The fight over Confederate monuments on public property has once again come to the forefront as the nation finds itself in the midst of racial upheaval spurred by the death of George Floyd while in police custody and amplified by the Black Lives Matter movement protests.
Some local governments in Alabama are taking unilateral action to remove monuments from public spaces in direct violation of the Alabama Memorial Preservation Act of 2017.
Former U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, a candidate for U.S. Senate in Alabama, noted the lack of a process and discussion about the monuments before these monuments were removed during an interview with Huntsville radio WVNN’s “The Jeff Poor Show” on Tuesday.
“Monuments — they can be changed,” Sessions said. “There are lawful ways to do that. You should do it in a lawful way. But look — there’s not being a real discussion about this. It’s not a respectful discussion. It’s almost an erasing of history. It’s a demonizing of anybody who was not perfect. The great Shelby Steele talks about this and it was clear in the 1980s, the radicals of the 60s and 70s and coming into the 80s — but, they judged America by a standard of perfection. And, of course, we fall short. Good Americans will say to the radicals, ‘We hear you. We want to get better. We want to have better racial relations. We want to have a better justice system. We want to have a better economic system.’”
He added, “And what do the radicals say? They don’t say, ‘Thank you,’ shake hands on it and, ‘Let’s work together.’ They say, ‘Aha, you’ve admitted your society is racist, exploitative and unfair, just like we said. We need to destroy it.’ That’s the way the Antifa crowd looks. They’ve never been a healthy part of democracy. They’re holding properties that they took, like they took in Seattle 20 years ago, still holding them in Germany. Now they’re bringing that to the United States. We just need to stand up to that, defend our lawful system, enter into constant discussions and dialogue, and in particular with policing.”
@Jeff_Poor is a graduate of Auburn University and the University of South Alabama, the editor of Breitbart TV, a columnist for Mobile’s Lagniappe Weekly and host of Huntsville’s “The Jeff Poor Show” from 2-5 p.m. on WVNN.
