Special to L. Neil Smith’s The Libertarian Enterprise

Once again, we have woke leftists tearing down statues and any monument to the long dead Confederacy. Of course, this isn’t a new thing, it’s actually been going on for decades, though it actually intensified after the church shooting in South Carolina in 2015. Left-wing activists somehow thought that tearing down historical monuments was going to prevent mass shootings by bigoted gunmen. Then there was the fiasco in Charlottesville three years ago, which happened over the removal of a Robert E. Lee statue. These efforts were once again intensified after the wrongful death of George Floyd. What do the statues of dead Confederates have to with police brutality? Your guess is good as mine.

I had written about this subject two years earlier in the article Erasing History and it seems as if this madness has only gotten worse. Though what I find really unfortunate about all of this is that there are both conservatives and libertarians who are having a hard time seeing the big picture. In that same article that I wrote, I mentioned my disappointment about Steven Crowder, a conservative commentator that I normally agree with, missing Trump’s point about how this insanity will never stop with the Confederates. Steven Crowder said he couldn’t understand why we should honor dead traitors to the United States. Apparently, Crowder’s knowledge of the Civil War is very limited to government school textbooks, otherwise he would know that the South likely had the same right to succeed from the Union as the American colonies did from Great Britain. He should also know that many of these “dead traitors” are honored in the Arlington National Cemetery. Though I think Crowder’s biggest folly is that he missed Trump’s point completely. A point that has consistently been reinforced every time a leftist mob throws a tantrum.

Even during the early days of the post-Charlottesville era, the woke mobs were already targeting monuments of Thomas Jefferson, George Washington and Christopher Columbus. Now they are targeting statues of Abraham Lincoln and Francis Scott Key. They even manage to decapitate a statue of Hans Christian Heg, a staunch abolitionist. This shows me their real beef isn’t with certain individuals immortalized in these monuments, but with American history in general.

People mocked Trump for pointing out that it would never stop with the mementos from the Confederacy, but he was proven right. This form of insanity has moved way beyond public monuments and has continued in the most absurd forms. Now, we have tv shows that once featured jokes or comedy sketches that involved blackface being erased from several streaming services that they are currently being shown on. Unfortunately, it hasn’t stopped with modern tv shows. HBO Max decided to take it upon themselves to ban Gone with the Wind from their streaming service. Apparently, HBO Max received some backlash from this asinine move because they decided to keep Gone with the Wind on their service, though they will have a historian appear at the start of the movie to explain the historical context of the movie’s political incorrectness. Yeah, HBO Max. I am pretty sure that most normal people couldn’t have figured out that people during the Civil War era didn’t care about political correctness.

If you thought that was ridiculous, then take a look at how the corporate stooges of Aunt Jemima pancake mix are doing away with their decades old image due to political correctness. Never mind that the woman who founded that company was a black civil rights activist with an entrepreneurial spirit. It doesn’t even matter that her surviving relatives think this move is patently absurd. How many of you want to lay bets that Uncle Ben’s rice is next?

The people that I am the most disappointed with are the libertarians who support the toppling of historical monuments. I actually saw a post on Facebook by the Libertarian Republic that actually rooted for the ongoing vandalism committed by the woke mobs from around the country. I know that there are many libertarians who say that we shouldn’t be wasting tax dollars on statues of leaders living or dead, since it amounts to nothing but state worship. I actually share this same stance and even mentioned it in my 2009 review of the book, Recarving Rushmore. However, I would never support the hooliganism committed by these mobs. For that matter I wouldn’t even support their removal by peaceful means. These monuments have been around for decades, if not centuries, which makes them part of our history. History exists to teach us about our past, even the parts that weren’t shinning moments for this country. Sadly, there are many libertarians who miss the big picture. This is similar to what Mao Zedong ordered his followers to the carry out in the so-called Cultural Revolution where his regime destroyed historical relics and artifacts. As the old saying goes, “those who control knowledge of the past can also control the future.”

They have been doing this for decades with our history books. The reason why you have so many younglings who hate this country is because of the drivel spoon-fed to them in government schools about how America was based on nothing more than bigotry, genocide and slavery. I am not denying that we don’t have barbarity in our past (name one nation that doesn’t). To say that it is what our nation is entirely based on is laughably ridiculous. If you were to listen to Marxist hacks disguised as historians, such as Howard Zinn, you would think that America invented slavery and that every Indian on this continent was a peace-loving hippie that was hunted by the white man. One of the reasons why Christopher Columbus gets such a bad reputation is because of lying hacks like Zinn. Let us not forget the 1619 Project, an organization that has told many falsehoods about our history, one of which was that the American Revolution was fought to preserve slavery. This actually caused professional historians to scratch their heads in confusion at how anyone could make such an absurd claim. It was during the American Revolution that we actually made our first attempt to end what many called the “peculiar institution.” It’s also worth pointing out that the principles that were established during the revolution would be used to undermine and eventually eliminate this oppressive institution.

Here is another food for thought. If you take a look at China’s “Cultural Revolution” they didn’t just destroy remnants of their past, but they replaced them with statues of Mao, their supreme leader. I have a strong feeling that if any of these insane leftists gain power, they will do the same. They will either create monuments to leftist idols such as, Che Guevara, Fidel Castro, Chairman Mao or quite possibly to their own leaders. I would say that monuments to the old Confederates are starting to look much better, don’t you think?