Understanding and Destroying Our History
Social justice “peaceful” protesters defaced the “Glory”
monument to the all-black 54th Massachusetts Regiment in Boston
Common. They also beheaded a statue of
Columbus in the North End of Boston.
These historical American monuments apparently symbolized some hidden
affront to race relations unbeknownst to most of the rest of us.
I went to university in Boston a long time ago, and these
monuments are in places near where I worked while I was going to college. Consequently, they are of more than of
passing historical significance to me.
Obviously the racially motivated idiots that defaced the monument, didn’t
know that the 54th Massachusetts, espoused “black lives matter”
during the Civil War, in the 1860’s, long before the 20th or 21st
century civil rights movements.
Being originally from Western Massachusetts, I understand
the Yankee, and the abolitionist points of view on the Civil War. Having lived in Texas for nearly 40 years, I
also understand the Southern point of view in that war. Not about slavery. The whole country agrees that slavery was
wrong. But there were many southern patriots
defending their homeland in that war, and I cannot deny these men their
bravery. I know that it is wrong to
deface and tear down any statues or monuments that signify a part of our
history, North or South.
The travesty of the stain of slavery on our heritage is that
it was not eradicated from our nation when the country was formed, but in retrospect,
if our founders did not compromise on the issue of slavery, we would have originally
been two countries, rather than one.
Now you might say that “I don’t have a dog in this fight”. My ancestors, at the time of the U.S. Civil
War were in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, in Central Europe, (really Poland, but
there was no Poland then). Try telling a Pole that.
My Polish ancestors were busy fighting Russians from the
East, Germans from the West, and Austrians and Hungarians from the South. Sometimes also Scandinavians from the
North. They weren’t involved in our
American wars or politics, except for chaps like Pulaski and Kosciusko, who
fought with Washington against the British in our Revolutionary War, but not
during the Civil War.
My mother was born in Poland, and emigrated to Chicago at
age 17. She became an American citizen
as quickly as she could. She was a
Franklin Roosevelt democrat, and that was my original exposure to political
thought. My outlook changed, maybe from
exposure to those monuments in Boston during my college years.
My mother did not have any of our American prejudices, but
she did have some mild Polish, Central European ones. Rosjanie, Niemcy, Żydzi, Cyganie, or
Russians, Germans, Jews Gypsies. These
were not hateful prejudices, but they made her narratives of life in Poland
quite colorful at times.
We all have personalities, with likes and dislikes, formed
by our backgrounds and experiences in life.
Our personalities are what make us human. But in our “melting pot” American society,
99.9% of us accept equality of all of our 325 million people under the law, and
accept the rights of all Americans as given, no matter what their skin color or
ethnic background. There are pockets of
bigotry among us, but these are not endemic or systemic to our overall society,
and this bigotry is dying out with education and time.
Unfortunately, we have flare-ups of racial violence, such as
George Floyd’s senseless killing in Minneapolis, which are magnified all out of
proportion by left wing groups, such as Antifa, Black Lives Matter and
anarchists, and exacerbated by left wing politicians and their media allies, espousing
divisive “identity politics”. If the
atrocity is “white on black’, the country goes into a furor, as evidenced by
the rioting and insurrection in our streets, fanned by all sorts of reverse
totalitarian actions against our history and common heritage.
When the atrocity cuts the other way, the equally senseless
killing of five white cops in Dallas in 2016 by a deranged black shooter, the
event is given short shrift by the hypocritical left-wing democrats and their
mainstream media accomplices. The New
York Times headline at the time said “Five Dallas Officers Were Killed as
Payback”. Can we get any mor
hypocritical?
Ray Gruszecki
June 14, 2020
No comments:
Post a Comment