Our nation’s capitol isn’t going to be the soft target for vandals that other cities have been in recent weeks.
While many state and local governments have allowed landmark monuments to be defaced, destroyed, and torn down, Washington, D.C., will be deploying the National Guard.
From our friends at Fox News:
Hundreds of troops with the Washington, D.C., National Guard have mobilized to protect monuments in the nation’s capital, a senior U.S. defense official told Fox News on Wednesday.
Interior Secretary David Bernhardt requested the action earlier this week, as protesters target statues and other historical markers during ongoing demonstrations in the wake of George Floyd’s police custody death in Minneapolis at the end of May.
Protesters on Monday attempted to tear down a statue of Andrew Jackson in Lafayette Square by the White House, and defaced it with the phrase “killer scum,” Reuters reported. Berhardt said afterward that he visited Lafayette Square and witnessed the destruction. He said the country “will not bow to anarchists,” and that “law and order will prevail, and justice will be served.”
The Lincoln Memorial and WWII Memorial were also defaced in earlier protests.
During a protest on Tuesday that took place in front of D.C. Emancipation Memorial, one demonstrator announced that on Thursday they would tear down the memorial’s statue of Abraham Lincoln standing over a freed slave.”
According toCNN, the National Guard troops will be deployed until other federal agents can be deployed to continue the protection of the monuments:
The DC National Guard will provide unarmed guard members to assist with additional security for monuments in Washington, DC, the National Guard Bureau said Wednesday.
"The District of Columbia National Guard is responding to a request to support law enforcement officials and has dispatched unarmed personnel, with others on stand-by, National Guard spokesman Major Robert Perino said in a statement to CNN. "Activated Guardsmen are expected to provide security for local monuments and critical infrastructure."
A defense official says Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy signed the memo Tuesday authorizing the activation of the DC National Guard forces, after the National Park Police made a request for the assistance.
The official strongly emphasized that no Guard forces have yet been sent onto the streets and so far have all stayed inside their barracks. There are currently about 100 troops in the immediate Washington, DC, area. The activation could grow to 400 in total to rotate troops if needed. The Pentagon expects the guard forces to be used as a stopgap measure until the Justice Department can muster additional federal law enforcement personnel to take over the mission, the defense official said. Nonetheless it is expected the guard units will remain in the DC area through July 4th."
As we have witnessed in other parts of the country, the anarchists are not stopping at tearing down Confederate monuments.
They're going after anything that they find offensive:
Even tributes to Honest Abe are at risk.
The President who freed the slaves.
Think about that.
Now even D.C.'s representative to the House is lobbying to remove The Lincoln Emancipation Memorial.
As reported by The Hill:
The statue was designed by sculptor Thomas Ball, with funds to build the monument solicited exclusively from freed slaves, according to the National Park Service. Frederick Douglass spoke at the statue's dedication in 1876.
Norton said Tuesday that she is also seeking the removal of the Andrew Jackson statue at Lafayette Square that's across the street from the White House.
Would the freed slaves who commissioned the memorial want their legacies removed because Social Justice Warriors nearly 150 years later didn't like it?
Perhaps they weren't all happy with the result of the piece they commissioned.
I certainly can't say one way or the other.
But one thing is for sure: that monument is a testament to the stories of those emancipated people and removing it from public view is silencing those voices from the past who are speaking out to us through this symbol.
Thank you, Mr. President!
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