness. We protect their memories because we understand that history’s judgment will eventually condemn us for the luxuries we enjoy off the backs of foreign workers in slave-like conditions. We too hope to be understood, forgiven.
In that spirit, I forgive all of those who failed to answer the call as the statues started falling. But we need you back. As is so often the case, the great compromise failed. There really are only two sides: one that seeks to burn everything down, and one that seeks to save the greatest nation the world has ever known. Pick one. Now.
David Marcus’ work has appeared in the New York Times, the New York Post, the New York Daily News, National Review Online, The Weekly Standard, and City Journal. He has been The Federalist’s New York correspondent since 2013. David is the former Artistic Director of Blue Box World, a Brooklyn based theater project, and a former president of the Bat acting company at the Flea Theater. He also was a participant in the 2018 National Security Seminar at the Army War College.