INTOLERANCE AND HATE
HAVE NO BOUNDS.

EXTREMISM AND IGNORANCE
HAVE NO LIMITS.

{Unanimously adopted by the Florida Democratic League, Friday, May 5, 2017}

MEMORIAL MONUMENT TO GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE IN DALLAS, TEXAS

WHEN MISGUIDED IDEOLOGICAL EXTREMISTS push us, as a people, to go along with the un-American banning,  desecration, or vandalism of our historical national symbols and memorial monuments, the Florida Democratic League, our state’s leading minority-led, Democratic voters’ civil rights, equality, and social justice advocacy organization, thinks it’s time to publicly call out these extremists and demand forthright, honest answers to critical questions on this burning national issue.

>> VITAL QUESTIONS DEMAND HONEST ANSWERS

FIRST, how are the banning, desecrating, or vandalizing of our nation’s historical symbols and memorial monuments any different from book burnings, speech censoring, persecuting minorities, or outlawing political, religious or philosophical ideas or symbols? How?

SECOND, how do the banning, desecrating, or vandalizing our nation’s historical symbols and memorial monuments promote ethnic or racial tolerance, goodwill, or understanding? How?

THIRD, what right does anyone have to ban from our public spaces historical national symbols and revered memorial monuments representing political, philosophical or religious views they personally hate or dislike?

FOURTH, how are the banning, desecrating, or vandalizing our nation’s historical symbols and memorial monuments not ignorant, hate-filled acts of bigotry, intolerance, and violence against our democratic principles, constitutional freedoms, and our historical past as a nation?

FIFTH, regardless of why a historical memorial monument was erected by prior American generations, shouldn’t basic respect for those Americans, their lives and contributions, their civil rights, equality, and dignity demand respect for their historical symbols and memorial monuments as well?

SIXTH, how are our nation’s freedoms, civil rights and civic values upheld or strengthened by the banning, desecrating, or vandalizing of our nation’s historical symbols and memorial monuments? How?

FINALLY, if the ideological extremists pushing this un-American historical and cultural vandalism had any respect for themselves, for American democracy and for the Rule of Law, why don’t they put the issue to a vote of the people?

Isn’t it clear that banning, desecrating, or vandalizing our historical national symbols and memorial monuments is, at best, misguided and fanatical extremism and, at worse, a naked abuse of political power and a totalitarian misuse of government violence and force?

Doesn’t true love of country impose on us the solemn duty to remember and respect the fact that all Americans, regardless of what side of the Civil War they were on, sacrificed greatly, with courage and patriotism, to defend and uphold the values and principles they believed, in good conscience, were true and worth fighting and dying for?

>> WHAT IS REALLY AT STAKE HERE?

Isn’t it a sad and ugly spectacle for New Orleans Mayor Mitchell Landrieu to attempt to justify tearing down his city’s historical memorial monuments by arrogantly condemning fellow Americans defeated in the Civil War for falling “on the wrong side of history”? Would Landrieu ever have expressed the same opinion had the Confederacy won? What does which side of history our fellow Americans landed in, have to do with basic decency, equality, and elemental respect for their human and civil rights, their dignity or their historical roots?

Renowned Russian intellectual, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, unjustly imprisoned and brutally tortured by the Marxist totalitarian Soviet regime, a man praised everywhere as the great “Conscience of the West,” once wrote that “to destroy a people you must first sever them from their roots.” How does Mayor Landrieu’s cowardly and thuggish vandalism differ from the destructive severing of our country’s roots Solzhenitsyn warned us about?

Isn’t American history replete with instances of U.S. government abuses, crimes, injustices, and corruption that are both painful and shameful to most, if not all, fair-minded, patriotic Americans? Will we ban the American flag because of this? Why not take this issue to its logical conclusion, Mr. Landrieu? Are you ready to abolish all historical national symbols, memorial monuments and public references of all former slave-owning Americans, our Founding Fathers included? And, while you are at it, would you agree to ban all former slave-holding states from the Union as well?

Stop this socially corrosive and racially divisive demagoguery! Stop the bigoted and hateful theatrics! Stop the ignorant, cowardly attacks on American national symbols and memorial monuments!

Respect Historic American Symbols and Memorial Monuments.
Respect History. Respect Freedom. Respect the American People.

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