“Virginia, Monuments, and the Republican Quandary” 

“After years of Republican inaction,” declared Dick Saslaw, the incoming Democrat Senate majority leader, “we are ready to get to work.” The shots came hard and quickly. Democrat legislation adjoining Virginia to the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact—a Progressive death pact to mandate delivery of electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote—sailed through both chambers of the legislature. Seven of eight proposed bills restricting gun rights passed in the spring legislative session. The progressive ascendancy was stopped just short of a total ban on semi-automatic weapons by an unprecedented national exodus of second amendment demonstrators to the state.

Virginia State Senator Dick Saslaw, Democrat Senate Seat 35 representing Fairfax, served in the Virginia House of Delegates from 1976–80, and has served for 40 years in the Virginia State Senate (1980-2020). Saslaw has been a leader in removing monuments and memorials to Confederate dead.

Amid this catastrophic barrage to social conservatives in the Old Dominion, the legislature also struck down an existing state law prohibiting local governments from removing or altering historical monuments. 

Both houses of the legislature passed reforms lifting heavy restrictions on altering historical monuments put in place in the 1890’s—Senate Bill 83 and House Bill 1537. Both proposed passing the authority to alter or remove existing war monuments down to municipalities, but the Senate version included more potential hurdles for a specific municipality to clear before action is taken. 

The Senate bill required a two thirds majority on city councils to alter, “contextualize” or remove a monument, and eventually included amendments to allow for referendums, six months for Virginia Department of Historical Resources (DHR) research studies of the monuments in question, and opportunities for nonprofits or heritage groups to assume control of monuments. The corresponding House bill required only a simple majority of municipal city councils to remove or alter monuments and included no extra protections. 

After a short impasse, Republican opposition to the more aggressive House bill broke down, and they accepted it unconditionally. 

Robert E. Lee Monument, in Richmond, Virginia after left wing rioters applied graffiti. The goal of the Marxists are to vandalize, destroy and remove monuments and all traces of history. Photo courtesy of Virginia Department of Historic Resources.

At first, monument removal may seem inconsequential in the face of other dire issues, but its significance is twofold. Against rising national protestations that support for monument preservation is waning across Southern states, a 2018 Quinnipac poll revealed that fifty-seven percent of Virginians favored leaving the monuments in place. Just thirty-three percent supported action to remove them. The actions of the Virginia legislature and its governor are a clear rebuke to their own constituencies—a sign that Virginia’s new, cosmopolitan governing elite, like Ghazala Hashmi, believe they know better than the people they represent. 

Viscerally, removal of Confederate monuments is a clear signal of conquest. Southern legislatures have long been fortresses of heritage defense and social conservatism. The swiftness of action following the electoral success of globalist leftists at the ballot box in Virginia shows that a new regime is in power, and they aren’t going to stop with Confederate monuments. A total extirpation of the “old” American narrative is underway in Virginia, fueled by the same people who want to ban guns, abolish the electoral college, and consign the Bill of Rights to the dustbin of history. 

Confederate monument removal is just the first wave of destruction in a campaign designed to reach much deeper. In public hearing after public hearing, and op-ed after op-ed, the salient narrative from the monument removal faction repeats the same arguments whose origins lie in revisionist academics at the universities. The monuments, they say, represent “white supremacy.” They were built by the Confederate government, whose only reason for existence was the perpetuation of slavery, and they were erected in the 20th century for the sole purpose of bolstering the Jim Crow regime that sought to preserve the racist status quo and nothing else. 

To the government of Virginia and the insurgent left across the South, it does not matter that these arguments are not true. It only matters that they can be imposed upon the conquered population.

Thomas Jefferson

The academic publishing complex that fabricates these arguments is now showing signs of moving past Confederate monuments. Once they are gone, professors like Alan Taylor, at the University of Virginia, will take aim at Thomas Jefferson. His new book Thomas Jefferson’s Education, applies all of the same arguments used against Confederate figures to the founder of his own university and the third American president. Thomas Jefferson was a “white supremacist”, he argues, and despite his opposition to slavery and authorship of the Declaration of Independence, Taylor insists he needs to go as well. This is not alarmist speculation—the city of Charlottesville has already moved to replace its yearly celebration of the university’s founder with a celebration marking slavery’s end instead. 

Monument preservation is every bit as important to the conservative cause as removing them is to the progressive agenda. Progressives believe it is very important, and so should conservatives. But progressives have urgency on their side. Incompetence and bad faith on the part of the Virginia Republican Party was matched by complacence in the electorate.

Virginia’s electoral fall was narrow in many districts, including Republican Timothy Hugo’s against Dan Helmer in District 40. This seat was the Republican Party’s last in representing any part of Arlington, Fairfax County or Alexandria in the assembly or in Congress. In 2017, an election with much stronger conservative turnout, Hugo won the district by just ninety-nine votes.

Conservatives across the South, and across the nation, should look to Virginia to see their future. Losses at the state level not only endanger heritage sites in progressive-controlled localities like Charlottesville and Chapel Hill, but also endanger the national conservative cause. If, for example, enough states join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact to represent 270 votes, the Electoral College, and its protections, will cease to exist. 

The Republican electorate needs urgency, and pro-monument candidates are a perfect cause to rally around. After all, has there ever been a pro-monument candidate who favored late-term abortion and gun bans?