Removing Lee's Statue

 

Treason against the United States shall consist only in levying war against them,or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort.

Article 3. Section 3, U.S. Constitution

 

Earlier this month officials in Richmond, Virginia removed a large statue of Robert E. Lee that had been on government property on Monument Avenue since 1890.  Trump and some conservative writers have denounced the removal with some calling it wokeness gone wild or an attempt to erase history. I think they are wrong. In evaluating the propriety of a statue commemorating someone being on public land, it is important to consider what it is about the person that is being commemorated. A statue of Henry Ford honoring him for helping put the nation on wheels would have a quite different meaning from one honoring him for his opinions about Jews. 

The statue of Lee in Richmond honored him for commanding the confederate Army of Northern Virginia in the Civil War. At the start of the war, he was a serving officer in the American army. He left it to participate in a violent rebellion against the United States, a rebellion for the purpose of preserving the institution of slavery in Virginia and other southern states.  He was a strong, serious, and personally honorable man. His enemies, including the man who finally beat him, admired his skill and tenacity. The army he led fought long and well. But he committed treason against his country in service of a vile cause. The statue in Richmond was meant to commemorate that treason and honor that cause. I see nothing wrong in removing it and others of confederate officers that went up throughout the former confederacy during the Jim Crow period  proclaiming a defiant support for the rebellion and its “glorious lost cause” from display on government property and moving  them to museums or selling them to collectors. 

Statues at battlefields intended to honor the courage or memorialize the deeds of confederate soldiers with little or no reference to their cause are different and probably should be left alone. Besides they and the ones of union regiments are good visual aids to who did what where at the battles.

 

Milley and Trump

Conservatives are attacking General Mark Milley, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, for three things authors Bob Woodward and Robert Costa claim he did in the last months of Trump’s presidency. I am no fan of Milley and  doubt that anyone foolish enough to babble in public about “white rage” has the brains and judgment to be up to the job he has.  However, I think the criticism is wrong.

The book mentions a conversation Milley had with his counterpart in China a few days before the election where he told the Chinese general that things were not getting out of hand, that the American government was stable and functioning normally. (He apparently had similar conversations at about the same time with officers in the armed forces of a number of other countries as well.) According to Milley, the call was authorized by the secretary of defense and made with over a dozen people present. I see nothing wrong in telling enemies and friends something like that to caution the first and reassure the second.

People have paid more attention to a second conversation on January 8^th with the same Chinese general. According to Woodward and Costa, Milley  told him that the United States was  not planning a sneak attack on China before Trump left office and promised to warn the Chinese if that changed. I see nothing wrong with telling the Chinese America was not planning to attack them.  Trump was behaving erratically enough that people might have wondered if he would do something that crazy.  The promise of a warning to the Chinese if we planned to attack is strange and unlikely enough to require quite a bit more than the authors say so to be taken seriously.  Also it has been reported in the news tonight that the general denies the story of offering the warning.

Perhaps the thing that infuriates conservatives the most is Milley’s meeting with other general and flag officers after January 6^th  to obtain their pledge not to obey an order from Trump to launch an unprovoked nuclear strike against a foreign country. They ignore the context of the time. From election day to December 14^th Trump’s behavior was dangerous, foolish, delusional, dishonest, reprehensible, and harmful to the country, but still within legal limits. After December 14^th he was acting as an enemy of the republic. On January 6^th he attempted a coup d’état by ordering his vice president to overturn the results of the election. On the same day he conducted a demagogic rally against the results of the election and sent a mob of gullible supporters to the Capitol to try to stop the final certification of his defeat.  It does not seem at all unreasonable to me that a prudent officer would want to make sure that the man was not able to do something far worse to try to stay in power.

I think General Milley did the country a service and should be commended for it.

Origin of the Covid Virus and Epidemic

I do not know how the covid virus originated or first infected people.  If anyone outside of China does know and has evidence to validate his conclusion, he’s not talking in public.  I do have an opinion. I believe the likely hypothesis is that the virus was stored and studied at the virology lab in Wuhan, China and (probably accidentally) released from there.  People at the lab were studying  and working with viruses of the same general sort. The first reported cases were in the area of Wuhan.

 However the main reason for my opinion is the behavior of the Chinese government. That government is a brutal dictatorship with a brutal and unrestrained secret police.  I think one may assume that if the virus came from the lab, Chinese officials either knew it immediately or learned it quickly. If they knew it did not come from the lab, it would have been in the Chinese government’s interest to be free, easy, and open in allowing outside observers and researchers to see whatever they wanted at the lab so that people everywhere would see China was innocent and had nothing to hide. Instead Chinese officials  have done the opposite.

One of China’s main assets in its competition with the United States is its modern day China Lobby of secret agents, ideological fellow travelers, paid flacks, and people with professional or business interests in or connections to China. The Chinese government’s behavior concerning the virus and the epidemic has made it harder for that lobby to function effectively and led to more Americans seeing China as a threat or enemy.  That was predictable, and it strikes me as best explained by the idea that  Chinese officials decided that allowing people to learn what really happened would be worse.

That is not conclusive, but I think it is the way to bet.

Texas Abortion Law

 I live in Texas, and in its last session our native criminal class outdid itself in passing the abominable abortion law that went into effect this month. The legislators did not make abortion a crime subject to prosecution by officials, probably because they knew courts would not allow a law of that sort to be enforced. Instead they came up with the gimmick of making performing an abortion or helping a woman to get an abortion after about the sixth week of pregnancy a civil violation that anyone in the state can sue over and collect up to ten thousand dollars plus a cut for his lawyers. The persons doing the suing do not have to claim to have suffered any harm or even to have any connection at all to the woman or those they are suing. The scheme was that as long as it lasted this would be as effective as an ordinary prohibition but would be harder and take longer to stop in courts, because  there would have to be civil suits under it to review before anything definite could happen.  

People should oppose the law and its gimmick irrespective of their opinions on abortion. If the gimmick is permitted as a tactic, a legislature could at least temporarily get rid of almost anything  its members disapproved of  that would be impossible to ban directly  (rude political speech, private purchase of firearms, homosexual marriage, or home schooling, for   example)   by making anyone connected with the disliked activity subject to an unlimited number of lawsuits.

The five members of the supreme court who refused to block this thing for what they said were purely technical and procedural reasons should consider its substance, see the gimmick as the attack on the general constitutional protection of people’s rights that it is, and find a way to stop its present and possible future use  as soon as possible. Liberal, libertarian, and conservative anti-abortion people who have supported this law should think twice. Libertarians among them should be ashamed.