Faced with a barrage of criticism after defending Confederate general Robert E. Lee, Arizona state senator-elect Wendy Rogers did what politicians usually do.
Just kidding — actually, she doubled down.
The controversy began Monday when Rogers, likely responding to the removal of a Lee statue from the U.S. Capitol overnight, tweeted:
Rogers is correct, as our current cultural revolution has little to do with slavery. Were it otherwise, leftists wouldn’t also be targeting monuments to Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt and, related to this, Mt. Rushmore. Leftists might also have something to say about a certain well-known slave owner and trader — Islam’s Mohammed.
Rather, the current revolution is about our own Year Zero, about erasing American history and traditions and remaking them in the Left’s image.
Despite a multitude of negative responses in the Twitterverse (not exactly a bastion of rationality), Rogers tweeted later Monday, stating the obvious:
The cancel cultists then predictably came gunning for the senator, but instead of cowering she tweeted the following:
Unsurprisingly, the triggered Left then weighed in further (a sampling of Twitter responses follow):
- “The problem is you support a traitorous white supremacist, but I guess that’s to be expected from Trump supporters.”
- “I’m sure you failed history and all, so protip: Lee was a traitor.”
- “You apparently never read any history or our country. You made a moronic statement. Go read real history of the civil war. Lee was a traitor. JFC how did you get elected.”
(Hat tip: Big League Politics.)
As Big League Politics (BLP) points out, however, the cultural revolutionaries may be upset at Rogers, but her defense of Lee was nothing compared to that offered by President Ike Eisenhower.
“Eisenhower, a five-star general who led the Allies in Europe during World War 2, proudly venerated Lee as one of the finest Americans ever to live” (video below), writes BLP.
Moreover, BLP also mentions that Eisenhower defended Lee against criticism in 1960, writing:
General Robert E. Lee was, in my estimation, one of the supremely gifted men produced by our Nation. He believed unswervingly in the Constitutional validity of his cause which until 1865 was still an arguable question in America; he was a poised and inspiring leader, true to high trust reposed in him by millions of his fellow citizens; he was thoughtful yet demanding of his officers and men, forbearing with captured enemies but ingenious, unrelenting and personally courageous in battle, and never disheartened by a reverse or obstacle. Through all his many trials, he remained selfless almost to a fault and unfailing in his faith in God. Taken altogether, he was noble as a leader and as a man, and unsullied as I read the pages of our history.
From deep conviction, I simply say this: a nation of men of Lee’s calibre would be unconquerable in spirit and soul.
I will disagree with Eisenhower on one matter. The constitutional validity of Lee’s cause was never arguable: States did and do have a right to secede.
As late professor Walter E. Williams wrote in July after making the above case via Founder quotations and historical evidence, “If there were a provision to suppress a seceding state, the Constitution would never have been ratified.”
“Confederate generals fought for independence from the Union just as George Washington fought for independence from Great Britain,” Williams later pointed out. “Those who label Robert E. Lee and other Confederate generals as traitors might also label George Washington a traitor. Great Britain’s King George III and the British parliament would have agreed.”
Roy Blount, Jr., author of the 2003 biography Robert E. Lee, might agree with Williams. Calling the general a “paragon of manliness,” he wrote that “it’s slavery, much more than secession as such, that casts a shadow over Lee’s honorableness.”
Yet note here that with slavery being one of the world’s oldest institutions, it’s hard to go back in history a good ways and find prominent individuals who didn’t have some connection to it. Famed ancient Greek philosophers Aristotle and Plato, for example, both justified slavery. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Union general U.S. Grant were slave owners. Lee was, too, yet he did call slavery “a moral and political evil” and freed his slaves.
So are we going to “cancel” all of history? One might say this would suit the cultural revolutionaries just fine, but that’s not entirely true. As with my earlier example of Mohammed — whom the Left would never dare criticize — the revolutionaries are only interesting in erasing history and airbrushing heroes insofar as it suits their agenda. This means Western heroes and history.
This is one reason why it’s not that we mustn’t give leftists an inch; we mustn’t give them a nanometer. Heck, if they want a given statue removed, we should perhaps erect 10 more just like it.
Another reason not to bend is that our leftists casting aspersions on historical figures is a bit like Bill Clinton condemning an altar boy who confesses impure thoughts. Our cultural revolutionaries too often are vulgar, lewd, crude, intemperate, morally relativistic degenerates. When they can even define “virtue,” never mind trying to cultivate the quality, we can talk. As Canadian psychology professor Jordan Peterson might say, “Clean your room!” — before trying to clean up the culture.
Speaking of virtue, Wendy Rogers is doing a good job of modeling a virtue needed when combating the Left: courage. Never, ever apologize for speaking politically incorrect truths. Your support will evaporate because people rally behind stout-hearted heroes, not cowards, and it won’t save you, anyway. The Left doesn’t care about contrition, but submission. It wants our culture and history gone — and you on your knees.
