EDITORIALS/No to statue removal

Changing the state flag was a symbolic, necessary and unifying decision, but the evil of slavery is diminished when we start erasing Confederate monuments. Auschwitz is standing for a reason.

A flag is a symbol that unites and can be changed, but monuments tell the story of history, the good, the bad and the evil.

Whitewashing history by pulling down monuments is a highly damaging Marxist notion sweeping America in the name of black lives matter. Yes, black lives do matter, but so do all lives. 

Pulling down a statue of abolitionist Frederick Douglass is going too far. Where will it stop? This far-left fascism infecting our schools, newsrooms, even corporate boardrooms demands absolute allegiance. 

If you do not speak their language, perform their rituals, recite their mantras and follow their commandments, then you will be censored, banished, blacklisted, persecuted and punished. 

The cancel culture’s demands have come, predictably, to Neshoba County in a call to remove the 1912 Confederate monument on the Courthouse lawn memorializing Neshoba County soldiers. The monument doesn’t glorify the Confederacy or slavery, it memorializes those men who served.

The removal of statues and the changing of street and building names is straight out of Marx’s revolutionary playbook.

America has lost something important when the Founders are judged too problematic to honor, as they are by the Black Live Matter movement, a self-proclaimed Marxist political organization that’s on the record as being against the nuclear family and Judeo-Christian values. They’re teaching Americans to hate their own country and that is problematic.

George Floyd’s death at the hands of Minneapolis police is tragic and unjust, but is chaos, lawlessness and defunding the police really the answer?

Civil discourse can accomplish much more than violence and anarchy, but the Marxist playbook calls for revolution.

 What about correcting the underlying problems such as education and poverty?

A large portion of Neshoba County’s population — black and white — lives outside of the traditional nuclear family.

Our public education system in America still forces many poor kids to go to horrible schools. These are policy decisions brought on by liberal teacher unions preserving themselves and government rules and programs that perpetuate dependency. School choice changes that as will welfare reform.

We lock up way too many people who should be in rehab and we take too much money out of the pockets of working people in the form of higher taxes.

The flag?  Fine.  What are we going to do to make sure Mississippi is a place of opportunity for all?

First of all, anyone who thinks racism is dead is out of touch with reality because the sin of racism permeates the entire human race and always will. Racism must continually be resisted, especially in civilized and free societies. 

A founding principle of America is that all men are created equal. Our Declaration of Independence affirms individual rights are derived from God, not the government. Our founders spoke of a “more perfect union” which would eventually lead to the abolition of slavery, women’s suffrage and civil rights for minorities. America is always striving to be better, more free.

In Neshoba County, a new monument near the Confederate monument memorializing the three young men murdered here in 1964 registering blacks to vote would be far more appropriate and educational for future generations than wiping out the memory of the greatest struggle our nation has ever had.

We claim history as a guide to making decisions in the present. Those who ignore history are destined to repeat it. But history is complex as is the present. We must be careful students of history to make prudent decisions today.

So how do we handle these monuments and statues here and across the South? Removing them hides the evidence of the lie that slavey was just. Instead, let’s use the monuments to tell the truth.

What we need is more history, not less. Contextualize the monuments. 

Don’t move the Confederate monuments, make them a lesson in truth for future generations to understand the evils of slavery, show that there is a pathway to repentance, forgiveness and unity as one nation indivisible with liberty and justice for all.