We don't need a society of vandals

When demonstrations triggered by the death of George Floyd spread to Philadelphia, vandals defaced a statue outside City Hall of an old white man. They spray-painted the words “colonizer” and “murderer” on it. But the statue was of Matthias Baldwin, a 19th-century businessman and abolitionist.

Baldwin was a vocal opponent of slavery decades before the Civil War. He founded a school for poor black children and paid the teachers’ salaries for years. He also advocated voting rights for black people well before the enactment of the 15th Amendment. None of this spared his likeness from today’s Jacobins.

Nor was the Baldwin episode an isolated case. Boston protesters painted graffiti all over the Robert Gould Shaw and the 54th Regiment Memorial, including the phrases “Black Lives Matter,” “No Justice, No Peace,” and “Police are Pigs.” Yet that memorial honored the men who comprised the first blacks to fight in uniform for the Union Army during the Civil War. Their heroism was captured in the 1989 film “Glory,” for which Denzel Washington won an Oscar. In Philadelphia, too, vandals defaced the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier of the American Revolution, with the graffiti “Committed Genocide.” Overseas, Winston Churchill’s statue in Parliament Square was defaced and then covered for its protection by a large metal box. The British government cannot be confident that the nation can celebrate the leader who, more than any other, stood up to fascism.

The debate over symbols of the past is legitimate, but what we have are indiscriminate attacks on all elements of our shared history. Today’s vandals are not really attacking evil; they’re attacking the past. It’s one thing to argue against honoring the Confederacy either because it fought against the United States or because it fought to preserve slavery or both. It’s quite another to destroy things simply because they date back to a time you cannot remember and cannot be bothered to find out about. The first is a reasonable argument; the second is nothing but malignant violence.

Debates over removing monuments should happen in public, overseen by elected officials. When the debate is given over to the mob, you get the sort of general vandalism that we see now. Taking down statues of Confederates is different from targeting those of America’s founders, such as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, who owned slaves but are celebrated for other achievements in the nation’s founding and for the advancement of liberty.

Wanton attacks on symbols of the past are partially rooted in ignorance. Given how much schools and colleges focus on racism in America’s history, it’s no surprise that the mob assumes any old statue it sees must be of somebody irredeemable. The trend also fits the concept seen in other revolutions from the French Revolution to the Khmer Rouge of trying to erase the past and starting over from Year Zero. Today’s street vandals call the police “pigs,” but who are those displaying porcine ignorance, and who behave most like the pigs of “Animal Farm,” making no distinction between innocence and guilt?

In a civilized debate, people can discuss the nuances of who we choose to honor and who, because fellow citizens want to honor them, we should accept in the interests of reconciliation and national unity. Such a debate would recognize that history is messy and that some people who achieved great things were also deeply flawed. It would also provide an opportunity for all sides to feel heard and make any decisions more sustainable. Lawlessness short-circuits this process, which is part of the extremists’ purpose.

REPRINTED FROM THE COLORADO SPRINGS GAZETTE

You Learn More By What the News Does Not Say

Every bit of this article speaks the truth and is documented facts. I am surprised The Star Democrat Newspaper published this. Read it for your self and see for your self, it is the truth. Thank You Rick Kollinger For this article.

2020 is certainly turning out to be an extremely odd year. Just when you think the Democrats have run out of impeachment ploys, and the economy is booming, and black unemployment is at record lows, a pandemic hits the country. Coronavirus, or the “Chinese Flu” as President Trump likes to call it. It was either developed in a lab in Wuhan or it comes from eating infected bats or monkeys.

This sent the country into a tailspin with estimates of one million deaths and a giant recession. People were quarantined to their homes and if you went out, you had to wear a mask and practice “social distancing.” Stores were shut down except for essential services like liquor stores, gun shops and Walmart. People who did venture outside were accused of being murderers.

Finally, a story came along that surpassed the Corona Frenzy. George Floyd, a long-time criminal, who had done five years in prison for armed robbery, was arrested by police in Minneapolis for trying to pass a counterfeit 20-dollar bill. While he was in custody a tape showed a cop with his knee on George’s neck for eight minutes. It was a shocking video. The cop was fired and charged with second-degree murder. Which brings up the question: how does an armed robber get a job as a security guard?

Since then the other three cops involved have also been charged with murder. The problem is — as we’ve seen in the past — snippets of video don’t really show the whole story. The video of the Rodney King beating was shocking, but not so much so when the opening clips were shown and it was evident that nothing was going to stop King.

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison has admitted that the charges may change once the cops get “high-priced lawyers” involved.

You’ll remember that Freddie Gray’s family in Baltimore received a huge sum of money before any of the cops held responsible for his death ever went on trial. The cops were found innocent in every single case.

Right away the Floyd case was characterized as a “racist assault” by a white cop on a black man. I haven’t seen or heard anything to indicate that the cop had racist intentions, and statistically, black men are far more often killed by other blacks or black cops. But, no matter. That doesn’t make for as good a story.

So, from there we went to New York where protests broke out, and looters broke into expensive stores, destroying them. The cops, under orders from Mayor Bill de Blasio, were told to lay off, and they did. Interestingly, I know a lot of high-end stores were burglarized, but I never heard of a Dollar Tree being targeted. Three hundred cops were injured during the melee.

The protests soon spread to other cities with the White House under direct attack in Washington, D.C. This was all done in the name of “past inequities.” Black Lives Matter is one of the groups behind these shenanigans and although they claim to be peaceful, every time they show up, cops die. Maybe it’s just a strange coincidence.

They led a peaceful protest here in Easton in which one woman chanted, “Hands up, don’t shoot.” This is the slogan made famous in Ferguson, Missouri, when a 300-pound thug tried to attack a policeman. He never said it. No one ever heard him say it. It was just made up. Never mind.

Meanwhile, in Minnesota, Los Angeles, and New York, the politicians are considering “de-funding” the police departments and putting the money into social services. So, the next time you need a cop in the middle of the night, call Social Services, and set up an appointment.

The nice thing about today’s media is that those sorts of things never have to be “walked back.”

Open Our Country

To those calling it selfish and reckless to reopen our country, to the ones who compare the reopening of our country and the people who are dying from CoVid 19 to abortion and blaming preachers, pastors, and government officials (mainly Trump) for not crying out against reopening this country is so unbelievable. You want a shutdown but you expect your garbage to be picked up, expect stores to be open with food supplies, expect farmers, people who process our foods, to generate our food, expect Amazon to deliver your packages while you sit at home, and be safe. You expect the delivery driver to leave it on your doorstep. You want your Cable, and telephone to work, electricity to stay on,  mail to be delivered in any kind of weather, the doctors and nurses to be there when they are needed, the police to keep doing their job of keeping you safe. The idea is some people want to be safe while others put their life and health on the line to protect them. It is a sad situation. There is nothing patriotic about making trip after trip to Walmart and other places to get whatever you need while screaming to keep the country locked down. With common sense, we can go back to a more normal life. We can catch this virus or any virus at any time. We take a risk every day. If you choose to stay home then do it. That is your choice. Most Americans do not want to see our country crumble. If our country goes down the tube because we are locked down then it will only open the door to many other illnesses and problems which will take far more lives than the CoVid 19 virus. I'm just wondering if all this crying against opening the country back up is mostly politically motivated with just a little bit of hate added in.  I do not put my trust in Trump, the Democrat or Republican parties, Nancy Pelosi, or any other political leader. It is in God I put my trust. Politics should have nothing to do with this pandemic but as you read between the lines with some of the letters to the editor in different newspapers you will soon see it does. If you think the shelves in the supermarkets are bare now you had better be prepared because if this country does not open back up there will be no supermarkets.