Starting to think it’s not so much about dishonoring racists as destroying America’s connection with its past — a connection that has often stood in the way of the kind of radical transformation the far left has sought
America honors and remembers its past not because it was perfect but because it’s part of the American story, we took lessons from it, and it guides our future. Some elements we learned we should never return to. Others remain the ideals that ultimately conflicted with and
prevailed over the elements that we came to understand as incompatible with our notions of who we are and what we should be. Individual liberty over enslavement. Equality under the law over segregation. But all of it is part of our history. All of it must be remembered.
The far left has found all of this very inconvenient. Yes, it’s convenient to recall slavery, less so to recall the triumph of individualism and free agency when you’re arguing for unrestricted collectivism and government control.
As much as people like Jefferson and Madison are hated by the far left because of slavery, there’s also a largely unspoken hatred for their broader ideology. Of the systems they created and the ideals they instilled that we hold onto today. As long as they’re cherished and
lionized, they stand as a roadblock to radical and fundamental transformation. So they have to go.
They don’t speak of replacing statues of slave-owning Founders with those of Hamilton or Lincoln or Tubman or Douglass. The destruction of monuments instead intends to give way to absence. A clean slate. A past wiped away to allow an untethered future.
