The Pentagon, led by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, plans to spend $10 million returning a Confederate monument to Arlington National Cemetery less than two years after an independent commission recommended its removal. When Hegseth trumpeted the news on social media, he said the monument “never should have been taken down by woke lemmings. Unlike the Left, we don’t believe in erasing American history — we honor it.”
Southern governments began embracing the Confederate battle flag during the Civil Rights Movement.
But any discerning look at this move shows it’s much less about honoring history and much more about getting one over on political enemies. Hegseth and President Donald Trump are embracing Confederate monuments and supporting changing the names of military bases back to what they were when they honored Confederates — for the same reason Southern governments began embracing the Confederate battle flag during the Civil Rights Movement.
The Confederate battle flag didn’t really take hold in the South until the ascendancy of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and ’60s. And that flag was used as a symbol of protest against that movement. Similarly, the president and the defense secretary are celebrating dead Confederates not because they want us to remember the exploits of long-dead traitors but to wage war against those people who got many of those monuments taken down — and took some down themselves.
On Trump’s watch, all mentions of Trump’s two impeachments were removed from a Smithsonian exhibit about presidential impeachments, and Republican governments have rejected AP African American Studies courses. And, in what seem like trial balloons to see how much they can get away with, we’ve seen mentions of Black war veterans, including Jackie Robinson and Harriet Tubman, temporarily removed from federal websites and the Air Force temporarily remove a training video featuring the Tuskegee Airmen. Hegseth removed gay rights activist Harvey Milk’s name from a Navy ship. And, this year, all mention of transgender people was removed from the National Park Service’s website about the Stonewall Inn National Monument.
So, contrary to what Hegseth says, this administration is quite eager to erase American history when that history calls attention to America’s oppressive past.
Hegseth would prefer that you not remember that progressives didn’t remove the Confederate monument in question from Arlington. Congress did, following the recommendation of a commission that lawmakers had created. Retired Army Brig. Gen. Ty Seidule, the vice chair of the commission, said the group found that the memorial, which sanitizes slavery, was “problematic from top to bottom.”
But Trump and Hegseth have already repeatedly shown their disregard for that commission and Congress as a whole. Congress decreed that military bases shouldn’t be named for Confederates. For example, there was to be no more Fort Bragg, which honored Confederate general Braxton Bragg. The name was changed to Fort Liberty. Trump and Hegseth changed it back to Bragg but got around Congress by decreeing that the name now honors Army Pfc. Ronald L. Bragg, who fought during World War II.
Similarly, Hegseth appears to be getting around Congress’ prohibition on naming things for Confederates by calling what was known as “The Arlington Confederate Monument” a “reconciliation monument.”
Historian Kevin Levin, an expert on the fight over Confederate monuments, has written that the people who created and funded the monument never used the word “reconciliation” to describe it and that Hegseth “referring to this monument as a ‘Reconciliation Monument’ is a willful act of deception away from the fact that is a celebration of slavery and of the Confederacy itself. There is nothing reconciliationist about it.”
To repeat, the officials championing Confederates 160 years after those losers surrendered aren’t motivated by concerns about history. They’re doing battle, as Hegseth put it, with “woke lemmings.”
On Tuesday, Texas’ Midland Independent School District Board of Trustees voted 4-3 to change the name of Legacy High School to Midland Lee High. The school had been named for Robert E. Lee, and the board changed it to Legacy in 2020. “Robert E.” isn’t a part of the new name, and the board president wants us to believe that the new “Lee” “does not reference any one specific individual but explicitly references the school’s 60 years of family, hard work and accomplishments in sports and academics.” But it’s doubtful that anybody in the Texas city will be confused.
Nor will they be confused about why the school board voted to change the name of a school it renamed just five years ago.
Officials championing Confederates 160 years after those losers surrendered aren’t motivated by concerns about history.
As quoted by the Midland Reporter-Telegram, Trustee Matt Friez said, “We live in a time where being offended has almost become a way of life or an addiction for some.” He said that “I reject the notion that being the most offended represents the moral high ground” and that he won’t “conflate the horrors of true, intentional racism with the legalistic and morally elitist outrage of every imaginable micro-offense by community agitators and dividers.”
He’s saying the same thing Hegseth said in his social media post — just with a lot more words.
The motivation couldn’t be clearer: This re-renaming spree isn’t motivated by concerns related to 19th century American history or putting the history of the Civil War in its proper place. Rather, it’s about putting progressive people in theirs.
