Have We Learned Anything from the Destruction of Confederate Monuments?

On a bright September day in 2017, in my hometown of Dallas, Texas, a work crew removed a large, bronze statue from Lee Park. The sculpture depicted Robert E. Lee accompanied by a young soldier, each mounted on horseback, and had been unveiled eight decades earlier as part of the Texas Centennial. During that celebration marking 100 years of Texas independence, President Franklin Roosevelt had stopped by to help dedicate the statue, giving a short address. One might assume the decision to dismantle such a monument would only happen after long and thoughtful consideration, perhaps even some debate. In fact, it all happened in one short week.

To simplify things, a crane was already parked nearby when the Dallas city council convened an emergency meeting to vote on the statue’s removal. The outcome was predictable, and the city ended up spending half a million dollars on the project, bypassing rules meant to govern large expenditures. Petitions to wait until citizens had been given a chance to weigh in were ignored.

That same summer, as the frenzy to tear down Confederate monuments gained momentum, then-President Donald Trump remarked, “This week, it is Robert E. Lee… I wonder, is it George Washington next week? And is it Thomas Jefferson the week after?” He was panned by the entire media. Even self-described conservatives ridiculed or dismissed his comment. To suggest that removing Confederate memorials somehow threatened America was a non sequitur, we were told. After all, Confederate monuments don’t represent America. They represent something shameful, even antithetical to American values.

But many conservatives should have listened better to those who wanted the monuments destroyed. The iconoclasts repeatedly insisted that the monuments represented “white supremacy”. Even by that term’s traditional definition, no level-headed person would have applied it to monuments commemorating battles, war heroes and dead soldiers. But the fact is, the zealots were very clear about what they meant by the term. For example, in 2020 the Smithsonian published a pamphlet titled “Aspects & Assumptions of Whiteness & White Culture in the United States”. It featured a list of attitudes and values which supposedly demonstrated the supremacy of “whiteness” in America. But the list included things that until recently nobody would have associated with race at all – things like Christianity, family, and a love of independence. Previously these were simply known as “American values”.

It is no consolation that President Trump’s remarks have been thoroughly validated. In the past seven years, Progressives have targeted countless statues, buildings and placenames throughout America that have no connection to the Confederacy. During the 2020 riots, in my adopted city of Denver, Colorado, a statue of a Union soldier at the State Capitol was toppled and the words “defund cops” prominently spraypainted across the pedestal. Shortly thereafter, a statue of Christopher Colombus in downtown Denver was felled. To date, neither statue has been restored.

Have we learned anything from all of this? At the least, it should be clear that those who target Confederate monuments seem to know something many conservatives don’t like to admit: Southern values are American values. They are the values of a complex and imperfect civilization, but one that deeply cherishes faith, family and independence. Confederate monuments were built to honor these values, and people who hate America know it.

Let’s start with faith. Christianity has long been an object of scorn for many on the Left. In recent years the approach has gone from mocking Christians to portraying them as an existential threat to America. Take, for example, the journalist on MSNBC who earlier this year described extremist “Christian nationalists” as those who “believe our rights as Americans… don’t come from Congress, they don’t come from the Supreme Court, they come from God.” While some were surprised by these remarks, it should be no wonder people on the Left feel threatened by Christian beliefs.

Progressivism has always assumed human nature is malleable, and society perfectible. By contrast, Christians believe human nature is not only fixed, but corrupt at its core. This leads to the conclusion that society is not perfectible and outcomes will never be equal. It also creates a desire for government that is decentralized and ultimately accountable to God. Far from being a threat to America, these religious attitudes were so widely held by the founding generation that King George referred to the American Revolution as the “Presbyterian Rebellion”. Federalism, and the government eventually modeled on it, took these Christian assumptions for granted. Christianity has always been at the heart of America.

While Christianity is rapidly being replaced by the religion of secular humanism, the South remains the most religious part of the country. It is still not uncommon to hear Yankees and bi-coastal elites disdainfully refer to the region as the “Bible Belt”. The South and its people have always been associated with a faith firmly rooted in the American tradition. In the decades following the war, throughout the North and South, Lee and many other former Confederates were regarded as emblems of American Christianity. Significantly, it did not seem necessary to disassociate their faith from their identity as Southerners. People who vehemently disagreed about slavery, secession, or other aspects of Southern culture, revered men like Lee for their principles which were rooted in a Christian worldview. Americans understood that the faith of these men, and its implications for government, society, and our families, transcended political disagreements.

The family is also a perennial target of the Left. Traditional families reflect the biblical model of a married man and woman together with their children. The husband is often the primary or sole breadwinner, the mother is mainly responsible for the home, and the children are expected to be obedient and respectful toward elders. Meanwhile, the entire catalog of left-wing social policies is designed to undermine this model. From promoting transgressive sexual ethics and redefining marriage, to openly calling for the eradication of the “nuclear family”, Progressivism has been highly successful in weakening the American family. The statistics on extramarital cohabitation, abortion, and plummeting birthrates speak for themselves.

And yet, families have formed the bedrock of America. Many European colonial projects in the New World were essentially military and economic enterprises, but England’s colonies endured and thrived due to the settlement of families. The biblical convictions revered and passed on through families enabled Americans to endure the suffering and hardships attendant to life. Thereafter, families brought stability and cultural continuity to America. If Christianity is at the heart of America, the family is the vehicle that has transmitted American civilization from one generation to the next.

The importance of family is central to the Southern tradition. Still today, it is the South that is most closely associated with traditional family values and family structure. It is no coincidence that birthrates across the South remain higher than along the West Coast and the Northeast. Here again, leaders like Lee exemplified the importance of “home and hearth” in the life of Southerners. In the aftermath of the war, Americans continued to disagree on many things. But for people on both sides, Lee and other Southerners were honored for their effort to protect their homes and families.

Finally, Progressives hate the idea of independence and the personal accountability that accompanies it. Progressive policies are always oriented toward centralization of authority, resources, and ideas. This approach has a homogenizing effect that can be observed today in major cities across America where regional distinctions like local accents, customs and culture are quickly disappearing. Progressive policies enacted in these areas tend to deemphasize personal responsibility for crime, substance abuse and dereliction of family obligations; simultaneously, they encourage dependence on centralized resources. The shocking decline of our large cities is a testament to the destructive effects of these policies.

In contrast to this, the spirit of independence defined American culture from its inception. To be self-sustaining at the local level was the goal of the earliest Americans. Far from living in isolation, most people lived within concentric spheres of community that started with families and churches, moved outward to towns and counties, and finally to the state. Within each of these spheres, individuals were accountable to God, family and the community. Society did not descend into anarchy because libertines who tried to shirk personal responsibility were held accountable socially, and at times judicially. Those who committed private sins, or otherwise managed to avoid temporal justice, would certainly be held accountable eternally.

The South is characterized by this idea of localism and independence. From the beginning Southern farms were designed to operate as self-sustaining enterprises. The culture produced by this model was marked by hard work, sacrifice, duties and obligations. Independence was not conceived as liberation from responsibility, but the freedom to live unmolested within a traditional framework of local obligations. The war that followed secession was a fight to maintain the autonomy Southerners had enjoyed for two and-a-half centuries. Jefferson Davis captured the spirit of what motivated average Southerners when he said, “all we ask is to be let alone.” It is not surprising that for many decades, people throughout America naturally associated this with the “Spirit of ‘76”.

Southern values are American values. Or to put it another way, American values are Southern values. Many conservatives don’t want to admit it, but this is crystal clear to those that want to tear down America and replace it with something different. Symbols associated with the South were a logical place to begin. Americans had already been conditioned to automatically impute things to Confederate monuments which were never intended by those who erected them. As a result, those who hate America correctly identified these symbols as soft targets, low-hanging fruit in a greater project that aims to dismantle our civilization. And as President Trump and others predicted, it was only the beginning. Considering the facts, we need to ask ourselves: Are we willing, like our ancestors, to lay aside differences and boldly defend our civilization from those who want to destroy it?

Step back in time to a summer day in Dallas when President Roosevelt, a New York Yankee, arrived to dedicate a monument to the memory of Robert E. Lee. As already mentioned, the sculpture did not depict Lee only, but also a young soldier riding close by, as if in the general’s shadow. This young man was intended to represent “the entire youth of the South”, and though he appeared diminutive relative to his leader, he leaned slightly forward and looked ahead with confidence.

Roosevelt’s words that day reflect an America that understood clearly that Southern values, embodied by men like Lee, represent the things we cherish most. Roosevelt said of Lee, “All over the United States we recognize him as a great leader of men, as a great general. But, also, all over the United States I believe that we recognize him as something much more important than that. We recognize Robert E. Lee as one of our greatest American Christians and one of our greatest American gentlemen.”

Aaron Archer

Aaron Archer is a native Texan. He holds a B.A. in history from Metropolitan State University of Denver and an M.S. in Criminology from Regis University. He lives in Colorado with his wife and three children.

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