Argues building should not be named after Confederate general
Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, a Democrat who represents the Highlands in Congress, plans to ask the Secretary of the Army to rename a cadet barracks at West Point that honors Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee, according to an Aug. 16 report in the Times Herald-Record of Middletown.
The request comes in response to violent protests in Charlottesville, Virginia, over the removal of a statue of Lee. There also are at least two portraits of Lee at the military academy, one in the mess hall and one in the library.
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) also said she planned to ask that the name be changed. Maloney and Gillibrand are members of the 15-person West Point Board of Visitors, which advises the academy.
Lee graduated second in the West Point Class of 1829 and ran the academy from 1852 to 1855. The barracks are adjacent to Grant Hall, named for Ulysses S. Grant, an 1843 graduate who accepted Lee’s surrender at Appomattox in 1865.
On Aug. 18, West Point opened a new barracks named for Gen. Benjamin Davis Jr., who was the only black cadet when he arrived in 1932, lived alone on campus and was shunned by his classmates.
People are going to lose their healthcare. And THIS is important?
Much more important things he needs to worry about. Leave history alone.
Rename Lee Barracks? Why, because he was one of the greatest generals to ever pass through West Point? Lee never owned slaves, and the Civil War was about taxation and secession. Lincoln himself even said he it wasn’t an issue if landowners had slaves, although he abhorred the idea. The North wanted to tax the south 40 percent for anything coming out of Southern industry, and the South wanted to secede. Lee struggled with which side he wanted to fight for, eventually siding with the South. Learn your history, Maloney!
Since the Civil War there’s been a Southern version of history that distorts the facts of “the war between the states,” including the fact that the confederacy was fighting for the preservation of its “peculiar institution”: slavery.
What is the point of only renaming Lee Barracks? As the story notes, there are two portraits of Lee, but also Lee Road and Lee Gate and a Lee Award for the graduating cadet with the highest grade in the core math curriculum. Should those be removed/renamed? And we rename Lee Barracks and cadets would graduate and go on to serve at one of nine U.S. Army posts named for Confederate generals, including, of course, Fort Lee in Virginia. Again, what is the point of only renaming Lee Barracks?
Frankly the focus of the Congressman, and of the Congress generally, should be on the learning from history rather than the re-litigating of it.
Thusly it may be possible to end or at least to limit and/or contain the innumerable if not countless military conflicts, entanglements and disputes of the 21st century in which this nation (in which this empire, to be more precise) is one way or another implicated, rather than re-invigorating or re-instigating those from the past.
Perhaps some lives can be saved.
This comment is not meant to imply that the wars of the 19th century were or are any more “just” than those of the present day. Or that all wars necessarily are avoidable. Or that the disputes of the 19th century were imaginary or beyond contemporary comprehension. However, the bringing of an excessive focus upon individuals and personalities (whether in the form of heroism or of villainy) is unhelpful and is a simplification that misleads, if not inflames.
What is next? Will they expect anyone with the surname of “Lee” to change their name?
Once again, this is a prime example of how fascism comes from the Left.
Get rid of it and his portrait in the library! If you crack open a book on Lee you will want him removed! He shamed the Union and disgraced West Point! Remove false idols! Replace them with truth!
That a sitting Congressman would pander to the likes of Antifa and the radical leftists that now seem to control the Democrat party, speaks volumes about the sad state of American politics in general and New York in particular.
Maybe Mr. Maloney is confusing the revered Confederate General Robert E. Lee with Bruce Lee or someone else — how else to explain his tone-deaf announcement that is probably offensive to the vast majority of his constituents.
Ultra-left liberals like Maloney and Gillibrand could only get elected in a state like New York where their Hudson Valley constituents keep electing them to office. It is frightening to think that they and their colleagues who are tearing this country apart with identity politics, will be able to destroy all evidence of our culture, history and heritage if they get their way.
Next they will want to exhume all the Confederate soldiers buried in our national cemeteries.