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White Home Chief of Employees John Kelly waded into the long-simmering dispute over the elimination of memorials to Accomplice leaders on Monday night time, saying in a televised interview that “the shortage of a capability to compromise led to the Civil Warfare.”
Within the interview on Fox Information’ “The Ingraham Angle,” host Laura Ingraham requested Kelly concerning the resolution by Christ Church, an Episcopal congregation within the Washington suburb of Alexandria, Virginia, to take away plaques honoring President George Washington and Robert E. Lee, the commander of Accomplice forces in the course of the Civil Warfare.
“Properly, historical past’s historical past,” stated Kelly, whom President Donald Trump moved from secretary of homeland safety to be his chief of employees in July. “, 500 years later, it is inconceivable to me that you’d take what we expect now and apply it again then. I feel it is simply very, very harmful. I feel it exhibits you simply how a lot of an absence of appreciation of historical past and what historical past is.”
Confrontations over elimination of Accomplice monuments have uncovered deep rifts in American society between advocates who argue that the Civil Warfare is a basis stone of American historical past whose combatants who acted out of conscience and those that contend that the memorials honor Southern defenders of slavery who betrayed their nation by launching an armed revolt.
A subset of pro-memorial advocates consists of so-called alt-right political activists and white nationalists, who had been blamed for violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August when a automotive drove into a gaggle of counter-protesters, killing one individual and injuring 19 different individuals.
“Robert E. Lee was an honorable man,” Kelly stated Monday night time, including: “The dearth of a capability to compromise led to the Civil Warfare.”
Following is the complete transcript of Kelly’s remarks:
Properly, historical past’s historical past. And there are specific issues in historical past that weren’t so good and different issues that had been very, excellent.
I feel we make a mistake, although, and as a society, and definitely as people, once we take what’s right now accepted as proper and unsuitable and return 100, 200, 300 years or extra and say, ‘What Christopher Columbus did was unsuitable.’
, 500 years later, it is inconceivable to me that you’d take what we expect now and apply it again then. I feel it is simply very, very harmful. I feel it exhibits you simply how a lot of an absence of appreciation of historical past and what historical past is.
I might inform you that Robert E. Lee was an honorable man. He was a person that gave up his nation to combat for his state, which 150 years in the past was extra vital than nation. It was at all times loyalty to state first again in these days. Now it is completely different right now. However the lack of a capability to compromise led to the Civil Warfare, and women and men of excellent religion on each side made their stand the place their conscience had them make their stand.
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