Hegseth’s Holy War

By Bill Doughty

On March 25 at the Pentagon “Secretary of War” Pete Hegseth prayed “in the name of Jesus” for God to help break the teeth of his enemies in Iran.

His prayer, written in part by a military chaplain, calls up ghosts of the Crusades, Manifest Destiny, and Old Testament brutality as well as an interpretation of the New Testament that is violent and unforgiving.

Hegseth called on the Christian God to give “overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy.”

“Almighty God, who trains our hands for war and our fingers for battle. You, who stirred the nations of the north against Babylon of old, making her land a desolation where none dwell. [“Nations of the North against Babylon of old” = Crusades]

“Behold now, the wicked who rise against Your justice and the peace of the righteous. Snap the rod of the oppressor, frustrate the wicked plans, and break the teeth of the ungodly.

By the blast of Your anger, let the evil perish. Let their bulls go down to slaughter, for their day has come… 

"Pour out your wrath upon those who plot vain things, and blow them away like chaff before the wind. Grant this task force clear and righteous targets for violence. Surround them as a shield. Protect the innocent and blameless in their midst. Make their arrows like those of a skilled warrior who returned empty-handed. Let every round find its mark against the enemies of righteousness and our great nation.”

[“Riighteousness…great nation = Manifest destiny]

“Give them wisdom in every decision, endurance for the trial ahead, unbreakable unity, and overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy. Preserve their lives, sharpen their resolve, and let justice be executed swiftly and without remorse, that evil may be driven back and wicked souls be delivered to the eternal damnation prepared for them. For the wicked flee when no one pursues, but the righteous are as bold as a lion.”

[Overwhelming violence…without remorse…eternal damnation = Old Testament.

“We ask these things with bold confidence in the mighty and powerful name of Jesus Christ, king over all kings.”

Hegseth’s apocalyptic vision frames the war with Iran as a struggle against "religious fanatics" seeking a "religious Armageddon.”

As George W. Bush did in his war with Iraq, Hegseth also characterizes Operation Epic Fury as a "crusade" and a "holy war.” Theocracy is embraced on a path toward "end times."

Framing Jesus Christ as “king over all kings” seems to place Christianity above the Constitution, with “under God” supplanting “e pluribus unum.” It is a turn away from secular democracy and toward dominion domination.

Considering the pattern of discrimination against secular humanism and diversity, equity and Inclusion –– such as raising the profile of Christian military chaplains and preventing the promotion of blacks and women in senior officer ranks –– Hegseth’s prayer and war strategy seem to align with white Christian supremacy.

During his Pentagon prayer service, he welcomed another member of the Trump cabinet, Veterans Administration head Doug Collins, an Air Force reserve chaplain. “It’s such a blessing to be a part of a cabinet filled with faith-filled members who pray together, who share scripture together on a regular basis, who meet together and pray together,” Hegseth said.

Hegseth’s pastor, Doug Wilson, spoke and prayed at a previous Pentagon service. Wilson opposes gay marriage, supports women not voting, and promotes past slavery as good for black people.

Regarding slavery, Wilson says that the Bible does not explicitly forbid slavery and permits owning other people if slaves are treated well. He co-authored “Southern Slavery as it Was,” which claimed that American slavery preserved families and introduced black families to Christianity.

Hundreds of Christian leaders, joined by other religious and nonreligious groups, have condemned white Christian nationalism and supremacy and Hegseth’s view of patriarchy and dominionism. Many express their opposition in ongoing “No Kings” rallies and protests.

After Hegseth’s prayer for violence, Pope Leo addressed Catholic worshippers during a Palm Sunday mass in St Peter’s Square. Leo said the conflict between Iran, Israel and the US was “atrocious” and that Jesus could not be used to justify war.

“This is our God: Jesus, king of peace, who rejects war, whom no one can use to justify war,” he said to tens of thousands of followers. “He does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them.”

Quoting a Bible passage, Leo added: “‘Even though you make many prayers, I will not listen: your hands are full of blood.’”

Rise and Fall and Rise of John Birchers

Review by Bill Doughty––

Welch with portrait of Birch

Robert W. Welch Jr. attended both the U.S. Naval Academy and Harvard Law School, but finished neither. He abandoned careers in the Navy and in law and became a wealthy candy manufacturer. He also started one of the most divisive groups in American history, the John Birch Society. Welch named JBS for Christian missionary and U.S. Army Air Forces Capt. John Birch, who was killed by Chinese communists in 1945 –– what the society considered the start of a “Holy War.”

Emerging from the ashes of a long history of racist, nationalist, and populist movements, including 1950s McCarthyism, the John Birch Society dedicated itself to defeating global communism, propagating Christianity, countering civil and women’s rights, and promoting an America First agenda. The JBS latched onto the GOP like a sea lamprey and did not let go.

“By the early 60s Birchers had settled on the course they would follow in the decades to come. They would operate on the fringe of the conservative movement and, episodically and erratically, within the Republican Party,” according to Matthew Dallek, author of “Birchers: How the John Birch Society Radicalized the American Right” (Hachette, 2022)

“Ideologically, the society flaunted its antiestablishment sensibility and pumped hot-button cultural issues –– patriotic eduction, moral library books, an end to teaching sex education in schools –– into local debates over their communities’ most valued and non-partisan institutions.” Past is prologue, as the saying goes.

After President Eisenhower appointed Earl Warren as chief justice of the Supreme Court, the Warren Court ruled progressively in favor of integration in Brown v. Board of Education. SCOTUS also upheld the wall of separation between state and church in banning prayer in public schools. So the Birchers targeted and smeared Earl Warren and called for his impeachment.

At the 1964 GOP Convention, Michigan Governor George Romney warned his colleagues and electors about the rise of populism and radicalism within the Republican Party, calling for more tolerance, inclusion, and respect for diversity in the Republican platform under Goldwater. "The strongest personality on earth cannot deal with the problems of this nation except upon the basis of correct principles. Our party was founded at a time of grave national crisis," Romney said, noting Abraham Lincoln's role in saving the Union. "The nation and its destinies were in peril, not only by the irreconcilable conflict between slavery and freedom, but also by the extremism of that time. And the extremism and lily-white Protestantism destroyed the Whig Party and brought the Republican Party into being."

Senator George Romney at the GOP Convention, 1968

But for most of the past six decades, according to Dallek, “Birch ideas were hardly dominant in the Republican Party.” Those ideas –– anti immigration, anti world alliances, anti feminism, anti abortion, anti gun safety, and anti integration –– were on the rise with Barry Goldwater and in reaction to the civil rights movement.

“In some communities, the society was very much in the ascendant. Its influence in the GOP in 1963 was also greater than at any time since its inception. But most Birchers had lost their elections, they failed to stop candidates such as (George) Romney from winning their races, and numerous Republicans from the Northeast to the Midwest to the West Coast remained vigorously opposed to their ideology and political style. Unbeknownst to the society, in the summer of 1963 the White House was preparing to launch an all-out assault that had the potential to knock the Birch movement to the ground. The society’s prospect remained uncertain and contingent. The struggle for power in the Republican Party –– and in the United States –– was heating up. Birchers warned of Armageddon, cast critics as traitors and degenerates, disrupted civic meetings, harassed teachers and principals, and hinted at physical violence. More than any other movement of the 1960s, the Birch Society ignited what they described as an end-times contest for the very soul of the United States.”

“The ideas, activism, and style that Birchers helped pioneer has continued to drive well into the twenty-first century.” George Romney’s speech in 1964 –– really a warning –– is chillingly relevant today.

The JBS wanted to ban alcohol, according to Dallek. They were also against Hollywood, the media, school integration, fluoridation of water, and teaching of evolution instead of creationism. “They sought to use the power of government to enforce Christian identity in American culture while repudiating allegedly alien values like pluralism and tolerance.” Dallek contends they “helped launch a culture war that reverberates today.”

Maddox and Wallace

One of the stars of intolerance and the culture war in the 1960s and 70s was Georgia Governor Lester Maddox, who became popular by wielding axe handles to chase black people out of his restaurant. Maddox was befriended and supported by JBS founder Robert Welch.

Welch endorsed Alabama Governor George Wallace’s run for president in 1968. Wallace was an avowed segregationist and racist. He chose as his running mate retired Air Force General Curtis LeMay, who Dallek describes as “the real-life inspiration for the cigar-smoking General Jack D. Ripper” of Stanley Kubrick’s film Dr. Strangelove.

“An architect of firebombing in World War II, LeMay had a fascination with nuclear weapons and drew howls of outrage when he endorsed their use while on the campaign trail. Although LeMay had a record of innovative military leadership, Wallace’s choosing him was a running mate was perceived as empowering Birchers and the far-right fringe.”

Dallek writes:

“Haltingly, over decades, this fringe usurped the party’s center. The trajectory was alterable, not inevitable, contingent rather than certain. Many Republican leaders worked to stop it, until they didn’t. The society fostered apocalyptic thinking about the country’s direction, mistrusted elites as traitors, and raised the specter that only drastic remedies, including violence, could save the country. Its brand of mass politics fed money, energy, and ideas to conservative Republicans. And by offering a home for conspiracy theorists, racists, and antisemites, some Republican leaders emboldened the rights most noxious and violent bigots. The GOP establishment’s effort to court this fringe and keep it in the coalition allowed it to gain a foothold and eventually cannibalize the entire party, Over time, this uneasy alliance came to seem commonplace, part of the zeitgeist –– more and more alarming yet no longer shocking.”

On the other hand…

Clinton and Carter

A goal of liberals and other anti-Birchers was “to build the world they wanted –– a world where pluralism trumped hate, science trounced unreason, and democracy conquered fascism.” Progressives witnessed how an “America First” fascist-friendly and non-interventionist approach, including appeasement, led to the Second World War.

Those on the Left also saw how the Birchers’ fervent and feverish anti-Communism and white Christian nationalism led the nation into the war in Vietnam, invasion of Iraq, and a culture war at home. By the early 1990s, the us-and-them influence of the Birchers, personified by politicians Pat Buchanan and Newt Gingrich, was rejected with the election of Navy Veteran Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter in 1976 and Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton in 1992.

“Clinton used his bully pulpit to tie the GOP to far-right militants like Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City mass murderer, and Randy Weaver, the white separatist who triggered a bloody confrontation with the FBI at Ruby Ridge. After McVeigh’s powerful homemade bomb tore through the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995, Clinton attended a memorial service in Oklahoma City and urged Americans ‘to purge ourselves of the dark forces which gave rise to this evil. They are forces that threaten our common peace, our freedom, our way of life,’ and, he vowed, ‘we will stand against the forces of fear.’ Some right-wing talk show hosts and politicians, he added, had to realized that their ‘incendiary talk’ moved fanatics to action. Their ‘constant bashing of government, and relentless assumption that forces beyond our control run our government’ had spread dark views of federal employees and could trigger more bloodshed.”

That warning was nearly 30 years ago!

In the yin-yang of the American republic’s elections under the constraints of the Electoral College, George W. Bush was elected president. Bush’s presidency was the “most consequential chapter yet in the Birchification of the American right and the GOP.” Bush, whose father appointed Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court, chose John Ashcroft as his first attorney general. Ashcroft expressed his belief, shared by many on the far-right, that “Jesus is king,” reigning above the Constitution and civil authority.

During Bush’s presidency, another politician, far more conservative than Bush, made a name for himself. Ron Paul (father or currently serving Senator Rand Paul) marked the time when, Dallek says, the fringe became mainstream. “Paul’s influence was substantial, opening the Republican Party to previously unthinkable views.”

The senior Paul as countered, however, by statesman and Republican standard-bearer John McCain, a Navy veteran and former POW, who said those who engage “in the politics of division and slander” are “corrupting influences on religion and politics, and those who practice them in the name of religion or in the name of the Republican Party or in the name of America shame our faith, our party and our country.” Although McCain called out Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell as “agents of intolerance,” he would later backtrack and reconcile with Falwell, hoping to woo Christian fundamentalists.

Ultimately, according to Dalleck, “McCain saw that it was no longer possible to navigate the tension between the far right and the mainstream because by 2008, in the Republican Party, the fringe had begun to gain the upper hand. If he wanted to win, McCain had little choice but to violate his own principles.” He selected Sarah Palin as his running mate.

With Obama’s election, gun sales rose dramatically, militia membership increased, and “the far right was now entering the mainstream of the Republican Party, bringing with it the legacy of the John Birch Society.” Along with Pat Buchanan and Rand Paul, politicians supporting or condoning extremism in the GOP included Senators Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, and Ron Johnson as well as “fringe” Representatives Jim Jordan and Michelle Bachman, according to Dallek.

Alex Jones

“Unlike in the mid-1960s, the Republican Party of the early 2010s failed to check the extreme right,” Dallek says. Instead, “social media and the ubiquitous, sophisticated right-wing amplified the far right’s most inflammatory claims.”

Media stars arose to spread the authoritarian populism of the far right: The Drudge Report, FOX News, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, and “breakout media star of the far right” Alex Jones, who as a young teen was influenced by John Birch Society PR director Gary Allen’s book “None Dare Call It Conspiracy.” Jones aligned with Roger Stone, a massive influencer of the extremist fringe right, even as Jones capitalized on conspiracies. Jones spread falsehoods related to the the 9/11 attacks, the Sandy Hook massacre, and supposed cannibalization of children by Democrats, including Hillary Clinton.

Conspiracies became part of the right’s bloodstream as it had been in the 1960s.

Just as the Birchers feared communists were in control of the civil rights movement, MAGA followers believed America’s first black president was born overseas and was not eligible to serve. While JBS followers feared adding fluoride in water as a government conspiracy, sixty years later many far right extremists feared COVID vaccinations and believed various pandemic-related conspiracies.

“Trump drew energy, as Birchers had, from white supremacists, militias, and nativists and brought them into his coalition. His alliances with the white nationalists who rioted in Charlottesville (‘fine people’), with the far-right, all-male Proud Boys (‘stand back and stand by’), and with the deep-state-obsessed, conspiratorial QAnon (‘people that love our country’) blended racism and conspiracy theories in ways that harked back to the mix of racism, antisemitism, and conspiracy theories that drew many Birchers to their movement.”

And Dallek contends, “Just as Birchers took a dim view of democracy, Trump questioned the integrity of elections in which millions of people of color voted.” The conspiracy theory of a stolen election, though disproven in dozens of court cases and denied by sane Republicans in many states, led to the tragedy of the insurrection of January 6.

Dallek may be right in his overall thesis, that the United States is still under the influence of the John Birch Society. He believes the Bircher years/epoch/era started in 1958 and continues through today. On the other hand, it may have been with us for for far longer –– perhaps for centuries under different names: Slavery, Manifest Destiny, Know Nothings, Lost Cause, America First, and White Christian Nationalism.

Three events in the news coalesced over the past week or so as I finished this important book, bringing some of the book's points home:

First, President Joe Biden visited a memorial in Vietnam that honors a great American, late Senator John S. McCain III; when all is said and done McCain stood up for the Constitution.  McCain also stood up for democracy and against autocracy and theocracy. He conceded his election loss to President Obama in 2008. McCain even asked Obama to offer a eulogy at his funeral.

Second, last week I watched another Republican – American statesman Mitt Romney – announce he would not seek reelection. Romney is a former Republican nominee for the Presidency who won 47 percent of the popular vote but lost – and conceded gracefully – to President Obama in 2012. Romney acknowledges in a forthcoming biography by McKay Coppins, “Romney: A Reckoning,” that he does not recognize today’s GOP, where many of his Republican colleagues, he says, no longer support the Constitution.

Finally, I read with sadness that President Biden has called to offer his final good-bye to a dying former president with gold standard ethics and integrity: Navy veteran Jimmy Carter, despite being a victim of Birchers and their ilk more than four decades ago, conceded to President Ronald Reagan in 1980. During his naval career and presidency, Carter, a Navy submariner and commander in chief, literally protected and defended the U.S. Constitution from all enemies, foreign and domestic.

Mahan the Realist / ‘Proud Tower’ 1

Review by Bill Doughty––

In “The Proud Tower: A Portrait of the World Before the War: 1890-1914,” (MacMillan, 1966) author Barbara W. Tuchman describes U.S. Navy Adm. Alfred Thayer Mahan as “a quiet, tight-lipped naval officer with one of the most forceful minds of this time.” Tuchman paints her description of Mahan this way:

“Well over six feet tall, wiry, thin and erect, he had a long, narrow face with narrowly placed pale-blue eyes, a long, straight, knifelike nose, a Sandy mustache blending into a closely trimmed beard over an insignificant chin. All the power of the face was in the upper part, in the eyes and domed skull and the intellectual bumps over the eyebrows … He had little sense of humor, a high moral tone … So precise were his scruples that when living on naval property at the War College he would not allow his children to use the government pencils.”

Mahan embraced his moment in time and was a driving force in turning the growing power of the United States toward expansion. He told others he could prove he was not anti-semitic: “That Jesus Christ was a Jew,” he said, “covers his race for me.”

Tuchman writes that among history’s many turning points at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, was “the last armed conflict between Indians and whites” at Wounded Knee Creek, South Dakota. (Although not detailed in Tuchman’s book, the “conflict” was, in fact, an atrocity –– the massacre of 300 Lakota men, women and children by the U.S. Army in 1890.)

The massacre was a turning point for the United States. “In that year [then] Captain A.T. Mahan, president of the Naval War College, announced in the Atlantic Monthly, ‘Whether they will or no, Americans must now begin to look outward.’”

Mahan saw the Pacific as America’s destiny. Expansion westward, he thought, must continue in the name of Manifest Destiny –– what Rudyard Kipling would call “the White Man’s Burden.”

“The immediate issue was Annexation of Hawaii. A naval coaling base at Pearl Harbor had been acquired in 1887, but the main impulse for annexation of the Islands came from American property interests which were dominated by Judge Dole and the sugar trust. With the support of the United States Marines they engineered a revolt against the native Hawaiian government in January 1893…”

In “The Proud Tower” Tuchman describes the political challenges and opportunities involved in Hawaii becoming a territory of the United States.

It was a time of tumult and war for the U.S. military in Cuba, the Philippines, and China. War continued to flair between other countries, as well.

Japan’s victory over China in 1895 –– not to mention Japan’s success in the Russo-Japanese War several years later –– reinforced Mahan’s published opinions about America’s continued need to look outward to defend its interests in a dangerous world through power. That power could only be achieved with a strong navy, which was “moribund” at the time, according to Tuchman. 

With strong support from Assistant Secretary of the Navy Theodore Roosevelt and allies in the U.S. Congress, it wouldn’t be long before shipbuilding in the United States was revitalized.

Meanwhile, Mahan’s classic “The Influence of Seapower on History” “had an effect that was epochal on world history,” according to Tuchman. The book was a favorite of Kaiser Wilhelm in Germany, and was high on the reading list for naval officers in Japan. She notes that another remarkable book published in that period also influenced the course of history: Charles Darwin’s “The Origin of the Species.”

Darwin’s conclusions about the animal kingdom were twisted to apply to human society so that Darwinism “acquired a moral imperative,” Tuchman writes. “Darwin’s indirect effects reached apotheosis in Captain Mahan. It’s no coincidence that science’s rise in the late 1800s came at the same time as the waning of the influence of religion. People needed to believe in something, Tuchman said, and that something was either nationalism, socialism, or anarchy –– or some combination of the above.

The world also experienced a revolution in art around the turn of the century. Picasso and Braque created expressionist Cubism. Richard Strauss experimented with formless new music with Also Spruce Zarathustra. The title of Tuchman’s book comes from a poem by Edgar Allan Poe, “The City in the Sea,”* written in the mid-1800s. By the first decade of the 1900s, playwrights, composers, painters, and writers, including Friedrich Nietzsche, tinkered with ideas that both reflected society and influencing it.

Mahan, a stubborn realist, continued to be a firm believer in the necessity of war and the right of a nation, at least his nation, to expand its interests through belligerence, even at the expense of others.

Mahan was chosen as a key U.S. representative at the Hague Convention of 1899 in the Netherlands. Tsar Nicholas II of Russia called leading nations to the convention to try to curb a global arms race. Mahan’s “rectitude and assuredness” led to his rejection to proposals to limit the calibre of guns and other restrictions. He even voted against limiting use of weapons of mass destruction, including chemical weapons such as “asphyxiating gas.”

Barbara Tuchman

It’s ironic (thinking of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine) to consider that it was Russia that proposed the Hague talks in 1899 and later in 1907. The Hague Conventions wanted to prevent or at least lessen the impacts of war through limitations in armaments, adoption of laws of war, and acceptance of rules of arbitration. To Russian thinkers, the thought was that war had become “impossible except at the price of suicide,” as stated in the six-volume “The Future or War,” published by Ivan Bloch, who believed “Limited war was no longer possible.”

Despite any meager agreements between nations, the “Great War” came to the world as Anarchists, Socialists, Ultra-Nationalists, and anti-Socialists prevailed in their assassinations, bomb-throwing, and revanchism in the second decade of the 20th century, culminating with the assassination of Franz Ferdinand and Jean Jaurés.

Tuchman laments the loss of the Old World and “much that has since been lost.” Touching on the imagery in Poe’s maritime-themed “The City in the Sea,” Tuchman writes, “Illusions and enthusiasm slowly sank beneath a sea of massive disillusionment.”

“For the price it paid, humanity’s gain was a painful view of its own limitations.”

*The City in the Sea

By Edgar Allan Poe

Lo! Death has reared himself a throne
In a strange city lying alone
Far down within the dim West,
Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best
Have gone to their eternal rest.
There shrines and palaces and towers
(Time-eaten towers and tremble not!)
Resemble nothing that is ours.
Around, by lifting winds forgot,
Resignedly beneath the sky
The melancholy waters lie.

No rays from the holy Heaven come down
On the long night-time of that town;
But light from out the lurid sea
Streams up the turrets silently—
Gleams up the pinnacles far and free—
Up domes—up spires—up kingly halls—
Up fanes—up Babylon-like walls—
Up shadowy long-forgotten bowers
Of sculptured ivy and stone flowers—
Up many and many a marvellous shrine
Whose wreathed friezes intertwine
The viol, the violet, and the vine.
Resignedly beneath the sky
The melancholy waters lie.
So blend the turrets and shadows there
That all seem pendulous in air,
While from a proud tower in the town
Death looks gigantically down.

There open fanes and gaping graves
Yawn level with the luminous waves;
But not the riches there that lie
In each idol’s diamond eye—
Not the gaily-jewelled dead
Tempt the waters from their bed;
For no ripples curl, alas!
Along that wilderness of glass—
No swellings tell that winds may be
Upon some far-off happier sea—
No heavings hint that winds have been
On seas less hideously serene.

But lo, a stir is in the air!
The wave—there is a movement there!
As if the towers had thrust aside,
In slightly sinking, the dull tide—
As if their tops had feebly given
A void within the filmy Heaven.
The waves have now a redder glow—
The hours are breathing faint and low—
And when, amid no earthly moans,
Down, down that town shall settle hence,
Hell, rising from a thousand thrones,
Shall do it reverence.

Smashing Ideas About Monuments

Review by Bill Doughty––

More than 250 years ago the federal government hired sculptor Clark Mills to cast a statue called Freedom, pictured above, that would be placed atop the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington D.C.

The first plaster model of Freedom, created in 1854, was rejected by then-U.S. Secretary of War (SECDEF) Jefferson Davis (future president of the Confederacy) because it wore a “liberty cap,”as Erin L. Thompson explains in “Smashing Statues: The Rise and Fall of America’s Public Monuments” (W.W. Norton, 2022).

Davis insisted the cap, which represented emancipation, be replaced with a helmet. But the new design looked “more suited to a Vegas showgirl than a warrior, with a starry headband topped with feathers sprouting from a popeyed eagle.” Eventually the symbol of liberty created by Clark Mills and his team of workers moved forward and upward, headgear and all:

“When Freedom was finally hoisted into place in December 1863, it was hailed as a symbol of the universal liberty the Emancipation Proclamation had declared in January of that year. More than 150 years later, many avowed white supremacists undertook a deadly invasion of the Capitol building to dispute the results of the presidential election. You might think that a symbol of the liberty America is supposed to offer to all would have dissuaded or at least shamed them. Looking more deeply into Freedom’s history reveals why the monument instead inspired them. It is a white supremacists vision of freedom.”

To help create the cast and melt bronze for Freedom, Mills depended on his workmen, including Philip Reed, a man born into slavery in South Carolina, who was paid $1.25 per day by Mills, but was considered his property. As Mills gained fame and made more money he purchased more enslaved people.

The symbol of Freedom was, in actuality, a symbol of slavery. “Slavery shaped everything about her,” Thompson writes.

Despite an attempt to promote emancipation and liberty, seditionists in the South staged the ultimate insurrection, led by Jefferson Davis. Construction of the Capitol Building stopped for a while, but was restarted under orders from President Abraham Lincoln, who said, “If people see the Capitol going on, it is a sign we intend the Union shall go on.”

The supreme irony of the statue atop the Capitol –– symbolizing liberty but built by enslaved people –– is matched in the story of Horatio Greenough, eugenic “father of our monuments,” whose “blatant racism” is found in his work.

Greenough's George Washington (Wikimedia)

Greenough created a bizarre god-like statue of George Washington that includes a subjugated indigenous “Indian chief” in the design, under Washington’s hips, as the first president holds a sword and points to the sky. Greenough had planned to include “a negro” along with the indigenous figure, but abolitionist Charles Sumner convinced him not create a tie to slavery. The sculptor included a depiction of Christopher Columbus instead.

The public and press mocked the semi-nude statue of the first president. “American audiences paid less attention to deciphering the meaning of Washington’s symbolic sword and more to his nipples.” The statue, Thompson notes, "is on display at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, awkwardly wedged next to an escalator. Today, the sculptures upraised hand looks as though it points the way up to the next floor."

Greenough's "Rescue." (LOC)

Greenough’s next work was received more favorably, at least by white Americans. In many ways it was even more bizarre and offensive. Like other monuments to follow, Rescue celebrated the genocide of Native Americans, particularly after President Andrew Jackson’s “Indian Removal Act” of 1830.

Rescue is in effect a monument to Manifest Destiny –– the idea of a god-given right of white people to subjugate indigenous people –– and for men to have an ordained role as dominant protectors of women. Thompson explains the scene of a white settler holding a dying indigenous warrior he'd just shot; his wife and child hover beneath him, and a dog watches balefully. The symbolism is clear and cringe-inducing.

At Abraham Lincoln’s inauguration in 1861, Rescue was prominently on display. It was removed from the eastern front of the Capitol Building in 1958 after decades of complaints. Thompson writes, “The removal of Rescue is another example of what happens when enough people decide that the messages encoded in a monument are unacceptable to them.”

“Greenough’s sculptures, the first thoroughly American national monuments, were also the first in a long line of public artworks to address questions of how much Black and Indigenous lives matter in America. He and his monuments claimed these lives didn’t matter at all. Greenough’s monuments assert that only people of a certain gender, class, and race deserve honor.

“Greenough’s beliefs informed not only his own sculpture but all the subsequent American public monuments based on his influential examples.”

A natural progression to other monuments highlighting white supremacy extended in the wake of the Civil War, even in Thomas Ball’s controversial Freedmen’s Memorial, dedicated in 1876.

Also known as Emancipation Memorial, it depicts a fully clothed Lincoln standing over a nearly naked kneeling black man. One interpretation is of a gracious leader bestowing freedom, but another view is of ongoing patriarchal and racial inequality.

Freedmen’s Memorial was unveiled on the eleventh anniversary of Lincoln’s assassination. President Ulysses S. Grant, members of Congress, and Supreme Court justices all attended and listened to Frederick Douglass’s speech. Several days later, Douglass wrote a letter to the editor of the National Republican in which he said, “What I want to see before I die is a monument representing the negro, not couchant on his knees like a four-footed animal, but erect on his feet like a man.”

Douglass’s descendants would live to see many hundreds of monuments erected to honor the seditionists of the Confederacy.

The rise of many of those monuments coincided with the rise of the rights and equality of African Americans as guaranteed under the Constitution.

An example is the statue of Robert E. Lee erected in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 1924, shortly after Virginia’s Racial Integrity Act made segregation lawful and outlawed in interracial marriage (not overturned by the Supreme Court until 1967 in Loving v. Virginia).

“The conflict at the heart of America,” Thompson writes, is “the conflict between the freedom for all and freedom for some.”

Thompson enlightens readers with the psychology, politics, and intent of Civil War monument creators. She delves into the meaning of statues’ poses, shows the influence of donations in creating profit motives for monuments, and explains the role of the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacists.

Then there's Christopher Columbus.

Columbus Fountain in Washington D.C. (NPS)

Thompson reminds readers about Columbus’s contemporary, the priest Bartolemé de las Casas, who wrote about the real Christopher Columbus during his cruel reign as governor of Hispaniola (now Dominican Republic and Haiti). Columbus is condemned for overseeing torture, rape, slavery and genocide. Columbus shipped young girls back to Spain to be sold into slavery.

In recent years more people have assembled, protested, and demanded statues honoring Columbus, like monuments to the Confederacy, be taken down.

Thompson explores how, despite widespread opposition to their presence, some monuments remained in place for years. “We think our monuments celebrate our democracy, but really, they are held in place by some of America’s least democratic uses of power.”

Complacency and willful ignorance kept monuments up until catalysts of violence created a backlash: “Unite the Right” white supremacists' march (and killing of Heather Heyer) in Charlottesville; the horrific mass murder at a church in Charleston, South Carolina; and the senseless murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota, as examples.

Acts of civil disobedience are often the result of willful acts of bureaucratic lethargy, intransigence, and not listening to peaceful protesters. Thompson writes, "Talking about monuments is not easy. But we need to do it. We need to come together as communities to make sure our monuments leave room for everyone's life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness."

Towering over all the monuments to the Confederacy is the incomparable Stone Mountain in Georgia. Cut into the face of the mountain, it is the world’s largest bas-relief sculpture: images of Confederate President Jefferson Davis, along with Civil War generals Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee on horseback. The sculpture inspires white racists and believers in the Lost Cause Big Lie, including the KKK.

Thompson writes about eccentric anti-semitic sculptor and con artist Gutzon Borglum, who was involved in creating the Stone Mountain monument. Borglum would go on to create the monument at Mount Rushmore, South Dakota, on land that was sacred to indigenous people.

There’s a lot more in this book about Borglum and Stone Mountain –– stories “to startle us out of our assumptions,” as Thompson writes.

[While reading this book I came across a new Americana CD by Bill Edwards, “61356,” with a great song from the perspective of a statue of a Union soldier on a Civil War monument in Illinois: “We Don’t See It Yet.” Edwards sings: “Since nineteen hundred and thirteen/I’ve stood in my place on this stone/In the middle of my Bureau County/But I haven’t stood here alone/Above me, a guardian angel/To my right, left and back, over Vets/We watch the horizon for justice/Alas, we don’t see it yet.” It’s a terrific song and album, highly recommended. Read more about "61356" on The Stratton Setlist.]

In “Smashing Statues” Thompson laments the lack of monuments to African Americans who fought for the Union in the Civil War.

There are also a relatively small number of monuments to women in the United States, but last week Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi unveiled a statue of Mary McLeod Bethune in the Capitol Building. Behune was “an unyielding force for racial justice, a pioneering voice for gender equity” from Florida, who was also “a devoted advocate for education,” Pelosi said in her remarks.

Bethune statue unveiled at Capitol Building July 13, 2022. (CNN)

The statue of Bethune joins statues of Rosa Parks, Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King, Jr. in the Capitol’s Statuary Hall. Bethune’s statue replaces that of a Confederate general.

On January 6, 2021, Trump-supporting insurrectionists, many wearing helmets or other headgear, walked through Statuary Hall during the coup attempt. Some rioters carried Confederate flags into the Capitol. High above them, on top of the building stood the statue in plumed helmet with an American eagle, mouth agape, eyes bulging –– Freedom.

This is an indispensable book for military readers interested in the reasons for the initiative to rename installations, facilities, and ships named for Confederate white supremacists or Confederate battle victories.