A Confederacy of Dunces Mayor Bill de Blasio goes hunting for ‘hate’ on New York City property.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-confederacy-of-dunces-1505774977
Spare a thought for poor Bill de Blasio. As cities across the South are shedding their Confederate memorials faster than you can say Stonewall Jackson, what New York’s mayor wouldn’t give for a larger-than-life Robert E. Lee bronze in full “Gone With the Wind” glory that he could order taken down.
Instead, he had to content himself with the announcement, days after last month’s deadly protest in Charlottesville, that the violence there had led him to order a 90-day review of “all symbols of hate on city property.”
Alas for the mayor, the Confederate pickings in his Yankee city are slim. The president of Bronx Community College found busts of Jackson and Lee and removed them. The Episcopalians took down two plaques commemorating a maple tree that Lee planted outside a now-closed church when he was stationed at Brooklyn’s Fort Hamilton in the 1840s. The tree itself lives, despite its Confederate roots.
But it was left to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to embrace the full absurdity of the moment when it declared that a mosaic at a Times Square subway stop is not in fact meant to be a Confederate flag—but will be altered anyway because it too closely resembles one.
Polls show most Americans oppose the removal of Confederate memorials, at least by mobs or politicians winking at them. Even so, the vandals are ascendant. In recent days Francis Scott Key joined a list of statuesque notables, from Joan of Arc to Wall Street’s Charging Bull, that have been toppled or otherwise despoiled.
Mr. de Blasio is hardly the only pol to grandstand here. But as mayor of the nation’s largest city—and America’s self-styled progressive-in- chief—his eagerness helps illuminate why these hunts for hate hold such an attraction for the Democratic left.
One big reason is that the left’s identity politics is not about healing old wounds. It’s about picking at them. Is there anyone in New York who believes a de Blasio panel rummaging through the city’s monuments for evidence of “hate” will contribute to either greater reconciliation or a deeper appreciation for the complexities of the Civil War?
Second, even where the charge of hate is outrageous, the accusation puts political opponents on the moral defensive. Look at the Southern Poverty Law Center. Most of Washington understands the SPLC’s hate designations are arbitrary and political. But in a confirmation hearing earlier this month for Amy Barrett, an eminently qualified nominee for the Seventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Sen. Al Franken berated her for having appeared before an SPLC-designated “hate group.”
The “hate group”? The Alliance Defending Freedom, a religious-liberty outfit whose “hate” turns out to be holding traditional Christian views on marriage and sexuality. CONTINUE AT SITE
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