Words from Theodore Roosevelt, firmly attached to a wall near the entrance of the Museum of Natural History, photographed by me in 2007, and dug up this morning on the occasion of the news that the TR statue will be removed from its sublime place of prominence in front of the museum.
The NYT reports:
[T]he museum’s president, Ellen V. Futter... made clear that the museum’s decision was based on the statue itself — namely its “hierarchical composition”—- and not on Roosevelt, whom the museum continues to honor as “a pioneering conservationist.”...It's important to understand this particular statue removal in terms of the specific statue in question, and not just the famous man. There are 2 other human beings in the arrangement, and that's a special problem. There is propaganda in the "hierarchical composition":
“The American Museum of Natural History has asked to remove the Theodore Roosevelt statue because it explicitly depicts Black and Indigenous people as subjugated and racially inferior,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said in a statement....
“The world does not need statues, relics of another age, that reflect neither the values of the person they intend to honor nor the values of equality and justice,” said Theodore Roosevelt IV, age 77, a great-grandson of the 26th president and a museum trustee. “The composition of the Equestrian Statue does not reflect Theodore Roosevelt’s legacy. It is time to move the statue and move forward.”...
“I’m glad to see it go,” said Mabel O. Wilson, a Columbia University professor who served on the city commission to reconsider the statue and was consulted on the exhibition. “The depiction of the Indigenous and the African trailing behind Roosevelt, who is strong and virile,” she added, “was clearly a narrative of white racial superiority and domination.”...
I would lean toward keeping such an impressive artwork where it is — because it's been there a long time and there's a sense of place and history to it. It's very obvious when you see it in person that a museum in NYC today would never accept a proposal to put up a sculpture like that at its entrance.
I've seen the thing in person a few times and always thought something like Whoa! That's a blast from the past! It's so absurd it's almost funny but I feel bad about anybody who has to see it all the time and doesn't have a sense of humor about it.
It made me reflect on the people who thought it was a good idea to put that thing up, to say what that object is saying, and to say it over and over again, permanently. These were Americans — not in the time of Theodore Roosevelt — but in 1940.
Did they think they were brave and manly, gentle and tender? They were about to fight World War II.
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169 comments:
I would think, the message the left declares the statue conveys, that Native Americans and blacks were subjugated, would be a message you would emphasize. Something to know and understand from a historical perspective, and as a way to remember the past, warts and all, especially the warts. Maybe my intellectual betters can explain how erasing history makes things better.
Free speech(expresion) requires all ideas have a right to the public square, to be experienced by all.
The only solution to obnoxious speech in more speech to explain the context. Not silence the obnoxious.
The statue-removers would get further with me if they suggested changes to improve things rather than destroy them.
Seems like nihilism to me: “having nothing here is better than having this imperfect thing here”.
No, it probably isn’t, but what is your plan to improve on this imperfect thing? Let’s hear it.
I oppose taking down the statue, but I have a similar reaction to the statue of Roosevelt on Roosevelt Island in DC -- I mean that it seems very old fashioned, not that it is hierarchical or whatever. There are huge tablets with Roosevelt quotes about "Youth" and "Manhood" with a message that I cannot imagine being permitted in public statuary today. I think the Youth quote is the same as the one you photographed above.
Nice post, Althouse. And I agree with you. I would leave this statue alone.
But it is certainly a nuanced debate over the artwork, and not the simple dialect that some of your commenters advanced in the previous post, where they indicated no acknowledgement that the Museum was only requesting the removal of the statue, and not disowning Roosevelt.
This story is an excellent example of the New York Times providing detailed, balanced, accurate reporting while right-wing social media dumbs it down so badly and with such oversimplification that the story is unrecognizable.
Then there is the arrogance: judging the past by today’s standards is okay, but there’s no possibility I could be wrong by some future standards, we know that for sure. We have achieved “total enlightenment”.
Okay champ. Got this all figured out, dontcha? Been playing golf with the Lama?
Teddy happened in an era when that statue was a true depiction of the white man’s burden. Pretending it was never true is not the best way to celebrate that brave Baby Boomer Americans And MLK have changed everything. Just treat it is the before in a before and after picture say thank you. Teddy would approve of Progress. But he would fight the bolsheviks to the death.
I received an email from our building manager that the statue in Boston's Emancipation park is coming down..
Emancipation Park/Lincoln Park and Building Board-Up
Due to the most recent events in Boston, management is seeking further information from the Mayor regarding the Lincoln statue and its removal. Upon confirmation of the removal timeline, the Board and management will address the removal of the building board-up.
I'm not sure if 'removal time' means 'scheduled by the parks department' or 'whenever the rioters get around to it'...
The statue in question: Emancipation Park
...and here I was campaigning to get flowers planted in the four urns surrounding it...
One plus, fewer kids around snapping pictures of the statue from the back. From behind, it looks like Lincoln's getting a hummer.
Question for TR and all here: What is the character of our nation today?
Like all Communists, the Left wants to erase our past, both the good with the bad. And don't let them tell you they are not Communists.
We have never been at war with Oceana.
How come they are subjugated and racially inferior? Is it because they don't have horses of their own?
To me, the statue says that the president is leading the nation supported by the strong good looking minorities. Perhaps that is condecending now. They should have been portrayed as saints flying above and ahead of Roosevelt leading him on to righteousness, like Sts Peter and Paul in renaissance painting.
The decline of New York City accelerates.
That would be a great place for a statue of a great President from New York City, Donald J. Trump. I'll bet he would pay for it too.
They have gone full i am legend and the zombies havent formally arrived yet.
The people who put it up, or rather the society that saw it as an appropriate symbol, had virtues that are now lost.
The moderns who are queasy about that statue imagine they are more virtuous than their ancestors, but they are not. They are collectively generations of the worthless. They could not do what their grandparents did. They are even failing to reproduce.
Forget history - and you can impose your own templates on the past.
The pioneers settling the country turn into invading barbarians, destroying the virtuous indigenous ever-so-wise-and-green peoples.
All motivations are turned into their worst possible interpretations. Leaving Europe for the New World won't be seen as escaping a stultifying, stagnating culture, it'll be turned into looting a new continent (well, to be fair Spain and Portugal were a trifle aggressive when it came to searching for gold...)
I hate it that we're seeing people using '1984' as a friggin' operations manual. They're destroying for the thrill and for temporary political power - but not caring one bit about the future. They're going to write it - so it doesn't matter what damage they cause, it'll all be glossed over and those who destroy now are going to be seen as liberating heroes.
At least, until the next cycle starts.
So, Roosevelt was a leader on horseback. This is almost as controversial as #BabyLivesMatter
Like all Communists, the Left wants to erase our pas
They are fomenting diversity (i.e. color judgments), notably racism, sexism, classicism, etc. in order to gerrymander democracy, suppress voices, and manufacture leverage over competing interests.
Keep All Statues: KAS.
Replace it with a statue of the saintly martyr George Floyd.
The people who put that up are those that made you great.
They gave you the world, they gave you the pinnacle of earthly glory.
They were self confident, often cruel, arrogant, tremendously brave, and enormously effective. So much so that the rest of the world saw them as supermen, however much they whined about it.
Can you imagine competing with them? Who would win?
I doubt most Americans today could admit what they secretly understand about that.
Its is simply the case that, whatever their defects, the (collective) virtues of those people were superior to those of their successors. It is not the place of inferiors to complain about superiors. Surpass them first, then you can say what you want.
was clearly a narrative of white racial superiority and domination
That's one prejudiced interpretation, but there is no evidence of diversity.
So, next, every single artwork in every museum in NYC will need to be scrutinized for White Privilege or Male Privilege or Heterosexual Privilege. If just looking at it makes any woman or minority or LGBT feel bad, it must go! Old Masters, your time has come. The authorities should take the opportunity to open up the museums to BLM and Antifa activists before re-opening to the general public to do the work of cleansing all art of its evil legacy.. The French Revolution is really here.
There is a lot of art I find repulsive. So glad it is okay to destroy it all now.
Can’t they just leave the statue of TR and remove the Indigenous and the African images? Problem solved.
I would lean toward keeping such an impressive artwork alone — because it's been there a long time and there's a sense of place and history to it.
Sorry but this "brave new world" the left is trying to build just has no room for such antiquated ideas as "history" or anyone's place in it.
Making omelets, eggs, you know.
It made me reflect on the people who thought it was a good idea to put that thing up, to say what that object is saying, and to say it over and over again, permanently.
They were Progressives. The statue reflects exactly how they thought at the time about race...until the Nazis took that view to its logical extreme. After the war it was hard to find someone who would self-identify as a Progressive.
But they're back now, new and improved.
It made me reflect on the people who thought it was a good idea to put that thing up, to say what that object is saying, and to say it over and over again, permanently. These were Americans — not in the time of Theodore Roosevelt — but in 1940.
This was only around 30 years after Teddy was president and 20 after he died. He was very much a living force in the imagination of millions of Americans. Yet this was still a decent and normal interval for waiting to venerate someone with a statue.
I get what you're saying about the other figures, even though they're rather majestically sculpted, wouldn't you agree? But the point of tearing down the statues is to tear down virtually all of them. Quibbling about this or that entirely misses the spirit of the thing. All signs of the past must be erased in Year 0.
It was an idealized portrait, silly rabbit are they going to bow and scrape before ant overlords rhetorical.
Replace it with a statue of the saintly martyr George Floyd.
Consuming psychoactive drugs, spreading Wuhan virus, while stealing from a store. #BrownLivesMatter
Roosevelt should have shared his horse in order to avoid future straw clowns.
“When smashing monuments, save the pedestals - they always come in handy.” - Stanislaw Lec
The dichotomy of "brave and manly, gentle and tender" is one that goes back at least to the Renaissance, and the notions of chivalry. Arguably, they are not opposites but in fact necessary for each other: you cannot be gentle if you are incapable of being harsh. Tenderness comes from a place of power, from confidence that you cannot be harmed by that to which you are tender.
They are even failing to reproduce.
Ah, diversity. When they are not pitting women against men, they are pitting people against each other. That said, voluntary dysfunction in the best case, and Planned Parenthood in the worst. #SocialProgress
The decline of New York City accelerates.
Progress: monotonic with variable slope and character (e.g. one step forward, two steps backward).
That quote is plenty to convict him of “white supremacy” in his own words today. To suggest that the intelligent application of honest toil is the key to success...
Sorry but this "brave new world" the left is trying to build just has no room for such antiquated ideas
It's a burden.
LGBT feel bad
The Transgender Rainbow, excludes black, brown, and features the shredded remains of white. Also, political congruence ("=") or selective exclusion. The age of Progress.
Sign me up for a dissenting view. In general, I oppose the removal of statues, and I think the current fad is insane, but for at least thirty years I've cringed at that particular statue of TR and wished it would be moved somewhere else. I am a little surprised that it has managed to last this long, to be honest.
They're not oppressed if they have a gym membership.
I assume the statue was commissioned with an intended message. Dos anyone know what that message was intended to be?
This NYT writer, Robin Pogrebin, is a child of privilege and likely beneficiary of nepotism. She should resign her position to make it available to a person of color.
One of the things I see missing from all these stories is TRs connection to the museum.
His father was a founder and finance. TR himself was closely associated with the museum from his teenage years.
He's not just some random president whose Statue has no real reason for being there.
John Henry
Looking at this issue in terms Spengler would have -
This piece was made when you Americans were a people.
Now you want to take it down because you no longer are a people, but a population.
This is in that view an inevitable process, and the inflection point of that change came during (most) of our lifetimes.
They're taking down statues at a museum. I think that's the important thing about what's going on here, rather than the propagandistic message of any particular statue. As to the people who haven't got a sense of humor about it, fuck them and their feelings. Go somewhere else.
Augustus St. Gaudin's magnificent memorial to Robert Gould Shaw and the 54th Massachusetts Regiment was defaced with the absurd slogans of BLM. Incidentally, it was in the process of being repaired to correct some structural issue. It was displayed in Paris before being set in the Boston Commons and was praised by Rodin as a work of genius. It is more than just a memorial statue, it is a masterpiece.
The Memory of the Just is Blessed
The men and officers of the 54th were true "Freedom Fighters" and American heroes. They certainly did more for social justice than any of the defacers. As Lincoln said, "But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract."
An interesting comparison between BLM and the Arab Spring movement.
In the background of the Arab Spring, the root control organization was The Muslim Brotherhood. Considering all of the connective similarities; and considering the U.S. advocates for the brotherhood are the same voices advocating for BLM; does it not stand to reason the BLM movement is an extension of the same overarching ideology.
It is not an esoteric intellectual exercise to compare the two movements because we’re not only talking about a similar level of protest, we’re seeing an identical set of actions in both groups. Not only are the advocates the same voices; but their purposeful action, the behavior to remove and destroy common cultural connection/heritage is the same.
The Brotherhood is essentially the umbrella organization for a multitude of Islamic factions. In essence, the Muslim Brotherhood represents political Islam. Similarly if you look at the structure of Black Lives Matter they too represent an umbrella-type structure for a network of individual political grievance groups. Both groups represent a cultural revolution by the results of their activity.
In 2010 the Brotherhood had al-Qaeda and militant factions within ISIS. In 2020 BLM has New Black Panthers and militant factions within Antifa.
In 2010 the Brotherhood tore down statues and symbols they identified as culturally oppressive to their political views. In 2020 BLM tears down statues and symbols they identify as oppressive to their political views.
Any individuals in common ?
As regards buwaya's points, the implications may be unpleasant, but in this case the cowardly self-loathing administrators of the museum are indeed the inferiors of TR and their other predecessors. Not fit to shine his shoes or, it turns, even to maintain a bronze likeness of him. These are the people we anoint or who anoint themselves as the keepers of our heritage, and they piss all over it.
"because it's been there a long time and there's a sense of place and history to it”
I kind of feel that way about Confederate statues, and that they will undoubtedly be replaced by Gramscian garbage. But I suppose that the argument could be made that the very beauty of their execution is some kind of statement about supremacy. I think that you could read Gramsci that way. BTW, the mayor of that little city in Indiana who ran for POTUS was the son of the foremost scholar of Gramsci in the United Sates.
I am sure that there were never any wars of conquest among the prelapsarian indigenous peoples of the world. At one time the thought that brown peoples were beyond sin was thought a racist 19th century belief, like the “White man’s burden.” Now it turns out that if you can truly accept that brown people can’t sin, only white people, this is a sign that you have, ironically, reached the highest level of intellectual evolution.
Or you could apply Occam’s Razor to the whole shyte show and accept that it’s just another manifistation of a Nietzschian will to power. Practically every gambit to take power over other people has been treated in the 3,000 years of Western literature.
Then there is the arrogance: judging the past by today’s standards is okay, but there’s no possibility I could be wrong by some future standards, we know that for sure. We have achieved “total enlightenment”.
It bore repeating.
A friend of ours, a Texas-born progressive who has been living in Seattle for twenty years, told us yesterday that every vestige of the Confederacy should be burned to the ground, citing Sherman's March to the Sea. This is a really good friend, and an intelligent man for all that he substitutes touchy-feely stuff for critical thinking when public policy is the subject. But he doesn't acknowledge the long-lasting damage and still-extant resentment caused by a military campaign that destroyed just the supplies and infrastructure of its enemies - not their cultural iconography or history. What he sees is, "We are the righteous and the rest just need to fall in line," with no credit at all given to the idea that his opponents may believe that they have a morally consistent argument too.
The irony is, his wife (a very successful Latina executive) has gone even further left than he has in the current circumstances, and is always sending him links to videos he "should" watch about the everlasting culpability of white people... and he's telling her (or maybe just us, knowing our political leanings, "I just don't feel that bad about myself." Last night my husband had to reassure him, "You're fine, you don't have to feel guilty for not buying into the All White People Bad stuff."
There are good reasons to take down a statue and there are bad reasons to take down a statue. In this case, in the environment in which it is being done, the public symbolism is support for the bad reasons, even if, on paper, they seem entirely reasonable.
There is a simple solution--don't expedite the removal process to make it happen now, in the context of our current Bonfire of the Vanities. Instead take it down following normal processes, which means it doesn't happen for a few years, after the current passions have cooled off and their reasonable explanation doesn't ring hollow.
That assumes, of course, that their reasonable explanation is the real reason, and not a fig leaf to provide cover for people who have the good sense to be ashamed of what they are doing, but lack the character to not do it.
If the Left is really serious about this, then both Yale and Brown need to be renamed. NOW.
Both were named for slave traders.
When does the Statue of Liberty come down?
Pogrebin who foisted that libelous screed that lingers in the book stores
I think it’s a form of sympathetic magic. They think that they can destroy a civilization by tearing down icons. It’s like voodoo or black magic. They sacked and burned Troy and it just came back as Rome. This happened even though they destroyed all of Troy’s temples. Turned out that the power didn’t come from the temples.
The thing I think is funniest is that these people are doing the bidding of billionaires, and you know what billionaires fear most is a. reincarnation of "trust busting” Teddy Roosevelt. They want the DC to be just one more satrapy of Alphabet, and Joe Biden is just the man to deliver.
So MLK is next? He too has "out lived" his usefulness. Right? er, Left? He preached the wrong message for our times.
"This piece was made when you Americans were a people.”
I am thinking seriously of moving back to Europe. Even if Trump wins, it’s only four years bought. Maybe the Basque region.
Replace it with a statue of Dolly Parton. It's a movement.
The mob rules us. Say hello to the new boss. Same as the old boss.
The liberal license. The progressive paradox. Roosevelt was a founding father... member of the Progressive Church.
When the mob comes for you, will the "brave and manly" show up? I doubt it. You've made it too costly for him and his family to try. Goodbye (Western) Civilization, I hardly knew you.
Indian tribes routinely kidnapped children from other tribes--and from white settlers--and raised them as their own. This is was happened to Sacajawea who met her long-lost brother in the wilderness and, thanks to his kindness, saved the Lewis-Clark expedition from starvation. Otherwise, he and his party would likely have killed the explorers.
Back in the day, those who survived the kidnapping and years later escaped wrote best-sellers about their horrific ordeals. Of course, their parents were long dead having been murdered.
Indian tribes viewed this as a natural part of life.
You don't hear much about this or the ways in which Indians tortured their victims. Both sides committed atrocities.
John henry said...
One of the things I see missing from all these stories is TRs connection to the museum.
His father was a founder and finance. TR himself was closely associated with the museum from his teenage years.
He's not just some random president whose Statue has no real reason for being there.
John Henry
Those historical facts are correct. But they were also clearly set forth in the Times' story.
>There is propaganda in the "hierarchical composition."
I think most artists try to focus the viewer's attention on their subject. Isn't that why almost all composite statutes are "hierarchically composed"? This is art 101 stuff.
The propaganda here is that it's a statute *of Roosevelt* i.e., that he's worthy of being the subject of a large piece of public art.
"The human soul has a sexual shape" Blaise Pascal
A man moves into mystery, relying on his strength of character, to bring order from chaos.
When abortion no longer feeds the beast.....
I admire Teddy, I think he is one of the great Presidents, but I have never actually seen the statue and so now I can see how offensive it is.
When do we get to take down the statues of the President Roosevelt who actually put American citizens in concentration camps?
That full quote is hard to find in copy-able text, so I'm guessing it's somewhat suppressed, but here it is in google books, from the Commencement Exercises and President Roosevelt's Address to the boys at ... Sidwell Friends School.
Since Terry Roosevelt was the first Progressive to get anywhere in politics, I am ambivalent about the left removing his statue. How about Wilson next ? Then LaFollette.
"I would lean toward keeping"
Well, that's very nice of you. But history is a tool: in that sense, of course, today's progs are doing the same thing as the people who put up the TR statue, as propaganda.
But the cleansing of the culture is not managed by Althousian leanings: it is meant to destroy, to propagandize, and to impose prog truth by force.
Progs do have a sense of humor: they think it's hilarious that the nice liberal women of America think their feelings still matter.
Germany still teaches its history honestly, but there are no statues to the Nazis or to Hitler. Germans do NOT want to return to horror of what they did and used to be, that's why they teach it in schools.
“The people who put it up, or rather the society that saw it as an appropriate symbol, had virtues that are now lost.”
I read the “we were Romans, now we’re Italians” bit when I was a kid and remember being amused at the time. But, Jesus, the contrast between us (and by us, I mean those people over there) and just a generation or two back is just incredible.
I think taking it down at this time.....when rioters are taking down any statue they choose...looks weak and capitulating. They just don't want their windows broken.
It's one of those....'hmm....probably not aging well' statues. It's really almost a caricature statue from another era. I'm not for removing statues, but that one, in that place, needed to go. Teddy Roosevelt should be honored and remembered. Not like that.
That said, you gotta love the last words on the plaque you had photographed. "Character in the long run is the decisive factor in the life of an individual and of nations alike." I wonder how he'd like the character of his nation today? He was not a 2020's man. He was a man's man and this is a woman-like man era.
Europe is more ahem emasculated tim, spain even more so, they same ready for al andalus
The game is get rid of Washington, Jefferson, TR, etc. Reagan will be on the target list when they get through. Of course, they will always give some bullshit reason, when they can't just get a left-wing mob to destroy the statues they hate.
The obvious solution was NOTt to get rid of the statue, but simply get rid of the African Porter (who probably carried TR's gear during his Safari) and the Indian. That's if the reasons for removing the statue were sincere - WHICH THEY ARE NOT.
Had it just been TR on horseback, they would've found ANOTHER reason to get rid of it. Because TR represents the Republican White Man.
This is no longer a country. This is no patriotism. Personally, I feel NO obligation to any American anymore. We're just biped occupying the same physical space. So, if you want my help, there'd better be something in it for me.
So why not just remove the two standing figures (to another location) if the "hierarchical composition" is a problem (which it clearly is)?
If I were a rich enough, I'd buy all the statues that are being taken down and display them in a new museum - the Museum of Banned Art, r maybe the Museum of Toppled Statuary
This isn’t the Roosevelt who sent American citizens into internment camps is it? Thought he was in a wheelchair.
Oh, it’s the other one, the robust one. And that black man could well be the slave of the Indian. And Teddy is pulling them both into the future
I have stood in front of that statue with each of my children and told them of my admiration for him. I am furious this statue is being removed from the front of a museum TR’s father co founded, a museum that sits in Theodore Roosevelt Park.
Ok, you've finally convinced me of white superiority.
Good to get it out of there to a safe place before it is destroyed.
If you are so inclined you can find offense in any and all of these statues and memorials. We are all imperfect and fallible, including the artists that make these things and the subjects of them.
I am intrigued by these actions of individuals that are so terrifically sensitive to the neuroses of the statue opponents. History is being erased, to no discernible effect on our current state of systemic racism.
Apologies for misspelling the artist's name: Augustus Saint-Gaudens.
As young boys, my brother and I frequently followed the Freedom Trail to visit all the historical places in Boston. The Shaw memorial was always my favorite. It had a tremendous emotional effect on me, feelings of awe, pride, sorrow and hope.
The most infuriating part of the recent crude vandalism was pray waiting the sophomoric slogans over the names of the black soldiers who gave their lives to the cause of freedom. Regardless of the controversy over the motivations for the Civil War (end slavery vs. save the Union) these men fought, bled and died for freedom.
"Did they think they were brave and manly, gentle and tender? They were about to fight World War II." My father was in that generation. And -- yes -- he was brave and manly, spending three years of his life fighting actual Fascists. Then he came home, married, and raised two sons and a daughter. He and millions like him were all the things Teddy Roosevelt called on them to be. They literally saved the world.
.
This may be a lousy statue, but when SJWs tear it out -- and every other statue or memorial that contradicts their puerile philosophy, indiscriminately -- then they insult the man I remembered and honored yesterday.
.
Do I have permission to be offended and angry at that? Or should I just know my place?
The Confederate statue controversy brings us to focus on the continuing insults against atheists and humanists represented in all the crosses, Ten Commandments monuments, the currency God and the god in anthems, oaths and pledges and public prayers. In the interest of liberty and justice for all, I've developed a "Jackson Holer" that will put a hole in a Twenty and drop God on the floor. A 1/4" paper drill will drop a stack of them all at once. I post the idea here, knowing that the CCP will steal it to wreak havoc on the Amerikan currency and encourage the gummint to come to its senses regarding Christian favoritism.
Which will go first, Mt. Rushmore or Stone Mountain carvings?
Next: Mount Rushmore. We have a lot of work to do.
Statue removal seems irrational because it is; it's self-loathing acted out by mobs whose motivation is atheism, nihilism, and envy.
Who's sensibilities make these calls?
How are they appointed? What /who validates their candidacy/position?
By what measure are their decisions deemed correct?
Are they infallible? Could the loss be unrecoverable?
Is it worth it?
What we need is a statue of the common man, the middle class working individual who really is the backbone of this country. It should be larger than the Statue of Liberty, and we could name it "The Unknown Deplorable".
Year Zero is upon us.
Is it offensive because he is on the horse and two beautiful strong men are proudly standing next to him? Is it offensive because he is in charge (I mean, he was, wasn't he?).
Tell me what is inarguably offensive about this statue?
Its an idealized portrait, now roosevelt was against anarchists his predecessor was killed by one another took a shot at him
Remember when the Left was so incensed with GWB over all of the artwork that was being destroyed as a result of the 2nd Gulf War?
Look around America today.
I'm still trying to figure out why Ulysses S Grant's statue had to come down. Wasn't he the guy who defeated the Confederacy?
Maybe we were still not at war with Oceana back then.
There are huge tablets with Roosevelt quotes about "Youth" and "Manhood" with a message that I cannot imagine being permitted in public statuary today. I think the Youth quote is the same as the one you photographed above.
6/22/20, 7:24 AM
I agree, those sentiments are laughably retro and outdated. Today, children are taught to be whiny, entitled, intolerant narcissists. And masculinity is seen as oppression, so we certainly don't want boys to be "manly."
What makes those quotes ridiculous to today's young barbarians is the idea that manliness has anything to do with being tender. Those men who were about to fight WWII would probably not have described themselves in such terms - but the troops who landed at Normandy also liberated Dachau and tried their best to care for the half-dead souls they found imprisoned there.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8DReSzEtB0
The shits who tear down statues have more in common with the people who built and manned the Dachau.
The irony is, his wife (a very successful Latina executive) has gone even further left than he has in the current circumstances,
Latins!? The Spaniards were real oppressors through Mexico/Central and South America.
I remember we used to make cynical jokes about that statue fifty years ago. It certainly represents a view that is outdated and that many people can justifiably consider offensive. It should be retired, but it should be given a decent retirement with a gold watch.... The immediate heirs of TR and, I guess, the civil rights leaders of 1940 didn't raise any objections to it. TR had a better record than his contemporaries on civil rights and that record was way, way better than that of his opponent Woodrow Wilson. Makes no difference. It's all very well to be right but you have to be right in the right way. This statue demonstrates that he was right in leading subjugated peoples towards the future, but he did it in a condescending way so knock him off his high horse.....Very few people lead lives of consequence and significance, and of those lives that have had an indent on history even fewer have had a benign impact. TR was right about a great many things. He's one of the good guys of history. He probably accepted white supremacy as the natural order of things, but that's not why we honor his memory. .... The topplers seem to have the upper hand right now and that gives me a profound sense of nihilism. Look at who they wish to topple and who they honor with their graffiti.
History IS a tool.
Before history there was myth, and that also was a tool.
And then myths became history, and we had stronger myths, because they were now indisputably "true", as in you had universities and professors and all.
The idea of history as some sort of science is a bit foolish, even if it is fascinating to us geeks, as we are geeks indeed, who live for detail. Most people actually need myths, of the best sort, which are history. Thats its purpose, instruction in virtue, personal and collective.
Titus Livius (Livy) fascinates me. He collected Rome's myths, as part of his history, those that seemed most true, or apt to his purpose, such as the tales of Coriolanus and Horatius, as well as masses of material of more recent vintage. He intended to shape the minds of the Romans, to virtue.
If the Left is really serious about this, then both Yale and Brown need to be renamed. NOW.
Both were named for slave traders.
Renamed? Hell no. Torn down.
"So MLK is next?"
Douglass first: he had some very incorrect opinions.
MLK seems safe for now, with the holiday and all.
But nonviolent social change, fornication fit for a retroactive #MeToo attack, and "all of God's children" make him vulnerable to prog attack.
Yeah, the statue is just like Tik Tok video- has to go.
The statue should be removed solely because Roosevelt’s words were the obvious inspiration for Casey Kasem’s “Keep your feet on the ground and keep reaching for the stars.”
How much longer will Mount Rushmore stand? TR is up there with two slave-holders and a Republican.
Self-sufficiency is now a bad idea.
Indulge in as much "taker" "you owe me" "you'll pay" sociopath revenge porn as you want.
The D-party condones it. But please, ignore the fact the Biden and Hillary are white slave owners.
Some are triggered seeing the statue; others triggered losing it.
Solomon: Remove the NA and AA and leave Ted astride his horse.
Ignore "PETA on line 1."
As a libertarian wise-ass who made my TR-admiring history profs frown by calling him "America's First Fascist President," I would be enjoying this current hullabaloo--except that I'm all too aware his statue is being removed by the gang that would probably prefer it to be replaced by a heroic statue of Che Guevara, or whichever murderous tyrant is now the current hearthrob of the Left. Maybe an iconographic religious statue of Saint George Floyd pointing a pistol at the belly of a pregnant woman?
Corolianus, is a fascinating tale in particular, that shakespeare took up 1500 years later,
I have a question about this statue:
Are the two men *tied* to the horse, or standing by its side?
If they are standing there, does it show a racial hierarchy? Or does it show something specific to Teddy Roosevelt, who was in fact a leader and kind of top of the hierarchy on a personal level? Roosevelt met with Indian leaders, right? But Roosevelt was in fact President of the United States. Roosevelt argued that white people had a responsibility to further the lives of black people (not so different than democrats today!). So does this show racial heirarchy, or the idea that Roosevelt, as leader, wished to guide marginalized groups forward?
If they are tied to the horse, that tells a completely different story.
The idea of history as some sort of science is a bit foolish, even if it is fascinating to us geeks, as we are geeks indeed, who live for detail. Most people actually need myths, of the best sort, which are history. Thats its purpose, instruction in virtue, personal and collective.
I'm reading Roberts' biography of Napoleon, which is good because he is more sympathetic than most authors in English and because he walks the battlefields and describes them today. Patton rode all over Sherman's battlefields as a young man. I have been to a few. The most recent Waterloo in 2015, the 200th anniversary. History needs to be more than reading about it although that is a good way to get oriented.
Of course, History is the first thing destroyed by the barbarians, as we see.
no that would be wilson, the patriotic leagues, the creel committee, the segregation of dc, that's who dubois recommended in his fools quest that would lead him to humor stalin, mussolini and ultimately kwame nkrumah,
tcrosse said...
How much longer will Mount Rushmore stand? TR is up there with two slave-holders and a Republican.
6/22/20, 10:39 AM
It would be considerably more difficult to take down Mount Rushmore than to remove a statue. Mount Rushmore is in a red state and it's the biggest - really, the only - tourist draw there.
Of course, the leftists are free to put up their own Mount Rushmore in say, California or Washington State, featuring Obama, Che, Marx and George Floyd. They'd also need some feminist and LGBTQ representation of course, so they could include AOC and the Jenner formerly known as Bruce. Heroes for our time.
ot:
As soon as YOUR LEFT-wing anarchists begin to make YOU look bad, turn it all around and blame those pesky right-wingers.
Seattle Council Member Who Encouraged CHOP Claims Shooting Could Be ‘Right Wing’ Attack, Says President Trump ‘Bears Direct Responsibility’
You have to hand it to the liar left. They lie about.... everything.
No love for "The Man in the Arena"? One of the best fucking quotes of all time...
"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."
10:16 - Exiled.
Indeed.
In response to "So MLK next?" Sebastian wrote:
"Douglass first: he had some very incorrect opinions."
Indeed. He was sort of a proto-libertarian libertarian. See, for example, he statements on socialism. Bernie Bros and other morons would not approve.
Remove the Indian and the African.
Leave TR alone.
Problem solved.
sunsong: "Germany still teaches its history honestly, but there are no statues to the Nazis or to Hitler. Germans do NOT want to return to horror of what they did and used to be, that's why they teach it in schools."
And that's why sunsong's allies have attacked statues and memorials to George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Francis Scott Key, US Grant, Gandhi, Winston Churchill, African-Americans who fought in WW2 and the Civil War, Cervantes, Father Junipero Serra, etc.
Because of the Germans or the Confederacy or something.
sunsong once again displaying that rock solid "logic" she has become famous for at Althouse blog......
Not news that public statuary = propaganda. The victors always get to decide, and they just as frequently decide to celebrate themselves. The old confederates (Democrats to a man) won the reconstruction wars and then put up all those statues of dead, white Democrats that now seem a bit icky.
Many have noted that revolutions eat their own. One of the newer hastags is #CancelYale, its namesake (Elihu Yale) having had some connection to the slave trade. Let's see how the wokidokes in charage at Old Eli decide to deal with that (for the moment, the Yale admin isn't saying). If so, only fair that fair John Harvard get the same treatment -- for a white guy dying young who served as a puritan minister in 1630s Boston, there must be some anti-woke thought-crimes that can be attached to him (anti-gay, white and male supremacist for sure). Time to cancel them all and start afresh, using only approved names and images. No white men need apply.
And then what? Is Marcus Aurelius next (fortunately, it's only a copy)? Homer and Vergil, too -- all that ridiculous stuff about singing the praises of arms and the man is obviously contrary to today's Values.
Bilwick said...
In response to "So MLK next?" Sebastian wrote:
"Douglass first: he had some very incorrect opinions."
**********
Just the other night, I overheard my late-twenty-somethings tenants talking out on the patio.
The Howard Zinn devotee was going on about something to do with white racism, when his light-skinned African American roommate, no Howard Zinn fan, reminded him that Frederick Douglass was a Republican.
Cognitive dissonance ensued.
take thucydides and herodotus, the former was a pericles partisan, and as such excuses the messes that his faction did in blundering into the pelopenessian war, I'm indebted to donald kagan for the insight, herodotus didn't have an agenda, he wanted a good story, sone elements like the giants that appear in 300 seem dubious,
moving on tacitus, was a senator and hence regards emperors specially claudius who purged the senate with contempt, procopius wrote two memoirs, one cloying toward justinian and his wife, the other an acid screed the secret history,
The best part of this is LLR-lefty Chuck reprising his role as "principled conservative" (LOL) who is here to make The "Conservative" Case For Why Whitmer Should Be Reelected, Theodore Roosevelt Should Be Cancelled, The Radical Left Needs To Be Empowered,Dick Durbin Remains A National Treasure The New York Times Is The Epitome Of A Truth-telling Operation.
LOLOLOLOLOLOL
It's just too perfect, isn't it?
move about a 1,000 years, il macchia, was a zealous supporter of the borgias and painted any rival, like catherina sforza, in dark relief, it took elizabeth lew to untagle that knot, five hundred years later,
Jeff Brokaw said...
Then there is the arrogance: judging the past by today’s standards is okay, but there’s no possibility I could be wrong by some future standards, we know that for sure. We have achieved “total enlightenment”.
********************
Ever spend time watching animals interact with other animals on YouTube?
They show a very surprising amount of intelligence and emotion. Even creativity.
Fast forward twenty years or so, when science figures out just how much smarter these "dumb beasts" are, and realizes that our meat-eating has caused horrendous amount of suffering to tens of billions of sentient beings.
You think future generations might look back on us unenlightened folk as utter barbarians?
YA THINK?
Any day now, I expect Chris Wallace to announce:
"I, for one, welcome our totalitarian overlords."
A Hill Not to Die on -
The Roosevelt statue is unquestionably racist and its interpretation of T Roosevelt comes directly out the eugenic history that stains the history of the American Museum of Natural History. In its early days the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) was dominated by Henry Fairfield Osborn Sr, a wealthy supporter of eugenics and racism. Osborn wrote the Preface for the Passing of the Great Race by Madison Grant which is the essential text for the dominant theory of racism as practiced in the United States. And it also inspired the Nazis and their program of extermination. President: American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) 1908-1933. Osborn was succeeded by F Trubee Davison , son of HP Davison, a contemporary of HF Osborn and a member of the American Eugenics Society in 1930. President AMNH 1933-1935. Davison was succeeded by Roy Chapmen Andrews who was hired by HF Osborn and who carried out field expeditions in the Gobi and Mongolia attempting to prove HF Osborn's theory that the birthplace of mankind was Asia. Andrews and Osborn were prime opponents of the correct Out of Africa theory. The difference between the way the Indian looks with his cultural equipment looking forward and way the African looks without any cultural signs and looking downward in the statuary group reflects the Out of Asia theory and is essentially racist. [https://equestrianstatue.org/roosevelt-theodore/] President AMNH 1935-1951. During World War II the Acting President of the AMNH was A. Perry Osborn, the son of HF Osborn Sr. In addition, A. Perry Osborn was Chairman of the Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Association which contracted for the statue. It can be argued that Theodore Roosevelt would not have supported the Nazis and their development of eugenic theory since he died in 1919 and did not live to see where eugenics was going. The same cannot be said of A Perry Osborn or Roy Chapman Andrews in 1936. Acting President, AMNH 1941-1946.
Sources:
Madison Grant / HF Osborn Sr.
http://eugenicsarchive.ca/discover/connections/53eea903803401daea000001
Jonathan P. Spiro (2009). Defending the Master Race: Conservation, Eugenics, and the Legacy of Madison Grant. Univ. of Vermont Press; documents collaborative links between Madison Grant and HF Osborn Sr. The best book ever written on how a good idea, namely, conservation develops into bad idea, namely, support for eugenics, the KKK and the Nazi racial programs.
A. Perry Osborn
Princeton Alumni Weekly, Volume 51
Theodore Roosevelt would not have supported the Nazis and their development of eugenic theory since he died in 1919 and did not live to see where eugenics was going
Planned Parenthood, reproductive rites, her Choice (e.g. selective-child, cannibalized-child) under the Pro-Choice religion of the Progressive Church. And racism has evolved and normalized as diversity (i.e. color judgments, denial of individual dignity) under the same religion and Church. Roosevelt was a classical or old-fashioned Progressive before it liberalized (i.e. diverged).
Every once in awhile, a criminal will do something that will make him a legend in prison or in the neighborhood. No doubt there are names unknown to general public but circulated among the more organized rioters and troublemakers....
So and so pulled down such and such a statue is bound to be a local badge of honor among these people .
The holy grail is the Statue of Liberty. It will take more than a drunken escapade in the middle of the night to pull it off but the one who gets it done will be a hero.
the birthplace of mankind was Asia. Andrews and Osborn were prime opponents of the correct Out of Africa theory. The difference between the way the Indian looks with his cultural equipment looking forward and way the African looks without any cultural signs and looking downward in the statuary group reflects the Out of Asia theory and is essentially racist
They opposed the "correct Out of Africa" theory. Whereas the "Out of Asia" theory is essentially diversitist, even rabid.
Seattle Council Member Who Encouraged CHOP Claims Shooting Could Be ‘Right Wing’ Attack
Did they self-identify? Are they eligible for reduced or suspended sentences, and a lucrative contract or stipends from an em-pathetic corporation or institution, a public smoothing function (e.g. welfare)?
"courage hard
work self
mastery..."
sounds like a euphemism for self pleasure.
I am not laslo.
Eugenics, phrenology, mesmerism, Freud, dialectical materialism, anarchism. Marxism. History is littered with any number of bad ideas. Why is eugenics such a hideous thought crime as opposed to these other bad ideas? Marxism seems to have the highest body count, and there was no real science behind it. No one comments on the connective tissue between Beatrice Webb and the gulags.....Eugenics deserves to be discredited, but why paint people like Oliver Wendell Holmes with the same brush used for Adolf Hitler? Does Garibaldi and his Redshirts have anything to do with Hitler and his Brownshirts?.....It's interesting to note how the left never draws any lines between their bad ideas and unpleasant current events.
Are the two men *tied* to the horse, or standing by its side?
Theodore Roosevelt Equestrian Statue
Both men are are standing to the side, and armed. Roosevelt is characteristically atop a horse leading the way. There is no evidence of diversity or that it is a motive in how each man is depicted. Did the Maasai have horses?
Dave Begley said...If the Left is really serious about this, then both Yale and Brown need to be renamed. NOW.
I'm a Yale alum, and I predict that we will see student protests in the coming school year in favor of renaming the university. I don't see the university changing its name right away, but my bet is that it's only a matter of time.
When will the good people of Madison decide it best that their town nor be named after a slaveholder? I propose :
Ho-poe-kaw, or Glory of the Morning, was the first woman described in the textual record of Wisconsin.
The last known Ho-Chunk female chief, Ho-poe-kaw was chosen to lead her people around 1727, when she was 18.
The following year she married Sabrevoir Descaris, a French officer who resigned his commission to become a fur trader. At the time, the French and their Indian trading partners were harassed by the Meskwaki, or Fox, Indians, who commanded strategic points on the Fox River, demanding tribute from everyone who passed. Under Ho-poe-kaw's leadership, the Ho-Chunk sided with the French against the Meskwaki in several battles during the 1730s and 1740s.
After seven years of marriage and three children, Ho-poe-kaw and her sons were abandoned by her French husband. He left Wisconsin to re-enlist and took their only daughter. In 1760 he died of wounds suffered in battle at Quebec.
While Descaris himself became but a footnote to family history, other family members became famous bearing an alternate form of his name, Decorah.
Ho-poe-kaw continued to lead her people, though how long is unknown. English traveler Jonathan Carver visited her in 1766 at modern-day Neenah-Menasha and left an account of her in his book.
She was never reunited with her daughter, who lived among whites in Quebec and eventually married a trader in Montreal. Ho-poe-kaw's two sons succeeded her as chiefs of a Ho-Chunk village near Portage that later became a town called Dekorra. One son signed the first peace treaty with the U.S. in 1816, shortly before he died.
conservation develops into bad idea, namely, support for eugenics, the KKK and the Nazi racial programs
It is progressive programs that support selective-child, cannibalized-child; some, select, Black Lives Matter; and diversity (i.e. color judgments including racism, sexism, classicism). Selective-Jew or life deemed unworthy of life, Planned Jew including abortion chambers and Menegele clinics, and diversity that denied individual dignity of Jews and others; and redistributive change or the Jews have to much.
A hill not to die on, indeed.
The Roosevelt statue is unquestionably racist and its interpretation of T Roosevelt comes directly out the eugenic history that stains the history of the American Museum of Natural History.
You know who else was racist and into eugenics? The founder of Planned Parenthood.
Margaret Sanger who wanted to abort blacks and idiots.
Wikipedia is trying very hard to hide that history.
Sanger worked with African American leaders and professionals who saw a need for birth control in their communities. In 1929, James H. Hubert, a black social worker and the leader of New York's Urban League, asked Sanger to open a clinic in Harlem
Sure he did.
There is no evidence of diversity or that it is a motive in how each man is depicted. Did the Maasai have horses?
Thank you nn. Do you mean there is no evidence of supremacy?
Forgot to give credit — Wisconsin State Historical Society
Now you want to take it down because you no longer are a people, but a population.
Ouch!
Remember, the Unite the Right rally happened because people peaceably assembled to protest and petition the government to reverse the decision to remove the Lee statue. BLM and Anti1a (Proud Boys and Boogaloos, in Igna-speak) weren’t there to petition for anything, since they already won, nor were they peaceable. They were there to violently shut down the people’s constitutional rights, in violation of federal civil rights laws. Some of them explicitly said so, including DeAndre Harris, who should be in prison.
I have no problem with removing statues or monuments, if done lawfully by the will of the people, but I’m always against unruly mobs. Still, I enjoyed watching Jefferson Davis smack that rioter. Sure, his skull was cracked open, but it couldn’t have done much damage.
>>The holy grail is the Statue of Liberty. It will take more than a drunken escapade in the middle of the night to pull it off but the one who gets it done will be a hero.
They could start with the smaller version in Paris, on the Isle of Swans.
I'd be very curious to see the French reaction.
What is going to be interesting is that the next target is rumored to be Christian statuary. Raised Calvinist, I was taught that it was Popist iconage, violative of our (and the Jewish) version of the Ten Commandments. Sunni Islam tends to agree. Hence the destruction of religious statues and the like in territory conquered for a time by Muslim Brotherhood parented terrorism groups like the Taliban, al Quaeda, and ISIS. I have lived for over twenty years now with a Roman Catholic, and my feelings towards members of that faith have mellowed to the extent that I would actively, including by force of arms, oppose such mob removal of their statuary. But opposed to a much more ecumenical Christianity are an alliance of godless Marxists, in groups like AntiFA, as well as an emboldened and coddled Islam in this country. Can, and will, the Christians, and esp the Roman Catholics, In this country stand up against this?
Teddy Roosevelt was an adventurer and naturalist, writing many, many books. Much of the original collection of specimens were hunted by TR. It is possible that the Native American represents the guides from his expeditions to the American West and the African the guides from his expeditions to Africa.
That recent multi-volume biography of TR is excellent.
Can, and will, the Christians, and esp the Roman Catholics, In this country stand up against this?
The Bishops will be washing blacks' feet. The Church did not survive the 60s well.
They could start with the smaller version in Paris, on the Isle of Swans.
I'd be very curious to see the French reaction.
There is also a smaller one in Buenos Aires.
The game is get rid of Washington, Jefferson, TR, etc. Reagan will be on the target list when they get through. Of course, they will always give some bullshit reason, when they can't just get a left-wing mob to destroy the statues they hate.
The obvious solution was NOTt to get rid of the statue, but simply get rid of the African Porter (who probably carried TR's gear during his Safari) and the Indian. That's if the reasons for removing the statue were sincere - WHICH THEY ARE NOT.
Had it just been TR on horseback, they would've found ANOTHER reason to get rid of it. Because TR represents the Republican White Man.
This is no longer a country. This is no patriotism. Personally, I feel NO obligation to any American anymore. We're just biped occupying the same physical space. So, if you want my help, there'd better be something in it for me.
Oh c’mon Ann, it has not been there as long as the definition of sex,. It’s overthrow seemed applause worthy to you.
OK, let me explain what the Teddy Roosevelt monument is all about. Teddy, as I like to call him, is leading two of the lower caste of Americans forward, having already taught them to walk softly, he is now on a mission to teach them how to carry the bigly stick.
I'd like to have that monument in my front yard.
Bruce Hayden said...
What is going to be interesting is that the next target is rumored to be Christian statuary."
That'll go over real well with church-going blacks and Hispanic Catholics.
I know black people who spend the better part of Sunday in church. They may or may not care about statues of Theodore Roosevelt, but I think desecrating and destroying statues of Jesus might upset them a bit.
"I want to see you brave and manly and I also want to see you gentle and tender."
While the phrase first appeared on a statue of Teddy "Ted" Roosevelt in the context of "game boys", it resurfaced decades later in the coach-and-team-themed porn film, "Gaym Boys".
They could start with the smaller version in Paris, on the Isle of Swans.
I'd be very curious to see the French reaction.
6/22/20, 2:16 PM
Macron has said he's not putting up with this destroy all the statues horseshit.
This appears to be largely an Anglosphere phenomenon. The ancient Romans were definitely slave owners but I don't see the Italians destroying their statues.
Macron has said he's not putting up with this destroy all the statues horseshit.
The French aren't into White Guilt.
It didn't take long for this to be proposed"
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/06/tear-race-activist-shaun-king-calls-removal-statues-white-jesus-european-mother/
sunsong: "Germany still teaches its history honestly, but there are no statues to the Nazis or to Hitler. Germans do NOT want to return to horror of what they did and used to be, that's why they teach it in schools."
You’re joking, of course. Germany doesn’t teach it’s Nazi past honestly, they blank it out. Ban the swastika so no one asks uncomfortable questions about what it means. Works for me. Let’s just not talk about slavery. Or Injuns.
has anyone noted that many of the "Rough Riders" who helped Teddy Roosevelt in the famous battle of San Juan hill were Buffalo soldiers, i.e. Black soldiers? Or that he helped the Native Americans obtain tribal rights? Or are those stories ignored by those not knowing history?
Take'em all down. Melt down the bronzes and make bullets. It's coming to that sooner than we ever thought.
The statue interprets Teddy Roosevelt. We don't have to agree with that interpretation of him. It interprets him in line with the known views of Henry Fairfield Osborn and Roy Chapman Andrews and the other leaders of the American Museum of Natural History at that time. And those views were racist, segregationist, and an inspiration to Hitler. If there was only going to be one statue in America to come down that would be the one. I don't regard it as a correct interpretation of Roosevelt. And all the more reason to take it down.
It's pretty useless to say "read a book" when a controversy is in full swing but all the same if you want to know how to interpret that statue there is a book: Defending the Master Race by Jonathan Spiro. It's about the figures - Henry Fairfield Osborn and Madison Grant - who built up the theories which the statue embodies. I'm not just looking at the thing. And here's why you might want to read the book some time. It describes how the ideas of Madison Grant evolved over time from conservation to support for the Nazis. We are asking ourselves right now I think how it happens that a good idea like America can be so problematic for some. And the answer is that a good idea can be changed bit by bit by bit into its opposite while the same words keep being used as was done by the Confederates. And Spiro shows this process happening as conservation becomes a policy of extermination. Just as Black Lives Matter is changing before our eyes into Black Lives (in Chicago and CHOP and NYC don't) Matter.
"there are no statues to the Nazis or to Hitler"
TR == Hitler? Good to know.
And after WW II Frederick Osborn, Henry Fairfield Osborn's nephew, "reformed" the American Eugenics Society. He supported Franz Boas; he opposed segregation and anti-Semitism. He set up the Population Council and helped found Planned Parenthood. He initiated studies of IQ through the Pioneer Fund of which he was the second President. When Charles Murray said that the lower IQ in the African-American community was the cause of their poverty and was a reason to make contraceptives and abortion freely available to this group which cannot sustain a place in a technological society, Murray was continuing the pattern of thought initiated by the "reforms" to the American Eugenics Society initiated by Frederick Osborn. But the reform was a deception and a successful one. Margaret Sanger, killer of millions of minority babies, is a hero to Black Lives Matter and its controllers. I'm surprised there isn't an equestrian statue of her, handing The Pill down to grateful black and Indian women to match the Roosevelt statue. Maybe they could put one up in the same place at the AMNH. It's the same thing, shape-shifted.
Fuck it. I've changed my mind. Teddy Roosevelt needs to stay put. His life and what he did is greater than what any of these punks can understand. That the city or the history museum directors don't seem to understand it is repulsive and that I let my own self slip earlier is not acceptable either.
This crap has to stop now. We are watching as our mis-educated youth are doing the work and bidding of the Maoists. It is time for Americans who appreciate their country to stand up and make it stop. We have to start fighting this and fighting back now. When schmucks like Shaun King are making demands, it's time to stand up and hit back. Hard and often. This is not about black lives and frankly, if it ever was, it was for 5 minutes. it's all about Marxism at this point. Nothing more, nothing less. And it's time to put it back in the trash.
Funny....but the last time I looked, AmerInds and Africans, whether African-Americans or not, STILL cannot keep up with white civilization.
Why do Indians who remain on reservations do so poorly? Why do those who leave them do so well?
Can't blame racism in black Africa on its continuing woes.
Can't even blame it on colonialism. Take a look at all the former British colonies in Asia; many are doing quite well, particularly India, the Jewel in the Crown.
So.. Why not those former British colonies in Africa? Why is South Africa sliding backwards under black rule? How did prosperous Rhodesia sink into the hellhole it is now?
In contrast, Swedish economist Gunnar Myrdal published a pessimistic book in 1968 ("Asian Drama: An Inquiry into the Poverty of Nations") focusing on what he predicted to be a dismal outlook for East Asian nations.
He was dead wrong.
Korea went from nothing to a huge economic power. Ditto China. To a lesser extent, ditto Malaysia, Indonesia, Taiwan and the Philippines. ALL are much better off than ANY African nation today.
Even Vietnam recovered from French mis-rule and a devastating civil war.
Why?
I'm sure it is "racist" to even ask these questions.
"Crews, wearing masks to cover their faces, worked under a heavy police presence starting at 3 a.m. to dismantle the statue..."
I think buwaya wins this thread. He brings a measured, classically educated outsider's view to this question.
how many genteel liberals are quietly freaking out now that
they see that the Clown Car of Wokeness that they cheered for
as it rolled off the assembly line earlier HAS NO BRAKES and
it's coming straight at them?
Whoever is driving this Virtuous Purge has no grounded tenets
really, other than
"Orange & White People Are Bad"
so their movement is in free-fall.
That might feel fun for now but it's the sudden deceleration
that is a problem.
I live in Manhattan. I am a member and a contributor to the museum. When I saw what Ellen Futter, the President, had done I cut my membership card in half and mailed it to her with a note saying never to ask me for money again.
That museum sits on land stolen from indigenous people.
The whole place has gotta go.
(eaglebeak)
Maybe they should remove the other two elements of the group and leave Teddy there on horseback.
Why can't the Museum do that, for heaven's sake?
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