Jefferson and Herring
Cancel culture came for the man who wrote the Declaration of Independence, who mentored the author of the Constitution, who served as our third President, a couple weeks ago in New York City. A statue of Thomas Jefferson installed in City Hall in 1833 was exiled to the New York Historical Society by a group of Mayor Bill De Blasio's lackeys. No public hearing, just complaints from the Council's Black, Latino and Asian Caucus that the fact of Jefferson's ownership of slaves is an affront.
Yes, Jefferson owned slaves. This made him a hypocrite.
Just like almost every single politician in existence. Then, today, tomorrow, next year, and forever after.
The slave-owner bit is, however, a smoke screen and a red herring for the real agenda.
That agenda is the relentless assault on the Enlightenment-era thinking that's at the heart of Jefferson's Declaration of Independence, and at the core of our American system of values and government. By portraying Jefferson as a scoundrel, by removing his image from places of commemoration and admiration, his detractors seek to undermine all that he wrote, via guilt-by-association or fruit-of-the-poison-tree arguments. Yes, indeed, these are logical fallacies - the truth of enlightenment views is not corrupted by the flaws of those who repeat them - but they are very convenient excuses for those seeking to reject those values.
These people, wittingly or unwittingly, are advancing the underlying goal of Critical Race Theory. CRT seeks to undermine the core precepts of the Enlightenment that serve as the foundation for what Jefferson and the other FFs wrought.
Its proponents don't hide this goal.
[C]ritical race theory questions the very foundations of the liberal order, including equality theory, legal reasoning, Enlightenment rationalism, and neutral principles of constitutional law." - Richard Delgado, Critical Race Theory - An Introduction
They do try their best to muddy the waters when people complain or challenge them. Take note of how many apologists claim that CRT isn't even a thing, while simultaneously asserting that critics get CRT wrong.
The true reason for cancelling Jefferson is to increase skepticism for what we call Western values. Their prime target is the collection of tenets upon which our Constitution, among others, is built. That would be the primacy and sovereignty of the individual, equal treatment under the law, property rights, limited government, and so forth.
In canceling Western values, they seek to supplant them with their preferred alternative. That is, of course, some form of collectivism, whether it be neo-Marxism, socialism or its modern variants, or the sort of econo/eco-fascism that's currently de mode. With them in charge, of course.
There is an insidious psychology at play here. In canceling Jefferson for racist behavior, they inform us, subconsciously, that we are racist if we don't agree with them or if we challenge their canceling. To reject the implication, we must first recognize it, and they rely on us not making that connection. And, in getting us to accede to their canceling, they plant seeds of doubt in us regarding the good things associated with Jefferson. Again, this is a logical fallacy, but that doesn't mean we all see it for what it is or are immune to its siren song.
The goal, one that most of them loudly deny, is indeed the destruction of the individualistic value system that built the greatest nations of history. In its place, they figure to "try again" at collectivism. No matter the nine-figure body count of previous iterations, and no matter the utter economic (and ecological) devastation those iterations caused.
A postscript. Be on the lookout for their other red herring, the "European socialism" gimmick. What our domestic progressives, culture warriors, and CRT obfuscators purpose has as much in common with the social democracies of northern and western Europe as fruit bats have with fruit pies. A common word, nothing more. If the Democrats proposed a platform that mirrored the Nordic model, the progressives would lose their collectivist minds.