Friday, January 6, 2023

SCV Camp 1524 Commander's Column for January 2023 - Continuing Erasure of History and Heritage in the New Year

Wishing everyone a Happy New Year!  It was a wonderful Christmas season and especially enjoyed the events with the camp including the parades, Salvation Army bell ringing and the Social at Buena Vista.   It was also a time to enjoy the holidays with our families.  Presented an opportunity to catch up on current events and social media and unfortunately the woke cancellation of our Southern history continued.  Last year’s revisionist histrionics involving the US Defense Department Naming Commission which sought to erase the names of the revered general officers for which a number of military installations were named for their involvement in the War for Southern Independence as a Confederate officer has bled over to a full assault on the character of all things Confederate including General Robert E. Lee who is widely recognized worldwide as one of the most honorable men and capable military minds ever produced by our country. 

Last August , Camp 16 Commander and AL Division JAG Jay Hinton spoke to our camp about how worthy Lee was of admiration for his personal and professional qualities in contrast to the sports and Hollywood celebrities of today.   Military leaders, historians and Presidents of the United States unanimously related their admiration for Lee’s Christian character and held him up as an example to emulate.   President Eisenhower who kept a framed portrait of Lee in his office said, “General Robert E. Lee was, in my estimation, one of the supremely gifted men produced by our Nation…. 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. Indeed, to the degree that present-day American youth will strive to emulate his rare qualities, including his devotion to this land as revealed in his painstaking efforts to help heal the Nation’s wounds once the bitter struggle was over, we, in our own time of danger in a divided world, will be strengthened and our love of freedom sustained.”   French General Ferdinand Foch, Supreme Allied Commander WWI, stated, "If Gen. Robert E. Lee was a traitor, Napoleon Bonaparte was a coward. If General Lee was a traitor, I wish France had more of them. he was one of the greatest military leaders the world has ever known."  Theodore Roosevelt, 26th President of the United States and Colonel in the US Army of Rough Riders fame, said, “General Lee has left us the memory, not merely of his extraordinary skill as a general, his dauntless courage and high leadership in campaign and battle, but also of that serene greatness of soul.” 

Lee's former home is Arlington House and it stands today as a memorial to Lee.  The grounds are the Arlington National cemetery.  Despite the service Lee exhibited to his country before and after the WBTS, these PC woke progressives seek to remove the Confederate Memorial at Arlington to erase this testimony to the reconciliation of the North and South following the War.  At West Point they are expunging any mention, any reference to the Confederacy and that includes to General Lee who graduated with honors from and served as the commandant of the military academy.  In doing so they are completely erasing all reference to the historical period, a complete and utter cancellation.  George Orwell wrote, ““The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history. Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood. Who controls the past controls the future. Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.”  The sick agenda-driven anarchists even removed the statue of Confederate General A.P. Hill and exhumed his body in Richmond, the last Confederate monument in the once proud historic city to leave a desolate stark sanitized remnant of Monument Avenue.  Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben would be so proud…if they were still here.  We can only hope the new year brings an end to the ridiculous senseless destruction and erasure of our history and heritage.  We must continue to fight by vocalizing our objections to our political representatives and to the public at large and to continue to stand for the ideals for which our Confederate ancestors fought and honor their heroic struggle.  Or else Washington and Jefferson are next.  Hope the new year brings each of you much success, health and happiness. 

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