Residents in D.C. Want Jefferson Memorial Removed, Area Renamed
Remember this story from the City of Memphis and how there was a push to dig up the grave of a Confederate general that was buried in a city park and relocate it somewhere else?
According to this, the Memphis City Council UNANIMOUSLY voted to remove the graves of General Nathan Bedford Forrest and his wife and the accompanying statue and move it somewhere else. It doesn't say where for sure they'll be moving him and his wife, but the way this ban on the Confederacy is going, they might have to shoot them off into space (but even THAT might not be far enough for some people). From the article -
Tuesday, the council voted on a companion resolution and ordinance triggering the following:
Condemnation of the equestrian statue of Nathan Bedford Forrest
Assignment and Sale of equestrian statue of Nathan Bedford Forrest
Relocation and Removal of equestrian statue of Nathan Bedford Forrest
Removal And Reinterment of Remains of All Deceased Persons Buried In The Burial Ground At Health Sciences Park
The resolution only required a majority vote, but the ordinance required a two-thirds majority vote.
"What's happening here is we are seeing political entities such as the County Commission, the State Legislature are all taking a stance on what is politically correct, and that is removing symbols of racism and bigotry away from public property," [Memphis City Council Chairman Myron] Lowery added.
Sooooo... I have kind of a dumb question. Have any murders or other crimes been committed because this statue is in this park? Any erupting racial violence or tension because these people are buried there? Is there anything at all to suggest that the presence of Nathan Bedford Forrest has created a problem for the City of Memphis?
Why in the name of all that is good and holy is this even an issue??? Other than to make liberals who are suffering from an acute case of white guilt FEEEEEEEEL better about themselves? Scrubbing all signs of the Confederacy from the public eye and pretending like it never happened isn't going to help anybody. Other than make the Confederate flag the new symbol of freedom of speech, that is (it's already happening in some cases). Shoot, I want to get my souvenir Confederate flag that I bought when I lived in Florida out of storage and start waving it out my window! Not because I have any great personal connection to the Confederacy, but because I know it would annoy certain liberals that deserve to be annoyed!
I don't even know who General Forrest was. He could have been an upstanding citizen for the most part, or he could have been an utter sleazeball. I don't care either way because that's not the point. The point is how far is this political correctness assault on history going to go?
People make fun of Southerners for holding onto their Southern heritage and say derisively "The Civil War's over! You guys lost!" - but I think a few people who would side with the North seem to have forgotten that as well. And they're the ones doing the MOST damage by insisting everything to do with the Confederacy be taken down!
And political-correctness-gone-mad hasn't neglected places where the Confederacy never even existed! Oh no! Even in my home state of Utah - they're actually talking about changing the name of Dixie State University in St. George, Utah. What's stupid is that the name has NOTHING to do with the Confederacy or slavery! The people who settled Utah Territory were OPPOSED to slavery and were driven out west because of it. The area around St. George and the rest of Southern Utah was nicknamed "Utah's Dixie" because they grew cotton and other crops associated with the American South so those early settlers wouldn't have to depend on importing those goods from places where the people had previously tried to kill them (when you get time, look up the history of violence against Mormons in Missouri in the late 1830s. Mob violence, murders, property damage, raping women, killing and kidnapping children - oh it's a RIOT!) Those early settlers in Southern Utah planted their own freaking cotton and harvested it and made their own fabrics out of it with precisely ZERO slave labor. That's what the university's name is honoring!
Between that and digging up graves and censoring "The Dukes of Hazzard," this anti-Confederacy craze has gone beyond jumping the shark. It's locked itself in the fridge and blown itself out of the nuclear fallout shelter into the desert where an aged Harrison Ford stumbles out and wonders why the crap he let George Lucas talk him into a fourth Indiana Jones movie at all.