Why would anyone defend Robert E. Lee?
Oct 31, 2017, 4:38 PM
A statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee stands in the middle of a traffic circle on Monument Avenue in Richmond, Va. (AP Photo/Steve Helber)
(AP Photo/Steve Helber)
For the life of me, I can’t figure this one out. And yet, it’s happening. We’re debating the defense of Confederate General Robert E. Lee.
Not in a high school history class, but in the White House press room and by a representative of the president himself, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who is following the lead of Trump’s chief of staff General John Kelly.
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Why? Robert E. Lee was a treasonous criminal who tried to kill those who flew the American flag. And yet, there are people in America who are more upset by football players kneeling before the Stars and Stripes that Lee sought to destroy.
“I would tell you that Robert E. Lee was an honorable man,” Kelly recently said to Laura Ingraham.”He was a man that gave up his country to fight for his state, which 150 years ago was more important than country. It was always loyalty to state first back in those days.”
“All of our leaders have flaws,” Huckabee Sanders said Tuesday morning during a press briefing “Washington, Jefferson, JFK, Roosevelt — that doesn’t diminish their contributions to our country and it can’t erase them from our history.”
But Colin Kaepernick is called unpatriotic, among other harsh names.
Robert E. Lee was a traitor. That’s it. That’s the take. Yes, we should learn about him and the events of the era. We should never erase history. But we shouldn’t honor its villains.
And as we all know, President Trump hates “losers.” And Lee lost!
