rid assets of names
symbols displays monuments
paraphernalia

Congress finally parted company with the myth of the noble Confederate in 2021. It overrode a presidential veto to order the Defense Department to rid its assets of “names, symbols, displays, monuments and paraphernalia” that commemorate the Confederate States of America. The legislation established a commission that brought forward new names for nine Army installations in the South.

The main event of the renaming project unfolds on Thursday in Virginia, when Fort Lee is rechristened Fort Gregg-Adams. This change derives its emotional power from the fact that the saint of the lavishly racist Lost Cause is being replaced by two African Americans who served in the Army during the Jim Crow era.

From the Confederate Tributes Are Losing Their Patron Saint By Brent Staples in the New York Times, 4/27/2023.

I have long wondered why the losers got forts.

Fort Knox was a Revolutionary War General.

Fort Jackson is named after General Andrew Jackson of the War of 1812, NOT that Stonewall feller.

Bragg, Hood, Benning were all the loser side.

I was told, as a kid, that this happened during World War 1 for the sake of unity.

The story as recounted in this article relates a story that is sadder than I ever imagined.

When I sent off to the National Archives for my Great Great Grandfather’s Civil War records, the first document in the pile was his Casualty Sheet listing him as Killed In Action.

Which surprised me as he was NOT killed in the Civil War but was badly wounded and captured after the Battle of Gaines Mill.

It benefited me greatly that he was not dead as he didn’t get married and have offspring, that led to me being born, until he returned home.

When someone gets around to apologizing for shooting Great Great Grampa, I’ll consider listening to it.

gotta do what you
gotta because you gotta
there are days like this

There are days like this.

There are weeks like this.

There are months like this.

There are years like this.

There are lifetimes like this.

Because you gotta.

struggle for rights is …
now a point of pride for all …
must never go back!

There is sin and evil in the world, and we’re enjoined by Scripture and the Lord Jesus to oppose it with all our might.

Our nation, too, has a legacy of evil with which it must deal.

The glory of this land has been its capacity for transcending the moral evils of our past.

For example, the long struggle of minority citizens … for equal rights, once a source of disunity and civil war is now a point of pride for all Americans.

We must never go back.

There is no room for racism, anti-Semitism, or other forms of ethnic and racial hatred in this country.

Ronald Reagan, March 8, 1983.

This speech became famous as President Reagan called out the USSR as the ‘Evil Empire’.

As Edmund Morris wrote in the book, “Dutch”, Reagan used the speech to note that the United States had PURGED ITSELF of racism and class prejudice.

President Reagan, I think, really thought that.

So did I.

President Reagan warned, “We must never go back.”

I would have agreed.

Not it seems, we never really left those things behind.

Someone had to come along and rip off the band aid and tear off the scab to show it was all still there.

God does indeed have a purpose for everyone in his great plan.

The President would go on and quote CS Lewis saying:

It was C.S. Lewis who, in his unforgettable “Screwtape Letters,” wrote: “The greatest evil is not done now…in those sordid ‘dens of crime’ that Dickens loved to paint.

It is…not even done in concentration camps and labor camps.

In those we see its final result, but it is conceived and ordered; moved, seconded, carried and minuted in clear, carpeted, warmed, and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voice.”

Evil is but it is conceived and ordered;

moved,

seconded,

carried

and minuted

in clear,

carpeted,

warmed,

and well-lighted offices,

by quiet men with white collars

and cut fingernails

and smooth-shaven cheeks

who do not need to raise their voice.

Don’t know about you but that Lewis quote hit me hard.

How in the world did we get here?

people of the world
still share that hope dignity
having some control

The people of the world still share that hope . . .

They want the dignity of having some control over their individual destiny.

They want to work at the craft or trade of their own choosing and to be fairly rewarded.

They want to raise their families in peace without harming anyone or suffering harm themselves.

Ronald Reagan in a letter to Leonid Brezhnev, April 22, 1981.

Hope.

Dignity.

Control over their individual destiny.

Peace.

Without harming anyone.

Not suffering harm themselves.

Growing up with Reagan as President in the 1980’s I cannot say I am a big fan … but he sure looks good in the rear view mirror.