This is Viewpoints for Sunday, Jan. 3, 2016
Clinton shenanigans
As reported in the Wall Street Journal, the Clinton crime machine slithers on unimpeded. More than two dozen companies and groups and one foreign government paid Bill Clinton more than $8 million (ostensibly to the Clinton Foundation) to give speeches around the time they also had matters before Hillary Clinton's State Department. Cha-ching! Reportedly, Hillary Clinton's State Department calendar reveals "availability to donors, loyalists." The Inspector General's Office called this behavior "open-air bribery." Amazingly brazen. Does anyone really believe either will be held accountable in the age of Obama? Surely you jest. This is just typical, unrestrained Clinton criminal behavior.
At least this degree of criminality qualifies Hillary to be the Democratic Party's choice for president. So goes "justice" under the Obama regime. RICO anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?
— John Brogden
Warner Robins
More blue than gray
I visited the Andersonville National Historic Site the day after Christmas. It had been a year since I had been there and I was saddened by the changes. The gift shop no longer stocked several books that gave the Southern side of the story. I asked about these volumes but the clerk said he had never seen them. I had. However, there was an ample supply of volumes dedicated to Lincoln, Tubman, Douglas and others who were only peripherally related to that location.
I had viewed the visitors center film before and was never enthralled with it. Again, I winced at the acute Northern slant as the credits revealed a Boston origin. Even quotes that Col. Henry Wirz made in his defense were skewed and delivered by a Yankee actor with an unfeigned sneer. I believe more than 100 Confederate guards -- like the prisoners, merely soldiers doing their duty — perished there, but their graves had long since been removed, not even allowed the dignity to be buried at the post upon which they served.
Heartrending as my trip was, I was not surprised. Political correctness never takes the moral high road. It slithers along the lower dominions of life. The war did not really end in 1865. Yes, the Southerners laid down their arms like the ladies and gentlemen they were, but the North relentlessly extinguished the people, heritage, the very culture of all that once thrived below the Mason-Dixon Line.
— John Wayne Dobson
Macon
Monumental error
As I read the story about the City Council of New Orleans voting to remove the old Confederate memorials, the first thing that came to mind was watching video of the Taliban destroying ancient monuments in Afghanistan because they did not like them. Recently, we have watched in horror as ISIS has destroyed historical monuments in Syria just because they did not represent the gang currently in control of that territory. These unique archaeological treasures were irreplaceable, not to mention being the life's work of some scholars that continued learning about them and their meaning to the past civilizations that built them.
The revisionists have gone out of their way to tie the Confederacy with slavery to rationalize their current politically correct mania. By the same logic, let's get rid of Monticello and the Jefferson Memorial because Thomas Jefferson owned slaves. Don't stop there, topple the Washington Monument and Mount Vernon, too, because George Washington owned slaves. In fact, 41 of the 57 signers of the Declaration of Independence owned slaves, so go ahead and take down any statues, monuments or memorials to these criminals also.
Note to the liberal PC censors and revisionists: If it is good for the goose, it is good for the gander. Stone Mountain Park is a Confederate memorial: What are you going to do to it? Borrow a hydrogen bomb from the military and nuke it? This was the venue for archery and track cycling during the 1996 Olympics: are the revisionist going to claim those events never happened? The tennis stadium is nearby and would get leveled in the blast, but that's just a little collateral damage, so just go ahead and deny that event ever occurred.
Slavery happened, the Civil War happened, the Olympics happened, and to deny history is both laughable and simple-minded. To hide the past from others that have not yet learned what happened hundreds of years ago is the worst form of censorship. To destroy history because you do not agree with it shows that your thinking is more closely aligned with the Taliban or ISIS than with the principles of free speech and free expression our country holds dear. History is history, and it will not be changed as long as freedom rings in the USA.
— John Ricketson
Macon
This story was originally published January 2, 2016 at 7:39 PM with the headline "This is Viewpoints for Sunday, Jan. 3, 2016 ."