“We want to make this a national monument to the ‘Invisible Founders,’” said the Rev. Larry Walker, a trustee at Montpelier, the home of James Madison, father of the Constitution, in announcing plans to build a national slavery monument right on the grounds of Madison’s home. The Montpelier board is planning on a massive scale: “Our memorialization project is not going to be limited to a bench and a plaque,” Walker declared, as the board compared the projected monument to the Lincoln Memorial. If this thing is built, future visitors to Montpelier will come away with one overwhelming message: James Madison was an evil man who enslaved other human beings.
Board chairman James French showed the photo of the Lincoln Memorial in order “to illustrate…our desire to create a national monument for the legacy of those who were enslaved.” Montpelier CEO Elizabeth Chew said that the plan for a national slavery monument was one of “big future projects” planned for Montpelier. The board announced its big monument plans on Sept. 17 at a little-noticed panel session (the video of the session has all of 91 views as of this writing), “Equal Power-Sharing at Montpelier,” at the mansion’s David M. Rubenstein Visitor Center. The New York Post has noted that David M. Rubenstein, who got the visitor center named after himself by donating millions to Montpelier, is “on the boards of the globalist World Economic Forum, China’s Tsinghua University, and the Council on Foreign Relations, among others.” What a surprise!
Larry Walker explained, according a Saturday report in the New York Post, that he believed that slaves “deserve equal credit for the Constitution and the Bill of Rights because their labor financed the private lives of Madison, Thomas Jefferson, and many of the nation’s early leaders.” Why choose Madison’s home for the slavery monument when others among the Founding Fathers also owned slaves? Apparently because he was unrepentant: “Madison owned 38 enslaved African Americans when he died in 1836 — and unlike George Washington, freed none of them in his will.” Nor did Madison denounce slavery even while owning slaves, as did Jefferson. Walker asserted: “The home of the Constitution should be the place that recognizes the contributions of descendants of the enslaved communities across America.”
Before wokeness took over Montpelier and the rest of the Western world, it was generally understood that human beings were complex, and that a man could be heroic in one way even while having blind spots and weaknesses. Madison was much more than just a slaveowner, and according to the Post, “critics and historians say such a memorial would upend the fourth president’s legacy and become the center of attention at his own home.” Oh yes indeed. Historian Douglas MacKinnon declared: “These people are doing what any totalitarian regime would do. They want to create a whole new narrative not based on reality. As they say, the victor gets to write the history — and now our history is being rewritten before our eyes.”
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That’s right. The woke have won the culture, or want us to believe that they have, and so they’re recasting American history as one of racism, white supremacy, colonialism, and other assorted evils. MacKinnon added: “A monument honoring America’s slaves is a worthy goal. But the only reason to build it at the home of James Madison is if you aim to deny, demean, and dismiss him by focusing on his weaknesses and not his massive contributions.”
That’s exactly what the Montpelier board wants to do. The Left hates James Madison, as well as Thomas Jefferson and the other Founding Fathers, for exactly the same things that make him great and worthy to be celebrated: Because he fought against tyranny. Because he helped create a free republic. Because he placed statements in those founding documents that would ultimately lead multitudes of the citizens of the new nation to believe that slavery was wrong and immoral and give their lives to bring about its abolition.
Madison is just the sort of man whom the fascist thugs of Antifa, busy smearing ACAB on the sides of buildings and hurling obscenities at police in pursuit of their vision of socialist utopia, and their moneyed backers despise and fear. They want Americans to hate America and the Constitution, so that they won’t defend either, and will submit meekly to their authoritarian vision. The example of James Madison could inspire Americans instead to work to save the free republic he did so much to leave for us. Can’t have that. Madison’s name must be made anathema to Americans. That’s the point of this national slavery monument at Montpelier.
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