Today's Editors' Choice
- Peggy Noonan: Trump's Tangle of Rhetorical Inadequacy
- Gary Bauer: More Left-Wing Insanity
- Todd Starnes: First-Grader Sent to Office for 'Misgendering' Fellow Student
To view all of today's opinion, click here.
Opinion in Brief
Peggy Noonan: "Slavery was not only a Southern sin, it was an American one. The Tear It Down movement is driven by the Left and is acceded to by some on the Right. This is the sophisticated stance. I do not share it. We should not tear down but build. When a nation tears down its statues, it's toppling more than brass and marble. It is in a way toppling itself — tearing down all the things, good, bad and inadequate, that made it. Or, rather, everyone. Not all of what made America is good — does anyone even think this? — but why try to hide from that? When you tear down statues, you tear down avenues of communication between generations. Statues teach. ... And once the tearing down starts, there's no knowing where it will end. On this the president is right. Once the local statues are purged the Tear-Downers will look to Statuary Hall, and the names of military bases, and then on to the Founders, to the slave-holding Washington and Jefferson. Then, perhaps, to their words and ideas. In what way will that help us? Edmund Burke famously said we have a duty to the past, the present and the future. In the minds of the Tear-Downers only the present is important, and only their higher morality."
