GOTCHA

A Facebook troll sent me these two memes. One depicts a patriot mob pulling down the statue of King George III on July 9, 1776. The other claims that Conservatives and Republican's decry the racist history of the Democrat party while at the same time wanting to protect Confederate monuments. I address these clever "gotcha" memes because they are very misleading and I know that there are many low information voters out there. I first heard this lie being spread by comrade Don Lemon and a guest who I believe was comrade Chris Cuomo of CNN during the height of the riots when they were tearing down statues. Not just Confederate statues mind you but statues of abolitionists like Frederick Douglas, and Grant and Lincoln. Lemon and Cuomo were trying to say that if it was okay in 1776 then it has to be okay in 2020. Well stop right there.

First of all a mob tore down that statue of King George and like mobs throughout history, they may or may not have been aware of why they were tearing it down in the first place. Mobs do not consist of the smartest of people. Second, the founders for the most part hated mob rule. They were afraid of it as much, or maybe even more than the rule of a monarch or a dictator. This is why they took so much time creating a Republican form of government with so many checks and balances. They wanted a safe middle ground between the tyranny of the oligarch and the tyranny of the mob. This is why Benjamin Franklin replied to the lady who asked him what kind of government that we had, after the constitutional convention, "a Republic if you can keep it".Mobs and mob action sometimes kick off a revolution until the more level headed leaders can direct it. 

The more level headed leaders of the American Revolution were rebelling to establish three founding principles. 

1. That all men were created equal. The king was a human and all men are human. Therefore all humans regardless of their station in life are equal under the law. 

2. All men have inalienable rights granted by God and not by government. Only God can remove these rights.

3. Government is created in order to protect those rights. When a government tries to usurp inalienable rights from man in order to establish tyranny then man has not only the duty but a God given right to alter or abolish that government. 

Edmund Burke, a famous member of the British Parliament during the American Revolution supported us in our grievances against the king. On the other hand in 1790 he wrote a book called Reflections On The Revolution in France which was critical of the French revolution which broke out in 1789. He could support our revolution because it was based on God and the rule of law. Although the French revolution was inspired by our own theirs was based on atheism and mob rule like the modern revolution going on in America today. That is the major difference between the Communist cultural revolution happening now and the American revolution. So comrade Lemon and this meme is comparing apples and oranges.

Are far as Conservatives wanting to save Democrat Confederate statues, I can throw it back on them. They want to tear down statues in order to erase their Confederate heritage because it is an embarrassment and doesn't fit the false narrative they have been portraying all of these years. That they are the progressives and Republicans are the racists. Personally I don't interpret history as all black and white. I don't care if well meaning people want to remove a statue or symbol as long as the process observes the true wishes of the people through the democratic process and the rule of law. The mob should not usurp or bypass that process. I am also in favor of removing statues or symbols to more appropriate locations such as a cemetery or museum rather than destroying them. 

Take Robert E. Lee for example. I think all American's owe Lee a debt of gratitude for what he did after the Civil War. I have great respect for Lee as a general but he was not the best general to come out of the Civil War. Grant was called a butcher but it was Lee who sacrificed his men needlessly because he was pursuing the wrong strategy. By the end of the Civil War Lee was almost godlike in the South and was even revered in the North by some. Lincoln's greatest fear was that the three most admired Confederate generals who surrendered their remaining armies in April and May of 1865 would decide not to surrender but to break up into guerilla bands and continue the Civil War. If that had happened we might still be fighting that war. Those three generals were Lee, Joseph Johnston and Nathan Bedford Forrest. 

Lee capitalized on his fame by using it for the good of the country as a whole. He spent the last five years of his life spreading the message in the South that his cause was fairly lost on the battlefield and it was now time to reunite the country. He preached good citizenship. The Northern half of this message was Lincoln, Grant and Sherman. Lincoln did not want our civil war to end like all other civil wars in a sea of blood and retribution. He told his generals to let them up easy. Grant and Sherman were the Northern purveyors of this message during their remaining years on earth. In my view Lincoln could have pulled off a successful reunification of the country, which also included the Black man. It was not to be. Lincoln was killed by a racist Democrat, John Wilkes Booth. His racist Democrat successor, Andrew Johnson, tried to reunite the nation without the Black man in the picture. A policy that this country is still paying a heavy price for today.

American history, good or bad belongs to all of us. It is a constant reminder of where we got it wrong and where we got it right. For some reason some of us want to forget our history so we can continue doing the bad things all over again. The Bible talks about the saints in heaven after the judgement. "He will swallow up death in victory; and the Lord GOD will wipe away tears from off all faces; and the rebuke of his people shall he take away from off all the earth: for the LORD hath spoken it." Isaiah 25:8  "And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away. Revelation 21:4. God is not saying that he will wipe away our memory because being free moral agents we will still be able to make choices in heaven. If he removes our memory we are no longer free moral agents. Choosing to return to our former sinful nature would be the equivalent of wanting your cancer or heart trouble to return. He will wipe away our tears because seeing our loves ones cast into the Lake of Fire and condemned to eternal death will be a painful experience and only he has the power to console. So if remembering our sinful past in heaven is important why wouldn't it also be important here on earth?