Shenandoah Civil War Park Potential New Home for Confederate Memorial

Confederate Monument

A Confederate memorial was removed this week from Arlington National Cemetery and could be relocated to the New Market Battlefield State Historical Park in the Shenandoah Valley if Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin gets his way.

The park is operated by the Virginia Museum of the Civil War, which is run by the Virginia Military Institute, one of the commonwealth’s 15 public universities and the oldest state-supported military college in the U.S.

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West Point Begins Removal of Robert E. Lee, Confederate Objects of ‘Racist-Past References’

Over these December holidays, the United States Military Academy at West Point started the process of removing aspects of the Confederate States of America in the name of altering its “racist-past references.”

Congress’ Naming Commission, comprised of four U.S. military veterans and four civilians, made its final recommendations this past summer.

Among them were renaming “seven different Department of Defense ‘assets’ dedicated to Confederate generals Robert E. Lee, P.G.T. Beauregard, and William Hardee,” and the removal of Lee’s portrait from the library in Jefferson Hall.

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Emory University, Claiming Racism, Drops Honorific Names of Two Alumni

Emery University, Georgia’s largest private college, has decided to drop the honorofic names of two of its alumni, citing racism. 

“Emory University President Gregory L. Fenves will rename campus spaces and professorships honoring Robert Yerkes, a psychologist who vigorously supported eugenics, and L.Q.C. Lamar, who was a staunch defender of slavery,” a statement from the school said. “The Yerkes National Primate Research Center will be known as the Emory National Primate Research Center, effective June 1. Professorships in the Emory School of Law named after Lamar will become the Emory School of Law Distinguished Professors.”

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Commentary: The Great American Con

Gabriel: “Do you know the difference between a hustler and a good con man?”

Fitz: “No.”

Gabriel: “A hustler has to get out of town as quick as he can, but a good con man—he doesn’t have to leave

—Steven McKay, Diggstown

 The Kansas City Shuffle: Winston-Salem, NC, 1985

I was a 16-year-old kid out with my girlfriend on a Friday night. We were at the county fair, where we wandered a lane crowded by brightly lit booths advertising competitions of chance and skill. Carnies invited us to toss baseballs into milk jugs, shoot basketballs through hoops, and pop balloons with darts. They made the games seem easy, but I’d never had much luck at them. I couldn’t throw a ball fast enough at the pitching booth, or swing a mallet hard enough to ring the bell at the strongman game. Still, I really wanted to win a prize for my girlfriend.

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Newt Gingrich Commentary: General Lee and the Importance of Preserving American History

Earlier this month, a 21-foot-tall bronze statue of Robert E. Lee — perhaps the most famous monument to the Confederate general — was removed from Monument Avenue in Richmond, Va. Supporters of the statue’s removal, including Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam (D), hailed the event as a triumph for racial justice.

The left has decided that Lee, the most recognized and celebrated figure of the Confederacy, is intolerable, a man who should be erased from American history. This maelstrom surrounding Lee has reached a fever pitch in recent years, as the woke movement has grown.

In short, anyone who dares mention Lee at all better demonize him as pure evil or else face the wrath of the progressive mob. This is retroactively imposing cancel culture on the past, while silencing free speech today.
In this context, Allen Guelzo’s newly released biography on the Confederate general, Robert E. Lee: A Life, is especially welcome and important.

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Commentary: Two Miles from North America’s Oldest Elected Body, a Richmond Neighborhood Cowers in Fear

It’s two miles or so down Monument Avenue from the Virginia State Capitol building in Richmond to the Robert E. Lee Memorial.

The capitol houses the oldest legislative body in North America – the Virginia General Assembly, which dates to 1619 when the Virginia Company, the private firm that controlled the state, appointed a governor and Council of State to rule along with 22 elected burgesses.

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Filmmaker Ken Burns Takes a Knee, Declares ‘We Have to Get Rid of’ Confederate Monuments

In an interview on CNN’s Cuomo Prime Time Tuesday, filmmaker Ken Burns voiced his support of the mob attacks on historical works of art depicting figures and events surrounding the Confederacy and the Civil War.

“I think we’re in the middle of an enormous reckoning right now in which the anxieties and the pains and the torments of centuries of injustice are bubbling up to the surface, It’s very important for people like me, of my complexion, to be as quiet as possible and to listen,” Burns began.

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Pelosi Orders Removal of Confederate Portraits from Capitol

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday she is ordering the removal from the Capitol of portraits honoring four previous House speakers who served in the Confederacy.

In a letter to the House clerk, Pelosi directed the immediate removal of portraits depicting the former speakers: Robert Hunter of Virginia, James Orr of South Carolina and Howell Cobb and Charles Crisp, both of Georgia. The portraits were to be removed later Thursday.

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While Visiting Nashville, Beto O’Rourke Says America and Confederate States Were Founded on White Supremacy

  During a campaign visit in Nashville Monday, Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke said that Nashville and Texas and other “places that formed the Confederacy” are bigoted and America was formed on white supremacy. In the same breath as mentioning Nashville, he mentioned his home state of Texas and linked them to racism. “Those places that formed the Confederacy, that this country was founded on white supremacy. And every single institution and structure that we have in our country still reflects the legacy of slavery and segregation and Jim Crow and suppression, even in our ability to vote and participate in our elections.” He went on to mention purging of voter rolls. O’Rourke made the comments during a roundtable discussion in Nashville hosted by advocacy organization Tennessee Immigrant & Refugee Rights Coalition (TIRRC). A full video of the roundtable discussion is available here. The remarks come in the final two minutes of the video. O’Rourke made several stops in Nashville on Sunday and Monday, as The Tennessee Star reported. TIRRC’s political action committee affiliate, TIRRC Votes, tweeted, “During our roundtable with @BetoORourke we talked about ending worksite enforcement and expanding federal protections for undocumented workers. Raids are designed to instill…

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Tennessee and The U.S. Constitution’s 15th Amendment

Celebrating the 15th Amendment

The 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which granted freed former male slaves and any adult male citizen the right to vote,  was ratified by the requisite three-fourths of all states and added to the Constitution in 1870.  At the time there were 37 states, and when the 28th state ratified the amendment in February, 1870, the three-fourths standard was met. Tennessee was not among those 28 states. In fact, Tennessee did not get around to ratifying the 15th Amendment until more than 100 years later, in 1997. Here is that story: During the Reconstruction period in the American South, in the aftermath of the Civil War, three individual amendments were incorporated into the U.S. Constitution – each separated in succession by only a few years – pursuant to that document’s Article V. This trifecta ended a dry spell of more than 60 years of no amendments at all finding their way into the federal Constitution. The 13th Amendment, ending slavery, was adopted in 1865.  The 14th Amendment, defining citizenship status, came along in 1868 (although there is some question as to whether its ratification process was 100 percent strictly by-the-book).  And the 15th Amendment, granting to former male slaves –…

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Oklahoma City Votes Unanimously To Rename Three Schools Named After Confederates At Cost of $40,000

An Oklahoma school board voted unanimously Monday to rename three Confederate schools, an action which will cost the district $40,000. The Oklahoma City, Okla. school board voted 7-0 to rename schools named after Gens. Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, Robert E. Lee, and Isaac Stand Watie, reported Fox25 News. “As the district begins the input process to determine…

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A School Named After Jefferson Davis Will Be Renamed After President Obama

A dominantly black public school in Mississippi named after Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederate States in the 1860s, will be renamed after former President Barrack Obama, according to a report released Wednesday. Stakeholders in the school voted earlier this month at the Jackson Public Schools Board of Trustees meeting to change the elementary school’s name…

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Bill Hennessy Commentary: ‘Common Knowledge’ Masks the Islamist Element Underpinning ‘Statue Wars’

Tennessee Star

  You probably believe the narrative. Because that narrative is strong right now. It has become common knowledge. Common knowledge in the formal, game theory sense of the word. In game theory, common knowledge is something everyone knows everyone knows. And everyone know everyone knows. And everyone knows how everyone else will behave because of that knowledge. Common knowledge doesn’t have to be true. In a common knowledge game, truth doesn’t matter. All that matters is conformity. Behaving or speaking in opposition to common knowledge does no good. Because the culture will punish you for speaking the truth if the truth counters common knowledge. People who point out the truth during a common knowledge game get punished. For example, people who ate whole eggs during the cholesterol common knowledge game were punished. People who ate high fat, low carbohydrate diets during the fat-is-bad common knowledge game were punished. Punished by family. Punished by friends. Punished by doctors. Punished by strangers in hotel restaurants. People who go along with common knowledge games usually suffer in the end. Like people who ate high carbohydrate diets and got fatter and fatter. But those who behaved according to the common knowledge weren’t punished. They…

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