On 18 June
1940, Winston Churchill spoke these words in his “Their Finest Hour” speech to
the House of Commons: “If we open a quarrel between past and
present, we shall find that we have lost the future.”
Because I could
not recall any recent statue removal or destruction stories, I found myself
asking why that emotional wave had ended so abruptly. Perhaps it is true that
the general public has a short lived attention span. Perhaps the listeners and
viewers were no longer consumed by the shocking and mind grabbing headlines and
they had become disinterested and the income the media harvested suddenly
evaporated as well. Perhaps the new stories about powerful men taking liberties
with women who were unable to protect themselves proved more exciting to the
folks on the street and the money began to flow to the media outlets in even
larger amounts. Perhaps the demonstrators had met or exceeded their
demonstration goals. For me, the last observation seems to be the most
compelling. Do not forget the acts or the actors and do not simply move either
of them into the category of old news. It is not a question of if they will
return but when and how. They may take a different form but the messages and
the tests will remain consistent.
Consider the
possibility that the assaults on all of the monuments were a staged and highly
choreographed, quarrel with the past for effect. The real demonstration targets
were not the statues of specifically chosen Civil War heroes and/or our
nation’s founders. The real targets were the hearts and minds of the people of
color who are living in the present and want the past to have never happened.
Carefully note that the highly publicized actions by these activists did not
change the past or improve the present but they did nudge all of us toward a
different kind of future. I believe the activists decided to remove the statues
not because they were offensive to them but because they wanted to test the
limits of a rewriting of history itself. The destroyed and removed statues were
simply visual reminders and symbols of our historical truths, events, mistakes
made and lessons learned.
Be wary of the
continually developing revisionist history. That history is being written to
replace our past and the lessons we have learned with a created history that
will be presented as something far, far better. The removal or destruction of
these statues told us a great deal about the activist’s teachers and the
lessons they taught and teach in today’s college classrooms. Both events
showcased which lessons the activists clearly learned and applied. I believe
these teachers and students are now much more likely to seek ways to remove and
replace all written and widely accepted truths in our founding documents beginning
with the Bill of Rights. I also believe they will also continue to test, in
public arenas, their own guiding principles and values as well.
Following
the lead of these activists puts you and our nation at risk but you can protect
yourselves by making personal decisions and efforts to learn freedom’s lessons
by reading and understanding your true history and foundation documents. Focus
on the future you certainly want but could well lose.
