ON : NYT.’s CHARLES BLOW SHAMING HIS NATION

Mr Charles Blow —the “Opinion Page” columnist  for the NY Times (but all of its “news” is opinion these days) did not like the President’s  Independence Day speech at Mount Rushmore.  In “Tell the Truth and Shame the Devil” (NYT  July 5, 2020) Blow shames himself by smearing and attempting to demean the truly great men of our history.:Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Roosevelt.  All these men had a hand in making America what it is today.  Yes each was a man of his times, and should be understood as an historical figure..not brought forward to the modern day and judged by our present standards.

Mr. Blow castigates George Washington as a “slave owner”—who only freed his slaves at the end of his life.  But if George Washington had not ever graced this land with his commanding presence, with his military determination, courage and simple doggedness on and off the battlefields, up and down our east coast against the most experienced, powerful military and navy in the world our nation would not exist. Without this man the military aspect of the Revolution may have never started and if it had it was likely to have resulted in failure and with the British, brutally subduing pacifying the colonies—as they did in Ireland and Scotland.  Those slaves that Washington freed would have remained as chattel —property—of the British overlords and there would be today be no America for Blow to be so unhappy with.

It was Thomas Jefferson who gave us the Declaration of Independence and  those great ideals to which we continue to aspire to and to work toward.  Jefferson enshrined one of the greatest political statements and documents of all time.  Those ideals and ideas would never have been written were it not for his fertile mind.  Western America might be still part of a French global empire (Louisiana Purchase) and Rogers and Clark would not have made their great passage of discover across out continent.

Need I explain what the our world would be like had not Abraham Lincoln served as President?  Lincoln  never owned a slave but nevee the less offends Mr. Blow—because he once expressed a view of race and race relations of THAT TIME which is painful for some to hear today.   But it was Lincoln who heroically, intelligently and doggedly  managed to win the Civil War, maintain the fragile union and free all of America’s slaves.  That was not enough for Mr. Blow.

President Teddy Roosevelt seems to offend Mr. Blow’s sensibilities because he was white and an “imperialist” and at least according to Blow a racist.  But it was Roosevelt who gave us the Panama Canal and began the practice of saving great swaths of our beautiful land preserving them for us all as our magnificent National Parks for which he is rightly honored today.

This and all those great deeds and wondrous achievement  would not exist where it not for these —yes white men—yes like all of us somewhat flawed.  But even with their inability to rise above the perceptions, value systems, economic constraints and ideas of their time—they accomplished great and wondrous—nay heroic- deeds and are worthy and more so of their elevation at Mount Rushmore.

Now as to Mr. Blow —and most all of us Americans —if he had never made it through his elite university and then on to the ivory halls of the NYT—all made possible by the early efforts of these great men —Blow has chosen so ungraciously to smear— no one would notice his absence..