Tipsheet

Christopher Columbus Is Set on Fire, Beheaded in Major Cities Across the Country

Christopher Columbus came tumbling down in the Virginia state capitol on Tuesday. A mob gathered around the monument in Richmond, and chanted about how the explorer "represented genocide," before tearing it down with ropes, setting it on fire, and throwing it into the lake. Another Columbus statue in Boston was beheaded. Similar plans are in place for other statues around the country because, in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd and new rounds of racial tension, these historical figures are now considered problematic.

Plenty of folks on social media were pleased and "proud" to see the Columbus monuments vandalized. But not everyone is celebrating the destruction.

In 2017, when the destruction of monuments was still a novel concept, liberal lawyer Alan Dershowitz chided those on the far left for wanting to "erase history" because that is exactly what Josef Stalin did.

"There's a danger of removing Washington and Jefferson and other of our founding fathers, who themselves owned slaves," liberal lawyer Alan Dershowitz reacted on "Fox & Friends. "We have to use this as an educational moment."

"The idea of willy nilly going through and doing what Stalin did, just erasing history and rewriting it to serve current purposes, does pose a danger,"  he continued. "And it poses a danger of educational malpractice, missing opportunities to educated people and going too far."

The lawyer made the point that if people want to suddenly erase some parts of U.S. history, they may as well dismantle the rest of it.

"Once you start rewriting history of African-Americans in this country, you have to start rewriting history of discrimination against many, many other groups," he noted. "Look, we're both a nation of immigrants, and nation of discrimination against immigrants. That's an important history for us to remember." 

For instance, FDR put 110,000 Japanese Americans into internment camps. President Abbott Lawrence Lowell of Harvard imposed anti-Jewish quotas, and discrimination against women was rampant.

Yet erasing those dark spots from history books is not the answer.

"Do not glorify the violent people who are now tearing down the statues," Dershowitz urged. "Many of these people are trying to tear down America." 

He singled out ANTIFA as a violent, anti-American group who should not in any way be considered heroes. In fact President Trump recently signaled his intention to identify ANTIFA as a terror organization.

Dershowitz encouraged his fellow liberals to speak out against the hard left radicals who are pushing this kind of dangerous behavior.