If we insist - as I do - on keeping statues of American historical figures found objectional by some in this country, we must deal with the issue of displaying major participants in significant world events. Even those who were at least as evil as Adolph Hitler himself.
The American Spectator "As leftists target monuments to everyone from Christopher Columbus to George Washington, Francis Scott Key, Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, and even all of Mt. Rushmore, I was reminded of a memorial not on their radar. No, I’m not talking about the 16-foot bronzed statue of Lenin in Seattle, nor the memorials to their revered racial-eugenicist Margaret Sanger. I’m thinking of the bust of Joseph Stalin that emerged in Bedford, Virginia, in 2010.
"Do you remember that one? It remains on my mind, albeit not on the minds of progressives. First a history lesson, and then an update on the status of the statue:
"Stalin’s chiseled mug sat at no less than the National D-Day Memorial in Bedford, where he was acknowledged as “General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.” Stalin there joined FDR, Harry Truman, and Winston Churchill, who, ironically, finds himself in the ideological crosshairs of today’s Left, the subject of vandalization.
"That acknowledgment to Stalin at the D-Day Memorial was no secret. I wrote about it 10 years ago, as did others. The Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation had a website at one point (www.stalinstatue.com, now defunct), which featured a petition to remove the statue, with thousands of signatures from every state and dozens of countries, including some really upset folks from the former Soviet empire. Addressed to the National D-Day Memorial Foundation and President Barack Obama’s secretary of the interior, the petition demanded that the “true history of World War II must be protected from distortion and misinformation.”
"Among that misinformation: “neither Joseph Stalin nor Soviet forces played any part in the D-Day landing at Normandy.”
"Indeed, they did not. Even then, the Stalin bust represented a far graver distortion of historical reality. Consider: . . .More...
. . . "But who gets protested? Leftist mobs target Columbus, Washington, Saint Junipero Serra, even Ulysses S. Grant, the Union general who (ironically) defeated the Confederacy during the Civil War before going to battle against the KKK and fighting for the right of black Americans to vote. And yet the ideological mobsters haven’t had a murderous communist tyrant like Joe Stalin on their target list? Why is that?
"Do you remember that one? It remains on my mind, albeit not on the minds of progressives. First a history lesson, and then an update on the status of the statue:
"Stalin’s chiseled mug sat at no less than the National D-Day Memorial in Bedford, where he was acknowledged as “General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.” Stalin there joined FDR, Harry Truman, and Winston Churchill, who, ironically, finds himself in the ideological crosshairs of today’s Left, the subject of vandalization.
"That acknowledgment to Stalin at the D-Day Memorial was no secret. I wrote about it 10 years ago, as did others. The Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation had a website at one point (www.stalinstatue.com, now defunct), which featured a petition to remove the statue, with thousands of signatures from every state and dozens of countries, including some really upset folks from the former Soviet empire. Addressed to the National D-Day Memorial Foundation and President Barack Obama’s secretary of the interior, the petition demanded that the “true history of World War II must be protected from distortion and misinformation.”
"Among that misinformation: “neither Joseph Stalin nor Soviet forces played any part in the D-Day landing at Normandy.”
"Indeed, they did not. Even then, the Stalin bust represented a far graver distortion of historical reality. Consider: . . .More...
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