June 20, 2020

The United States of Appeasement

by By Robin M. Itzler
AmericanThinker.com

The problem with appeasement is that you can never truly appease. A famous example of naïveté occurred on September 30, 1938. British prime minister Neville Chamberlain returned home waving a worthless paper signed by Hitler. Placating the Führer by giving Germany the Sudetenland, Chamberlain happily announced to the world, "Peace in our time." Less than one year later, Hitler invaded Poland, and that was the start of World War II. So much for peace for anyone's time.

Once they see how easy it is to get what they want, their list of demands only grows longer. As Winston Churchill said, "an appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last."

Who are they? For America, it's everyone who hates President Donald Trump and his loyal supporters:

· Increasingly irrelevant people — Colin Powell, Mitt Romney, Jennifer Rubin, Meghan McCain, and Bill Kristol.

· Democratic Party leaders — Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer, House speaker Nancy Pelosi, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Georgia (governor in her own mind) Stacey Abrams.

· Leaders of large and small groups that say, "Orange man bad."

They want Confederate statues smashed into oblivion and military bases that were named after Confederate generals to be renamed. However, these statues and military bases have been around a long time — just like House speaker Nancy Pelosi, who has served in Congress since 1987.

Let's say Fort Benning, named after Confederate brigadier general Henry L. Benning, is rechristened. However, it's located in Columbus, Georgia. Would they want the city renamed, too? After all, they hate Christopher Columbus as much as they hate Henry Benning.

Appeasers always think that if they do "just this one thing," they will be happy, but it rarely works out that way. Once Confederate statues are removed, military bases renamed, and cities and states named Columbus given new monikers, there will still be more to appease.

For instance, they might focus on Camp Sherman in Ohio, which has operated since World War I. It is named after famous Ohioan and Union Civil War General William Tecumseh Sherman, who helped the Union win the war. But they do not like Sherman because Sherman didn't like black people.

During the Atlanta campaign (better known as Sherman's March to the Sea), the general issued notorious Special Field Order No. 16, which forbade the enlistment of black soldiers. Sherman detested the idea that free-born blacks from the North or newly freed blacks from the South would fight side-by-side with his white armies. He was so adamant about keeping the races separate and using blacks only as laborers that he threatened recruiters with arrest and imprisonment if they enlisted blacks.

They would denounce Gen. Sherman as a racist (which he was) and insist that the camp be renamed after someone they admire. (Che Guevara? Nicolás Maduro? Fidel Castro? Josef Stalin?)

Rather than destroy America's past, perhaps the answer is to let these statues and forts educate. Two respected black leaders agree:

· Veteran and former U.S. rep. Col. Allen West — "History is about learning from it. I don't want to see us become like the Taliban or ISIS. Those are the people [who] destroyed history."

· Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development Dr. Ben Carson — "We need to move away from being offended by everything, of going through history and looking at everything, of renaming everything. We're going to have to grow up as a society."

As Spanish-American philosopher and author George Santayana pithily observed, "those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

But wait, there would be more appeasement!

Starting with George Washington, beloved Father of our Country and America's first president, there are now calls to get rid of statues and memorials and rename streets and cities for all slave-owning Founding Fathers. These men risked their fortunes and lives to declare America's independence from Great Britain. The Washington Monument might become the Monument Formerly Known as Washington.

Thomas Jefferson, our nation's third president and principal author of the Declaration of Independence, wouldn't fare much better, as he was a slaveholder, too. Some critics claim that if whatever you are declaring can't be written in a 280-character tweet, it was probably too long to read anyway.

Would that be the end of appeasement mania? Of course not!

President Abraham Lincoln, our esteemed 16th and first Republican president, wouldn't have a chance in the Court of Popular Appeasement. In a George Soros world, only Democrats can have views that evolve. Although President Lincoln freed some of the slaves during the Civil War by issuing the Emancipation Proclamation and wanted them to join American society following the war, his earlier views would take precedence.

They would reach back to September 18, 1858 in his fourth debate with Stephen Douglas, when Lincoln said, "I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races."

Lincoln went on to share that he was also opposed to blacks having the right to vote, serve on juries, hold office, or intermarry with whites. They would close the Lincoln Memorial, topple statues, and rename streets and cities.

Would that be enough to appease them? Of course not!

President Franklin Roosevelt would have to go, too. On February 19, 1942, President Roosevelt signed infamous Executive Order 9066 that forcibly removed Americans of Japanese descent from their homes and sent them to internment camps. Think of all the bridges, libraries, schools, museums, roads, and parks named after our 32nd president that would have to be changed. Or maybe it would be cheaper to chisel out the name "Franklin" and replace it with "Theodore," our 26th president.

However, they probably hate Theodore Roosevelt, too. An avid sport hunter, T.R.'s homes were adorned with small and big game trophies from his many hunting expeditions.

Should Teddy Roosevelt, as well as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln, be chiseled off Mount Rushmore to appease everyone? Who, if anyone, would those seeking absolute purity accept in the place of the four undisputed great U.S. presidents?

President John F. Kennedy would likely be erased from history. A conservative by today's standards, JFK lowered corporate tax rates ("A rising tide lifts all the boats") and hated communism ("The enemy is the Communist system itself — implacable, insatiable, unceasing in its drive for world domination"). Moreover, Kennedy had the audacity to approve the Bay of Pigs invasion, where he backed Cuban rebels in their attempt to remove communist Fidel Castro. JFK increased the defense budget by 20 percent and escalated America's involvement in the Vietnam War. However, his biggest sin to today's liberals might be that he didn't fully embrace the civil rights movement.

Once all the statues are toppled

When there are no more statues to destroy, no more government institutions to rechristen, no more streets and cities to rename, they will focus on entertainment. Songs, television shows, and films that they don't like would be gone with the wind. And movies or programs that show law enforcement in a good light — fuhgeddaboudit! (Better start taping Law & Order episodes.)

Would appeasement be done now? Of course not!

Offices, schools, and homes would feature safe spaces to prevent anyone anywhere at any time from being offended by anything. The only exception would be free rein to offend conservatives.

Major corporations would continue issuing preposterous news releases and running full-page advertisements about how much they care about the issue du jour.

History is not erasable and should not be sanitized. Once Democrat-supported appeasement is permanently embedded and used to cancel culture and promote political correctness, it will continue even after they decide that Democrats must go, too.

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/06/the_united_states_of_appeasement.html

Gold is $1,581/oz today. When it hits $2,000, it will be up 26.5%. Let's see how long that takes. - De 3/11/2013 - ANSWER: 7 Years, 5 Months