My latest in PJ Media:
If their objective is really to destroy monuments to slave owners (which it isn’t, of course: the goal is to obliterate American history in general and America itself), the Antifa rioters who are busy tearing down statues all over the United States have demonstrated more than once that they have only the most glancing grasp of the history against which they’re at war. They recently tore down a statue of Ulysses S. Grant, the Union general who, more than any other single person, deserves credit for defeating the Confederacy and winning the Civil War. But so far, a President who actually did foster racial hatred and injustice has not been targeted: Woodrow Wilson, who was President from 1913 to 1921.
Wilson remains a hero of “progressive” internationalists and a pioneer of American interventionism. As Rating America’s Presidents: An America-First Look at Who Is Best, Who Is Overrated, and Who Was An Absolute Disaster shows, Wilson articulated the messianic foreign policy objective that has prevailed in the State Department ever since his day. America’s goal in World War I, he declared, was not to protect American interests or indeed to do anything for the benefit of the United States at all; rather, it was to “make the world safe for democracy.”
But besides this savior-complex globalism, Wilson had an even darker side. He was born on December 28, 1856 in Staunton, Virginia to a Presbyterian minister and his wife, and was still a baby when his family moved to Augusta, Georgia. One of his earliest memories was hearing, at the age of three, that Abraham Lincoln had been elected President and civil war was on the horizon. When it came, young Woodrow saw his father’s church turned into a hospital for Confederate soldiers wounded in the Battle of Chickamauga and other Civil War battles.
It is unlikely that Wilson’s father was unwilling to turn over his church for this service. His parents were fervent supporters of the Southern cause, and it is clear that they imparted their sentiments to their son. Even after Woodrow Wilson moved north in the course of his academic career, he retained the racist attitudes he learned in his youth. When he became president, he made them U.S. government policy.
There is much more. Read the rest here.
curious george says
45 Communist goals for America
https://www.theblaze.com/video/45-communist-goals-for-america
Take note of Number 11,17,19,22,26,27,28,29,38,40,41,42.
truthout says
Yes very familiar with it.They have all combined in numbers and are using it at light speed to destroy us from within
truthout says
My question is this.Shall we judge totally with todays knowledge and cultural values or shall we judge from the timeline they lived in with the morals at the time? Also I think its high time we made an attempt to look at what else may have transpired and what having a lack of sunset laws has done to all of us collectively
For background as to why the feds didn’t intervene
https://www.history.com/topics/early-20th-century-us/jim-crow-laws
Here is the true timeline.Now read it and you will see that several laws should have had sunsets and I am not talking about racism.
https://millercenter.org/president/woodrow-wilson/key-events
truthout says
My apologies to everyone .I see the way I worded this makes it seem that I advocate or condone racism .That wasn’t my intent .It was meant to indicate that the second read wasn’t strictly about racism, it was about the other laws that went into effect ,that should have had sunsets attached to them .In some cases they shouldn’t have passed at all.
gravenimage says
truthout, you are quite right that times were different a hundred years ago.
That being said, most White Americans *did not* support the Klan, and segregation in government offices and the Civil Service worsened under his administration. He did away with merit-based performance being the sole criterion on Civil Service exams. Then, he threw Civil Rights leader William Monroe Trotter out of the Oval Office because he had challenged this increasing segregation. He was also a Eugenicist.
So Wilson was not merely racist by 21st-century standards, but also very much so by the standards of his own age.
curious george says
Sad to say, but discussions of this sort are only pissing in the wind. Woodrow Wilson is dead and buried, and so is the era in which he lived.
“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.”
– Ronald Reagan (1911-2004)
It appears the passing of the baton has failed. The U.S.A. is on the verge of a second Civil War.
“There are risks and costs to action. But they are far less than the long-range risks of comfortable inaction.”
John F. Kennedy (1917-1963)
Those on the left are taking risks and backing up what they believe in by “acting” on their convictions. They aren’t sitting idly by and wishing for change, they are forcing the change. In effect, they are creating an environment that will work to their advantage in the upcoming election.
And what is the “silent majority” doing?
gravenimage says
curious george, I think that pointing out that those like BLM and Antifa are not targeting “Progressives” like Woodrow Wilson is indeed salient.
If this was *all* that Robert Spencer and Jihad Watch were doing, then you would certainly make an important point–but they are doing *much* more.
curious george says
gravenimage says
If this was *all* that Robert Spencer and Jihad Watch were doing, then you would certainly make an important point–but they are doing *much* more
………………………………………….
No issue here.
The issue I have seems to be the passivity of those who visit this site, and others like it.
This site isn’t alone in the battle against the leftist agenda; there are others. Their expertise may differ from this site; however, their objective is the same, stand up for the truth, get involved, and make a difference.
To name a few..
Brigitte Gabriel @ Act for America
https://www.actforamerica.org/aboutbrigitte
Pamela Geller @ The Geller Report
https://gellerreport.com/
Frank Gaffney @ Secure Freedom Radio
https://securefreedomradio.podbean.com/
David Horowitz @ FrontPage Mag
https://www.frontpagemag.com/
Charlie Kirk, Founder of Turning Point USA.
https://www.tpusa.com/
Candice Owens – The Candice Owens Show
https://www.prageru.com/video/the-candace-owens-show-marc-lamont-hill/
Dennis Prager & Prager U
https://www.dennisprager.com/
My question remains the same: What IS the “silent majority” doing?
Historians indicate that Empires go through similar cycles.
1. The age of outburst (or pioneers).
2. The age of conquests.
3. The age of commerce.
4. The age of affluence.
5. The age of intellect.
6. The age of decadence.
7. The age of decline and collapse.
It appears that we are exiting the sixth stage and rapidly entering the seventh and final phase.
November is just around the corner. Frankly, I’m not optimistic about the outcome.
gravenimage says
Many here are involved with these groups, curious george–many posters here are anything but passive.
But yes–it is hard not to be pessimistic at times.
Mike Barry says
Anglophobic rubbish.
truthout says
Please explain your post. Anglophobic would mean scared of Europeans Caucasians .Rubbish is trash .Are you scared of what you think is white trash or the truth?
gravenimage says
How is this “Anglophobic”? Wilson was American, not British.
Wellington says
Not good enough. Not nearly good enough and you know this or should know this.
SAFI says
Who’s anglophobic? Wilson or the article?
gravenimage says
Woodrow Wilson, the Racist Hero of Progressive Internationalists
…………………….
Yes–this racist thug almost always gets a pass. Part of this is ignorance–but not all of it.
Wellington says
Gee, gravenimage, calling Wilson a “racist thug” is a bit over the top. Yes, he thought blacks were inferior, but almost all whites did at the time.
I view him no differently from the vast majority of whites in their era, just as I see Huron Indians thinking Algonquin Indians inferior and worthy of being skinned alive as inferior to others. Ditto for Romans about Carthaginians. And ancient Greeks about all other peoples (the very word ‘barbarian” comes from the Greek “barbaros,” “barbaroi” in the plural, to describe all non-Greeks as sub-humans because if a person could not speak Greek then they sounded like animals—barbarians going like sheep “ba-ba”). Ditto for sub-Saharan Africans (most recently in a very brutal way respecting what happened in Rwanda back in 1994 between the Tutsi and the Hutu). And then there are the various Asian societies who thought of each other as inferiors, e.g. the Japanese stupidly thinking themselves the “divine race” which helps to explain in part their “Rape of Nanking” in 1937. Even the ancient Jews I do not exculpate. Their demonization of surrounding peoples like the Philistines very conveniently fit into their God promising them the Promised Land.
No, I can’t call Wilson a “racist thug.” Please reconsider.
And I write all this to you with the conviction that Wilson is the more overrated President in American history (in part because he is the only President to hold a PhD, in history, no less from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, and so many historians are such snobs). Conversely, I think Calvin Coolidge and James Polk the most underrated Presidents in American history.
And even Abraham Lincoln, though he detested slavery, thought blacks inferior to whites, as brought out in his debates with Stephen Douglas in 1858 when running for the Senate from Illinois. So where does all this stop? Go down this road and history will be obliterated, not only statues but history in general.
Here is a question I regularly posed to students whom I taught, including black students, to wit, if you were a white born in the 19th century, what are the chances you would have thought of blacks as your equal? Virtually every black student I taught grasped this. The times do indeed define the man or the woman. After all, even Jesus never condemned slavery. But I digress.
Don’t mean to preach, though I could see that you think I am, but taking your world view back into past times and judging people by your Weltanschaunng is never a service to history or to the truth. I mean, just imagine if you were born a hundred (or two hundred) years before you were. What are the chances you would have thought of Negroids as equal to Caucasoids?
I rest my case.
Wellington says
“…most overrated…” and not “…more overrated…”
mortimer says
The school system is letting the young down tragically by failing to put them back into the mindset of previous times as Wellington so bravely tried to do. That is real teaching.
The Hellenic city-states were all slave states, and their democratic principles were not only racist, but far from democratic in today’s terms. But it was a beginning.
Every society has to start somewhere. That too was water under the bridge.
While not a paragon of 21st century virtue-signalling, Woodrow Wilson was thought very progressive in his time.
gravenimage says
Mortimer, this was when eugenics and support for the Klan were considered “progressive”.
gravenimage says
Perhaps an overstatement on my part, Wellington.
But that Wilson so often gets a pass is something I have long found concerning.
And while many of Wilson’s views *were* common for the time, his resegregating of the Civil Service is deeply disturbing, as is his opposition to ‘Negro’ suffrage, criticism of the movement towards equal rights during Reconstruction, and support for the resurgent Ku Klux Klan.
I want you to know that I have never agree with judging history by modern standards. The truth is that Wilson was quite racist even for his time.
Wellington says
Well, gravenimage, you made some sound points about Wilson. I chiefly am critical of his Pollyannish approach to international affairs which more realistic leaders like Lloyd George and Clemenceau thought was mostly pie-in-the sky sentimentality, as did Senator Henry Cabot Lodge.
gravenimage says
Agree, Wellington. The League of Nations was especially so. The worse than useless UN is its spiritual offspring.
gravenimage says
True, Mortimer–I think a salient quote here is Gustave Flaubert, who said, “Our ignorance of history causes us to slander our own times”.
James Lincoln says
Wellington,
To your point, “Archie Bunker” and his blatantly racist view on the subject circa early 1970s.
And, remember “Henry Jefferson”, who was a Black actor, was just as racist as Archie.
I get the humor – others may not…
Interestingly – and ironically, race relations in United States were much better in the 1970s than in 2020 – at least from my personal perspective. And, back in the day, I had some Black friends in college as well as med school.
2020 has put race relations between Whites and Blacks back decades. I predict that Whites will associate with Blacks only when legally required, lest they unintentionally say something “wrong” and lose their job, etc.
Wellington says
I think, James, that the real rot of our times respecting worse race relations began with Obama. He stoked the flames of racism time and time again, whether about Trayvon Martin, the Professor Gates tempest-in-a-teapot incident, the Ferguson/Michael Brown/Officer Wilson situation, calling central Pennsylvanians people who cling to their guns and their religion (thin code for white people), etc. Race relations were better, not great of course but better, before Obama became President and then things really started gong down hill. The ever increasing amount of Leftism taught in our educational system has also done a lot of damage, and getting worse by the year.
I still watch the Dean Martin Roasts that aired from around 1974 to 1984 and were terribly funny, without profanity and everyone was made fun of—Italians, Puerto Ricans, Jews, blacks, Irish, Asians, etc. Someone like Don Rickles couldn’t function in today’s super sensitive society. Damn shame. And those comedians back then like Rickles, Foster Brooks, Dean Martin himself, etc. were far more talented comedians than what passes for comedy today, which is often loaded with pc/mc, leftist didacticism. Just look at how late-night comedy has been ruined by the mediocrities spouting pc garbage and Trump hatred. They’re all pale imitations of the master of late-night comedy, Johnny Carson, whose political views to this day I still don’t know.
BTW, thanks for the clip.
Larry says
Wellington Wilson was not a thug because of his opinions on blacks but rather his opinions on the Federal Reserve Act which returned all to slavery!
Wellington says
An interesting “perspective,” Larry.
Marttheman says
I think Antifa is a misnomer, cannot we just call them Fa, because that is what they really are.
SAFI says
Today everyone and their mom seems to despise Woodrow Wilson for one reason or anoter. Racism is perhaps the reason most often cited by people who hate him, especially by leftist SJW types, but I’ve seen people all over the political spectrum attacking him for different reasons.
Conservatives for example most often hate him for entering WWI (after he promised he wouldn’t) , while libertarians hate him for creating the Federal Reserve. Communists on the other hand hate him for being anti-communist and intervening in the Russian Civil War against the Bolsheviks and so on… I’m guessing he doesn’t have many fans, excpept maybe in Academia or amongst Europeans…
gravenimage says
SAFI, Woodrow Wilson winds up in the top ten presidents in most polls:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_rankings_of_presidents_of_the_United_States
Larry says
BS about the top ten. We have lost our freedoms to the tax and spend thugs of which he was a member!
gravenimage says
I didn’t say I necessarily regard him as such–just that many Americans do.