The Iconoclasts Come For George Washington

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The Federalist

The Iconoclasts Come For George Washington

By removing its historic memorials to George Washington and Robert E. Lee, Christ Church is yielding to the relentless logic of identity politics.

 By John Daniel Davidson OCTOBER 30, 2017

 

They were always going to come for George Washington. Christ Church in Alexandria, Virginia, announced last week that it will remove a pair of memorial plaques honoring Washington and Robert E. Lee, who were parishioners at the historic Episcopal church, marking the latest flashpoint in what has become an endlessly widening war on the past.

 According to church officials, the justification for removing the plaques, which were installed in 1870 and for the past 147 years haven’t caused much trouble, was to help make the sanctuary a “more welcoming space.” Welcoming for whom? They didn’t say, but they didn’t have to. By now, we all know what they mean. The mere presence of the names of Lee and Washington, tainted as they are in the eyes of progressive iconoclasts, has become unbearable.

Why? Because nowadays they represent nothing so much as racism and slavery, America’s original and ongoing sins. To remember Lee and Washington at all, we’re told, is to condone these things