Executive
Monument Avenue – casualty of revolution
Monument Avenue in Richmond, Virginia will now become a casualty of an attempt to make revolution by demonstrating how quickly law can change.
The political left in America is attempting a putsch against our republic. Others have written ad nauseam about the excuse. Whether a squad of arresting officers acted properly or improperly, in trying to apprehend a suspect who might or might not have been “high” and who definitely died as a result, a trial court will decide. But that is not the issue, and never was. The issue is whether America will continue as a republic, or lapse into an identity-political oligarchy. And the latest casualty of this attempted authoritarian revolution is an iconic street in Richmond, Virginia. Its name: Monument Avenue
Monument Avenue geography
Monument Avenue takes its name from a group originally comprising five monuments to Southern figures in the American War Between the States. The divided road begins at North Lombardy Street at one of two traffic circles along the route: Stuart Circle. From there it stretches northwest through Lee Circle and on to Roseneath Road, which marks the Richmond city limit. Beyond, something called Monument Avenue continues into Henrico County and ends at Horsepen Road.
The Monument Avenue Preservation Society defines the Monument Avenue Historic District as running from Roseneath Road to Birch Street. (Technically, the avenue changes its name to Franklin Avenue southeast of Stuart Circle at North Lombardy Street.)
National Historic Landmark
Monument Avenue earned a place in the National Register of Historic Places in 1965. The National Park Service extended this designation in 1989. Then in 1997 the Park Service declared Monument Avenue a National Historic Landmark. A small plaque sits on the median grass immediately northwest of Lee Circle and declares the purpose:
This District possesses national significance in commemorating the history of the United States of America. This grand avenue retains a unique combination of commemorative sculpture, community planning and distinctive architecture from the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
But note one feature of this image that ought to anger anyone who believes in the republic. Someone has spray painted over the plaque, in bold yellow, the classic hammer and sickle of communism.
The statues of Monument Avenue
Five statues have graced Monument Avenue since 1906.
First is the J. E. B. Stuart Memorial, in Stuart Circle. That the first monument would be to Stuart is only fitting, for his soldiers brought the cavalry commander’s body to Richmond after he fell in battle. General Stuart sits astride his horse Yellow Tavern, shouting a command as the horse rears up and prepares to jump.
Next is the Robert E. Lee Memorial within Lee Circle, which joins Monument Avenue to Allen Avenue. Lee Circle is much larger, large enough to force all traffic to turn aside. The statue has one word on it, on each side: the name of Lee. Atop the plinth, the commander of the Army of Northern Virginia sits astride his favorite war charger, Traveler. In contrast to Yellow Tavern, Traveler walks almost calmly, all his hooves on the ground.
Jefferson Davis tells why the South fought and for what
Where Davis Avenue intersects Monument Avenue, stands the Jefferson Davis Memorial. The President of the Confederate States of America stands facing the center of his capital city. His right arm stretches forward and to the right. Above him stands Liberty, spreading her wings. And along the semicircular stringcourse behind him, one can read President Davis’ reasoning for fighting the War:
“Not in hostility to others, not to injure another section of the country, not even for our…” Photo: CNAV 
“…pecuniary benefit, but from the high and solemn motive of defending and protecting the…” Photo: CNAV 
“…rights we inherited and which it is our duty to transmit unshorn to our children.” Jefferson Davis. Photo: CNAV
Not in hostility to others, not to injure any section of the country, not even for our own pecuniary benefit, but from the high and solemn motive of defending and protecting the rights we inherited, and which it is our duty to transmit unshorn to our children.
Stonewall Jackson
Further up the avenue, the recently renamed Arthur Ashe Boulevard crosses it. In that intersection stands the statue of Thomas Jonathan “Stonewall” Jackson. He commanded the original “Stonewall Brigade” and afterward the “Stonewall Division.” This last became the small but more mobile unit of the Army of Northern Virginia. The forward curve of the plinth tells this brief story:
Born 1824; killed at Chancellorsville 1863.
In fact, Stonewall Jackson died in what soldiers today call a “blue fire incident.”
In the middle of the 20th century a local legend took hold about the horses on Monument Avenue. According to this legend, if a statuary horse stood or walked calmly, its rider did not die under enemy fire. But if the horse was actively rearing or galloping, the rider did. This would be consistent with J. E. B. Stuart dying in action while Lee survived the war. How this applies to Stonewall Jackson is ambiguous at best.
A Naval officer and a gentleman of tennis
Immediately southeast of Belmont Avenue stands the Matthew Fontaine Maury Memorial. This Naval commander, who defected to the Confederacy when the War began, sits beneath a large world globe. Commander Maury gained the nickname “Pathfinder of the Seas” through his revolution in ocean charting. But this happened before the War, not afterward. His Virginia heritage, and his service in the Confederate Navy (though apparently not at sea), are why he rates a statue on Monument Avenue.
Finally, where Roseneath Road crosses Monument Avenue, stands the last statue, which dates from 1997. Arthur Ashe is an unusual honoree for at least two reasons:
- He lived in modern times, and
- His claim to fame is the sport of tennis, not military service.
Nevertheless he was by every account a gentleman, on or off the court. His likeness, a Bible in one hand and a tennis racquet in the other, addresses a class of small children.
The death sentence on Monument Avenue
In the same year that Arthur Ashe joined the list of honorees on Monument Avenue, came the declaration of it as a National Historic Landmark. But today that seems to make no difference. Monument Avenue has received a death sentence, contrary to law. That this should happen, and the agency by which it is happening, threatens death to the Republic itself.
Damage
It began on Tuesday night, June 2, 2020, and continued the night after. Quite simply, a riot broke out in Richmond. This was one of several attending the death of drug-possession suspect George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota last week. Before it ended, graffiti, most of it obscene but much of it bearing the phrase Black Lives Matter or their initials, covered the plinths of the first four statues. CNAV saw the aftermath, but declined to photograph the plinths, because the graffiti would make them NSFW. (The galleries in this article reflect the state of the monuments more than three years ago.)
The Stuart monument suffered the worst defacement: someone threw bright yellow paint on the general’s back. That this did not happen to General Lee is only because his plinth stands too tall. The Maury monument suffered comparatively little defacement, which looked more like a lover’s mark than a political message. No one defaced the Arthur Ashe monument in any way, shape or form.
Protest and counterprotest
On Thursday (June 4), demonstrators stood at the plinths of the stricken Jackson, Davis, and Stuart monuments. Before the Lee monument, a crowd gathered, with portable sound system, listening to several people giving political speeches. One brave woman challenged the prevailing sentiment, holding aloft a sign giving the message that these statues represent art. Passions, including anger, last only a moment. Art stands forever. But that made little or no difference to that crowd, as far as CNAV could see.
The governor and mayor would remove the statues
Also on Thursday, Governor Ralph Northam (D-Va.) announced that “as soon as possible” crews would remove the Robert E. Lee statue and plinth. These, he said, will “go into storage” while the Richmond Mayor and City Council decide what to do with them. (At least one official from the town of Crewe, Virginia has expressed interest in acquiring the Lee statue and possibly others also.) Mayor Levar Stoney of Richmond vows to remove the Stuart, Davis, and Jackson statues, which stand on city land. (Lee Circle belongs to the State.) Reports conflict on whether Mayor Stoney will seek to remove the Maury statue. No one has said a word about removing the Arthur Ashe statue.
But would that be legal?
The legality of the moves by the Governor and Mayor is in doubt. CNAV could find no statement revoking, or suggesting to revoke, the National Historic Landmark designation of Monument Avenue. But, given someone’s use of a classic communist symbol to deface the plaque marking the declaration, perhaps neither Governor Northam nor Mayor Stoney care.
CNAV has reached out to Senator Amanda Chase (R-Chesterfield Co.) for comment on this point. Senator Chase, on Facebook, has protested the removal of the Lee statue and the threat to remove all the monuments. At the time of this writing, Senator Chase has not commented. But in her Facebook videos she has denounced the Democratic majorities in the General Assembly as “socialist majorities.”
Oh, by the way…!
In all the excitement, no one in Richmond has mentioned whether the riots and vandalism (and worse things, that happened to neighborhoods removed from Monument Avenue) will cause a spike in SARS-CoV-2 infections. It would appear to CNAV, as to Tony Heller at realclimatescience.com, that Gov. Northam and Mayor Stoney have abandoned the fiction. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D-Mich.) certainly abandoned it, though Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D-N.Y.) did not. Then again, Gov. Cuomo is in a scathing dispute with Mayor Bill De Blasio (D-NYC). As may be, not one Virginia official has said or implied that the vandals, or the daytime protesters, risk infection. True enough, most of the daytime protesters at Lee Circle wore masks. But no one has made that claim about the nighttime vandals and arsonists.
As goes Monument Avenue, so goes the republic
So three issues raise themselves with the slow death of Monument Avenue that will shortly begin. First, Federal law might not allow it. Either that, or National Historic Landmark designation means nothing.
Second, as the counter-demonstrator told CNAV, art ought to be above politics. If art ceases to be preservable art because it is no longer “politically correct,” then art qua art no longer exists. To prostitute one’s own art in service to a political cause is bad enough. To permit any political cause to deem that art becomes non-art is to destroy art and law both.
Mutable laws are a dead letter
Third, last, and most important: the subjects of the statues that now face removal (and destruction?) were defending freedom and the rule of law. Note Jefferson Davis’ words carefully. Today a political movement will carelessly proceed in defiance of existing law, and demonstrate the danger of making too many laws changeable on a moment’s notice. Well does the John Birch Society warn that “democracy” is unstable and leads to oligarchy. Laws that one can change without notice, or simply ignore, have no force and cannot protect anyone’s rights.
Monument Avenue updates 17 June 2020
As of this posting, the following relevant news items have come to the attention of CNAV, courtesy of The Richmond Times-Dispatch:
- A judge in Richmond has enjoined indefinitely the plan by Governor Ralph Northam (D-Va.) to remove the Robert E. Lee statue. Judge Bradley B. Cavedo had already so enjoined the Governor for ten days on Monday 8 June. Today he said the statue “belongs to the people.” He scheduled a hearing for Tuesday 23 June.
- Some person, acting in the mistaken belief that two wrongs make a right, has defaced the Arthur Ashe statue. The report comes originally from the Associated Press. The vandal allegedly said, “You guys tagged my statues, so I will tag yours.” CNAV condemns without qualification that shameful and disgraceful act. No, sir(rah)! Two wrongs do not make a right!
Angels are bright still, though the brightest fell.
Though all things foul would wear the look of grace,
Yet grace must still look so.MacBeth IV.iii.10-12
Terry A. Hurlbut has been a student of politics, philosophy, and science for more than 35 years. He is a graduate of Yale College and has served as a physician-level laboratory administrator in a 250-bed community hospital. He also is a serious student of the Bible, is conversant in its two primary original languages, and has followed the creation-science movement closely since 1993.
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What “rights we inherited, and which it is our duty to transmit unshorn to our children” was Jefferson Davis fighting to defend, exactly? The right to enslave other human beings, perhaps? Or something else?
In that era, the States were supposed to be sovereign. In fact, before the war, one would speak of “The United States, or any of them.” After the war, the phraseology in Amendments to the Constitution spoke of “The United States, or any State.” Though the word State remained, it no longer retained its meaning. From now on, province would have been more appropriate.
The conduct of Reconstruction (1865-77) vindicated the judgment of Davis and other political and military leaders. Abraham Lincoln might have done things differently. Certainly he had plans that differed markedly from what Congress, and President Ulysses S. Grant, did after his death. But, of course, Lincoln was dead. And with the sole exception of Tennessee (which obtained “re-admission” to the Union under Lincoln’s Ten-percent Plan before his death), every one of the Confederate States suffered a different degree of, frankly, punishment. The worst was having to endure a series of “provisional governors,” all from out of State, with zero accountability, whom the occupying forces permitted, frankly, to “steal large amounts of money for themselves.” That last comes from Gertrude Simmons Brown, Ernest W. Tiegs, and Fay Adams, authors of Your Country and Mine. No historian has openly disputed that charge, though some tried to gloss over it.
The regime of the “carpetbaggers” (those out-of-state provisional governors) and the “scalawags” (their in-State collaborators) made Southerners bitter. That Virginia did not suffer as badly as most is only because Virginia re-established Constitutional government earlier than most (except for Tennessee, of course).
The defacement and threatened removal of the monuments is all about serving a goal going far beyond rescuing people from slavery. I challenge you to read the article by Joan Swirsky. It contains an embed of the “Antifa Manual,” recovered from a riot scene in Eugene, Oregon on 29 May of this year. I’d say the condition that document was in, which comes through in the making of the PDF file, will attest to its authenticity. You will find therein a plan for nothing short of genocide. Genocide spread out over decades, but genocide nevertheless.
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It seems odd to justify the rebellion of the slaveholding states by their treatment as defeated combatants after the war. Combatants who fought for their right to own other human beings.
If you think that ‘antifa manual’ is real, I have some startling facts for you about the protocols of the elders of zion…
I would say that the treatment of the South after the war removes any moral argument against the persistents of the monuments on Monument Avenue in Richmond.
As to the Antifa Manual, I suggest you visit the post “Where anarchists fail, Americans prevail”, scroll down to the embed I made of it, download it and read it. Then tell me whether you think it’s true or false.
You see, I know the provenance of the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion. It came from the secret police of Czar Aleksandr III. I also know that those Protocols find no support in any legitimate Jewish writings. Whereas the Antifa Manual is classic leftist kill-whitey style. It’s right up there with the spectacle of white women kneeling before black men and apologizing publicly for being white.
By that logic, the treatment of East Germany by the Soviets (far worse than the former CSA after the Civil War) would remove any moral argument against the persistence of monuments to Nazis in Berlin.
I did read the ‘antifa manual’, which is why I dismiss it entirely. I did the same in 2017. I am shocked that you are taken in by such an blatant work of either propaganda or terrible satire. I lean toward propaganda, but maybe someone was just satirizing the motives attributed to antifa and the left by the far right.
Yes, you know the provenance of the Protocols. Do you know the provenance of this manual? The Protocols wouldn’t have attracted worldwide attention (like Henry Ford printing 500,000 copies to distribute in the US!) if it didn’t play into the antisemitic beliefs of so many people in the early 20th century. It certainly didn’t seem over the top or too on the nose to them, because they were eager to believe the worst of their ‘enemies’. You seem happy to believe similar claims about Antifa, too. “Classic leftist kill-whitey style” sounds a lot like “classic Jewish subvert-Christendom style”. Did you not notice the parallels between the Protocols and the ‘antifa manual’? Did you not know about this identical ‘manual’ being posted in 2017, cofevfe stains and all, by a guy calling himself Jebediah88? And reposted since as being ‘found’ at Evergreen State College, or at Charlottesville, or ‘leaked’?
link to web.archive.org for example.
What’s a little blood libel on one side when you have neck chips on the other side that determine whether it’s a hate crime if you use the “n-word with the hard r”? I mean, one is totally real and the other is just baseless propaganda, right?
I did not see that the first time, three years ago. The text is identical.
But one complication remains. Can you assure me that no person, anywhere in the world, is promoting just such an agenda as I read in those eight pages? For everything I read there is classic anti-American style, in the style of Dreams from My Father by Barack Obama as told to Saul Alinsky. In fact it’s the sort of thing Saul Alinsky would write or ghost-write, if he thought he could get the intended readership to draw the moral.
Check this out:
link to academic.oup.com
Do those Hitler and Goebbels quotes hit a little close to home? I’m not accusing you of being a fascist, by the way. But these quotes reflect the prominent contemporary belief that just because the Protocols as a specific document were a forgery didn’t dismiss the ‘inner truth’ of the ‘Jewish conspiracy’. Heads you win, tails I lose: if they’re real, they’re real, and if they’re fake, they’re still real.
It seems to be a psychological truth that it’s easier to go from ‘oh, i got fooled by a fake’ to ‘but my underlying beliefs are still correct’ than it is to go to ‘so I should maybe re-examine my beliefs’. I don’t claim to be immune from the effect, but I try to recognize it in myself.
It seems that you’ve lowered the bar for believing the worst of Antifa to whether or not ‘no single person, anywhere in the world’ promotes such an agenda. Would that single person be enough to condemn the entire movement? I’ll even concede that somewhere there is a nutjob who would read this bogus manual and think ‘right on!’. What then follows? What does that prove about the other members of the movement?
Would one police officer promoting violent racist actions then be enough to condemn the entire police force?
That’s now the excuse they’re using in Minneapolis. They are going to go without a police force completely.
I predict that roving gangs will take over, taking what–and whom–they want.
What do you predict?
So you agree that it’s wrong to condemn the whole organization for the theoretical actions of one theoretical member? I’d just like clarification on that point.
I think that there’s a lot of room in between ‘riot gear cops in unmarked uniforms in military vehicles on every street corner’ and ‘do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law’. I don’t know what Minneapolis is going to do, but I doubt that it will end up with warlords driving technicals up and down Hennepin. I thought you were of the mindset that the agents of Government were supposed to be afraid of the People and not the other way around, anyway. Hire yourself some Academi operators like a true Libertarian, whydoncha.
I think in the Great American Experiment there’s room to try a form of policing where it isn’t one gang with badges vs. all the other gangs. I think that sometimes an institution is so deeply entangled in flawed systems that it can’t be incrementally reformed but must be replaced.
Do you think that police unions make it difficult to get rid of ‘bad apples’? Does ‘qualified immunity’ make it too hard to hold the system accountable? Can there be too many avowed white supremacists on a police force?
Or do you think that everything in policing is fine the way it is?
FWIW, I think that shuttering every police station and opening all the prison doors is a bad idea too. Let’s not exclude the middle ground, though.
I say that the police is one of the three core functions of government. Without police, people have no protection from criminals. They then have to fend for themselves.
One of two outcomes flows from that.
That’s what I see about to happen in and to Minneapolis.
What they have done is abolish the very concept of a police force that answers to everyone. They have replaced it with the Committee of Revolutionary Justice.
Listen to what they are proposing: whatever people were stealing to try to provide, give them. Maybe not drugs–though I see them decriminalizing the latter. Mostly I see them enacting Cloward and Piven’s grand dream: a Universal Basic Income.
Who pays for that? Blank-out! And I am in the blank-out category. I always knew that everything in Minnesota, particularly in the Twin Cities, was going crazy. I had no idea how crazy. I’m glad I was never naive enough to live there. Right now I would be looking for another place to live. I will have no part of such a brazen attempt to redistribute my wealth.
Whom do I call when I need to report something? According to Antifa and BLM and the DFLP (“Democrat-Farm-Labor Party,” the State chapter of the Democratic Party), no one. I just have to give up my valuables, never to see them again. I don’t deserve to retain them. Because I’m white, I’m sure, but that’s only part of it. Rather, because I have independent wealth and they, by their lights, do not.
Behold the Communist, or more likely the gangland, revolution. Anarchy, though they have legislated that, is never stable. Oligarchy always succeeds to it. Now in Minneapolis there is no law. There is only the dictates of the Crips and the Bloods, after they fight their bloody rumble.
Okay, so your prediction is no law enforcement of any kind, dogs and cats living together, Mogadishu, smoking-hole-in-the-ground. Maybe you, with a generator, commander of the neighborhood militia.
My prediction is that there will still be law enforcement, restructured/renamed, with less money spent on police militarization and more on social services like drug treatment and mental health care. Probably fewer arrests for drug possession, noise complaints, and Terry stop shenanigans. I don’t expect all the changes to be positive, because big new projects aren’t perfect from the first iteration – but then neither is the existing system.
How long before we can decide whose prediction was right? Five years? Ten? Let’s hammer out the victory conditions ahead of time. Major crimes up by some amount? A 24 hour period where there is no public law enforcement agency by whatever name? Let’s make it a betting proposition.
You’ve lost already. The Minneapolis City Council has voted already to have no law enforcement whatsoever. They even said those who today have a reasonable expectation of a police response to their trouble calls, are living in a place of privilege. Councilwoman Lisa Bender actually said that to interviewer Alisyn Camarota. Whereupon Lara Logan, the journalist who suffered gang rape in Egypt (Cairo, I believe), unloaded. She said she would have loved to have had a police force to call, and asked whether she should consider that a privileged-character utterance.
So yes, my prediction is no law enforcement of any kind, dogs and cats living together (actually that’s scarcely the worst of it), Minneapolis as Mogadishu West, smoking-hole-in-the-ground. And with Representative Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) cheering it on from her position of–yes, privilege–in Washington, D.C.
I put it to you, by the way, that noise is invasive. Landlords and their superintendents always enforced noise complaints in any duplex or apartment complex where I have ever lived. Do you believe people ought to have full liberty to make all the noise they want to make, under any circumstances?
You will see another round of flight from the cities. Except this time, whites will not be the only ones to flee. The flight determinant will not be race, but economic class. Those who have things to guard, including their very persons, will flee from those jurisdictions who won’t do anything to stop even The Big Four. A thief is an irregular wealth-distribution agent. An aggravated assailant or even a murderer is an irregular avenger of some real or imagined race- or class-based slight. And a rapist? What is he? An irregular avenger of the incel community?
Privilege, they say? I think you just made a bad choice of ideological allies.
Incidentally, is there a way to search CNAV comments by poster? I was trying to find something that I remember posting a while back, but I can’t remember exactly when.
I haven’t installed or even found any such extension that would search comments rather than posts. It would probably come at a stiff premium, I shouldn’t wonder. By the way: third-party plugins, that have neither testing nor sanction from the WordPress community, are notorious for breaking sites. Themes from third parties, who are a lot better at maintaining them, do fine. Plugins, not so much. Sad fact.
OK, so: if at some point in the next five years there is no law enforcement whatsoever in Minneapolis, I’ll donate $500 to the cause of your choice, and if not, you’ll do the same to a cause of my choice. Deal? Or do you think the terms should be more specific than that?
This whole thing is pointless. One thing that could happen, to avoid the outcome I listed, is the people of Minneapolis rising up and sweeping aside the Mayor and City Council in the next election.
Either that, or all those with property, flee.
While we’ve been arguing over what’s happening in Minneapolis, Chicago is already having a problem of an only slightly different kind.
Mayor Lori Lightfoot actually ordered armed residents not to defend themselves, but to “call 911 and wait.”
Alderman Ray Lopez, in a meeting held by conference call, protested about the looting already taking place in his district. Herroner then tried to say, “Next item.” But Alderman Lopez was having none of such evasion. He said he had asked a direct question, and on behalf of his constituents he demanded a direct answer.
Whereupon she told him he was “100 percent full of” a substance that does not bear mention.
In reply he told Herroner to go pleasure herself. I quote him loosely.
The two continued to argue, not even able to agree on matters of fact.
And that is where this conversation is going.
You are not in any position to propose any sort of wager. I doubt that we could even agree on what sort of outcome would be good or bad for Minneapolis or any other city. Crime “going down” because taxes have gone up? Didn’t I tell you that a thief was an irregular wealth-redistribution agent? What do you suppose that means?
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