Editor, The Smithfield Times:

I have seen so much misinformation on the Isle of Wight monument to Confederate dead published that I am at a loss as to how so many who claim to know so much are obviously just repeating what they hear or read and cannot be doing their own research into the facts.

The most amazing was a claim that in 1905 citizens then purposefully caused the county a future land problem if the monument was moved. Obviously that writer has neither seen the actual deed or does not understand what they read.

Yes, there is a potential land problem if the monument is moved, but the deed is not so clear as to make it a “sure thing” for either party. Also, people of that time never imagined people of our time could be so brainwashed as to believe a monument to the dead that had what is engraved on it could be made to believe it was something totally different than what it says it is.

There is no evidence Confederate monuments were erected to intimidate African Americans other than the dates they were erected. Opponents do not say and you will not find, unless you do your own research, that the Union monuments were erected in the exact same time frames as Confederate ones — most on the five-year anniversary dates of the war or some battle, such as Isle of Wight in 1905, 40th anniversary of the ending of the Civil War and 45th anniversary of its beginning. Also the South was a devastated wasteland with no money for food, much less monuments, until decades after the war.

My favorite is when I hear pastors calling for the destruction of monuments to the dead because they judge people of the distant past with their 21st century hindsight. They must have lost the page in their Bible that says ” Judge not, that ye be not judged.” If they want all reminders of slavery gone, I guess they can’t keep their Bible. I see a lot in it concerning slavery.

If you can judge people of 150 years ago, why not those of 2,000 years ago like King David. If the monument painfully reminds you of slavery, the Bible certainly must. Does that have to go also?

It took me a while and some research to realize that this is not about monuments at all. It is about a Marxist agenda. Monuments are only the “thing” used to organize and have a manufactured cause against so once the monument is gone you have gained two important objectives. First, you have the organized group you did not have before. Secondly, you have shown your political power to force the government to do what you want and then you move on to your real agenda.

The public hearing on the Isle of Wight monument taking place Thursday at 6 P.M. at Smithfield High School is not a public hearing on keeping a Confederate monument to the dead. It is a public hearing on whether we will allow the Marxist agenda to have a victory in our county. These monuments — all of them, no matter the type — are just a very small piece in a very large puzzle and most Americans will not like it when the puzzle is completed.

 

Volpe Boykin

Carrsville