Barbarians are at the Gate

The barbarians are at the gate, and they are in the centers of American cities, tearing down statues and memorials representing our history and our heritage. They started with Confederate political leaders and generals. Many of us understood from the beginning that the Confederate generals were clearly a Trojan horse.

Let me be clear: the Confederate memorials should be moved into historical museums, but only after the people’s elected representatives in the locales where these statues are located voted to do so.

To have mobs take the law into their own hands is unacceptable – and dangerous. Such actions erode and undermine the rule of law, which is precious, valuable, and very fragile. It is far easier to erode the rule of law than it is to build it up in the first place, brick by painful brick.

Now these mobs in the last few weeks have torn down and defaced statues of George Washington, the father of our country, Thomas Jefferson, the chief author of the Declaration of Independence, and Ulysses S. Grant, the man who defeated the Confederacy and who as President helped shepherd the ratification of the 15th amendment to the Constitution, which says “the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” This gave constitutional guarantees of the right of former slaves to vote. Grant also had numerous African Americans in prominent places in his administration.

They have also successfully agitated for the removal of President Theodore Roosevelt’s statue in New York City. And recently they tried unsuccessfully to tear down the statue of Andrew Jackson in Lafayette Square across the street from the White House. Where does this end?

Are we going to chisel away Washington and Jefferson, and Teddy Roosevelt’s images from Mount Rushmore? And now they are even attacking Lincoln. Should we chisel his image away too? Are we going to demolish the Washington Monument and the Jefferson Memorial? Are we going to rename the Capital, and it won’t be Washington D.C. anymore? And why stop with Theodore Roosevelt? Should we remove memorials to Franklin Roosevelt because he interned tens of thousands of Japanese Americans during World War II?

This will not stop until we insist that it stop. These revolutionaries—and that’s what they are—want to delegitimize America’s heritage and culture. They are defaming America as an illegitimate concept and project from the beginning, fatally compromised by slavery and racism rather than being the “city on a hill” that declared the belief that “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” And while we are still striving to live up to that ideal, it is that ideal that has made us a hope and a beacon to the world and has made America the greatest country yet created on this earth. And that is why people of all ethnicities and backgrounds from all across the world yearn to immigrate to the United States.

These radical Marxist revolutionaries are exploiting the legitimate heart-felt protests against police misconduct and residual racism in our society to attempt to tear down our society. This radical mob wants to delegitimize our history, our heritage, and our government in order to enact a new Marxist, socialist society. Unless we insist our government enforce the rule of law and put a stop to this dangerous nonsense, it will continue.

Recently, Shawn King, one of the most visible of the Black Lives Matter leaders, proclaimed, “I think the statues of the white European they claim is Jesus should also come down. Yes. All murals and stained glass windows of white Jesus, and his European mother, and their white friends should also come down. They are a gross form of white supremacy. Created as tools of oppression. Racist propaganda. They should all come down.”

Mr. King is calling for all statues and murals in all the churches in America to be removed, torn down. And of course in the process, he argues that Jesus wasn’t white. The Bible makes it very clear that Jesus was Jewish, of the seed of David, thus the Messiah, thus a Caucasian, but the Savior of all—red, yellow, black and white—all who will accept Him. By the way, all of the earliest abolitionist societies to abolish slavery in America were founded by Christians.

I’m frankly amazed at the lame acceptance of mob rule by so many of our elected leaders at every level. This is supposed to be a government of the people, by the people, for the people, as President Lincoln asserted in the Gettysburg Address where he was honoring the memory of some 300,000 Americans who died ending slavery in America.

Who elected these mobs? Who gave them the authority to make decisions for the rest of us? And how is it that we have elected so many invertebrate politicians who refuse to honor their oath of office, do their duty, enforce the law, and maintain domestic tranquility? What is at stake here, quite literally, is the rule of law and the very foundation of our civilization. Here in America we too often take the rule of law for granted because it has always been part of the furniture in the room. Consequently, we don’t appreciate how rare it is and how many sacrifices were made by our ancestors to bequeath it to us.

There are only about 10 countries in the world where Bush v. Gore in 2000 would have been decided as peacefully as it was here in America. Polls show that about one in five Americans really believed that Gore won the election. But when the Supreme Court ruled that Florida could not count votes the way they were counting them and that it was time for the Electoral College vote and Bush had been elected, that 20% accepted the rule of law. I am confident the same thing would have happened had the results been reversed. I must confess that I am fearful that enough damage is being done to the rule of law that significant portions of the American populace would not accept such a court decision today.

We must assert and respect the rule of law or we will lose it.

And I fear, if we lose it, it will be enormously difficult to get it back, and many, many, many people will suffer. I doubt most Americans are aware of just how radical these people are. We must insist that our government, at every level, put a stop to this, or there will be horrendous consequences. Contact your local, state, and federal officials, and tell them that you expect them to do their duty, to maintain domestic tranquility and to enforce the law. And let’s all resolve to pray for our country.