One my birthday presents was The Point of It All–a collection of columns by the late great political commentator Charles Krauthammer. Incredible to read Krauthammer’s opinion on matters that are pertinent today, only to realize that he had written the column in the mid-’80s or early ’90s. But one particular column was addresses a simmering issue—an issue that has actually come to a boiling point here in North Carolina–Confederate monuments.
Writing about the controversy over the Confederate flag in South Carolina in the wake of the horrific 2015 mass murder in a Charleston church, Krauthammer writes (emphasis mine):
We will probably overshoot, as we are wont to do, in the stampede to eliminate every relic of the Confederacy. Not every statue has to be smashed, not every memory banished. Perhaps we can learn a lesson from Arlington National Cemetery, founded by the victorious Union to bury its dead. There you will find Section 16. It contains the remains of hundreds of Confederate soldiers grouped around a modest, moving monument to their devotion to “duty as they understood it”– a gesture of by the Union of soldierly respect, without any concession regarding the taintedness of their cause.
Or shall we uproot them as well?
A column well worth reading; a book well worth reading.
