Fighting the Civil War All Over Again

Some 152 years after America's bloody Civil War ended, tense battles have erupted over Confederate monuments.  Last week's violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, was just the latest skirmish in a noisy campaign to rid America of any remaining symbols of the nation's defining conflict.

A budding list of cities, including Baltimore, New Orleans, Memphis, Lexington and Jacksonville, have declared war on statues of Confederate generals, soldiers and statesmen. Proponents claim the monuments, most prominent in the South, are symbols of lingering racism.

Historical groups and preservation societies have opposed the rush to rip down Civil War memorials. They defend the statues and monuments as an important part of the nation's history, particularly in the South. Members contend the historic markers honor those who fought and died in the war.

Now white supremacy, Klu Klux Klan and Neo-Nazi thugs have usurped the issue to advance their creed of racial hatred and anti-Semitism. The pandering media has turned this into a struggle between Neanderthal whites and oppressed African-Americans, who own the moral high ground.

Instead of treating the issue on its merits, the media has zeroed in on the tiny minority of repugnant bigots associated with fringe groups, giving them a bigger forum than they deserve to spew their malice. Big media has used the issue to paint all whites with the same broad racist brush.

Yet even the liberal Southern Poverty Law Center estimates there are only 5,000-8,000 members of KKK groups.  Neo-Nazi hate-mongers have even less members. But neither one of these groups has cornered the market on extremism.

The opposition has coalesced around an anti-fascist group known as ANtifa, a radical pan-leftist organization whose followers are "predominantly communists, socialists and anarchists." That description was lifted from the pages of The Washington Post, not some conservative website.

What began is an honest debate about Civil War symbols, has been corrupted into a shouting match between a few fanatics on both sides who want to inflame unrest.  Dishonest media and race-baiting activists have conspired to stoke the fires of rebellion to create political upheaval.

Since 2015, city leaders often without public consent have purged at least 60 symbols of the Confederacy.  However, more than 700 monuments remain in 31 states and 109 schools bear the names of Confederate figures.  Those numbers were compiled by the Southern Poverty Law Center. 

The capricious removal of statues has emboldened radicals to take matters into their own hands. An angry mob in North Carolina lassoed a rope around a 15-foot bronze statue of a Confederate soldier and toppled it to the ground.  Frenzied vandals repeatedly stomped the downed monument.

This has all the earmarks of becoming an escalating mob hysteria with deadly consequences. Free speech has been sacrificed by those who want to silence dissent over the removals. Those against whitewashing history are branded racists. Where are the messengers of reconciliation? 

Among the voices of sanity is former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, an African-American who grew up with racism and rose to be one of the nation's most eloquent and informed speakers on the topic.  She recently addressed the hostility over Confederate symbols. 

"I'm a firm believer in keeping your history before you," she told an interviewer on a national network. "And so, I don't actually want to rename things that were named for slave owners.  I want us to have to look at the names and recognize what they did and be able to tell our kids what they did and for them to have a sense of history."

Ridding the country of its past is not a prescription for alleviating racism.  And once the country goes down that path, where will it end? Nine of America's first twelve presidents were slave owners. Should their statues be torn down and defiled?  Should their names be scrubbed from schools?

There are more than 200 Confederate soldiers buried in Arlington National Cemetery.  Should their graves be emptied?  The cemetery is located on 624 acres that once belonged to the estate of the family of Confederate General Robert E. Lee.  Should the cemetery be relocated?

There are lessons to be learned from other countries.  After World War II, Germany wanted to cleanse itself of Hitler's death camps.  The facilities were embarrassing reminders Germans wanted to forget. But sensible people prevailed and the camp's ruins today serve as a warning to future generations.

Removing statues, school names, monuments and the like will never bleach the scars of slavery or the Civil War.  The story of America has been a nation that acknowledges its faults, mends its flaws and moves forward to heal divisions. No country advances by rewriting its past.   

This is the country that survived a dreadful Civil War and emerged united.  That grim conflict would have been fought in vain if Americans once again are so divided that violence and lawlessness become the solution.  Cooler heads on all sides should be able find a peaceful resolution.