Push to erase Confederacy dumbs down America

March 16th, 2018,

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/opini...314-story.html


Regarding the possible renaming of Stonewall Jackson Middle School: No better epitaph can be written for an educator today (or naming of a school memorializing him for advancing education), than that he would risk prison to educate children.

Before the Civil War, in the state of Virginia, Stonewall Jackson broke the law every Sunday. For that, many slaves and black freedmen in Lexington, Va., revered him and considered him a hero of the African-American community. At that time, according to Virginia law, it was illegal to teach African-Americans to read and write. However, Jackson believed that everyone deserved to be educated and established the Lexington Presbyterian Church Sunday School in 1855, where together with his wife, he taught African-American children to read and write.

Even after he’d left Lexington to join the Civil War, Jackson never forgot his students; and, sent money to them and the church school, until he was killed in the war.

Stonewall Jackson during the Civil War was a leading advocate for thousands of black Confederate soldiers, as corroborated by a member of Abraham Lincoln’s Cabinet. Dr. Lewis H. Steiner, the chief inspector of the U.S. Sanitary Commission — today’s equivalent of the Environmental Protection Agency — said in 1862, he saw over 3,000 well-armed black Confederate soldiers in Stonewall Jackson’s army in Frederick, Md., and that those soldiers were “manifestly an integral portion of the Southern Confederate Army.” (Steiner Report, New York: Anson D. F. Randolph, 1862, pp. 10-11.)


In this era of taking down Confederate memorials, in Roanoke, Va., there’s one at the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church, where since 1892, for 125 years, Stonewall Jackson has been memorialized in a stained-glass window. That’s not a big surprise considering he was a famous Confederate general and a Virginian — that is, until you meet its African-American congregation. Third-generation member Joyce Bolden says the window is not about Gen. Jackson, but Jackson the man, who before the war led a Bible study for his slaves — including the parents of an early pastor. “This was a monument to the future of the African American race,” she said. “Stonewall Jackson was as a human being and as a man of Christ, of faith. He defied all the laws of the South by educating his slaves. He taught them to read and write.”

This fever today to erase Confederate memorials — will that make America a better nation? Will a single inner-city school improve? Will we have a single meaningful step toward finding a way to responsibly end mass incarceration? Will community and police relations improve at all? Will racial harmony be achieved?


Of course not. In fact, by screaming their invectives at dead Confederates from 150 years ago, the social-justice warriors will be rewarded with yet another round of pop-culture accolades that will empower them to engage yet another target. And at the end of the day, America will be more ignorant, the cultural left will be more self-righteous, and our nation’s history will be viewed as an infinitely malleable tool for delivering only left-approved, politically correct messages to the hearts and minds of our citizens.

The many thousands of men who risked their lives and spilled blood to defeat the Confederacy would be appalled. Abraham Lincoln would see the malice toward all, the charity toward none. Ulysses S Grant would be shocked at the notion, for example, that Pickett’s Charge represented “false valor” (as Democratic Party leader of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi said), and the great warrior-poet-abolitionist Joshua Chamberlain (who said on the occasion of the South’s surrender at Appomattox, it was “honor answering honor”), would be disgusted at the idea of destroying Confederate memorials to make a political statement.

This is the stupidest thing I\'ve seen all week - and I've seen some pretty dumb things.



Onward and upward,
airforce

I'd rather be a General Hooker than a Private Hooker or a Corporal Hooker

Hooker had a fondness for prostitutes. One time a soldier asked who a wagon filled with prostitutes belonged to. A officer replied. "They're Hooker's." The name stuck and the rest is history.