https://www.foxnews.com/media/brit-hume-trump-media-mount-rushmore-speech-turning-point
“I think the public would like to see America’s tradition and heroes and history defended.”
I understand what he said, but without specifics, what are those “traditions, heroes and history” and why do we need to defend them.
Understand them, learn from them, and try not to repeat the bad.
It might be plausible to defend the industrial style slavery as part of the times, although that’s a stretch.
One could even defend the secession if one believed as the South did and is reiterated in the Mississippi Articles of Secession:
“Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery– the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin.”
“A blow at…civilization.” Flowery, but the point was made.
Yet, defending Jim Crow and restrictive covenants for a century after abolition is hard to fathom except as a statement of white supremacy at all costs. That is pure racism.
Defending Confederate colors on state houses? Defending glorious monuments that were erected mostly to intimidate descendants of slaves. And these statues were politicians and generals fighting to preserve the ideals in the above Article of Secession
These are not heroes to most Americans.
No, defend is not the right word. Preserving the history, though, is important. Our history has a lot of positives, and that is important to recognize.
The movement now has shined a spotlight on issues we have ignored or wish we could ignore. Replacing the Mississippi flag would not have been possible just a few years back. Things are different now. So that symbol will be relegated to the history books and museums.
Trump is into labeling “enemies”. Just like Pol Pot, Mao, Stalin and other brutal dictators have done. According to the president, 60% of the nation are enemies. The media is an enemy. Democrats are enemies. The House is an enemy.
Coming from a man who dared not confront our enemies as a young man, he now uses the autocrats playbook like a veteran.
His speech was clothed in divisiveness. We have a crippling pandemic, a teetering economy, a trade war, Kim is going ahead with his nukes, a low wage economy, unaffordable healthcare. He has no mention of what we as a united nation can and will do to move forward and inspire us.
Instead it is all about the imaginary “cancel culture”. Sow hatred, push conspiracies and inject fear of minorities and immigrants is the president’s message.
Violence is not the answer. Out of the million or so who have protested, a few hundred, maybe a thousand, a tenth of a percent at most, have hijacked some early demonstrations. So painting the left has some kind of “anarcho-fascist” movement is classic pandering to populist fears. For that matter, few, if any, Antifa have been seen or arrested. At last count, the feds about 75 in custody, none from the left bogeymen.
Long post. I am waiting for a recall repair to my car.
But it is all my humble opinion. Good or bad.
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Tidewater News and Opinion Forum 
Trump did not mention Confederate heroes in his speech,
He referred to Washington, Jefferson, and other framers of our Constitution,
There is great danger in painting history as a battle against the White Hats and Black Hats. It leaves us with a naive and childish view of history and we all think our side is wearing the White Hats.
History is complicated, and if we are to learn from it we need to understand the complexities of the people who made it. Very often, events paint good men into corners from which there are no good exits. If we simply paint them as evil no matter what choice they made, we lose the lesson of not placing people in such dilemmas.
The current damnation directed at Robert E Lee is a good example. He is called a traitor now, but in his time, making war on one’s State would have been seen as treason. For him, making war on Virginia would have been like taking NATO’s side in a war with the United States would be to us. But if you just put a Black Hat on him, you don’t learn that.
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It is probably true that the word “confederate” was not uttered. The vast majority of statues pulled down, defaced or officially removed were Confederates, with a handful of founders, Columbus, some Spanish missionary, etc. But the intent was clear that Confederates were included in the “hero” category. Historical figures perhaps, but hero is not something that most Americans would apply to secessionists protecting slavery.
Lee is a complicated question. I am going to delve into him a bit more on my own. Like many of the founders and early prominent figures, the history that was taught was not necessarily the truth.
Yet, he did take an oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States of America. So he had to break his oath to side with Virginia.
But the statues, memorials, naming bases and other “remembrances” were not complicated. It was strictly for the benefit of intimidating the descendants of slavery so they would know “their place”. And their place was 2nd class citizenship for 100 years. And the statuary stuck around for 120 plus years.
The “Lost Cause” was a direct attempt, successful as it was, to rewrite the history of the Civil War and the Confederacy by Jefferson Davis. The memorials were essentially wrapped around that myth.
Time for a change.
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Lee was offered command of the Union Army but declined rather than make war on Virginia, which he felt was a prior obligation. So, he resigned his commission in the US Army as an honorable exit.
Lee was very much opposed to the raising of statues of him, and none were until after his death.
It may well be that some statues were about intimidation, but also many more were memorials to soldiers who never came back and whose families had no body to bury. Those, like the one in Portsmouth, were of anonymous soldiers or sailors representative of the unreturned dead. They were paid for by the families of the lost.
The statues themselves are no big deal to me, but the drive to erase history, including the bad done by good men and the good done by bad men, is a very big deal.
A simplistic, White Hat/Black Hat view of history leaves us with ad hominem arguments and deification of the leaders of our tribe and damnation of the leaders of the other tribe, and that makes governing for the common good impossible.
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…”the drive to erase history”…
The drive isn’t to erase history; it is to understand it better, be more accurate in it’s depiction, and learn from it. RELOCATION of memorials to cemeteries and museums is, IMO, a proper way to move in that direction.
The old adage that history is written by the winners was not held to in the erection of SOME of these statues. Nor in the naming of military installations.
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Wait, didn’t Hume claim that Biden was in early stage Alzheimer’s because he saw some of his own symptoms?
BTW, I’m disappointed in you, Doc. You missed the opportunity to post “Chief Justice Suffers Blow to the Head, Begins Voting with Liberal Justices.”
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The Onion would be proud.
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