Category Archives: Culture wars

The infamous Unite-the-Right rally in Charlottesville took place two years ago today. The event degenerated into a pitched street battle between white supremacists and militant leftists, culminating with the death of counter-protester Heather Heyer when a white supremacist ran his car into the middle of a crowd. The riot traumatized the Charlottesville community, the state of Virginia, and indeed the entire nation.

It is interesting to see how the nation has processed the tragedy. From my vantage point, the big loser is Governor Terry McAuliffe, whose flawed law-enforcement contributed to the breakdown in order. The big winners are the leftist radicals whose shared culpability for the violence has been virtually expunged from the mainstream media narrative.

Mac the Dull Knife. McAuliffe, who reportedly entertains ambitions of running for elected office again, has released a book, “Beyond Charlottesville,” which he purports to be “the definitive account of an infamous chapter in our history.” The former governor exonerates himself for allowing the protest to turn into a riot. Conservatives never bought McAuliffe’s story. It turns out the Left isn’t buying it either. Continue reading →

Photo credit: WAMU

The radicalization of Virginia politics continues apace. Now former Governor Terry McAuliffe, nobody’s idea of a conservative, is getting the Joe Biden treatment — criticized by Leftists for his reactionary views, and getting respectful media treatment for it.

McAuliffe was plugging his new book at the Politics and Prose bookstore in Washington, D.C., yesterday, when his book signing was disrupted by four residents of the People’s Republic of Charlottesville. In a 20-minute exchange that became heated at times, according to WAMU radio, the protesters took particular exception to McAuliffe’s defense of police actions during the infamous Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville two years ago and his promise to donate proceeds from the sales of his book to the Virginia State Police Association fund.

States WAMU: “At one point, a protester moved toward McAuliffe airing her concerns and then chanted, ‘Cops and the Klan go hand in hand.'”

“You’re using this book as a means to raise money for a contingent of people who contributed to terrorizing antiracist activists,” said Constance Paige Young, who said she was injured in the attack that killed Heather Heyer. “Please explain to me why you believe it’s appropriate to raise money for the very people who fail to keep us safe, and contributed to terrorizing us that day.” Continue reading →

Captain John Smith, mercenary, founder of Jamestown…. slave

In 1602, five years before he led the Virginia Company expedition to found a colony in the new world, John Smith fought as a mercenary in a war against the Ottoman Empire. Wounded in battle, he was captured by Crimean Tatars. He and his comrades were sold as slaves — “like beasts in a market,” as he later put it. Taken to Crimea, Smith escaped into Muscovy, from where he made his way to Poland, and then circuitously back to England in 1604.

It is worth remembering Smith’s brush with slavery as we ponder the significance of the founding of the New World’s first representative assembly in 1619 at Jamestown as well as the importation of the colony’s first African slaves. There is an increasing tendency in America’s intellectual class to view the United States as irredeemably stained from its inception. It may be true that Virginia established representative government, some suggest, but who was represented? White male property owners. According to this narrative, white Americans prospered through the oppression of native Americans and black slaves. Conceived in sin, some say, the American experiment was illegitimate at its birth.

Such a perspective commits the error of viewing the American colonies in isolation from what was happening in the rest of the world and then condemning the colonists for failing to live up to the standards of 21st-century values. Before adopting such a view, let us recall what the world was like in 1619. Slavery and other forms of servitude were nearly universal. What made England and its American colonies remarkable was not their sufferance of slavery for 200 years or more but their eventual willingness to abolish it. Continue reading →

At least one elected Democratic Party official, it appears, will attend the commemoration of the 400th anniversary of the birth of representative government in North America at Jamestown later this month: Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax. While making clear that he shares the animus of other Virginia Democrats toward President Trump, he is choosing not to boycott the event.

Writes Fairfax: “I intend to honor, in this 400th anniversary year, our proud achievements as a representative democracy and the achievements of the enslaved African-Americans and their descendants who have contributed mightily to Virginia’s success. That is more important than the frenzied and fickle politics of the moment.”

Trump has demonstrated that on occasion he can conduct himself in a dignified, non-partisan manner. He surprised everyone with his 4th of July speech, and I expect the Jamestown commemoration will be similar. Democrats boycotting the ceremony will be the ones who come across as petulant and partisan. Fairfax is to be credited for not joining them.

The commemoration is a big deal. The birth of representative government (and, the same year, the arrival of the first African slaves) is a milestone in Virginia history and the development of democratic institutions. It is bigger than Trump. It is bigger than the partisan divide of 2019. Let all Virginians, for one brief moment, join to celebrate what unites us. We’ll have plenty of time later to fight over what divides us.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

With those immortal words in the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson declared the freedoms and liberties of Englishmen to be universal, applying to all people. As a slave holder, he failed to live up to the ideals he espoused. But his words inspired his generation to fight for independence, and inspired subsequent generations, who nearly succeeded in abolishing slavery in Virginia in 1831-82, fought a Civil War to end slavery, and fought and won Civil Rights for all. Without Jefferson’s words, without the principles he articulated and defended, those who now revile him would not enjoy the liberties they have today.

Showing an astonishing lack of historical perspective, the People’s Republic of Charlottesville (P.R.C.) City Council voted 4-1 Monday to scrap the decades-old April 13 holiday honoring the city’s most famous resident and, instead, will recognize Liberation and Freedom Day on March 3, the day Union army arrived in the city in 1865.

Speakers at the session denounced Jefferson as a racist and a rapist, reports the Daily Progress: Continue reading →