We’ve seen it on the evening news: ISIS destroying ancient structures that have stood for hundreds or thousands of years. Iraq and Syria’s cultural heritage being bulldozed, jack-hammered or blasted to pieces.
The Ninevah Museum in Mosul has been ransacked and pillaged, artifacts stolen and statues sledge-hammered to dust. Thousand of tomes and manuscripts from the Mosul Library, burned.
Gone are the frescoes of Nimrud, a once-proud city of the Assyrian people. Jonah’s Tomb in the Mosque of the Profet Yunas, destroyed.
The ancient ruins of the city of Hatra, believed to have once been the capital of the Parthian Empire is now used as an ISIS armory, execution site and training ground for ruthless ISIS fighters. Two Muslim shrines in Palmyra, destroyed.
Syrian heritage is being deliberately targeted by ISIS for ideological reasons. This is the ISIS version of Politically Correct. Anything that conflicts with their world view has to go.
Some have dubbed these acts as “war crimes”.
Director General of UNESCO, Irina Bokova wrote: “The bulldozing of the archaeological site of Nimrud marked a new step in the cultural cleansing underway in Iraq. These acts are a deliberate attack against civilians, minorities, heritage sites and traditions. In the minds of terrorists, murder and destruction of culture are inherently linked.”
One cannot help be appalled. And yet…
A similar cultural cleansing has started here in the USA, removing heritage sites and signs of traditions that those in power find unacceptable. It began when a mis-educated youth, who had adopted the Confederate Battle Flag as a symbol to represent his belief in white supremacy, killed a number of black people in a church. Since then, all things Confederate have been fair game for the cultural cleansers.
It began, of course, with the banning of Confederate flags. “It is a symbol of racism”, its detractors claimed. They, like the young man who had adopted it as an icon for his white supremacist views had been misinformed by the schools that were supposed to educate them. They believe it is a symbol of racism because they have been taught to believe it is a symbol of racism. Clearly, they’d not given it much thought, just believing what they were taught to believe. Like dogs barking just because the other dogs are barking, soon everyone was yapping about the Confederate Battle Flag.
Confederate Flags were the first to go. But that was just the start. Now we have statues being taken down and in at least one place, the remains of a Confederate general, Nathan Bedford Forrest, are being dug up from a Memphis city park that once bore his name. A statue of his likeness will also be removed.
In Annapolis and Baltimore, there are calls to remove statues of Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger Taney because he presided over the Dred Scott decision. His crime? Following the law.
Highways and high schools are being renamed to purge the names of slave-holders or Confederate heroes. Names are being sand-blasted off buildings and monuments.This is happening all over the country as Political Correctness aims to eradicate history found to be objectionable.
I don’t see how this is greatly different from what ISIS is doing. Cultural terrorists are removing the names and likenesses of those of whom they do not approve. Where will it end?
Will the Washington Monument have to go? Should “Washington” be expunged from the name of our nation’s capital? He was, after all, a slave owner. How dare we let this monster’s name endure!
And what about Jefferson? Washington, D.C. has a monument to this slave owner. Cities are named after him. Jefferson and other slave-owning presidents appear on our currency. Does it all have to go to satisfy the cultural cleansers in our midst?
Why draw the line at slavery? Doubtless there are other classes of miscreants that the Politically-Correct class can identify for expunging.
We decry ISIS for its cultural and historical cleansing even as we emulate them.
Our cleansing of Confederate symbols will not change history and makes no more sense than what ISIS is doing by their destruction of history. And ours is every bit as shameful.