History Deniers

It was fun for a while watching Democrats (the party of southern whites and anti-Lincoln for most of the last 150 years) destroy what were, for the most part, monuments their party built. It was also fun to watch Republican leaders, as they so often do, snatch defeat from the jaws of victory by apologizing and kowtowing to this latest assault of political correctness – even though in this case they were mostly innocent.

Contrary to what the left would have us believe, the leftist attack on our history was not motivated by a desire to protect us from the pain of the past. It is simply a ploy to make people ignore or be embarrassed by the past, so as to make room for the dystopian future they propose – unhindered by actual history.

According to John Davidson, writing for the Federalist:

That’s why Mao’s Cultural Revolution in China torched temples and dug up ancient graves, why the Soviets sacked Orthodox churches and confiscated church property, and why various governments of France went about de-Christianizing the country during the French Revolution.

While our monument deniers are not yet as bad as Mao, they could be, if not challenged.

Consider how crediting any part of the horror of the Civil War to any cause but slavery has become sacrilege and political suicide. Yet, in truth, the vast majority of those who fought on both sides of the war did not do so out of a desire to enslave – or to free – their fellow man. Instead, they did it out of loyalty to their states, families and friends.

While it is wrong to claim the war was only about states’ rights, it is just as wrong to say that the southern warriors only fought to protect slavery.

Many of the challenged monuments were erected well after the war as the oldest veterans began to die off. Folks wanted to remember their sacrifice before what they did was forgotten. Some say it as a way to pull the South back into the Union after the horrible period of reconstruction. Some call the monuments a purposeful slap in the face of the black man. Maybe both are right. But then, that is our history.

Regardless, it makes a great trap to snare republicans. If they refuse to destroy a statue, the left accuses them of supporting the character flaws of the former hero – real or imagined. If they tear the statue down, they are seen as kowtowing to ridiculous demands from the far left.

Do nothing, however, and the problem gets worse.

Now, the National Anthem is racist. Again, according to Davidson, within a week of the left’s attack on Trump for his claim that tearing down a statue of Lee would lead to more attacks:

The Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC was vandalized with spray paint. A Lincoln statue in Chicago was burned. Al Sharpton said the Jefferson Memorial should be abandoned. A pastor in Chicago asked the mayor to remove the names of Washington and Andrew Jackson from city parks because they owned slaves. A writer at Vice News called for Mount Rushmore to be blown up. One columnist in Philly even argued for tearing down a statue of Frank Rizzo, who served as police commissioner and mayor in the late 1960s and ‘70s. In some cases, any monument would do.”

Have you noticed how we seldom dedicate monuments to individuals anymore? Monuments today are usually dedicated to groups where individual human frailties disappear in the mass goodness of the group. It’s safer that way.

Yet anyone who has ever known a hero, or a heroic group, knows that individuals are what make the group work. Individuals are heroes, not groups. That idea, however, does not fit in a leftist world where the collective is worshipped and individualism is disdained.

Can any hero from history stand up to liberal scrutiny when the requirements include having lived a perfect life – according to an ever-evolving standard? Too often, what we consider a past hero’s failings, are really just a sign of their times. It’s sad if that offends some, but that is real history taken from the way real people lived. We need to be cautious before destroying these bits of stone memories left over from a world where we never lived and a time we never experienced.

Our history may sometimes be ugly and raw, and we should point that out. There may be monuments that should be moved or removed. My only argument is that we need to be careful. Ugly and raw is better than sanitized and filtered, especially through a lens of modern sentiment.

Besides, times and attitudes come and go. Who is to say that in a few years a new breed of radicals might not come along wanting to tear down the monuments of the current batch of liberals as history deniers and monument burners?

That would be funny too. And almost as ironic as today’s democrats complaining about the statues erected by their own political ancestors.

What a crazy world.

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Voter Apathy?

While most of you reading this column voted this month, most of the people you see walking down the street did not.

Blaming voter apathy, however, may not be the answer. It’s like blaming the bumps for the measles – it’s a symptom not the cause.

Instead, consider this: The United Sates has one of the lowest rates of voter turnout in the free world. Is it just coincidence, that they are also one of the last advanced democracies to use a winner take all system of voting?

In a winner take all system, everyone votes, and whoever gets the most votes wins. While it sounds perfectly fair, it is not.

Too often, under winner take all, the winning candidate is an outlier that most of the voters did not want – the perfect example – the primary nomination of Donald Trump.

Let’s say there are eight people running for the school board’s one open position. There has been rampant juvenile crime on the busses lately, so Tommy Terrible, the candidate who wants to ban school busses, has convinced about 15 percent of the voters (mostly those who already take their kids to school) to support him. The other 85 percent, however, hate this idea. So he has no chance of winning – right?

Wrong.

If the seven remaining candidates divide the opposition votes, with no individual getting more than 15 percent, Terrible wins the election. He is now on the school board even though 85 percent voted against him.

After a few elections like this, voters will start voting strategically. This means they vote only for the candidate closest to their view that also has the best chance of winning. It is called the spoiler effect. They don’t vote their first choice, or even their second – they only vote to keep Tommy Terrible out of office.

If this sounds familiar, it should. How often do we hear complaints of how there are no good candidates with a chance of winning. Yet we vote anyway – it’s our duty. Many just give up.

As people continue to vote strategically, the smaller parties drop out rather than spend money in futile efforts, leading eventually to a two party system. That is where we are today. The two parties will change control periodically, but third parties have no chance, and most voters feel they have no real say in government.

We call it voter apathy and blame it on lazy voters.

Negative campaigning grows when the purpose of campaigns is as much about scaring the public off the competition as it is satisfying your base. Major parties like the spoiler effect. It makes them less answerable to small interests as long as they can scare those interests away from the opposition.

A simple change in our voting system could go far to fix these problems.

Instant runoff voting (IRV) is one method several states are trying.

IRV, allows voters to number each candidate on the ballot by preference. In an election for a single office, only the number one preference on each ballot is counted in the first round. If, in that first round, a candidate gets more than 50 percent of the votes, he or she wins the election.

However, if no one gets 50 percent, the two bottom candidates are dropped, and the ballots recounted. The ballots that had originally numbered a dropped candidate as their first choice, are now re-allocated to count as a vote for whomever they selected as their second choice. The process continues until one candidate reaches the 50 percent mark and wins the election. No one has to visit the polls more than once, and the winner is always the one that the most voters actually chose.

Voters, seeing that their vote really matters, vote again.

Parties must stop alienating small groups so that they will choose them as their second or third choice. Because they can no longer depend on demonizing large swaths of the population, negative campaigning decreases.

Major parties must work harder to lock in voters – so changes in voting systems are difficult to get past the party dominated legislatures – kind of like re-districting reform.

Regardless, fourteen major cities in the U.S. already use Instant Runoff Voting. And Ranked Choice Voting (RCV), another alternative system that claims it can beat Gerrymandering, is used at some level in more than 30 states – including some party elections in Virginia.

As is so often the case, grass roots efforts started the ball rolling.

Perhaps the two major parties might consider IRV or RCV for their next presidential primary.

A new voting system is not the only fix needed to help solve voter apathy. Fixing Gerrymandering would also help, as would finding more innovative and convenient ways to vote.

But that’s a discussion for another time.

Punchbowl Shelter

 

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