Buchanan Decries "Old Heroes" Like Robert E. Lee Being "Replaced By Dr. King"

[one...two...tree 2,762]

In his latest column -- which is available all over the web -- Pat Buchanan asks, "Is America Coming Apart?" After pointing out some obvious issues where the American people are polarized (abortion, gay marriage, etc.), Buchanan delves into an amateurish dissertation about what makes a nation. Predictably, Buchanan's argument quickly becomes about race and heritage. In Buchanan's mind, a nation must be unified by "common ancestry, faith, culture and language," as well as "the same God." He goes on to imply that Mexican-Americans who celebrate Cinco de Mayo aren't really Americans at all:

In what sense are we one nation and one people anymore?

For what is a nation if not a people of a common ancestry, faith, culture and language, who worship the same God, revere the same heroes, cherish the same history, celebrate the same holidays, and share the same music, poetry, art and literature?

Yet, today, Mexican-Americans celebrate Cinco de Mayo, a skirmish in a French-Mexican war about which most Americans know nothing

, which took place the same year as two of the bloodiest battles of our own Civil War: Antietam and Fredericksburg.

Buchanan rambles in a similar vein for some 800 words. However, one passage really stands out, as he decries "old heroes" such as Robert E. Lee being "replaced" by the likes of Martin Luther King:

One part of America loves her history, another reviles it as racist, imperialist and genocidal.

Old heroes like Columbus, Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee are replaced by Dr. King and Cesar Chavez.

The fact that Buchanan identifies more with a man who fought for secession over one who fought for equal rights surely won't surprise anyone. Indeed, after his recent defense of Hitler, this will barely register. Yet, still, Buchanan is given a megaphone in the mainstream media on a near daily basis.

–Matt Finkelstein

http://mediamattersaction.org/blog/200909110003

[peejay 327]

Steven, instead of posting selectively edited hitman articles why not post the article in question in full and let the reader decide what to think?

Is America Coming Apart?

by Patrick J. Buchanan

Posted 09/11/2009 ET

Updated 09/11/2009 ET

Flying home from London, where the subject of formal debate on the 70th anniversary of World War II had been whether Winston Churchill was a liability or asset to the Free World, one arrives in the middle of a far more acrimonious national debate right here in the United States.

At issue: Should Barack Obama be allowed to address tens of millions of American children, inside their classrooms, during school hours?

Conservative talk-show hosts saw a White House scheme to turn public schools into indoctrination centers where the socialist ideology of Obama would be spoon-fed to captive audiences of children forced to listen to Big Brother -- and then do assignments on his sermon.

The liberal commentariat raged about right-wing paranoia.

Yet Byron York of The Washington Examiner dug back to 1991 to discover that, when George H.W. Bush went to Alice Deal Junior High to speak to America's school kids, the left lost it.

"The White House turned a Northwest Washington junior high classroom into a television studio and its students into props," railed The Washington Post. Education Secretary Lamar Alexander was called before a House committee. The National Education Association denounced Bush. And Congress ordered the General Accounting Office to investigate.

Obama's actual speech proved about as controversial as a Nancy Reagan appeal to eighth-graders to "Just say no!" to drugs.

Yet, the episode reveals the poisoned character of our politics.

We saw it earlier on display in August, when the crowds that came out for town hall meetings to oppose Obama's health care plans were called "thugs," "fascists," "racists" and "evil-mongers" by national Democrats.

We see it as Rep. Joe Wilson shouts, "You lie!" at the president during his address to a joint session of Congress.

We seem not only to disagree with each other more than ever, but to have come almost to detest one another. Politically, culturally, racially, we seem ever ready to go for each others' throats.

One half of America sees abortion as the annual slaughter of a million unborn. The other half regards the right-to-life movement as tyrannical and sexist.

Proponents of gay marriage see its adversaries as homophobic bigots. Opponents see its champions as seeking to elevate unnatural and immoral relationships to the sacred state of traditional marriage.

The question invites itself. In what sense are we one nation and one people anymore? For what is a nation if not a people of a common ancestry, faith, culture and language, who worship the same God, revere the same heroes, cherish the same history, celebrate the same holidays, and share the same music, poetry, art and literature?

Yet, today, Mexican-Americans celebrate Cinco de Mayo, a skirmish in a French-Mexican war about which most Americans know nothing, which took place the same year as two of the bloodiest battles of our own Civil War: Antietam and Fredericksburg.

Christmas and Easter, the great holidays of Christendom, once united Americans in joy. Now we fight over whether they should even be mentioned, let alone celebrated, in our public schools.

Where we used to have classical, pop, country & Western and jazz music, now we have varieties tailored to specific generations, races and ethnic groups. Even our music seems designed to subdivide us.

One part of America loves her history, another reviles it as racist, imperialist and genocidal. Old heroes like Columbus, Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee are replaced by Dr. King and Cesar Chavez.

But the old holidays, heroes and icons endure, as the new have yet to put down roots in a recalcitrant Middle America.

We are not only more divided than ever on politics, faith and morality, but along the lines of class and ethnicity. Those who opposed Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court and stood by Sgt. Crowley in the face-off with Harvard's Henry Louis Gates were called racists. But this time they did not back down. They threw the same vile word right back in the face of their accusers, and Barack Obama.

Consider but a few issues on which Americans have lately been bitterly divided: school prayer, the Ten Commandments, evolution, the death penalty, abortion, homosexuality, assisted suicide, affirmative action, busing, the Confederate battle flag, the Duke rape case, Terri Schiavo, Iraq, amnesty, torture.

Now it is death panels, global warming, "birthers" and socialism. If a married couple disagreed as broadly and deeply as Americans do on such basic issues, they would have divorced and gone their separate ways long ago. What is it that still holds us together?

The European-Christian core of the country that once defined us is shrinking, as Christianity fades, the birth rate falls and Third World immigration surges. Globalism dissolves the economic bonds, while the cacophony of multiculturalism displaces the old American culture.

"E pluribus unum" -- out of many, one -- was the national motto the men of '76 settled upon. One sees the pluribus. But where is the unum? One sees the diversity. But where is the unity?

Is America, too, breaking up?

http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=33517

[tallcoolone 102]

Jefferson Davis is and was the Greatest President the USA ever had

[peejay 327]

Jefferson Davis is and was the Greatest President the USA ever had

I'm sure you realize he was president of the Confederacy.

And, yes, there are still counties, parishes (Louisiana), highways, etc. in the American South that still bear his name. Just as MLK Boulevard is the longest road in America (since there is a MLK Boulevard in just about every city with a sizable black population).

[Danno 1,228]

Buchanan is The Man!

Love him or hate him.....

He is a puppet for no party and truly one of the independent voices of our time.

Edited September 13, 2009 by Danno

[tallcoolone 102]

Jefferson Davis is and was the Greatest President the USA ever had

I'm sure you realize he was president of the Confederacy.

No $hit Sherlock

I consider Jefferson Davis to be on the Greatest President the USA ever had in the last 150 years, and I put Ronald Reagan on the same platform

[HAL 9000 96]

Awesome!

And with that I leave for a Mexican Independence Day Festival. Have a great day!!

[AlHayatZween 2]

He's just pissy b/c no one ever invited him to a Cinco de Mayo fest, which are great btw.

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

What's more relevant to contemporary America: the heroes of the 18th and 19th centuries or the heroes of the 20th and 21st?

[one...two...tree 2,762]

What's more relevant to contemporary America: the heroes of the 18th and 19th centuries or the heroes of the 20th and 21st?

Robert E. Lee was pro-slavery and anti-American. I don't know anyone except White Supremacists who think of him as a hero.

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

I just don't see the relevance. Putting Lee on a pedestal is about as meaningful as glorifying Oliver Cromwell or the monarchs of the 17th century.

Even the famous ones like Henry VIII or Elizabeth I are remarked on for their contributions that defined the English State but I don't think any of them are held up as heroes in the patriotic sense.

[zqt3344 21]

Who is Lee and this King people? What is so scandalous about these two persons?

In his latest column -- which is available all over the web -- Pat Buchanan asks, "Is America Coming Apart?" After pointing out some obvious issues where the American people are polarized (abortion, gay marriage, etc.), Buchanan delves into an amateurish dissertation about what makes a nation. Predictably, Buchanan's argument quickly becomes about race and heritage. In Buchanan's mind, a nation must be unified by "common ancestry, faith, culture and language," as well as "the same God." He goes on to imply that Mexican-Americans who celebrate Cinco de Mayo aren't really Americans at all:

In what sense are we one nation and one people anymore?

For what is a nation if not a people of a common ancestry, faith, culture and language, who worship the same God, revere the same heroes, cherish the same history, celebrate the same holidays, and share the same music, poetry, art and literature?

Yet, today, Mexican-Americans celebrate Cinco de Mayo, a skirmish in a French-Mexican war about which most Americans know nothing

, which took place the same year as two of the bloodiest battles of our own Civil War: Antietam and Fredericksburg.

Buchanan rambles in a similar vein for some 800 words. However, one passage really stands out, as he decries "old heroes" such as Robert E. Lee being "replaced" by the likes of Martin Luther King:

One part of America loves her history, another reviles it as racist, imperialist and genocidal.

Old heroes like Columbus, Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee are replaced by Dr. King and Cesar Chavez.

The fact that Buchanan identifies more with a man who fought for secession over one who fought for equal rights surely won't surprise anyone. Indeed, after his recent defense of Hitler, this will barely register. Yet, still, Buchanan is given a megaphone in the mainstream media on a near daily basis.

–Matt Finkelstein

http://mediamattersaction.org/blog/200909110003

[one...two...tree 2,762]

Who is Lee and this King people? What is so scandalous about these two persons?

They were both Ukranian. One was from Kiev, the other from Vinnitsa. They both were caught in tumultous love triangle with a USC, both fighting for his love and devotion. You'll have to stay tuned for the conclusion.

[zqt3344 21]

You are a glubie Suka!

Who is Lee and this King people? What is so scandalous about these two persons?

They were both Ukranian. One was from Kiev, the other from Vinnitsa. They both were caught in tumultous love triangle with a USC, both fighting for his love and devotion. You'll have to stay tuned for the conclusion.

[Danno 1,228]

I just don't see the relevance. Putting Lee on a pedestal is about as meaningful as glorifying Oliver Cromwell or the monarchs of the 17th century.

Even the famous ones like Henry VIII or Elizabeth I are remarked on for their contributions that defined the English State but I don't think any of them are held up as heroes in the patriotic sense.

The point you might be missing is the word "replacing".

As newer, noteworthy people emerge in history.. such as King, it is fitting to name monuments streets, parks, schools, public buildings after them, it is shameful to RE-name these places, erasing earlier great men or woman with others,

just as it would be wrong to erase Kings name from a park or street and Replace it with some one else in the future.

Edited September 13, 2009 by Danno