Changing the Past

The odd news of the past week included a decision by Christ Church in Alexandria, Virginia (a city I often represented in singing competitions, so I know it fairly well).  That decision included the removal of a plaque honoring the fact that George Washington -- remember him, you know, the Father of our Country? -- had been a parishioner in that church in the 18th Century.

Some have tried to defend that action, and the statement by that church that they were trying to separate politics from their worship.  I don't buy it.  The statement included words about people feeling uncomfortable, or whatever, coming to that church because there was a plaque honoring someone who had owned slaves.

Do you think perhaps that the ones with the problem are the ones who, after 250 years or so, only now have decided that they feel "uncomfortable" in a church?  I mean, if I were a pastor, I would want to attract as many people as possible to hear the Word in my church.  But maybe I would be a bit hesitant about turning off 95% of the potential worshipers who, like me, would have immediately dropped my attendance there and found another church, if my pastor had decided to make us forget that the Father of our Country had actually prayed there regularly -- presumably for guidance in the nurturing and governance of the nascent republic.

Of course, the removal of such memorials to our Founding Fathers who were farmers and therefore, as was the custom of the day around the world, owned slaves, is simply a quick extrapolation of the removal of statues to Confederate generals who served in the War Between the States and whom it is apparently no longer PC to memorialize.  "Gen. P. G. T. Beauregard was born here" is apparently no longer an acceptable thing to memorialize, and apparently "George Washington prayed here" is not a good thing either.

So where did this come from after all this time?  The history itself has not changed in 150 years, there have not been slaves in the USA for 150 years, and now all of a sudden we need to take down plaques?  And let me note, lumping George Washington in with Confederate generals makes no sense to begin with, so let me get that in there.

Why, all of a sudden, did the left take on this history-alteration and memorial-destruction tack as a way to advance ... whatever it is they are advancing?

Well, it was suggested to me by my brother recently that there is a reason, and with the left, there is always a method to what even is perceived as madness.

History, you see, is not on the side of the left.  Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Madison, Adams, Hamilton and the like were flawed men, of course, but they dreamed of a free and independent land governed by the representatives of the people, not an unelected family ruling by genetics rather than competence.  And then they built it.

The Founding Fathers built an incredible nation and wrote an incredible document to serve as its governing principles.  For the left to destroy the USA, there are social and institutional components that have to be destroyed first.  There can be no differences, for example; no races, no genders, no ... well, humans are simply one generic animal.  We can choose our gender, our race and presumably our species, if we "identify" that way.

And there can be no history.  History is too "defined" for the left; things that happened, happened.  That's not squishy enough to be interpreted flexibly as the left requires.  So history has to be destroyed as well, and there is no better way to do that than to see it not through the eyes of its participants but through a morality that did not even apply then.
 
George Washington owned slaves, which was a perfectly normal practice at the time.  Admittedly, different owners treated their slaves better than others, and Washington was a bit of a reluctant owner as it was (go to Mt. Vernon some time and see, at least until the left tears that down).  But the point is that his owning of slaves was rather irrelevant to his character, and completely irrelevant to his role in the founding of our nation.

Yet the left wants to use that to destroy the image of George Washington by trying to apply 21st Century views and values to an 18th-Century person and devalue the entire rest of his life based on it.

I keep using the term "the left", meaning the organized leftist movement on earth, whether instigated in Russia, China or Cuba, funded by them and the George Soros types of the world.  Why do I say that?

Well, as much as I hate to quote fiction to defend fact, there is this.  Take a look at the film adaptation of the story of Artur London, the Czechoslovak communist who was part of the 1950s purges in Czechoslovakia of certain communist leaders by other communist leaders.  The film was done in 1970, and was historically researched enough that one can readily infer that the intent, if not the dramatized words, was real.

London's character was being interrogated by a communist official during the trials, and during the interrogation the official said to London that "The past must be judged in light of the truths established today." 

Whoa, Hoss.  Doesn't that sound exactly like the motivation claimed by the leftists of 2017 in trying to tear down plaques of the Father of our Country based on what, his owning slaves?  It is vital to the left that the Founding Fathers be badly characterized so that the founding principles of our nation can be torn down with them.  What better way to make an America that reveres our founders turn on them than to try to change the light in which we judge their lives?

It is a frightening thing to come to the realization that there are those within our nation willing -- even motivated -- to destroy it.  But destroy it they will, plaque by plaque, until in their view we have become completely composed of a history-free consolidation of milquetoast that the left can waltz in and run, because at that point we'd be too feeble to resist.

Sounds like Orwell, doesn't it?

Copyright 2017 by Robert Sutton
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