New in PJ Media:
“We want to make this a national monument to the ‘Invisible Founders,’” said the Rev. Larry Walker, a trustee at Montpelier, the home of James Madison, father of the Constitution, in announcing plans to build a national slavery monument right on the grounds of Madison’s home. The Montpelier board is planning on a massive scale: “Our memorialization project is not going to be limited to a bench and a plaque,” Walker declared, as the board compared the projected monument to the Lincoln Memorial. If this thing is built, future visitors to Montpelier will come away with one overwhelming message: James Madison was an evil man who enslaved other human beings.
Board chairman James French showed the photo of the Lincoln Memorial in order “to illustrate…our desire to create a national monument for the legacy of those who were enslaved.” Montpelier CEO Elizabeth Chew said that the plan for a national slavery monument was one of “big future projects” planned for Montpelier. The board announced its big monument plans on Sept. 17 at a little-noticed panel session (the video of the session has all of 91 views as of this writing), “Equal Power-Sharing at Montpelier,” at the mansion’s David M. Rubenstein Visitor Center. The New York Post has noted that David M. Rubenstein, who got the visitor center named after himself by donating millions to Montpelier, is “on the boards of the globalist World Economic Forum, China’s Tsinghua University, and the Council on Foreign Relations, among others.” What a surprise!
Larry Walker explained, according a Saturday report in the New York Post, that he believed that slaves “deserve equal credit for the Constitution and the Bill of Rights because their labor financed the private lives of Madison, Thomas Jefferson, and many of the nation’s early leaders.” Why choose Madison’s home for the slavery monument when others among the Founding Fathers also owned slaves? Apparently because he was unrepentant: “Madison owned 38 enslaved African Americans when he died in 1836 — and unlike George Washington, freed none of them in his will.” Nor did Madison denounce slavery even while owning slaves, as did Jefferson. Walker asserted: “The home of the Constitution should be the place that recognizes the contributions of descendants of the enslaved communities across America.”
Before wokeness took over Montpelier and the rest of the Western world, it was generally understood that human beings were complex, and that a man could be heroic in one way even while having blind spots and weaknesses. Madison was much more than just a slaveowner, and according to the Post, “critics and historians say such a memorial would upend the fourth president’s legacy and become the center of attention at his own home.” Oh yes indeed.
There is more. Read the rest here.
Infidel says
Why even maintain it as a monument in the first place, if that’s how they feel about him? Let it become a private home to his descendants, whoever would be the inheritors to the property had he simply been a private citizen
CogitoErgoSum says
Yeah, they could just flatten the place and put up a monument to somebody who in their opinion did more for the country – like George Floyd.
CogitoErgoSum says
They could chisel into stone the cop standing with his foot on Floyd’s neck to re-stoke their hate for white people anytime they felt it subsiding.
gravenimage says
Because they want to to smear the Founding Fathers and everything they stand for.
Wellington says
I wonder if any mention will be made of the fact that thousands of free blacks owned thousands of black slaves. In 1830, as an example, some 4,000 free blacks in the South owned some 13,000 black slaves. This number rose to around 20,000 by the eve of the Civil War. William Ellison (1790-1861) of South Carolina was a free black who became quite wealthy and owned more than 60 black slaves. He sold his own illegitimate daughter into slavery. His sons also owned many black slaves.
American Indian tribes had an extensive black slave system, for instance the Five Civilized Tribes in what is now Oklahoma. The last Confederate general to surrender to Union troops was General Stand Watie. Watie was a Cherokee chieftain.
Many white northerners and not a few white southerners detested slavery and knew it debased, as Abraham Lincoln noted, both the slave and the slave owner. It was whites, not blacks or Asians or American Indians, who first realized how awful slavery was and thereafter took many steps to eliminate it. Slavery also functioned as a dead weight upon an economy looked at from a macro standpoint. Three political parties in succession were formed in the mid-19th century with their principal aim the eventual eradication of slavery in the USA—the Liberty Party, Free-Soil Party and the one that has stuck to this day, i.e., the Republican Party (why black Americans continue to vote Democrat is a classic example of a people voting against their best interests since the Democratic Party has been the party of rebellion, the KKK, Jim Crow and appalling policies to this day that keep blacks in a dependency state of existence).
One sixth of the entire British fleet in the early 19th century was the West African Squadron. Its main mission was to end the Atlantic slave trade. Between 1808 and 1860 it freed over 150,000 black slaves, captured over 1600 slave ships and this came at a cost of at least 1500 British sailors perishing in this noble effort. Meanwhile, blacks kept enslaving blacks all through West Africa, only too eager to sell them to white slave traders that continued to exist.
Will any of this be noted at what is to be constructed at James Madison’s estate? I doubt it.
James Lincoln says
Wellington,
An excellent – an important post. My compliments.
And to your point:
“Don Lemon roasted over royal expert’s answer on Britain paying reparations”
https://www.foxnews.com/media/don-lemon-roasted-royal-expert-answer-britain-paying-reparations-ready
James Lincoln says
Wellington,
An excellent – an important post. My compliments.
And to your point:
“Don Lemon roasted over royal expert’s answer on Britain paying reparations”
https://www.foxnews.com/media/don-lemon-roasted-royal-expert-answer-britain-paying-reparations-ready
Wellington says
Saw that clip many times, James, but thanks for sending nonetheless. Worth watching a hundred times.
Yes, Lemon not only had his lunch eaten by this astute and informed woman, she also ate his breakfast, dinner and midnight snack. But, as ever, we live in an absurd era whereby people who never owned slaves owe slavery reparations to people who have never been slaves. Translation in microcosm: Lemon will learn nothing from this Brit and will insouciantly go back to being the ignorant fool he is, propounding all kinds of fallacious hypotheses again and again and again.
If you can have gay marriage, 1st graders taught about transgenderism, and pronouns being sexist, expect all kinds of rot. I do. I am no longer surprised by anything. I am “merely” disgusted but still deeply concerned where mankind is headed, especially here in the West where freaks, perverts, zealots, the confused, the malevolent and the brain dead (e.g., Joe Biden) are now overwhelmingly in charge. Not lookin’ good.
gravenimage says
True, Wellington–but this does not fit the narrative.
Beneath the Veil of Consciousness says
+1 Wellington. I’m going to print your response. It pushes back hard on the skewed narrative that feeds the justification to hate white men. I’m so glad it was a woman who ripped Don Lemon’s snide and ignorant question on the issue of reperarations. BTW- While they’re at it, why don’t the Madison haters construct a wall commemorating all the fatherless Black children born out of the Democratic inspired welfare state. Unfortunately, it would have to be miles wide. Talk about a group condemned to hopelessness and poverty. But this might shed light on the importance of responsible men in the lives of their children. A fact the left can’t tolerate.