PIERS MORGAN: Cynical Democrats are presiding over violent culture war

PIERS MORGAN: COVID-19 is a deadly threat that Trump has shamefully bungled but cynical Democrats are presiding over a violent culture war against America’s heroes and history that could destroy it

What is the first thing you think about when you hear the name Abraham Lincoln?

I imagine most people would say ‘America’s greatest president’ followed by ‘savior of the Union’ and ‘the guy who helped end slavery.’

For these three reasons, you might think Abe would be spared the increasingly insane and anarchical mob rule protests in the wake of George Floyd’s horrific murder.

But no, he’s now been targeted too.

Last week, protesters threatened to tear down Lincoln’s statue in Washington DC.

It was built to commemorate the Emancipation Proclamation, an executive order signed by the Lincoln that put an end to slavery in the Confederacy.

The bronze edifice is an icon image showing him standing over a shirtless African American man with broken shackles around his wrists.

He was a real person – an ex slave named Archer Alexander, who coincidentally was Muhammad Ali’s great-great-great grandfather.

And like Lincoln, he fought for the Union and to end slavery.

Last week, protesters threatened to tear down Lincoln’s statue in Washington DC. It was built to commemorate the Emancipation Proclamation, an executive order signed by the Lincoln that put an end to slavery in the Confederacy

In response to protesters threatening to tear down the statue, the U.S. Army activated 400 unarmed National Guard troops to protect monuments in Washingtn D.C. 

The statue was intended to be a celebration of slaves being set free, one of the most important moments in the whole history of the country.

The inscription reads: ‘A race set free and the country at peace. Lincoln rests from his labors.’

Yet as the controversy over historical statues and memorials being removed gathers momentum, it has become a focus for Black Lives Matter protesters’ rage.

Now, Boston has decided to remove an exact replica of the statue.

The city’s Mayor, Marty Walsh, said: ‘As we continue our work to make Boston a more equitable and just city, it’s important that we look at the stories being told by the public art in all of our neighbourhoods.’

For ‘look at’, try ‘airbrush’.

Boston is removing a moving and powerful tribute to one of America’s greatest stories – the emancipation of slavery – because it’s bowing to protesters who don’t seem to understand what it represents.

Pressure is growing on Washington to the same.

And students at the University of Wisconsin have demanded another statue, just of Lincoln alone, be removed.

‘For him to be at the top of Bascom [Hill] as a powerful placement on our campus, it’s a single-handed symbol of white supremacy,’ said Black Student Union president Nalah McWhorter.

Let those words sink it for a moment.

Abraham Lincoln, the man who contributed so much to ending slavery, is now ‘a symbol of white supremacy’.

I despair at what is happening in America.

President Trump’s response to America’s developing violent culture war is a typically inflammatory dog-whistle effort to fire up his base with just months to an election he now looks like losing

Joe Biden and the Democrats have surrendered to those waging it with the same cowardly inaction that Trump has shown towards the coronavirus

This is a developing violent culture war that has lost all sense of proportion and perspective and threatens to rip the country apart.

I despair at President Trump’s response to it because he’s being typically inflammatory in a dog-whistle effort to fire up his base with just months to an election he now looks like losing.

But I particularly despair at the woeful inaction of Democrats who are sitting back and watching all this crazy nonsense happen and doing nothing to stop it.

The party’s presidential nominee Joe Biden launched a ferocious attack on Trump yesterday, saying he has ‘surrendered’ to coronavirus.

It was a perfectly justified allegation given America’s shocking COVID-19 death toll and the devastating surge in cases all over the country.

The President’s handling of the pandemic continues to be a total disaster and he deserves all the opprobrium he gets for his shockingly complacent, egotistical, and negligent leadership as the US plunges ever deeper into the virus abyss and consequent economic catastrophe.

But this savage, unrelenting culture war may end up causing even more lasting damage as it seeks to destroy everything the nation was built on and everyone who built it.

And Biden and the Democrats have surrendered to those waging it with the same cowardly inaction that Trump has shown towards the coronavirus.

Covid is scary, but it will be resolved either by a vaccine or drugs to stop victims dying.

The destruction of America’s very historical foundations is an irreparable act of self-harm that has to be stopped before it’s too late.

Let me be clear: the disgusting murder of George Floyd was a moment that demanded real change.

To watch a black man die on camera for nearly nine minutes at the hard, callous knee of a murderous police officer was something none of us who believe in justice and equality should ever forget.

It was astonishing to see the world rise up, or rather down as millions took the knee to show solidarity with #blacklivesmatter.

Conservative activist and Trump supporter Jack Posobiec (right) gets into an argument with anti-racism protesters in front of the Emancipation Memorial at Lincoln Park in Washington, DC

Protesters arguing both for and against the removal of the Emancipation Memorial debated each other at Washington D.C’s Lincoln Park

But most of them did so for the cause of racial equality and justice, and not to support the radical political aims of the organisation Black Lives Matter which wants to defund the police and abolish capitalism and whose UK arm has this week launched anti-Semitic social media attacks on Israel.

Nor, I would imagine, do the vast majority of those who supported the BLM hashtag and its more general meaning want to see America’s greatest heroes defaced and torn down by gangs of blindly furious protesters who seem to have lost all sense of what they’re supposed to be protesting about.

In the past week, we’ve seen attacks on George Washington’s statue, and Thomas Jefferson’s, and Ulysses S. Grant’s.

And now Abraham Lincoln’s.

These are the men who helped create America, for goodness sake.

None of them was perfect, but the good they all did far outweighs the bad – and it is frankly ludicrous to judge them by the evolved morality of today.

The protesters won’t listen to Trump.

They perceive him, with good reason, to be a race-baiting monster.

But the Democrats need to put their own blind hatred of the President to one side for the sake of the country.

America is nothing if it’s not its history and that history is being desecrated before our very eyes.

When the mob comes for a man like Lincoln, it’s time for all right-minded Americans, whatever their political persuasion, to say: ‘ENOUGH.’

The United States is under deadly attack from COVID-19, and much of the blame for the current calamitous situation with the virus can be squared directly at President Trump.

But America is also under attack from out-of-control intransigently illiberal liberals and much of the blame for THIS can be squared at other liberals who’ve stood by and let it happen.

Joe Biden spoke a lot yesterday about bringing America back together.

But that will never happen if such lawless mob rule is allowed to continue its shameful wrecking ball treatment of the country and its history.

If he wants to be president, then it’s time Biden and his fellow Democrat leaders stepped up and led the charge against the lunatics intent on eradicating the nation’s greatest heroes.

Source: Read Full Article