Why Should We Protect Our History?

            Our nation has a dilemma, or I should say that it has lots of difficult decisions to make. The dilemma that I speak of is the question of statues. There is a portion – no one knows how large or how small – of our nation that wants to destroy our history. They are going about this task in a multitude of ways. An ongoing project is to teach a false history to the rising generation. In many schools there is no longer a requirement to study the history of the United States to graduate from high school or college. Instead of learning the history of this great nation – both the good and the bad – student are taught that America is evil.

            This lack of knowing the correct history is shown time after time in the current riots. An example is the tearing down of the status of Ulysses S. Grant, the General who led the Union forces to victory and the freeing of the slaves. Statues of other people who worked to benefit the enslaved people have been destroyed. A statue of Abraham Lincoln freeing a slave is currently being threatened. This statue was paid for with donations from formerly enslaved people. The fact that these statues are being threatened or destroyed by the mobs clearly illustrates that the rioters do not know history.

            Our history shows where our nation has been over the past 244 years. Since no human being is perfect, there are bound to be some bad situations in the lives of all of us. However, we study to learn where we came from, how we got where we are, and how we can move forward in the best way. There is an old axiom that gives this thought: if we do not learn from our history, we will be forced to repeat it. How can we learn this critical information if the history is destroyed? This could be the reason why many evil people in the world destroy history. The mobs and rioters destroying statues are clearly in the same category as Nazi Germany, the Taliban in Afghanistan, ISIS, and other history-destroying despots.

            David Lynch, the city manager of Newton Falls, Ohio, signed a proclamation on July 4, 2020, declaring his city of about 4,500 people located about 60 miles east of Cleveland to be a “sanctuary city” for statues that are being toppled or taken down in other parts of the nation.

I, David M. Lynch, as City Manager for the City of Newton Falls do hereby proclaim that Newton Falls shall be known as a “Statuary Sanctuary City” welcoming statues rejected by other cities across the United States and also proclaiming a general amnesty for George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, Ulysses S. Grant, Patrick Henry, Francis Scott Key, Theodore Roosevelt, and Christopher Columbus as represented by statues removed all across the United States.

The great leaders of our country and Western civilization, though flawed in many ways, have risen to great achievement, such as the founding of our nation, the ending of slavery, establishment and protection of our national parks, the establishment of antitrust laws to protect our citizens from overaggressive monopolization of industry, and the discovery of the New World itself.

            As should have been expected, there is a detractor to Lynch’s proposal. A resident of Newton Falls named Werner Lange launched a petition on MoveOn.org to stop the action. The online petition is titled “No Sanctuary for Racist Statues” and calls for Lynch’s proclamation to become “null and void”: “We resolutely reject the proposed denigration of our fair town into a mecca for racists and their ilk, and declare this shameful proclamation null and void. We shall overcome.”