Of all statues to be removed, this one should top the list

Since I last addressed the fever to eliminate or relocate the statues of Confederate leaders in American history, such efforts have expanded as the frenzy finds new targets.

I want to contribute my support to one of them. I’ll get to that in a moment.

Georgia State University history professor Harcourt Fuller summarized the ongoing irrationality of political correctness:

“Since monuments represent these contested memories, histories and embattled national identities, their removal, redesign, renaming or destruction represents a rejection of those historical and cultural narratives in favor of ones that are more in line with the political, cultural and social climate of the day.”

Awakening to the trend, the Democrats in several states are removing the names of Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson from their events.

What have annually been traditional Jefferson-Jackson Day dinners to raise campaign funds for liberal candidates are being scrubbed of reference to these two founders of their party.

A recent family road trip took us across the South, including such places as Memphis, Nashville, Knoxville, Asheville, Charleston, Atlanta, Birmingham, Natchez and more.

The folly of thinking the images of Southern culture and history can somehow be put away and out of sight can be verified by nothing more than a drive-by. Anyone who stays a while in any of these places can realize the futility of this nonsensical behavior.

But there is one effigy that truly deserves to be trashed. The effort to make that happen is the one I want to join.

Last month, Ministers Taking a Stand, an organization whose mission is to stay true to America’s national destiny, wrote the Smithsonian Institution seeking the removal of Margaret Sanger’s bust from National Portrait Gallery exhibits.

Their petition explained why: “Perhaps the Gallery is unaware that Ms. Sanger supported black eugenics, a racist attitude toward black and other minority babies; an elitist attitude toward those she regarded as ‘the feeble minded;’ speaking at rallies of Ku Klux Klan women; and communications with Hitler sympathizers.

“Also, the notorious ‘Negro Project,’ which sought to limit, if not eliminate, black births, was her brainchild. Despite these well-documented facts of history, her bust sits proudly in your gallery as a hero of justice. The obvious incongruity is staggering!”

Pastors and religious leaders from across the country signed the letter.

The Smithsonian quickly rejected the request, citing the founder of the American Birth Control League and Planned Parenthood as someone who shaped history.

Expressing their displeasure with the answer they received, The Ministers cited the nation’s leading provider of abortions as suppressing the growth of minority populations by locating 70 percent of its abortion facilities within or near black and Latino communities.

The Civil War cost the lives of more than 600,000 American soldiers. Planned Parenthood has destroyed the lives of 6.8 million developing babies — a factor 10-fold as great as the casualties of the costliest war in our history.

With the latest revelations of the organization’s practices of harvesting baby parts — for whatever reasons — I have a resulting question in the year of attempting to erase the likenesses of certain images of our past.

Among them all, are any responsible for greater denigration of minorities than the organization created by Sanger?

One of our nation’s founders, John Adams, famously identified the Constitution as “made only for a moral and religious people,” it being “wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

The removal of Sanger’s bust would be a step in the direction of recommitting ourselves to such a high calling and restoring the essential values of our society that are eroding in an ever-widening stream of secular convenience.

Richard Greene is a former Arlington mayor and served as an appointee of President George W. Bush as regional administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency. mayorgreene@mayorgreene.com

This story was originally published September 11, 2015 at 8:12 PM with the headline "Of all statues to be removed, this one should top the list."