In the days following the disturbing events in Charlottesville, VA, the Left has been desperate, apparently, to prove Donald Trump correct. He was using an argument which, in the discipline of logic, is called a reductio ad absurdum when he asked reporters who were defending the violence of Antifa, what would be next after the statue of Robert E. Lee; George Washington, Lincoln, Jefferson. After all, they were slave owners as well.
Left wing commentators mocked him for these sentiments just hours before other prominent leftists began calling for the removal of monuments including those depicting Washington, Lincoln, and Jefferson. They even went so far as to cry out for the demolition of Mount Rushmore.
None of these extremists, by the way, have taken a step back and recognized that Trump foresaw their childish behavior. Reductio ad absurdum means to reduce one’s opponent’s argument to its simplest form and show it to be absurd. It is considered one of the most resounding forms of victory in a debate when one debater uses this technique- and then his opponent runs full bore into proving him prophetic. And the left has done the very thing Trump predicted- even while mocking him for predicting it.
Political cartoonists should be having a field day with these events.
It’s been more than two weeks since the events in Charlottesville, and the left is still going full bore in their demolition of American history. The most recent casualty of the culture war is the cinematic classic, Gone with the Wind. A theater in Memphis Tennessee which has been screening the film for 34 years dropped it for reasons of ‘racial insensitivity.’
Based on the canonical novel by Margret Mitchell, the film was first screened in 1939 and has been met with critical and popular acclaim ever since. The story takes place on a southern plantation and carries its protagonist, Scarlett O’Hara, through the American Civil War. It has been hailed for decades as one of the grandest love stories ever to grace the silver screen. The film featured historically resonant fictional characters including black slaves who were far more fleshed out than any other such characters previously, making the novel and the film milestones in American racial relations.
Interestingly, the most prominent black actor in the film, Hattie McDaniel, went on to become the first black person to receive an Oscar. By erasing this iconic film from history, those responsible would deprive us of the seminal performance of at least one person of color who paved the way for many more.
The film, like the novel, is broad in its scope, yet fine in its portrayal of all manner of character types from its leading woman to her dashing suitor, to servants and soldiers, widows, matriarchs, fathers, and children. But most importantly, it showed us the grand and delicate beauty of the South before the Civil War, revealed its ornate customs and generous architecture. The story shows us a side of the Confederate states which today is all but a federal crime to speak about.
But we would do well to remember a few things about that time before we burn all our copies of Gone with the Wind. We should remember that at the time, the Democrats were in favor of slavery. The North’s original interest was to expand availability of the slave trade to themselves or deprive the south of it entirely. The North only wanted a bigger cut of the business. We should recall that the North also had slaves, only the South had fewer restrictions on the practice, forcing the North to struggle to keep up economically. We should remember that the Civil War was fought over economic matters and that the fight to free the slaves was just the advertisement, much like spreading Democracy in the Middle East.
The South had to pull down its church bells for rarified metal with which to make guns to fight back against Northern forces.
The practice of slavery was first abolished in Europe, then England. The United States followed soon after- as did the world. Today, slavery is illegal everywhere except in Islamic states.
After the Reformation, the Democrats- desperate to hold on to their economic power- formed the Ku Klux Klan to harass and murder Republicans who opposed slavery. And they hung blacks who stood in their way.
If these historical events seem apocryphal, one would do well to consider that the erasure of history and art that is going on right now is likely to result in future generations who do not recognize the genuine history which is being made as we speak.
~ American Liberty Report
