“Do you worry 100 years from now someone is going to take that memorial down like they are trying to remake our memorials today?”
On the 16th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, we bring to your attention a question by a Fox News host that is all at once hyper-political, hyperbolic and hyper-offensive to both 9/11 victims and those who are offended by Confederate memorials, by suggesting the two are somehow connected.
Interior secretary Ryan Zinke joined “Fox & Friends” from Shanksville, Pennsylvania, where one of the planes in the terrorist attacks crashed, killing all on board. He and Vice President Mike Pence were there to commemorate a new memorial for the 40 passengers who died trying to save more people. They will dedicate a wind chime tower with 40 chimes on it as part of ongoing construction of a memorial there, Zinke said.
“We’re really reflecting on how great this country is and the sacrifices we made, and also talking about the change that 9/11 brought to all Americans,” he said.
To which Fox News host Brian Kilmeade asked: “Do you worry 100 years from now someone is going to take that memorial down like they are trying to remake our memorials today?”
Kilmeade appears to be comparing a memorial for 9/11 victims – heroes, really, some of whom wrested control of the plane from the hijackers and forced it to crash in a rural Pennsylvania field rather than into the U.S. Capitol – to Confederate War memorials around the country. In doing so, Kilmeade implies that some people will stop at nothing to erase the nation’s history, because. . .? Well, I’m at a loss to explain the conclusion to his logic.
Because the two couldn’t be more different.
Sept. 11 memorials like the one Zinke and Pence were dedicating in Shanksville are for Americans whose lives were lost or irrevocably disrupted in the attacks, and, really, for an entire nation that was forever changed by the deadliest terrorist attack on American soil.
Confederate memorials honor men who fought against the country as it existed then, largely to keep their right to use black people as slaves. Defenders of the memorials argue that taking them down will take America down into a sanitized, political correctness where nothing in history is sacred.
“Should we start taking their statues down and saying, ‘We’re embarrassed by you?'” Kilmeade rhetorically asked Condoleezza Rice in May, noting that some of the nation’s first presidents were slave owners.
Public opinion is divided over the meaning of the Confederate statues, with 26 percent seeing them as a symbol of racism, according to an August YouGov-Economist survey.
The divide in America – as we agonizingly replayed this summer – is between those who see a Confederate memorial as a reflection of Southern history and culture, and those who, when they look at a Confederate memorial, see a monument to America’s racist past, which is being appropriated some 150 years later by white supremacists who feel empowered by President Donald Trump’s election.
Kilmeade appears to be delegitimizing anyone who is genuinely offended by the Confederate memorials by suggesting that those people are unpatriotic. If you don’t want to honor Confederate soldiers who are part of our nation’s fabric, he’s suggesting, then it’s not a far leap to assume you will find distaste in honoring the victims and families and first responders whose lives were irrevocably changed by the Sept. 11 attacks.
Zinke, diplomatically, tried to convey that to Kilmeade:
“‘I’m one who believes we should learn from history. I think our monuments are part of our country’s history. We can learn from it. Since we don’t put up statues of Jesus, everyone is going to fall morally short. And I think reflecting on history, both good and bad, is a powerful statement and part of our DNA. So I’m an advocate again of learning from our monuments and understanding the period that they were made. But also, we live in a great country, and monuments are not Republican and Democrat and independent. The monuments are a tribute to all of us.'”
In other words: The debate about Confederate memorials can rage on, entirely independent of honoring 9/11 victims, about which there really is no mainstream debate.
