Talbot County Strives to Ban Veterans from any Honor
“Whether you agree or disagree with the cause that these young men fought for doesn’t change the historical facts of war. It would be a sign of dishonor to those 90 deceased soldiers, as well as disrespectful to family members, should this council or any other council remove, deface, or alter this monument in anyway. Therefore this council does not support the recommendation to have the Talbot Boys monument moved to another location." - Cecil Daily, Nov 24, 2015
Read the resolution carefully. As written, any monument honoring our veterans is limited to a list of names. No statue can depict the Confederacy, the Confederate flag, nor a soldier, musket, or sabre...nor can a statue mention the US, the American flag, nor a soldier, tank, fighter jet. Any monument honoring veterans from any war is reduced to a cold, unadorned base with a list of names and nothing more. The resolution is designed to squelch art, emotion, and meaning so that it is as sanitized as possible to hurt no one's feelings.
Commissioner Corey Pack, President of Talbot County Commissioners uttered those words five years ago. Five years later, he has a completely different story to tell, in the form of a new resolution he and fellow Commissioner Pete Lesher introduced:
A RESOLUTION PROHIBITING STATUES DEPICTING PERSONS, SIGNS, OR SYMBOLS ASSOCIATED WITH MILITARY ACTION ON TALBOT COUNTY PROPERTY AND PROVIDING FOR THE REMOVAL OF THE "TALBOT BOYS" STATUE WHILE RETAINING THE BASE OF THE MONUMENT
During the Council meeting on 23 JUN 2020, he stated "Now is the time to remove the statue."
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| How history revisionists make sound judgments |
Only it does. This resolution was obviously drafted by two men who never served in the military. You know what? I'm not going to try to research that fact I stated. That's how confident I am that neither Pack nor Lesher served in the military.
To be clear, their lack of military service isn't any indicator of their "fitness of character." They both are driven by a sense of civic duty and have served their communities well. But their resolution, as written, would ban a memorial to veterans from Talbot County who fought in the American Revolution that looked similar to the Tomb of the Unknown Revolutionary Soldier in Philadelphia.
Here's the message this resolution sends to our veterans overseas, today, as we tear down monuments to past veterans and propose to replace veteran monuments in the future with sanitized, watered down lists on cold, blank granite that reads like roll call at five in the morning:
"In honor of our brave veterans who fought for our freedoms from tyrants and terrorists. You're our heroes. Please forgive us for the bland, made-in-China, cookie cutter memorial from Walmart (it was on special), but your great-great-grandchildren might decide your efforts were racist, xenophobic, capitalistic...or Lord knows what...and erase you from the pages of history and our collective memories. We live in a disposable society now, and just like the water bottle we toss in the ocean, we toss our veterans into the lost pages of history...to be forgotten forever."
Yeah, that message should boost recruitment ensuring we never have to return to a draft.
Posted by A Drunk Redneck
You have hit in on the head 100%. My father was a World War II, Patton's 3rd Army, front-line forward-observation 17 year old kid when he bravely fought in World War II. My grandmother always said, because of what he saw, he was really never the same person in many ways. He never spoke of anything about it, only once when he told me he had been in a foxhole so close to Germans he could hear them singing Silent Night in their own language.......17 years old. Many of my classmates at St. Michaels High fought in Vietnam to come back home and be treated with dishonor. For ANY member of this Council to think THEY have the right to decide how we, in Talbot County, choose to honor our soldiers of any conflict is way beyond their pay grade.
ReplyDeleteThank you for your heartfelt comment. The further we are from people in both time and space, the easier it is to forget they were people. I take comfort in believing a future generation will look at the leaders of The Great Confederate Purge of 2015 as well as today's purge and hold them in the same contempt many hold our Confederate veterans in...and they, too, will suffer the same fate of being erased from history.
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