The Patriot Post® · Radical Left Targets DC Monuments
President Donald Trump was mocked and ridiculed in 2017 when he questioned if there’s a logical stopping point for monument removal. “So this week it’s Robert E. Lee,” Trump opined following the decision by Charlottesville, Virginia, officials to remove a statue of Robert E. Lee. “I noticed that Stonewall Jackson is coming down. I wonder, is George Washington next week? And is Thomas Jefferson the week after? You really have to ask yourself, where does it stop?”
Trump’s observations, far from being ridiculous, have proven prescient. Washington, DC, Democrat Mayor Muriel Bowser on Tuesday embraced radical proposals by the leftist group District of Columbia Facilities and Commemorative Expressions (DCFACES) to remove, relocate, or contextualize many of the city’s most historic and iconic monuments and memorials, including the Washington Monument, the statues of Benjamin Franklin and Andrew Jackson, the Christopher Columbus Fountain, and the Jefferson Memorial.
DCFACES came to these recommendations using a “decision-making prism focused on key disqualifying histories, including participation in slavery, systemic racism, mistreatment of, or actions that suppressed equality for, persons of color, women and LGBTQ communities and violations of the DC Human Rights Act.”
A report produced by DCFACES noted that since 70% of the city’s statues and memorials are named after white men, “priority should be placed on ensuring future assets, especially and including those recommended for renaming by this Working Group, include more women, people of color and LGBTQ Washingtonians.” Bowser said she was eager to move forward on “reviewing and advancing” these recommendations.
Fortunately, Bowser has little power to actually implement the changes these woke iconoclasts demand, as many of DC’s monuments, memorials, and statues are classified as federal assets. And the Trump administration has made clear that it will not entertain the radical Left’s desire to remove and rewrite American history. The DCFACES effort will get “absolutely nowhere” while Donald Trump is president, says White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany.
What Democrats like Bowser and the radical Left ultimately aim to do is erase America in order to replace it with a Marxist totalitarian nightmare. Instead of seeing and valuing the tremendous advancement for individual liberty and human rights America’s Founders achieved, all these “social justice warriors” can see are flaws.
Dr. Douglas Bradburn, the CEO of Mount Vernon, noted the great irony of the Left’s iconoclasm, stating, “Without George Washington, there is would be no United States of America; there would be no Constitution, which allows the freedom of speech, assembly, and protest. … If we fail to honor George Washington, because we understand him only as a slave owner, we will lose the story of the United States, for it will have no beginning and very little direction.”