By Caleb Backholm

Now Teddy Roosevelt is a no-no also? Here’s my question. How can a person support the removal of icons that matter to our history — Roosevelt, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Robert E. Lee, Christopher Columbus, Ulysses Grant, plus various songs, mascots, authors, missionaries, and even Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben — yet still support the continuation of the worst actor of all, the Democratic Party?

The following is not to impugn all Democrats. Most Democrats, like most Republicans, are honorable, imperfect people.
 My point is we should stop destroying our history and being overly sensitive about honoring imperfect people. 
But perhaps I’m wrong. Perhaps eliminating problematic icons in history really is a valid step toward healing. If so, there is nothing in our history more problematic than the Democratic Party. It has been the source of our most shameful moments. That is where erasing should start.

The statue of Teddy Roosevelt is now the latest that somehow no longer measures up to our purity standards. We, the Holy and Righteous Inhabitants of 2020, have decided we cannot abide that reminder of … of whatever evils Teddy is a reminder of.

It is rich irony that many of those who wish to remove these historic icons also plan to vote for Democrats in the fall. Here’s a quick primer on what I’m referring to.

You’ve heard it said that we Americans live on stolen land. In fact, that is mostly untrue. Mostly. When the Pilgrims arrived in 1620, they stole nothing. That first winter they barely even saw anyone else. They settled in a village that was permanently abandoned, its former inhabitants all dead or moved on. That empty village probably saved their lives that year, but they didn’t steal anything in the New World any more than they did when they went to Holland years before. They simply arrived and settled peacefully. For their entire lives they lived well with the tribes around them, and even once sent a band of men to rescue Squanto from a violent tribe that had kidnapped him and held him as a slave.

The travelers and pioneers that set out west over the next 200 years often went for days or weeks without encountering another soul. There were no roads to use, no cities or villages to raid. They settled on mostly empty lands, not stolen ones.

But there were exceptions. The most notorious of all is called “The Trail of Tears” in which the Cherokee tribe, among others, was forced to leave Florida and walk all the way to new land in Oklahoma. Many suffered and died on the trip, hence the name.

Democrat Andrew Jackson was largely responsible for this disaster (though the atrocities continued under the next president, Democrat Martin Van Buren). The Supreme Court told him he had no right to force their removal, but he proceeded anyway. Davy Crockett famously opposed him, and when he was defeated in his efforts, Crockett uttered the bitter denouncement, “I’m going to Texas. The rest of you can go to hell.” He left Tennessee and later died bravely fighting at the Alamo.

But the Democrats won the day, and the Indians were forced to move. The land was given to white settlers.

Slavery is sometimes called our “original sin,” and it was an awful atrocity. Yet it didn’t have to happen at all in this country. At the 1787 Constitutional Convention, it was understood that the southern bloc of delegates, which would eventually take the name of the Democratic Party, was too powerful and united to defeat. It insisted on legalized African slavery. If there was to be a union, that union would allow slavery, at least in the South. The best that could be done was the outlawing of the slave trade. This was a great thing, as no more slaves could be legally brought in, but the slaves already here remained in slavery.

There were many Americans who saw slavery as immoral, but the Democrats did not. As they saw their power beginning to fade in the 1850s, they started a war to keep their slaves. They preferred to leave or destroy the country rather than give up slavery.

Thankfully, they failed, and the slaves were freed by the first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln. But they were bitter losers, so after the war they passed state laws that allowed them to punish even petty crimes with forced labor. Young black men, recently freed, were rounded up on minor or false charges and forced to work off their “sentence.” Many found themselves back on the same plantations they had been freed from under the same “master.”

Only now the masters were pent up with rage at the army of the northern Republicans who had defeated them and taken their “property,” and they took that all out on the helpless former black slaves. Imagine how awful that must have been. These harsh laws continued for many years due to the strength of the Democratic Party.

Around the same time, two branches of Democrats sprung up — the KKK, followed by Planned Parenthood. The KKK was ostensibly a political group opposing the Republicans, but it was especially cruel to the blacks and their white allies in the South.

Meanwhile, Planned Parenthood was established by Margret Sanger on the principle of eugenics. Eugenics is an extension of Darwinism, and both ideas were gaining popularity around the world. Adolf Hitler was born in the same generation and used the same thinking — some races have evolved superior to others. Planned Parenthood would be used to clean the country of the inferior negro race, killing their children before they were born.

As evil as the KKK was, it was Planned Parenthood that was more successful in its efforts to limit the population of black Americans, and it continues its work today with the support of the same party. If not for abortion, the black population in the U.S. would be significantly higher than it now is.

Even after the Civil War, Democrat dominance in the South made life very hard for blacks. The 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments were passed to reinforce the idea that the Declaration of Independence means what it says: “all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.” Those amendments were overwhelmingly opposed by the Democratic Party, but still passed.

Beyond the forced-labor laws mentioned above, where Democrats reigned, they implemented Jim Crow laws. They made it illegal for businesses to serve black people in some cases, even when the business owner wanted to do so. They made it illegal for blacks to use public bathrooms, water fountains, and transportation.

These highly unconstitutional laws were finally repealed via the Civil Rights Act of 1964. But even then, many Democrats opposed the law. A Republican president had to send the National Guard to force Democrat governors to stop infringing the rights of their own citizens.

During World War II, there was concern that Americans of German and Japanese ancestry might have divided loyalties. Some people with German heritage, like me, were treated poorly at times. But it was the Japanese Americans who suffered the worst abuse. They were rounded up and forced into camps during the war. This abuse too happened under the direction of a Democrat — President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Today, the Democratic Party no longer follows most of these oppressive beliefs. Yet still, if a poor, white mother or a middle-class black father wants to send their children to better schools, who is it that opposes them?


Democrats.

And if an unborn child needs an advocate to save her at the moment of birth, the Democratic Party will not defend her right to life.

For the past 200 years, when it comes to human-rights violations, there is no person or entity that has a worse track record than the Democratic Party. If we really want to “cancel” things, if we really think erasure will bring positive change, that is an obvious starting point.

The Democrats have a convention this summer. Will they make an apology to the nation for the shame they brought on us? Will they disband the party to cancel the “painful daily reminder” that they are? Will they be paying reparations out of their campaign coffers to recompense the various minority groups they wronged? There’s no sign of that so far.

One thing’s for sure. There’s a saying about glass houses and another about “casting the first stone” that apply here. As long as they remain a functioning party, Democrats have no room to be calling syrup bottles problematic.

Let’s leave our history alone and learn from it.