Un-American Idols

It’s a shame that the ostensible catalyst for the recent conflagration in Charlottesville and the attendant political fallout on all sides is attributable, however remotely, to the attempt to rescue a statue.  Furthermore, one can’t help notice that more than a few conservative eminences not only defend those who want to to keep the statutes up even if they theoretically disagree with totality of the iconography, but now there are those who actually go so far as to defend the totality of the iconography itself.  In so doing, they ironically subvert conservative ideals, American ideals, and salient historical narrative.

At the outset, one can dispense with the notion that the ultimate motives of those clamoring for the statues’ removal are rooted in righting historical wrongs and restoring historical truths; one need not argue that “they see America as the Evil Empire and the Confederacy as a face of that evil…[t]o them this is not a campaign about racism or slavery; it’s one more step in transforming America by effacing and defacing every aspect of its history, going back to the founding.”  That, however, may be precisely the point: one should not combat historical revisionism by engaging in same, particularly when the foundations of one’s politics and worldview demand otherwise.

As regards General Lee, a number of the arguments proferred concerning his being worthy of monumental honors revolves around his willingness to foster national reconciliation after Appomattox, particularly in the fact that he would not countenance continued guerrilla warfare to maintain Confederate aims.  This portrays Lee more as a craven, if smart, political opportunist rather than a paragon of morals: aside from knowing the damage Sherman had done to the South, the self-immolation of Richmond and the possibility that the retreating Rebels might complete their pre-Wagnerian Gotterdammerung indicated to Lee that the South itself, let alone its Cause, might cease to exist, leaving no Cause to remember with no one left to remember it.

Compounding the treachery: Lee was not completely unaware from the outset how dishonorable said Cause was--he claimed to be against secession--and then gave a mealy-mouthed excuse for resigning from the US Army and joining the Confederacy because he "couldn't fight against his beloved Virginia”.  This marks Lee as a traitor on two fronts: betraying his country in the Civil War and retroactively betraying the Revolutionary cause his father had fought so tirelessly for, making Robert simultaneously a Rebel and a Tory.  Either way, Lee’s cravenness—which he likely knew would be lavishly rewarded by an overly gallant Grant under orders from a conciliatory Lincoln—speaks to both his consistent willingness to dishonor any cause as well as the dishonor inherent the Cause he eventually fought for. 

By way of comparison, those touting Lee's erstwhile heroism in his postbellum role in national conciliation should consider more heroic models.  There’s Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, who saved a considerable number of Jews while a Nazi intelligence chief, enough to get him executed before V-E Day and to have some campaign for his status as a Righteous Gentile by Yad Vashem.  To a lesser degree, there’s Emperor Hirohito, braving assassination by his own troops and general staff that preferred possible atomic annihilation at the hands of the Americans and wholesale slaughter at the hands of the now hostile Soviets, better to preserve the “honor” of their civilization; instead Hirohito catalyzed the transformation of Japanese civilization by asking his people to reject the ''false conception that the Emperor is divine”.  In contrast, the postbellum honors accorded Lee start to more and more resemble photographs of Hermann Goering’s initial surrender to US forces; the casual conversations depicted there between a fully uniformed Goering and his too-friendly interrogators infuriated General Eisenhower enough that Goering was remanded to the custody of Col. Burton Andrews who treated him with the contempt due the arch-war criminal.

Even still, the aforementioned Cause is whitewashed along with its statuary, “...monuments to timeless virtues…[not] monuments to “traitors.””  Eerily reminiscent of today’s progressive-sympathetic media when placing the word “terrorist” in quotes?  Maybe militants adhering to a "cause" that dates back to the 7th century also can promulgate “timeless virtues”?  Furthermore, even if “Lincoln set that issue [traitors] aside as soon as the war ended by making it clear that there would be no trials or punishments for the rebels”, settling a legal issue for the sake of a national rebuilding does not thereby sanction a carte blanche to construct eternal encomia to the leaders of the rebels who catalyzed the national carnage.  

Further, most of these monuments were built long after 1865, by which time the the South had reestablished a reworked Cause through essentially a successful sustained campaign of terror largely conducted by the Democratic Party in the South (Michael A. Bellesiles’ "1877" illustrates just how bloody it was).  But even if one were to discount the fact that “timeless virtues” being celebrated by these monuments were inculcated postbellum by the 19th century equivalent of enemy noncombatants, more important is that during the actual Civil War, the soldiery of the Confederacy was fighting for the enshrinement of slavery as a foundational and constitutional matter.  It is to be expected that doctrinaire progressives that “see America as the Evil Empire and the Confederacy as a face of that evil” would be unwilling or unable (or both) to make a distinction between North and South; for conservatives with any modicum of historical literacy to fail to make that distinction is intellectually unforgivable.

Then there’s the question of “fine people” defending “beautiful statues”.  Those who might have wandered into the Unite The Right pest fest at Charlottesville either share the Presidential disinterest in historical topics, or they are disingenuous enough to hope that everyone else in America might be as disinterested; those concerned enough about the preservation of their “Southern heritage” might reconsider coming within four cubits of a rally featuring unmistakeable white supremacist iconography and icons in its publicity campaigns.  A prominent Trump-supporting Rabbi defending those preservationists who would not go so far as attending the rally but “see...true military heroes and patriots who gave their everything to protect…critical aspects of their way of agrarian life” might need to be reminded that said “way of agrarian life” was, again, predicated upon a de jure and de facto system of strictly racially-based enslavement.   Likewise, one wonders why the Rabbi, on his Southern sojourns, “read the inscriptions that breathe not a word about slavery nor the social injustices of the Confederacy” and ironically failed to recognize how successful Southern historical revisionism was.

(Should one also mention that a nod to the “aesthetic beauty and passion that went into sculpting those monuments” conjures up a classical Greek notion of using said aesthetic as a possible moral arbiter, which is in direct contravention to the classical “Judeo-Christian” moralism that underpins much of contemporary conservative philosophy, especially as promulgated by the aforementioned Rabbi?)

Those worried about historically revisionist “slippery slopes” leading from dismantling of Confederate statues to the destruction of ostensibly more benign monuments, let them try this one: what prevents other states and erstwhile civilizations from honoring the “true military heroes and patriots who gave their everything to protect” causes that ranged from mistaken to outright indefensible?  Where are the statues of General Cornwallis at Yorktown?  General Robert Ross in Washington DC?  Yamamoto in Pearl Harbor?  Glubb Pasha in the Rova haYehudi?  Saddam Hussein in Kuwait City?  Why not move the Arch of Titus to the Temple Mount?  Heck, like General Lee, Benedict Arnold was a quintessential American military hero, until he became the paradigmatic American turncoat: where's his West Point monument?

(In a similar debate, a more conservative political sparring partner asked me whether I would be inclined to burn the Confederate flags attached to the tanks of soldiers that liberated the German concentration camps.  I replied that I would, along with the Hammers and Sickles that adorned the Soviet tanks that liberated the death camps further East.  Two short-lived, thankfully dead "civilizations" that deserve no posthumous honors.  Thanks for your service.  Maybe you were worth something.)

To repeat, no one from the center rightward harbors any illusions about the motives of progressives or their many talking points elicited in these “monumental” battles.  More than a few liberals recognize, even if in a distorted fashion, that there are destructive amoral and immoral elements both within and to the left of their camp, even if they can’t decide whether to condemn or co-opt them.  However, these considerations should not determine the correct attitudes towards the proper historical and cultural contexts in which specifically Confederate iconography should be judged, and the moral opprobrium that should be directed at them and everything they represent.  

If there are idols that need to be slain, conservatives should start with those.