In the wake of the tragic murder of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis Police, protests have engulfed virtually every major American city in recent weeks. In taking to the streets, activists seek to reform what they view as America’s racist and discriminatory law enforcement practices. Recent events, however, force us to recognize an uncomfortable truth: there exists a far more extreme element within the movement, capitalizing on civil unrest to push an insidious agenda. This extreme element is the radical left, and they are currently engaged in a cultural purge against traditional America. And if our national identity is to survive, they must be stopped.
To begin, one thing must be made clear: anyone protesting police brutality in the United States has a legitimate grievance against the immense power law enforcement officers wield in this country. While there is evidence to suggest that police brutality isn’t necessarily racially targeted, that’s a different argument entirely, and also doesn’t refute the sobering fact that police officers in this country are too quick to resort to fatal force, regardless of whether the victim is black or white or anything else. Thus, when protesters advocate for sensible reforms, such as more intensive training that includes de-escalation, limiting qualified immunity, or curtailing the power of police unions, we should support them. Curbing the discretionary power of law enforcement will make our streets safer by reducing unjustified police killings, while simultaneously strengthening the relationship between officers and the communities they serve.
The problem, then, isn’t the majority of protesters, peacefully advocating for reforms that any logical citizen, left or right, can get behind. It is the small, yet vocal, minority of leftists who have subverted the Black Lives Matter movement for their own purposes: to rewrite American history as one of evil rather than goodness, to erase American culture and heritage, to efface our national pride and ethos, and ultimately, to destroy America as we know it. And they are waging this war on every front imaginable: cultural, social, and political.
The leftists’ political demands alone are enough a testament to their extremism, most notably their call to defund the police. This term has taken on many meanings over the past few weeks as the left performs some serious mental gymnastics to defend the concept to the American people. The fact, however, remains that this position is entirely out of lockstep with the views of the American people, especially in the wake of the looting and rioting that has been taking place during these protests. According to a poll done by Politico, 57% of Americans oppose defunding law enforcement, compared to only 29% who support it. Americans want safety. Americans want law and order. In the face of historic civil unrest, defunding law enforcement is possibly one of the worst ideas anyone has ever concocted. And lest we wish to return to the historically high murder rates of the 1970s and 1980s, this is an idea which must die a fiery death.
The leftists who push to defund the police are undoubtedly aware of its potentially disastrous consequences, and that is exactly why they want it. As witnessed through their establishment of the CHOP autonomous zone in Seattle, their calls to defund the police are congruous with their affinity for anarchy. These extremists seek insurrection and lawlessness, and weakening law enforcement is the first step towards it.
Perhaps the most visible and consequential evidence of the left’s burning hatred for America, however, is their relentless quest to extinguish reminders of our civilization’s glory from the national landscape. Without fail, they have torn down or defaced at least one statue of each of the following men who were once revered as national heroes: Christopher Columbus, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt. We have reached a point in time when we even debate the existence of Mount Rushmore, one of our most enduring and majestic national monuments. When asked about their motives, the leftists almost unfailingly cite racism as their justification for this cultural purge. But the truth is, they don’t care who these people are or what they did. If they did care, what explains their tearing down the statue of Colonel Hans Christian Heg, who died fighting slavery?
Indeed, the real reason these extremists are tearing down monuments to some of the greatest and most consequential heroes of our civilization is because these monuments represent what is good about our civilization. Columbus discovered the New World. Washington and Jefferson forged the greatest nation on earth, the United States of America. Lincoln expanded the liberties promised by Washington and Jefferson to African Americans, and erased slavery from our country. Roosevelt established the National Park System and ensured that our natural beauty would be preserved for generations to come. What these men did flies in the face of the leftist narrative: that America, and the Western World, in extension, are inherently flawed, evil, oppressive, and not worth celebrating. Honoring a man who fought for our independence, who wrote that “all men are created equal,” or who ended chattel slavery across the United States, is but a reminder of the greatness of our civilization, a testament to our commitment to progress, and a refutation of the radical narrative that the West was built on oppression.
The attempt by the leftist extremists to purge from our culture some of the greatest men who ever lived is nothing but an attempt to demoralize our people, to strip America of its patriotic spirit, and tear down the notion of America as a “shining city upon a hill,” a bedrock of our culture. In such a diverse country as ours, a shared patriotism is perhaps the only thing that has reliably held us together as one people. If our national identity fractures, so do we. Thus, the very survival of American civilization hinges on stopping this leftist onslaught on our heritage and national mythos.
We must defend the majority of law enforcement officers who risk their lives protecting our communities daily. We must defend law and order, and be unafraid to use force to defend our country from those few agitators who seek to use violence as a means to their ends. We must defend our history as one of greatness and reject the view of the leftist revisionists who seek to portray our heritage as shameful. We must defend those men of our past, men far greater than most of us will ever be, who led revolutions, built civilizations, and expanded liberty. We must regain an appreciation of what it means to be an American, and begin re-instilling those fundamental values of patriotism and American Exceptionalism in our schools, our media, and our children. And ultimately, we must not let the leftist extremists win. For if they do, what we hand down to posterity will not be America, but rather what little remains of it.
