Can you conceptualize how you should react to a current situation based on what people might think in 10, 50, 100 years from now? For many people, that concept sounds like an odd question to ask, but actually, it is what is happening in reverse with political activists today. When people destroy statues of historical figures that did things more than a hundred years ago based on current political winds it is wrong and misguided.
Take the recent destruction of Founding Father’s or Civil War statues in various parts of the country. One of the key points of the war was around the expansion or extinction of slavery within our country. Many in the south also did not want Northern activists dictating to them what they could do with their own property. {Sound familiar with modern times of Coastal Democrats telling the center/southern parts of the country what is moral and right} Owning human beings was wrong, and it was corrected in that bloody struggle for the life of the Union not just the life of the slaves. Believe it or not, the Southern Plantation Owners were Democrats, and President Lincoln was a Republican that threatened that system, hence the war. There are many books with much deeper analysis around the Civil War so I won’t relitigate things here. It was not just about the slavery issue or that would have been objective #1 after the war started for President Lincoln. Just sayin…
My point is that through modern day lenses anyone that was a slave owner at the time of the Civil War or before is considered evil and should have their statue’s demolished and history books should erase their names if you follow modern day sentiment. Even if they did amazing things for our country. Much of the world had the practice of slavery at that time. Slavery was WRONG, and the reason we don’t have it in this country anymore is that it was WRONG. The founding fathers knew it at the time of this nation’s founding, but it wasn’t so easily dealt with as you could see by the bloody Civil War that eventually had to put the end to the practice.
Several of our Founding Father’s had slaves, or eventually freed the slaves their family had {as is the case with George Washington}. My point is that we did not prevent them from doing a massive service to us and allowing us to live in such a free and open society because anyone considered what future generations might consider them to be. The Founders, in particular, risked literally everything, their lives, their lands, their families, even their slaves, if they had any, if the Revolution had not succeeded. They would have been hung as traitors to the crown of England. They put it all on the line, just as our military does to this very day, to ensure a great nation continues to survive and flourish in freedom.
If the USA had failed at its founding or in the Civil War, then WWI would have come out very differently, WWII would have come out very differently, and slavery would probably be more prevalent in the world than it is in modern times. If those that worry about destroying dead statues would put their focus on helping those in living modern-day slavery their actions would be much more valuable and even heralded as brave and noble. Sex traffickers, human traffickers, and others are out there around the world, and yes even here in America, to this very day. Put your energies into helping the living, not destroying what has happened in the past and cannot be changed. Today is the time to make a difference. Get to it!!!