Statue Follies

Cancel George Washington?

Featured image When liberals began their war on public monuments a few years ago, we were told that only statues of Confederate generals would be dismantled. Of course that turned out not to be true. While slavery is the purported justification for these erasures of history, even monuments to Abraham Lincoln have not been immune. Now, New York City–having, apparently, no larger issues to address–is considering tearing down statutes of George Washington, »

Gandhi, We Hardly Knew Ye

Featured image Statue toppling continues apace. This is from a Davis, California newspaper: The statue in Davis’ Central Park of Mohandas K. Gandhi, the Indian lawyer and independence leader, was found Wednesday morning toppled and lying on the grass next to its plinth. The 6-foot-tall, 950-pound bronze likeness appeared to have been sawed off at the ankles and half its face was severed and missing. The Gandhi statue was somewhat controversial when »

More Evidence That Liberals Hate America

Featured image Actually, I am not sure that more evidence is needed, now that hating America has evolved from an allegedly scurrilous accusation to the essence of the liberal program. But, for what it is worth, Thanksgiving brought liberals out of the woodwork in Minneapolis as elsewhere across the country. The Star Tribune reports on two instances of vandalism last night: Vandals toppled a statue of George Washington in the Washburn Fair »

Coming Soon to Our Nation’s Capital: A Comprehensive Purge

Featured image Mayor Muriel Bowser of the District of Columbia created a D. C. Facilities and Commemorative Expressions (DCFACES) Working Group to review the hundreds of public buildings and spaces in the District, and make recommendations as to whether they should be renamed. The Working Group has now submitted its report; it is embedded below. The report’s first paragraph makes clear where the Working Group is coming from: When history revisits the »

Holloway’s way

Featured image Jonathan Holloway is the new president of Rutgers University. Insofar as one can tell from the quotes in Amanda Hoover’s NJ.com profile of Holloway — “Rutgers is named for a slave owner, but school’s first Black president says the name will stay” — his views resemble those of a conventional academic bureaucrat except in one respect. Holloway asserts that the university’s name isn’t up for changing even though it honors »

Trump at Mount Rushmore revisited

Featured image As I listened to President Trump’s July 3 speech at Mount Rushmore (White House text here, video below), I couldn’t believe how good it was. One measure of the speech is the campaign of falsehood undertaken by the press condemning it in unison. As I wrote here yesterday morning, I had only my own reaction to go on. Now I can commend the following columns to the attention of interested »

Dan Mahoney: Rejecting the culture of hate

Featured image RealClearPolitics has made available its Independence Day Series for publication with attribution. Below is Dan Mahoney’s column “What Does Our Nation Mean to Us? Rejecting the Culture of Hate,” followed by Steve Hayward’s podcast with Professor Mahoney on the themes of this column. Daniel J. Mahoney holds the Augustine Chair in Distinguished Scholarship at Assumption University. He has written numerous books, essays, and reviews on statesmanship, religion and politics, totalitarianism, »

Rename Yale Now

Featured image Some mischievous benefactor of humanity has purchased a full-page ad in today’s New York Times to publish Roger Kimball’s June 22 American Greatness column “Canceling Yale.” The ad with Roger’s column appears in today’s Times under the headline Rename Yale Now. I have posted a screenshot of the text below. I’m sorry it’s not more readable. I just want you to get some idea of the nature of the thing. »

What’s going on

Featured image Paul Mirengoff engaged a portion of Victor Davis Hanson’s brief comments on the tear down all the things phase of our current revolutionary moment. Paul linked to, and commented on, the Daily Caller story and accompanying (unembeddable) video of the segment with VDH on Tucker Carlson Tonight this past Monday. FOX News reports on the segment here. Video of the full segment is also accessible here via FOX News with »

A word from Amb. Landau

Featured image United States Ambassador to Mexico Christopher Landau wrote last night to add to our chronicle of the tear down all the things phase of the leftist mob violence: I’m a loyal reader of your site and, needless to say, have been following you with even greater intensity lately given the recent rash of insanity in our beloved country. In reference to John Hinderaker’s post “Grant, Too” I just wanted to »

Grant, Too [Updated]

Featured image So much for the idea that “Confederate monuments” are under attack. Last night in San Francisco, left-wingers pulled down a statue of Ulysses Grant, the man who did more than anyone except Lincoln to preserve the Union and abolish slavery. Grant also, as President, did all he could to enforce Reconstruction and protect blacks in the South. He sent the military after the Ku Klux Klan in South Carolina, worked »

They’ve Come For Washington

Featured image This was entirely predictable, and now it’s happened. Anyone who thought liberals would be satisfied with demolishing the statues of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson doesn’t know liberals. Last night in Portland, leftists destroyed a statue of George Washington: Portland wakes up to see what antifa did overnight. A century old statue of George Washington was toppled & set on fire with an American flag. “White fragility,” “Damn white »

The Latest Battle In the Statue Wars: Stephen Foster

Featured image A famous statue of Stephen Foster, often referred to as the father of American music, has stood in Pittsburgh for more than 100 years. (Foster was a native of Pennsylvania.) It was sculpted by Italian emigre Giuseppe Moretti: Today Moretti’s statue of Foster was carted away by Pittsburgh authorities: A 118-year-old statue of the “Oh! Susanna” songwriter was removed from a Pittsburgh park Thursday after criticism that the work is »

Statue Mania Comes to Minnesota

Featured image One might think that Minnesota would be one of the last places to pull down statues. The state joined the union just in time for the Civil War, in which its young men fought heroically in the anti-slavery cause. But when Leftists get going, they never know when to stop. The Star Tribune reports on an effort to cart away a statue of Christopher Columbus and replace him with…Prince Nelson: »