What the heck is this?
With the tearing down of American statues and defacing of ones still standing across the country, it shouldn’t be a surpise to see there are people trying to remove our country’s monument in DC.
But it is.
A DC committee called for removing or “changing” some of DC’s best known monuments and tourist attractions, saying they are “racist.”
Soon, it’s going to be “racist” to breathe, at the rate they are going.
Thankfully, the Trump Administration threw that idea out of the window.
Check it out below:
Fox News shared part of the White House's response to this absurd and crazy idea, and they don't seem too amused:
The White House flatly rejected calls Tuesday by a Washington D.C. city committee to “remove, relocate or contextualize” historical statues and memorials, including some of the city's best-known tourist attractions.
A working group tasked by Mayor Muriel Bowser identified dozens of schools, parks, monuments, statues and buildings named after historical figures that they believe represent an oppressive or racist history.
The list of historical figures they identified included former presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Monroe, Andrew Jackson, William Henry Harrison, John Tyler, Zachary Taylor and Woodrow Wilson.
The list also included other key American figures like Founding Fathers Benjamin Franklin and George Mason, inventor of the telephone Alexander Graham Bell and composer of the national anthem Francis Scott Key.
See what the Press Secretary said to this absurd request:
From the White House Press Secretary:
By publishing a plan that recommends potentially removing the Washington Monument, Christopher Columbus Statue, Andrew Jackson Statue, and Jefferson Memorial—among many other ludicrous recommendations—the radically liberal mayor of Washington, D.C., is repeating the same left-wing narrative used to incite dangerous riots: demolishing our history and destroying our great heritage. Our Nation’s capital is rightly filled with countless markers, memorials, and statues to honor and respect the men and women who built this country. President Donald J. Trump believes these places should be preserved, not torn down; respected, not hated; and passed on for generations to come. As long as President Trump is in the White House, the mayor’s irresponsible recommendations will go absolutely nowhere, and as the mayor of our Nation’s capital city—a city that belongs to the American people—she ought to be ashamed for even suggesting them for consideration.
The Washington Post shared in-depth article, interivewing various people about different apsects of the monuments:
“Contextualizing these monuments makes perfect sense,” said historian and Thomas Jefferson biographer Annette Gordon-Reed, in an email. “Removal, particularly of the Washington [Monument] and Jefferson Memorials, does not make sense, given the formative role they both played in the founding of the United States.”
“I see plenty of space for additions on or alongside the otherwise nondescript Washington Monument,” wrote historian Alexis Coe, author of a recent best-selling biography of the first president. “I welcome, with a standing ovation, any proposal that calls for an uniform evaluation of all monuments and holds them to a standard.”
The report also evaluated dozens of schools and government buildings named after other slave-owning presidents, including James Monroe, Andrew Jackson and John Tyler, “Star Spangled Banner” songwriter Francis Scott Key and founder Benjamin Franklin. (Franklin enslaved people when he was a young man, though he became an outspoken abolitionist in his later years.)
Trump has repeatedly criticized the removal of Confederate statues, warning that those who want to take them down want to “erase our heritage” and wouldn’t stop at Confederate figures.
“So this week, it’s Robert E. Lee, I noticed that Stonewall Jackson’s coming down. I wonder, is it George Washington next week? And is it Thomas Jefferson the week after?" he said in 2017, in response to the unrest in Charlottesville. “You know, you really do have to ask yourself, where does it stop?”
Fencing now protects a statue of Abraham Lincoln in Washington’s Lincoln Park, after protesters called for its removal, saying its depiction of a Black man crouched before the Great Emancipator is offensive. But it isn’t just that modern opinions of it have changed; abolitionist Frederick Douglass called for contextualizing soon after it was unveiled in 1876.
Continued from above from theWashington Post:
But what about the argument that removing or changing monuments erases history?
“There’s a lot of good to come of arguing over what should and should not be commemorated,” said historian Seth Bruggeman, author of “Here, George Washington Was Born: Memory, Material Culture, and the Public History of a National Monument.” “It’s when that conversation stops, and a monument is left to stand in for the argument — when it begins to do the remembering for us — that we begin to lose sight of history.”
Gordon-Reed agreed. Washington and Jefferson “were at the very center of the American Revolution and the early Republic. Jefferson’s Declaration has inspired people all over the world. We’re not giving that up. There’s plenty of room, in both places, to talk about all aspects of their lives. That would be a healthy and good thing. Americans should be reminded of the reality of our origins — the good and the bad.”
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