I’m actually pretty busy at the moment, even though school is over for the summer, so I’m having trouble keeping up with the tsunami of craziness washing over the land. But I’ll try to continue this chronicle of the most egregious and significant events.
• Who would have thought that sense and resolve against statue-toppling repudiation would come from the president of France, Emmanuel Macron. The Daily Wire reports:
“We will be inflexible when it comes to tackling racism, anti-Semitism and discrimination, and new strong decisions will be made to reinforce the egality of chances,” Macron said, according to a translation provided by TIME. “But this noble fight is perverted when it turns into communitarianism, into a false rewriting of history.”“This is unacceptable when it is picked up by separatists. I tell you very clearly tonight my dear fellow citizens, the Republic will not erase any trace or name from its history,” Macron continued. “It will not forget any of its deeds or take down any statue. What we need to do is to look all together with lucidity on all of our history and all our memory. . .
I’m not sure this translation from the French is a good as might be, but who in our country, aside from President Trump, is offering any serious public argument against the repudiators in our midst?
• Speaking of Trump, I wonder sometimes if he has a secret crystal ball allowing him to see the future of certain precincts of leftist madness. Roll the tape back to August 15, 2017, when he was pilloried for the remarks that there were “fine people” on both sides of the protests in Charlottesville that left one person dead, but which of course were misreported and taken willfully out of context (read the entire exchange here). Reminder: Trump said white nationalists “should be condemned totally” and that the driver of the car who killed someone was “horrible.”
But along the way, Trump raised a good question:
Many of those people were there to protest the taking down of the statue of Robert E. Lee. So this week, it’s Robert E. Lee, I noticed that Stonewall Jackson’s coming down. I wonder, is it George Washington next week? And is it Thomas Jefferson the week after. You know, you really do have to ask yourself, where does it stop?
A reporter tried to interject with typical ignorance, and Trump handed his head to him:
REPORTER: George Washington and Robert E. Lee are not the same.TRUMP: Oh no, George Washington was a slave owner. Was George Washington a slave owner? So will George Washington now lose his status? Are we going to take down – excuse me. Are we going to take down, are we going to take down statues to George Washington? How about Thomas Jefferson? What do you think of Thomas Jefferson? You like him? Okay, good. Are we going to take down his statue? He was a major slave owner. Are we going to take down his statue?
“Some wrapped the statue’s head in an American flag and lit the flag on fire.”
Seems like another layup for Trump.
• Apparently a real news story:
Jan Björinge, a former mayor in Sweden, is proposing the country tear down a statue of King Charles XII and replace it with a likeness of 17-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg. “Remove the autocrat Karl XII and replace him with the climate activist Greta Thunberg,” Björinge wrote in an opinion piece published by Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet.Björinge wrote that the statue represents “evil deeds and outdated values” and that a statue of Thunberg would be more in line with the country’s current ideals.
• My mentor M. Stanton Evans liked to say that “liberals don’t care what you do, so long as it’s mandatory.” Actually, they care a lot about what you do, and want to mandate that you do the right things. And so the leftists in the California state legislature are considering a law to require that all students take ethnic studies courses at the California State University campuses:
Students at California State University, the nation’s largest four-year public university system, will need to take courses in ethnic studies under legislation advanced Thursday, a move by lawmakers to impose new graduation requirements that the colleges want to set themselves.For supporters, debate over the bill took on more urgency amid the uproar over racism after the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, saying the new rules would ensure students learn the complete picture of American history and the experiences of marginalized communities.
Once again, Republicans apparently mustered feeble arguments against this Maoist coercion, at least if this single sentence in the news story is an accurate indication:
Sen. Andreas Borgeas, R-Fresno, said schools in the middle of tough economic times would have trouble setting new courses and hiring professors to teach them.
If this is the best Republicans can do in opposition, they deserve to lose.
• Some questions. Nancy Pelosi ostentatiously removed the portraits in the Capitol of southern Democrats. Fine. What about Fulbright Fellowships, named for the legendary senator from Arkansas? Who signed the segregationist “Southern Manifesto.” Who joined the filibuster against the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Shouldn’t those fellowships be canceled or renamed? Actually, shouldn’t woke graduate students and faculty decline henceforth to apply for Fulbrights, and expunge their Fulbright Fellowships from their CVs? Justice demands no less.
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