“Strong men ruled bloodily; weak men gladly exchange freedom for protection…
for freedom is meaningless in a world of anarchy.”
Morris Bishop
The Middle Ages
“We seem to be witnessing the coming of Antichrist, for this is the falling
away of which the Apostle speaks.”
French Bishops from the 991 council
(statue of Robert The Bruce / Stirling Castle, Stirling, Scotland)
Robert the Bruce, King of the Scots was not always the leader he needed to be.
He waffled to and fro…confused about what he was truly representing or
fighting for.
Himself, or something much greater than himself.
Yet with most of those brave individuals tapped for great leadership,
Robert eventually came around to his senses and to that of his destiny.
He figured things out while in exile on a lonely cold windswept Irish isle and
finally came home to rout the British out of Scotland.
Once Robert understood his true destiny, he rode forward, never looking back.
His mind was made up.
He was going to fight to win or die trying.
Freedom has that sort of draw on men.
You will fight for it or die trying.
Yet most of us know that our brave freedom fighters throughout the annuals of time
have not always been the saints or perfect individuals we often imagine.
In fact more often than not, valiant individuals usually have a rather checkered past.
For it usually takes a lot of falling and dying unto self before real virtue
bubbles its way to the top.
We’ve seen as much here in the States in our own quest for freedom.
Yesterday our good friend the Scottish Pastor David Robertson offered a post
of observation.
Just when I think he’s said everything there is to say while saying it so succinctly
as he covers all the bases, he reminds me he’s only just getting started.
Should I be embarrassed for us here in the States that people now around the world
are taking notice of our latest public temper tantrums and are actually writing
about them and us?
And I don’t think it’s the kind of stuff we really want other people to be
seeing let alone writing about… that being our egregiously dirty laundry.
But our Scottish friend has been most astute in his observations.
Let’s take the latest crazed mentality of ours to desecrate, destroy and remove
the static polestars of history.
Robert E Lee-
Lets talk about removing statues.
In the Ukraine over 2000 statues of Lenin are being removed.
In the UK our loony left are falling into line with this latest virtue
signaling fashion—according to this article in the Guardian Nelson’s
column must go—
Never one to miss a trick, the Scottish Green leader Patrick Harvie wants
statutes pulled down as well…
I wonder if anything will be left standing!
In America the liberal left are going hysterical about monuments to
Confederate generals – especially Robert E Lee.
The irony is that they know nothing about Lee –
they are just virtue signalling.
Lee himself was opposed to the breakup
of the Union and was also apparently opposed to slavery.
In 1856 he wrote to his wife –
“in this enlightened age, there are few I believe,
but what will acknowledge, that slavery as an institution,
is a moral and political evil in any country.”
He set up an illegal school for slaves at Arlington and all
the slaves they were freed in 1862. Lee has become the latest victim
of “identity politics”.
The irony is that he did not think statues of himself should be erected
and he hoped that the wounds of the civil war would be healed.
“I think it wiser not to keep open the source of war, but to follow
the examples of those nations who endeavoured to obliterated the marks
of civil strife, to commit to oblivion the feelings it engendered.”
But if the fashion of the day is statue destroying – can I suggest others?
Statues of William Wallace and Robert the Bruce should be destroyed.
After all they were slaveholders – at least in the sense that serfs were slaves.
One of the reasons that Wallace went to war was to maintain the right
of the Scottish nobles to have their own serfs.
Will the Scottish government start pulling down statues soon?!
And what about the statue of the Duke of Sutherland above Golspie –
the ‘Mannie’ responsible for some of the most savage clearances in the Highlands.
Every time I sit in my parents home at Portmahomack and stare across
the water to the Sutherland hills, I see that monstrosity of a statue
on top of Ben Braggie and I am offended.
I had an elder in Brora who at one point,
before he became a Christian had seriously considered blowing it up –
even as a Christian he was tempted!
Meanwhile can anyone tell me the substantive difference between
ISIS and the Taliban
Buddhist statutes removed by the Taliban
pulling down monuments to ideologies they don’t like and Antifa doing
the same thing in the US?
It strikes me that once you start removing
a nation’s history you end up being as bad as the people you are trying
to replace.
And that was but one observation by our good friend in a litany of observations
worth your perusal when clicking the following link:
While I stand mouth agape, dumbstruck…wondering once the dust settles if anything recognizable of this country I’ve known and loved,
all these many years, will be left standing…
As the protestors and politicians have long forgotten the cost paid for their freedom
to do what it is they are doing, forgetting, hating and desecrating…
I wonder…
will Shirley Temple will be next…..
(Shirley Temple and Bill Robinson in The Littlest Rebel, 1935)
But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat,
for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”
Genesis 2:17
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