Bee Gees – "Stayin' Alive" (1977)

Feel the city breaking

And everybody shaking, people

Stayin' alive, stayin' alive

President Trump recently made what law professors and students are fond of calling a “slippery slope” argument when he questioned the wisdom of taking down statues of famous Confederate figures:

So, this week it's Robert E. Lee.  I notice that Stonewall Jackson is coming down.  I wonder is it George Washington next week, and is it Thomas Jefferson the week after?  You know, you really do have to ask yourself, where does it stop? . . . George Washington was a slave owner. . . . So will George Washington now lose his status?  Are we going to take down statues to George Washington? How about Thomas Jefferson? . . . Because he was a major slave owner.  Now are we going to take down his statue?

Law professor Ilya Somin believes that it’s easy to distinguish between Confederates like Lee and Jackson and figures like Washington and Jefferson:

There are two big distinctions.  One, nobody honors George Washington precisely for the fact that he owned slaves, whereas the Confederate leaders, when they're honored, are honored almost entirely for their service to the Confederacy, which was created for a purpose of perpetuating and extending slavery.

Second, while I think it's very much correct to criticize the Founding Fathers for owning slaves, those of them who did, they also had great achievements in other areas which do legitimately deserve honor.  By contrast . . . very few of [the Confederate leaders] would be remembered today but for what they did in the Civil War to protect slavery.

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In the last 2 or 3 lines, I introduced you to Albert Pike and James Bevel.

Pike was a 19th-century Renaissance man – a lawyer, orator, philosopher, poet, scholar, and soldier.  He grew up in Boston, then moved to Arkansas – where he served briefly as a general in the Confederate Army.  After the Civil War was over, he settled in Washington, DC, where he dedicated the rest of his life to the cause of Freemasonry.

Albert Pike in Masonic regalia

Bevel worked closely with Martin Luther King, Jr., and planned several of the most memorable civil rights initiatives of the 1960s.  But he later became an ally of Lyndon LaRouche and then Louis Farrakhan, and was convicted late in his life for committing incest with his young daughter.

So what’s the connection between Pike and Bevel?

James Bevel and Martin Luther King, Jr.

In 1901, the Scottish Rite Masons – with the blessings of Congress – erected a statue commemorating Pike’s work on behalf of that fraternity on a plot of federal land in Washington, DC.

The dedication of the Pike statue was preceded by a procession of what a Washington newspaper called “probably the most distinguished body of Masons ever assembled in this country,” followed by band music and a speech by the head of the District of Columbia government, who noted one important distinction between Pike’s statue and most of the statues in Your Nation’s Capital: it “honor[s] the victories of peace rather than [those] of war.” 

In 1992, Bevel led a band of protestors who alleged that Pike had been a Ku Klux Klan leader before moving to Washington – an allegation that Pike’s biographer says is false – and that his statue should be taken down.

*     *     *     *     *

The Bevel-led protests were unsuccessful, and nobody paid much attention to the Pike statue for the next 25 years.  

The Albert Pike statue

Demonstrations against statues of more famous Confederates like Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis are getting most of the headlines today.  But despite Pike’s relative obscurity – by which I mean that 99.99% of Americans have no clue who the dude was – his statue hasn’t gone unprotested by the residents of Washington, PC.  (Oops! I meant to say “DC,” not “PC.”)  

And those protests haven’t been ignored by local politicians.  Several D.C. Council members have written to the National Park Service, the agency that’s in charge of the Pike monument, to demand that it be taken away.  “Albert Pike was a proponent of slavery and a brigadier general in the Confederate Army,” their letter said.  “[T]he presence of a statue honoring Albert Pike only serves to perpetuate and incite hate, violence, and oppression.”

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The obvious difference between Pike’s statue and those of Lee, Jackson, and other more prominent Confederate generals is that you would never know from Pike’s statue that he had ever served in the Confederate army.

Pike’s bronze statue, which is about eleven feet tall, depicts him wearing civilian clothing – not a Confederate uniform.  In his left hand, he holds a book – presumably his Morals and Dogma tome.   

A modern edition of Pike’s magnum opus

In addition, the intent of those who erected the Pike statue was to honor his many years of dedicated service to Scottish Rite Freemasonry – not his brief service in the Confederate Army.

The logic of those who believe that we should pull down the statues of Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, and other Confederate leaders is that those statues are monuments of white supremacists that were erected by white supremacists and for white supremacists.

That’s not true of the Pike statue.  

*     *     *     *     *

Some people might argue that the Pike statue should come down anyway because Pike did something bad: he fought to defend slavery.

If you start taking down all the statues of men who did bad, you’re going to find yourself sliding down the mother of all slippery slopes.

All those Washington and Jefferson statues are going to have to go, because each of those iconic figures owned hundreds of slaves.  That certainly qualifies as a bad thing.

Should this Jefferson statue
stay, or should it go?

So does committing incest with your daughter.  So if there are any monuments honoring James Bevel for his contributions to the civil rights movement, they need to be hidden away.

*     *     *     *     *

So far, that big-ass statue of Albert Pike – which stands just a few blocks from the U.S. Capitol – is stayin’ alive, stayin’ alive.  (By the way, the National Statuary Hall  in the Capitol – which has two statues chosen by each of the 50 states – includes ten Confederate statues.)

But what will be the ultimate fate of Albert Pike’s statue?  I’m not sure, but I am sure of one thing: it’s fate won’t depend on logic and reason, but on politics.

If it were up to the District of Columbia’s government, it would already be hidden away.  (That’s not surprising given that African-Americans outnumber whites in D.C., where Clinton voters outnumbered Trump voters by an astonishing 90% to 4%.)

  

But the Pike statue was erected on land owned by the federal government. 

As noted above, the National Park Service is the federal entity with jurisdiction over the Pike monument, and that fact alone ensures that it will some time before anything happens to it.

The Virginia State Monument at Gettysburg
is topped by a statue of Robert E. Lee

I say that not because our current President has expressed doubts about the wisdom of tearing down statues depicting Confederate figures, although that  doesn’t hurt Albert Pike's cause.

No, I say that because the National Park Service has an institutional bias in favor of preservation regardless of who is in the White House.  (That agency has already said there is no chance that it will be removing any of the many Confederate statues and monuments located at Gettysburg and the other national military parks it administers.)

And there’s one other thing: no matter who is President, federal agencies almost never move quickly.  They are world-class procrastinators.  

So my money is on the survival of the Albert Pike statue – at least for the time being.

*     *     *     *     *

Of course, it’s always possible that a mob will show up one day, throw a rope around old Albert’s neck, and pull his ass to the ground.

That’s what happened in Durham, North Carolina recently, when a mob wrecked a statue of a generic Confederate soldier that stood outside the old county courthouse.

Mob rule in Durham, NC

Local police stood by and watched the statue being toppled because it stood on county property, not city property, and because county sheriff’s deputies were present at the time.

Sheriff’s deputies stood by and watched the statue being toppled because . . . frankly, I have no idea why they stood by and watched.

*     *     *     *     *

According to the American Heart Association, the tempo of “Stayin’ Alive” is perfect for  performing hands-only CPR:

Here’s “Stayin’ Alive”:

Click below to buy the song from Amazon:

Rolling Stones – "Connection" (1967)

My bags, they get a very close inspection

I wonder why it is that they suspect ‘em

Today’s 2 or 3 lines is going to introduce you to two interesting historical figures who no one remembers.  (By “no one,” I mean 99.99% of you.)

The next 2 or 3 lines will explain the relationship between these two figures, and what it is they have in common – despite being born 125 years apart.

*     *     *     *     *

Albert Pike was born in Boston in 1809.  He had the benefit of a classical education, and learned Hebrew, Greek, and Latin – some say he had a photographic memory.

When Pike was 16, he passed the entrance exam for Harvard College, but couldn’t afford the tuition.  So instead of attending Harvard, he taught school in several Massachusetts towns.

In 1831, Pike moved to Independence, Missouri, where he joined an expedition to Santa Fe, New Mexico.  In the middle of the journey, Pike’s horse ran away from him, so he had to walk the remaining 500 miles to Santa Fe.  

After hunting, trapping, and trading in what was then Mexico for a year or so, Pike moved on to Little Rock, where he bought a newspaper with the dowry he received when he married a woman from a wealthy family in 1834.  That same year, he published his first collection of poetry.

While running his newspaper, Pike studied law.  He built a thriving legal practice; his clients included a number of Indian tribes, and he learned several Native American dialects.  

The battle of Buena Vista

Pike helped raise a militia company that later fought in the Mexican War as part of an Arkansas cavalry regiment, which performed badly at the Battle of Buena Vista.  Pike thought the regiment’s poor showing was the fault of its commander, John Selden Roane, and he criticized Roane publicly.  

Roane demanded satisfaction from Pike, and the two men ended up fighting a duel in Indian Territory, just across the Arkansas River from Fort Smith.  (Dueling was illegal in Arkansas.)  The duelists exchanged two shots without doing serious damage, then decided that honor had been served, shook hands, and rode away.  

Pike moved to New Orleans in 1853, where he became involved in efforts to build a transcontinental railroad.  He moved back to Arkansas a few years before that state and its Confederate fellows seceded from the Union.  

*     *     *     *     *

After the outbreak of the Civil War, the Confederate government appointed Pike “Commissioner to all the Indian Tribes West of Arkansas and South of Kansas,” and in that capacity he negotiated nine treaties with the various tribes who lived in Indian Territory.  

Pike in his Confederate general's uniform

Pike was then given a commission as a brigadier general, and assigned to train several regiments of Indian cavalry.  He protested when the commander of Confederate forces west of the Mississippi ordered him to join a Confederate army camped near Pea Ridge, Arkansas, because Pike’s understanding of his orders was that his troops were to be used only to protect the Indian Territory. 

His men did not distinguish themselves in the Battle of Pea Ridge in March 1862.  In fact, they were accused of killing and scalping several wounded Union troops.  

Pike was horrified by the reports of scalpings, and tried to identify and punish the guilty party.  (His investigation into the matter had concluded that only one scalping had taken place.)  But Northern newspapers took the story and ran with it, alleging that as many as 100 scalps had been taken and that Pike was a war criminal.  

Pike didn’t get much love from his fellow Confederates either.  He challenged the authority of his commanding officer, was reprimanded by Confederate government for insubordination, and resigned his generalship a few months after the clash at Pea Ridge.

*     *     *     *     *

After the Civil War, Pike moved to New York City, then to Canada.  After being granted amnesty by President Andrew Johnson, he moved to Memphis before finally settling down in Washington, DC, in 1870, where he lived for the rest of his life.

Pike in full Masonic regalia

During his time in Washington, Pike devoted his time and efforts to Freemasonry.  He had become a Mason in 1850, and in 1859 was elected Sovereign Grand Commander of all the Scottish Rite Masonic lodges in the Southern Jurisdiction (which included all the states south of the Ohio and west of the Mississippi) – a position that he held until he died in 1891.   

Pike wrote extensively on Freemasonry.  His most famous book is Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry, an 861-page text first published in 1872, which was provided to all new members of Southern Jurisdiction lodges until 1969.

A modern edition of Pike's magnum opus

After Pike’s death, the Masons petitioned Congress to authorize the placement of a statue honoring Pike on federal land.  In 1901, a large and distinguished body of Masons assembled in Washington for the unveiling of that statue, which still stands today.

*     *     *     *     *

James Bevel, who was born in 1936, was a top aide to Martin Luther King, Jr., who has been called the “Father of Voting Rights”    

The Birmingham, Alabama “Children’s Crusade” was Bevel’s idea.  He was also the brains behind the “Selma Voting Rights Movement,” which resulted in the famous “Bloody Sunday” march from Selma, Alabama, to Montgomery in 1965.  

James Bevel with Martin Luther King, Jr.

Bevel was also influential in persuading King and other civil rights leaders to join the anti-Vietnam War movement and participate in the 1967 “March on the Pentagon.”

But Bevel jumped the shark in the 1980s, when he became a follower of perennial Presidential candidate and all-around wackadoodle Lyndon LaRouche.  

Bevel was LaRouche’s running mate when LaRouche ran for President in 1992.  LaRouche’s chances of winning that election were somewhere between slim and none – for one thing, he was in jail for mail fraud and tax evasion during the campaign.

According to Louis Farrakhan, Bevel came up with the idea for the 1995 “Million Man March” in Washington, DC, which was sponsored by Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam.

*     *     *     *     *

Bevel’s life took a serious turn for the worse in 2007, when he was indicted for committing incest with one of his young daughters.  (Three other daughters also alleged that Bevel had sexually abused them.)  

His trial was about as sordid as a trial can be.  The key piece of evidence leading to his conviction was a telephone call recorded by police without Bevel's knowledge.  During that call, Bevel's daughter asked him why  he wanted her to use a vaginal douche after having sex with her.  Bevel said that he didn’t want to get her pregnant.

Bevel in jail

Bevel was sentenced to 15 years in prison, but was released only a few weeks after being incarcerated when it was discovered he was dying of pancreatic cancer.

*     *     *     *     *

What’s the connection between Albert Pike and James Bevel?  

I’ll answer that question in the next 2 or 3 lines.

*     *     *     *     *

I bought Between the Buttons – the Stones album that includes today’s featured song, “Connection” – FIFTY YEARS AGO, when I was a 9th-grade student.

(Sometimes I wish that someone would just put me out of my misery.)

Here’s “Connection”:

Click below to buy the song from Amazon:

Radiohead – "Electioneering" (1997)

Say the right things

When electioneering

As noted in a previous 2 or 3 lines, the state of Maryland recently gave the old heave-ho to a statue of Roger B. Taney, a Maryland native who was the Chief Justice of the U. S. Supreme Court for 28 years.  That statue was installed on the grounds of the Maryland State House in 1872. 

A contractor hired by the state arrived in the dead of night, used a crane to lift the statue on to a flatbed truck, and drove it away.  (The cost of the operation has been estimated at $100,000.)

Removing the Taney statue

That statue was removed because the governor of Maryland recently stuck his finger up to see which way the political winds were blowing.  It turns out they were blowing against Roger Taney.

I happen to like the current governor of Maryland – in fact, I like him a lot.  I’ll vote for him in the next election despite the fact that his decision to get rid of the Taney statue was 100% the result of political considerations.

*     *     *     *     *

A recent NPR/PBS poll found that Americans oppose the removal of statues of Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee,  and other Confederates by a better than 2-to-1 margin.  Despite that, statues of Confederate leaders are quickly becoming an endangered species.

Some people believe that Confederate monuments were built to make a statement about white supremacy.

In a recent column in the Washington Post, history professor Karen Cox says that theory is supported by when the statues were erected:

[T]he vast majority of monuments date to between 1895 and World War I.  They were part of a campaign to paint the Southern cause in the Civil War as just and slavery as a benevolent institution, and their installation came against a backdrop of Jim Crow violence and oppression of African Americans.

The Robert E. Lee statue
in Charlottesville, VA

Cox is especially suspicious of statues located near courthouses:

During the era of Jim Crow, Confederate monuments could be placed most anywhere.  Some were in cemeteries or parks, but far more were erected on the grounds of local and state courthouses.  These monuments, then, not only represented reverence for soldiers who fought in a war to defend slavery.  They also made a very pointed statement about the rule of white supremacy: All who enter the courthouse are subject to the laws of white men.

*     *     *     *     *

While most of the recent controversy relates to statues of Confederate leaders, some believe that statues of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and other slaveholders are a slap in the face of African-Americans. 

Professor Grace Elizabeth Hale is one of those who believes a line should be drawn separating monuments to Confederates and monuments to pre-Civil War American icons who were slaveholders:

I would argue we’re not celebrating George Washington and Thomas Jefferson because they were slaveholders.  But I think the reason that they are commemorated or memorialized is because of their role in founding the nation. . . . [W]e need to look at that in all its complexity — in how people could support freedom and also own slaves . . . But that is not the same thing as celebrating Confederate generals; people who [fought] for the preservation of slavery.

Law professor Ilya Somin agrees:

One crucial distinction it misses is that few if any monuments to Washington, Jefferson and other slaveowning Founders were erected for the specific purpose of honoring their slaveholding.  By contrast, the vast majority of monuments to Confederate leaders were erected to honor their service to the Confederacy, whose main reason for existing was to protect and extend slavery.

[T]he Founders deserve commemoration because their complicity in slavery was outweighed by other, more positive achievements, such as establishing the Constitution. By contrast, leading a war in defense of slavery was by far the most important historical legacy of Davis, Robert E. Lee, and other Confederate leaders.

*     *     *     *     *

There’s one obvious difference between Taney and Confederates like Davis and Lee. 

Taney never foreswore allegiance to the United States, much less fought in the Confederate Army.   He remained a loyal citizen of the United States after the Civil War broke out, and headed up the third branch of the U.S. government – the judicial branch – until his death in 1864.

Taney’s statue was hidden away not because he was a Confederate, but because he was the author of the famous (or infamous) 1857 Dred Scott decision, which held that slaves (or descendants of slaves) could not bring a lawsuit in federal court because they were not citizens of the United States. 

*     *     *     *     *

It’s hard to reconcile Taney’s opinion in Dred Scott with his words and deeds as a young man.

In 1819, Taney defended an abolitionist minister who was arrested for disturbing the peace after preaching a fiery anti-slavery sermon.  He told the jury that slavery was “a blot on our national character,” and argued that “every real lover of freedom confidently hopes that it will be . . . wiped away.”

Roger Taney in 1831

Taney put his money where his mouth was when it came to emancipation.  He never bought a slave, and he manumitted the slaves that he had inherited from his father when he was a young man.

From a 2010 article by historian Timothy S. Huebner:

[In 1818] Taney affixed his signature in the court record book, paid the requisite transaction fees, and manumitted seven slaves. . . . Moreover, in 1820, together with his younger brother Octavius, Taney liberated two additional slaves who had been owned by their father.  Over the next four years, Taney manumitted two more slaves – bringing the total number of slaves he freed to eleven.  We must not underestimate these deliberate acts on behalf of freedom.  While historians have lauded George Washington, for example, for liberating his slaves at his death, Taney did so at a relatively young age. . . . Unlike some Maryland emancipators, Taney never purchased other slaves to replace the ones he freed.

(By contrast, George Washington was a slaveowner for 56 years, and owned 317 slaves at the time of his death.  Washington’s will provided that his slaves should be freed, but only after he and his wife Martha died.)  

Huebner’s view is that Taney’s change of heart on the slavery question reflects what happened in the country as a whole in the decades that preceded the Civil War:

Roger Taney's odyssey from antislavery lawyer to proslavery justice mirrored larger currents in American political and constitutional development. . . . The rise of the immediatist abolitionist movement, with its emphasis on moral purity and revolutionary change, significantly altered the nature of the political debate over slavery.  During the early 19th century, an amalgam of antislavery societies existed throughout the upper South and border states, and national political leaders vigorously and openly discussed ways to restrict the growth of [slavery].  Abolitionists' uncompromising rhetoric forced antislavery opinion from the mainstream to the margins, as more moderate antislavery advocates – particularly in slaveholding states – felt forced to defend themselves against charges of extremism.  This development silenced some of slavery's opponents and nudged others toward a more proslavery stance, thus circumscribing the national political debate on the subject.  By the 1840s and 1850s the Democratic party had shifted the discussion away from the question of whether slavery conformed to the nation's founding principles and redefined the issue as one of protecting the property rights of southern slaveholders. . . . Taney's changing views show that he was both a product and a proponent of this shifting discourse about slavery.

*     *     *     *     *

The intention of those who erected the Taney statue on the Maryland State House's grounds was not to make a white-supremacy statement, but rather to express pride in the man who was at the time – and who remains to this day – the highest-ranking government official ever from Maryland. 

(The only other Marylander who held high national office was Vice President Spiro T. Agnew.  The less said about him the better.)

Professor Somin argues that Confederate leaders like Davis and Lee, who left no legacy other than their defense of slavery, should be distinguished from figures like Washington and Jefferson, who had many significant achievements that outweighed the facts that they were slaveowners.

If the same standard is applied to Taney’s, he falls on the Washington-Jefferson side of the line.  In his many years as Chief Justice, Taney earned a reputation as a careful judge who understood legal nuance and stuck closely to the letter of the law.   

Taney and Dred Scott

Even Dred Scott’s lawyer found much to admire about Taney:

[Taney] was indeed a great magistrate, and a man of singular purity of life and character.  That there should have been one mistake in a judicial career so long, so exalted, and so useful is only proof of the imperfection of our nature.  The reputation of Chief Justice Taney can afford to have anything known that he ever did and still leave a great fund of honor and praise to illustrate his name.  If he had never done anything else that was high, heroic, and important, his noble vindication of the writ of habeas corpus . . . will command the admiration and gratitude of every lover of constitutional liberty, so long as our institutions shall endure.

But the Dred Scott decision – which was only one of the hundreds that Taney had a role in deciding while he was Chief Justice – did irreparable harm to his reputation.

*     *     *     *     *

Let’s face it.  No one really cares what a bunch of history professors think about which statues should stay and which should go.  The statues that are being taken down are being taken down for purely political reasons.

Consider the case of the Roger Taney statue.  Some urged Maryland Governor Larry Hogan to get rid of the statue back in 2015, after a white supremacist killed nine people at a black church in Charleston, SC.  But Hogan said that taking down the statue would be “political correctness run amok.”

What a difference a few days make.  Shortly after the recent white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, VA, Hogan said removing the Taney statue “was the right thing to do.” 

What caused Hogan’s change of heart?  Would you believe the upcoming 2018 election?

Hogan’s victory in the 2014 Maryland gubernatorial election was a huge upset because Hogan is a Republican, and Maryland is as blue a state as there is.  (Registered Democrats outnumber registered Republicans in Maryland by a better than 2-to-1 margin.)

Maryland Governor Larry Hogan

Hogan bailed on the Roger Taney statue because he was afraid that if he didn’t, the Democrats would try to tar him with the brush of white supremacy when he runs for re-election in 2018.  Going over to the other side on this issue also allows Hogan to further distance himself from President Trump.  (Hogan didn’t endorse Trump – in fact, he stated publicly that he didn’t vote for him – but the Democrats will try to link Trump to Hogan, who is a Republican.) 

One high-ranking Maryland politician who wanted to keep the Taney statue was State Senate President Thomas V. “Mike” Miller, who is a Democrat. 

Miller acknowledged the harm caused by the Dred Scott decision.  But he noted that Taney served with distinction as Chief Justice and in other public offices, including state attorney general and U.S. attorney general.  And he pointed out that Taney freed his slaves and remained loyal to the Union.

In other words, Miller made the same points about Taney that I made above.  (GMTA!)

It’s a bit of a shock for 2 or 3 lines to find itself agreeing with Mike Miller and disagreeing with Larry Hogan.  But that’s where I find myself when it comes to Roger Taney.

It’s bad enough that Hogan is wrong about the Taney statue.  It’s worse that he flip-flopped on the issue overnight purely because it was politically expedient to do so.

But nobody’s perfect.  I’ll still vote for the guy. 

*     *     *     *     *

“Electioneering” was released in 1997 on Radiohead’s third studio album, OK Computer.

As Tim Footman noted in his book on OK Computer, it was one of the most critically acclaimed albums ever:

Not since 1967, with the release of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, had so many major critics agreed immediately, not only on an album's merits, but on its long-term significance, and its ability to encapsulate a particular point in history.

Of course, it’s clear today that Sgt. Pepper is a hugely overrated record.

Here’s “Electioneering”:

Click below to buy the song from Amazon:

Dave Mason – "We Just Disagree" (1977)

There's only you and me

And we just disagree

We Americans disagree on a lot of things.

But it may surprise you to learn that one of the things we don’t really disagree on is whether statues of Robert E. Lee and “Stonewall” Jackson and others who fought on the side of the Confederate States of America in the Civil War should be removed.

According to a recent NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist University poll, 62% of Americans believe statues honoring leaders of the Confederacy should remain as historical symbols, while only 27% believe they should be removed because they are offensive to some people.  (The other 11% are unsure.)

That’s a very wide margin – better than two to one.

Contrary to what you might expect, the numbers are pretty much the same no matter how you slice and dice the poll respondents.

It doesn’t matter much whether you’re a man or a woman, you’re old or young, you live in the South or the Northeast, you make more or less than $50,000 a year, and you graduated from college or you didn’t: the odds are roughly two to one that you oppose the removal of Confederate statues.

According to the NPR/PBS poll, 63% of males, 61% of females, 66% of those aged 60 and older, 60% of those aged 18 to 29, 66% of Southerners, 53% of those who live in the Northeast, 65% of those whose annual income is less than $50,000, 57% of those whose annual income is more than $50,000, 68% of those who didn’t graduate from college, and 54% of those who are college graduates oppose the removal of Confederate statues.  

A mob in Durham, NC, vandalizing
a statue of a Confederate soldier

Only 26% of males, 28% of females, 23% of those aged 60 and older, 30% of those aged 18 to 29, 23% of Southerners, 33% of those who live in the Northeast, 24% of those whose annual income is less than $50,000, 32% of those whose annual income is more than $50,000, 22% of those who didn’t graduate from college, and 34% of those who are college graduates want to get rid of Confederate statues. 

Surprisingly, even a majority of African-Americans support keeping the statues where they are – albeit by a narrow margin (44% to 40%).  

What groups favor tearing down Confederate statues?  Only “strong” Democrats  and those who describe themselves as liberal or very liberal.  It’s no surprise that Republicans and conservatives feel just the opposite – but so do “soft” Democrats and independents and those who call themselves  “moderates.”  (Moderates oppose removal of the statues by an overwhelming 67% to 24% margin.)

Click here if you’d like to see all the poll numbers. 

*     *     *     *     *

Given the broad public support for leaving statues honoring Confederate soldiers alone, why are they  disappearing faster than you can say “Jack Robinson”?

I can’t answer that question.  But the handwriting seems to be on the wall.  

Baltimore workers removing a statue
honoring Confederate women

The real question isn’t whether statues of Robert E. Lee, “Stonewall” Jackson, and other prominent Confederates are an endangered species – they clearly are – but where we draw the line between which  statues are hidden away and which statues are allowed to remain where they are.

2 or 3 lines is going to explore that question over the next week or two.  If you’ve already made up your mind and don’t want to be confused by the facts, feel free to avert your gaze from my wildly popular little blog until mid-September.

*     *     *     *     *

“We Just Disagree” was the biggest single from Dave Mason’s Let It Flow album, which was released in 1977.  It reached #12 on the Billboard “Hot 100.”

Here’s “We Just Disagree”:

Click below to buy the song from Amazon: