Reflections June 2020
By Joseph M. Valenzano, Jr.
In response to the riots, looting and destruction of property by insurrectionists following the death of a five time criminal named George Floyd, several well known retired and active duty General Staff Officers and Admirals have chimed in to the rising incendiary rhetoric of Black Lives Matter to announce that the names of military bases named after members of the Confederacy must be changed.
They state that these bases must be renamed because the individuals whose names the bases bear, were associated with the Confederacy and were “traitors”. Really? And our new modern military leaders, retired or otherwise, suddenly have come to this conclusion 150 years after the end our great Civil War?
Many of these modern day leaders trained on these bases. Did they feel that way as young PFC’s or did this just come upon them in 2020?
hat ever happened to Abraham Lincoln’s exhortations to “bind the nation’s wounds and…care for his widow and children”?
Didn’t Congress declare that soldiers fighting for the Confederacy were entitled to honorable burial and full military recognition?
Did the Generals and Flag Officers today making these bold statements and demands consider these historical facts?
What names will now be ascribed to military bases such as Bragg, Benning, Lee, Stewart, Hood?
Will there be a push to recognize the “heroes of Black Lives Matter” to give them all a more “current look and feel”.
Give me a break.
Don’t our military leaders have more important things to deal with than renaming bases as a gesture to mollify the demands of a few misguided people?
I have the utmost respect for General David Patraeus, a West Point Graduate, but his contention that those who fought for the Confederacy…Robert E. Lee, George Pickett…were traitors is just plan wrong and indefensible. It is also unnecessary. Statues and monuments of General Lee are all over West Point!
Recently, NASCAR and the United States Marine Corps have decided to abolish flying or using the Confederate Flag. This flag has been flown proudly for over 160 years and many sons and daughters of the South have given their lives in the defense of our freedoms.
The Confederacy happened as did the Civil War; it is a historical fact. You cannot change the past by rewriting it; you can only learn from it.
The Civil War happened. Slavery happened…and, incidentally, slavery continues to exist in today’s world.. with black slave owners involved in buying and selling slaves in Africa.
If we continue down the path to destroy monuments and flags and artifacts from our past, how in God’s name will we be able to learn from the mistakes we have made?
Where do all these attempts to rewrite history to conform to what we believe should have happened stop?
Who is next?
Already statues and monuments to Christopher Columbus have been torn down in fits of radical rage, and there is a movement afoot to remove Christopher Columbus from history because he is “believed to be someone who treated the Indian poorly’. Says who? And if he did, perhaps there was good reason.
Once again, you cannot reinvent history, you can only learn from it.
Much of the circulating information about Christopher Columbus is historically inaccurate and it neglects the many positive aspects of Columbus’ explorations and has placed this information totally out of temporal context. His accomplishments as a daring navigator and explorer are unquestioned and he is emblematic of the millions of immigrants and their pursuit of economic opportunity, religious freedom and hope for a better life. To Italian-Americans like myself “to the world he gave a world” But it is not just Christopher Columbus whose monuments are torn down or desecrated.
The real question is….whose next? Following the logic of the mob, why not destroy any history about some of our founders like Jefferson, Adams….at least seven of our Founding Fathers were slave owners.
And how about Winston Churchill or General Dwight Eisenhower. He was Supreme Allied Commander and didn’t he keep the army segregated in WWII?
You see how ridiculous this all is? Where does it all stop.
Revisionist history serves no useful purpose.
Now we learn that epic movies like “Gone with the Wind” must no longer be shown. The TV show “Cops” is to be discontinued after 25 years. Unbelievably, ”Paw Patrol” is now slated for the junk heap.
Recall, that the tremendously successful and highly educational literary work “To Kill a Mockingbird” was removed from high school educational curriculums a few years back, all because it has “racial overtones’. There were great life-long lessons learned from the study of this work. What changed?
Armed insurrectionists (there is no other way to describe these individuals), have occupied a seven square block area in Seattle, Washington. The Mayor calls this nothing more than a “block party” and the governor of the state of Washington says “he doesn’t know anything about it”, but these officials tell President Trump to mind his own business!
The insurrectionists have already made their demands well known: They want the elimination of the entire police department, closing of jails and release of all prisoners, elimination of all fines, free education, reparations for blacks and a host of other ridiculous demands. Fascinating, don’t you think?
And all around the nation, primarily in Democratic controlled cities and states, hardened criminals are being released from prison over fears they will contract the coronavirus while priests and ministers are being arrested and fined for giving sermons and grandparents walking with their grandchildren are being detained and fined.
I find this very troubling. Don’t you? Mayor DiBlasio in New York City just declared himself to be the greatest mayor in the entire nation. He must think he is Idi Amin. Anyone hear from that despot lately?
If you are not concerned and troubled by all of these things, you have not been paying attention to the lessons of history. The riots, lootings, desecration of churches and monuments and the destruction of private property have absolutely nothing to do with the death of George Floyd.
Mr. Floyd’s death was tragic but he is no hero or martyr. He was a repeat criminal having served five prison sentences, one a five year term for robbing a pregnant woman’s apartment and holding a gun to her stomach. He was not a nice man.
More to the point is that far more blacks are killed by blacks in the United States than blacks killed by whites.
One thing I am certain of…as Americans this cannot stand. We should not…cannot….view these things with apathy. All of this strikes at the core of who we are and the values we hold dear. If it is allowed to continue, we will no longer be a nation of laws but a nation of anarchy.
And if we permit the defunding of police departments, we will be consumed by chaos which is precisely what the enemies of our country desire.
The consequences of defunding police departments are both depressing and ominous
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Excellent level headed, totally logical, sane post, pointing out the facts with all the past links that have put us in this situation today. I find it rather odd that so many “white” officials are kneeling down to the black people, some even washing their feet and asking forgiveness for whites over the decades, all rather like an agenda has been planned to now blame white people for everything. We are taking the blame of slavery, but the facts remain with research, that the biggest slave traders were Africans and Jews. But Whites are being openly blamed for slavery.