On Friday night, armed patriots lined the area around a Confederate statue in Brandenburg, Kentucky, that was expected to be defaced by a Black Lives Matter mob.
The 70-foot statue was moved to the site from the University of Louisville campus in 2016, and it had been identified as a potential target for angry rioters. It was originally erected in memory of Confederate veterans who were killed in the Civil War.
When protestors showed up bearing “Black Lives Matter” signs, people protecting the statue responded, “All lives matter! Go home!”
Some business owners in the area boarded up their windows in case violence broke out, but law enforcement was on hand to keep things under control.
The statue’s defenders got their message across loud and clear, and although harsh words were exchanged, the site remained peaceful overall, according to those present.
The mayor of Louisville, Greg Fischer, who originally removed the statue from the university a few years ago, removed a different Confederate statue from the city this week. It depicts a Confederate officer and U.S. army colonel John Breckinridge Castleman, and it is expected to be moved to his gravesite.
Statue madness sweeping the nation – where does it end?
Statues across the country have been coming under attack lately, and rioters don’t seem to care who they hurt in the process of tearing them down. In fact, one left-wing protester was left critically injured after being struck in the head with a piece of a Confederate statue in Portsmouth, Virginia, as a mob teared off pieces of the monument. Witnesses said he was left convulsing and bleeding on the ground with parts of his skull showing.
Yesterday, California legislators announced that a statue of Christopher Columbus and Queen Isabella will be taken out of the Capitol rotunda, where it has stood since 1883. In a statement, lawmakers said: "Christopher Columbus is a deeply polarizing historical figure given the deadly impact his arrival in this hemisphere had on indigenous populations.”
The day before, a statue of a Swiss settler of Sacramento who helped to colonize California, John Sutter, was removed on the grounds that he is believed to have enslaved Native Americans.
Columbus statues across the country have been targeted by rioters. In one incident, a statue of Columbus was recently toppled outside the state capitol of Minnesota. In Portland, Oregon, protestors toppled a statue of founding father Thomas Jefferson. Meanwhile, construction crews recently took down a statue of a Texas Ranger in Dallas due to concerns about historical episodes of racism and police brutality in the agency.
Not everyone who is part of the Black Lives Matter movement thinks this fixation on statues is important right now, with some saying this won’t save any lives and that the focus should be on moving forward rather than dwelling on the past.
This problem is not unique to America. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson recently wrote an op-ed for The Daily Telegraph in which he said that attacking symbols isn’t the right way to address the problem of racism.
He said that he’d like to see more monuments that celebrate the accomplishments of black Britons, but he called it “absurd and deplorable” that protestors were targeting a statue of Winston Churchill in London.
He added: “I will resist with every breath in my body any attempt to remove that statue from Parliament Square.”
It’s about time people started speaking up and defending our country from this insanity. These people want to erase our history, just like they want to erase America and everything we stand for – and the statues are only the beginning.
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