The beautiful Confederate Memorial was erected in 1914 by the Jewish sculptor Moses Jacob Ezekiel, who considered it the “crowning achievement” of his career, and it has stood as a depictive memorial to American history and a reverential tribute to the more than 250,000 Confederate soldiers killed during the War of the States.
Ezekiel also sculpted the 1893 World’s Columbian Exhibition Christopher Columbus statue, which stands to this day in Arrigo Park, Chicago, and the famous Religious Liberty statue, which now stands at the National Museum of American Jewish History. Ezekiel was the Michelangelo of his day, taking up a longtime studio in Rome and producing dozens of beautiful and now irreplaceable works of art.
The Confederate Memorial was erected when many veterans were still alive, and it served as an important healing tribute in post-war reconciliation. One must remember both sides of any conflict; any tampering with this tombstone, whose dead can no longer speak for themselves, is both sacrilegious and cowardly. It is also fundamentally un-American, demonstrating no tolerance or allowance for free speech.
That the American government now seeks to destroy this great sculptor’s finest work speaks to the craven and sordid mindset that infects its leadership and bureaucracy.
The Department of Defense has claimed this statue “offers a nostalgic, mythologized vision of the Confederacy,” clearly (and likely intentionally) missing the memorial’s spiritual, historical, and artistic significance. The Department wishes to tear open old wounds and trod on the graves of fallen Americans. The New York Young Republican Club condemns this callous and ugly behavior, which amounts to the un-personing of generations of American citizens.
This is the same Department of Defense that sports infamous weirdos like “Public Health” admiral “Rachel” Levine and Shawn Skelly, the “Assistant Secretary of Defense for Readiness,” among others. Over their tenure, the United States has become less healthy and ready, with these so-called leaders violating intrinsically the common military motto of a sound mind in a sound body. Such unsound minds in unsound bodies now seek to tarnish the great cultural artifacts, upend our heritage, and defile the graves of those great men who came before them.
This intended action mirrors grave desecrations in foreign nations, from Spain’s obscene expulsion of Francisco Franco from his long-term place of rest to the ongoing vandalism in Zimbabwe of Cecil Rhodes’s mountaintop tomb. All deserve round condemnation.
The New York Young Republican Club encourages continued resistance to the destruction of this important piece of art, history, and heritage. We call for the pursuit of its permanent preservation through legislative action.
Cedar's Take: This sort of divisive nonsense is going to get to the point where not just the re-opening of old wounds becomes problematic but it will create new ones.
Richmond Virginia's Monument Avenue a once grand and pristine landscape is now nothing more than a waste land of overgrown weeds and litter. No longer maintained, it has become nothing short of an eyesore.
Lincoln's own words "we here highly resolve .... that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."
If this monument is removed we will have lost our way, a government of the people doesn't take away what one group built in favor of another group no mater what the intentions.
Now I understand there are plenty of yankee liberals screaming for removal on these monuments. The idea is to remove an vestige of these insurrectionists and racist traitors, as if they never existed. After all they lost!
However, if that's the case shouldn't we remove all signs of the American Indians? Those monuments to so many across our nation the note the lands of Indian nations?
Maybe we should also strike those names of former British rulers? Certainly those German names should be removed.
Let's not forget the Alamo our nation is covered in spanish names, many of Mexican and Spain warriors.
The argument of course is we need to honor those treaties sign with warriors and chief of Indian Nations as well as those with Spain and Mexico.
The we probably need to honor those agreements signed by Grant and Lee at Appomattox and stop desecrating and dishonoring those who fought for their right to self govern.
13 comments:
Was there really a metro dude who decided to wipe his arrestee’s ass during processing?
I have zero use for white supremacy neo-nazi proud boys or any of the other far right extremist groups. But removing a memorial to fallen Americans from the Civil War is not only pointless it adds further fuel to an already well stoked fire. Thank you Cedar for posting this I had no idea this was happening.
Why would they tear down a memorial to dead Americans? 160 years after the fact?
Traytors should not be glorified. What next, a J6 monument? The sooner we put this mess in our past, the better we are. Can you imagine how many people in that cemetary have been triggered with PTSD while those brave Uniun soldiers were still alive? And how many POC have been reminded that they are still considered property in the south.
Tear it down, melt it down, and turn what remains into public art at a affordable housing complex.
I despise liberals.
I second that too about liberals
Liberal literally means freedom. The freedom to not be enslaved is something that our country had to go to war over. We should not be celebrating the losers, militarily or ethically.
You despising liberals shows your true colors. You wish to enslave in a modern way, a continuance of Jim Crow. You have your hispanic yard crew, and your indian IT workers, and your puppet Black entertainers, but you don't want to share your power or control.
We need an established system of financial reparations for eternity, to even the scales of justice for the blood of my ancestors. You have proven that my unborn great grandchildren will still have poor schools, no choice in affordable housing, a lack of equity in medical care, but when you want to go to war, you will look to the peoples with dark skin to be cannon fodder.
I need my monthly payment for these historic wrongdoings. My children need them for the horrible education your Head Start program gave us, and my grandchildren need their monthly to pay for their HBCU experience. If you have your statues, street names, and deed restrictions (which are still recorded in Meck County, by the way), then we need our monthlys.
If you are under age 55 then you have attended the same public schools as everyone else in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg School system (whites, African Americans and Asians). If you were an African American with at least a “B” average then you were almost assuredly guaranteed a college scholarship/grants…. The Asian community has certainly demonstrated the fact that if a FAMILY ( that word capitalized on purpose due to fact there has been a very obvious downfall in the intact family concept in the African American community- with so many single mothers and numerous uninvolved and non-supportive fathers) the Asian families clearly value and take educational success seriously. Many in the African American clearly do not value or take education very seriously, when that is an obvious way to climb out of poverty and into professional ranks and middle class or highly social status. I really wish the African
American community would stop looking to blame everyone else and looking into the past (guess what - none of us actually owned slaves and most were not alive during the Jim Crow era! ) sto playing the poor me victimization and do the work to improve you lives and that of your family.
To think that my North Meck education was equal to one from Meyers park is laughable. Further, I was raised by a loving mom and grandparents, all of whom were denied an equal education because of their skin color. This does not end in one generation, or in a hundred. Your people created this system, and it is exacerbated by the continuance of your ignorant blindness. Only with permanent reparations, affordable housing, access to equal healthcare, and ownership in the capital structures that power america will the struggle be near an equal footing.
If you have ever been pulled over, denied for a loan, scored poorly on your tests, or terminated from your job all due to systematic racism, then you can feel the pain of being a POC in america in the 21st century. Until then, we don't want to hear you. I am proud that Charlotte has made strides of being a Black city. One day, we will know we are winning when those banks in downtown are black owned and run, when our people can give car loans without the embarassment of denial. When we can buy that new house on equal terms as you have, and when we stop throwing our fathers in prison for child support, knowing that sentence just pushed them out of the workforce.
Get your head out of the sand, and pay me my monthly.
Hard to tell if this guy ^ is for real or a troll. Unfortunately, there are probably a lot out this with this entitlement mindset. And you will never know how hard it is to be black unless you are black. Guess what, life isn’t fair. Some a born laying on a golden egg, some have to work hard all their life. But we all have opportunity here in America, that’s why everyone wants to come here. There are so many successful black people in this day and age in this country that “reparation” argument is completely laughable at this point and no one takes it seriously.
As typical of most white supremecists, you disregard 404 years of the contribution of Black people to america by claiming opportunity. There is opportuniy, but it is not doled out in equal doses and it goes to those who have skin that matches the power structure.
Charlotte is getting better but until we follow San Francisco and give POC monthly reparations, we are just moving up the chain of power.
Name 5 Black people in Charlotte who have been successful enough to endow and enrich the community to the degree of McColl, Dowd, Richardson, Blumenthal, Levine have? They all had a natural born advantage that my people did not, and until my people acheive that level of greatness, the scales need to be tilted in our favor. 404 years since my people were brought in chains. Blame your people for creating this mess.
White supremacist 😂 listen to yourself dude. No one takes you seriously and never will. Instead of looking for handouts, do something to better your life and make the world a better place. By your line of reasoning, we are going to have to go ahead and give the land you live on and a lot of the land in the USA back to the Native Americans. We should also give Alaska back to Russia, Great Britain is owed the Northwest Territory, Mexico gets back CA, NV, UT, AZ, and the of course, the whole Louisiana Purchase needs to go back to France!
Is the girl dude or dude girl still on VCAT? The one that shot herself in the foot?
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