It did not take a particularly prescient person to know that the Left’s iconoclasm wouldn’t stop with Confederate statues. Perhaps that’s why former President Donald Trump was able to predict back in 2017 that they would come for Thomas Jefferson and George Washington next.
He was right. This week, art handlers packed up a statue of Jefferson and carried it out of New York City Hall, where it had resided for nearly two centuries. The New York City Council voted last month unanimously to remove the statue, claiming Jefferson “embodied some of the most shameful parts of our country’s long and nuanced history.”
Why even mention “nuance,” since that is clearly what was missing from the city council’s decision? Yes, Jefferson owned slaves. Yes, he even treated some of them brutally. But he was also the architect of the Declaration of Independence, and the man who put into words the principles of equality and liberty that have made this country so great.
It is because of Jefferson that the movement to end slavery was able to appeal to this country’s founding as justification for abolition. It is because of Jefferson that civil rights leaders were able to demand fairness and justice under the law. Those were Jefferson’s words on Martin Luther King Jr.’s lips when he declared that black men and women have just as much right to the promise of the Constitution as white people.
We don’t celebrate Jefferson’s hypocrisy and personal failings; we celebrate his contributions to this country because they made it better.
The Left, however, is totally incapable of approaching any historical figures with the discernment they deserve. They are interested in only one thing: pushing the narrative that America is an evil nation founded by evil men, Jefferson included.
So-called “experts” dismissed conservatives’ concerns about the Left’s push to dismantle history, writing them off as a “false slippery slope.” But those of us who have been paying attention to the radicalization of the Left knew this was inevitable. They hate Jefferson and the other founders — not because of what they did, but because they represent a nation the Left wants to destroy.
Jefferson won’t be the last statue they try to tear down. They’ll come for Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and maybe even Martin Luther King Jr., as he advocated for a color-blind society. It will be up to all of us who still care about history and all of its nuances to defend them.
