ANALYSIS/OPINION:

Charlottesville has had a cascade effect, and cities and counties around the nation are looking to their own backyards for signs of racism, monuments of offense, statues that bring bad feelings — and the Founding Fathers are weeping.

There’s a First Amendment, folks. There’s a history of a nation at stake here. And just because Charlottesville was blackened by white supremacists who brought out the ugly, doesn’t mean their entire cause was black. Erasing history is never a good thing. And plenty others than white supremacists think that way.

That Robert E. Lee statue in Charlottesville should have been left alone, if for no other reason than to remind Americans of her past — to prompt discussion of her future.

But it wasn’t, and now we’re seeing the dismal ripple effect.

The mayor of Baltimore, Catherine Pugh, ordered Confederate monuments removed from her city under cover of darkness. Think about that for a moment: A government official ordered an action behind closed doors, absent the say of the people — an action which was then carried out in the middle of the night.

Anybody see anything anti-American about that?

“[It was] in the best interest of my city,” she said, The New York Times reported. “I said with the climate of this nation, that I think it’s very important that we move quickly and quietly.”

A Chicago pastor, Bishop James Dukes of the Liberation Christian Center, called on Mayor Rahm Emanuel to uproot a statue of America’s first president, George Washington, from the park that bears his name — Washington Park — and oh, yes, rename that parcel of land, as well.

His reasons?

“Slave owners do not deserve the honor of our children playing in parks named after them,” he said in a Facebook post.

By that logic, next up: Everything that bears resemblance to Founding Fathers, some of whom were slave owners, some of whom were not, but still supported slavery. That means a complete shake-up of Washington, D.C., where a massive cast of Thomas Jefferson stands nearby a high-rise monument named in Washington’s honor.

And why stop at monuments?

Of course, Jefferson’s hand was heavy on the Declaration of Independence. Does that get torn and tossed, as well?

Don’t forget the school books — the history lessons. The coins and bills that bear founders’ likenesses; the many museums that hang portraits and paintings of these so-deemed racist white men. The Constitution of the United States that bears their spirit and words.

The door, in this out-of-control emotionally charged atmosphere, is opening wide for a complete anarchist take-down of America’s history. This isn’t about monuments — it’s about power and control and political agenda.

And the leftist lust to consume freedom and crumble our country from within isn’t confined to the public square. In Stafford County, Virginia, a Confederate flag waves high above trees planted along a patch of land by Interstate 95. The flag is on private property. But Stafford County supervisors are currently fielding complaints from residents about the negative messages this flag sends to highway drivers. One possible solution they’re mulling to right this offense?

Supervisors may very well create a new zoning law that restricts the height of flags that can be flown on private property. Read that again: Private property.

Is this the America we want — a nation run by thugs, mob rule, far-left control freaks and anti-freedom special interests?

No, guys, this is not about monuments. It’s not even about white supremacists, and whether these types of groups deserve First Amendment rights to assemble and speak (which, of course, they do, same as Black Lives Matter). This is about the soul of America — the truth of her past, and the determination of her future.

Robert E. Lee, Confederate monuments — Confederate flags — are just the first of a very long line of symbols and pieces of history that are in the line of the left’s fire. And after the symbols are destroyed, the structural damage starts — the uprooting of our country’s constitutional way of government. Because, after all, if documents like the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were written by racist men, using racist words, well then, the whole government of America must be racist, yes?

Beware the wicked logic. Those who don’t fight this whitewash are condemning America’s coming generations to a country that’s far different from what our founders intended, one where freedoms will be defined by what our government allows, and not by what God has already granted.

Sign up for Daily Opinion Newsletter Manage Newsletters

Copyright © 2020 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.