Letter to VA Governor

An Open Letter to Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe

From Sherwan W. Dillar

Democratic gubernatorial candidate, Terry McAuliffe speaks during a debate at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Va., Thursday, Oct. 24, 2013. (AP Photo/Steve Helber)

 

 

 

 

 

 

I was born in Los Angeles, California and raised in Ohio. I have taught Political Science at the collegiate level in Cincinnati, been published in The Wall Street Journal and am in my 12th year of research for a forthcoming book on Columbine.  For the past seven years I have made Rockbridge County, Virginia, my home.  The one and only reason I live in Lexington, Virginia is, because it is the final resting place of Robert E. Lee and Thomas J. Jackson. Their lives, character, faith, integrity, honor and testimony shone so brightly a century and a half after their decease, that there is no other place on the Earth I want to be, but where they lived and served.

There is something deeply and morally wrong with anyone, who objects to these two great Virginians—great Americans being honored by the native State, for which they gave their lives, limbs and blood in selfless patriotic service.  President Dwight D. Eisenhower kept Lee’s portrait in his executive office, while president. Churchill extolled him as the greatest American. Ulysses S. Grant threatened to resign from the U.S. Army, if Lee were tried for treason. The statue that marks the grave of “Stonewall” Jackson was paid for not only by the veterans, who served under him, but by financial contributions from former slaves, whom he had taught to read in violation of Virginia law.

When a Lexington local assailed Jackson for breaking the law to “teach those people”, Jackson uncharacteristically lost his temper and shouted, “If you were a Christian you would not say so!”After the war, it was Lee who broke social convention at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, by kneeling beside a former slave, who had mortified the White congregation by kneeling at the altar. Asked afterward by a bigot why a man like himself would kneel beside a former slave, Lee simply chastised him, “The ground is always level at the foot of the cross.”

The anniversary of the deaths of Lee and of Jackson were long commemorated in this Commonwealth by veterans of the North, who were often the honored keynote speakers invited to praise the virtues of their once-foes.  Every monument to a Confederate Virginian is a war memorial to an American veteran.  It has been the mark of manhood and civility and longstanding American tradition to leave politics out of the way we honor our veterans. They fought the battles; we did not. They shed the blood; we did not. They reconciled with their enemies; we did not. End of subject. It is not for children born a hundred and fifty years later to re-adjudicate the past and expose to double jeopardy men their own contemporaries exonerated.

It is the height of arrogance to suppose that you know more about these men and their times than their even contemporaries. The command of God remains, “Remove not the ancient landmark, which thy fathers have set.” It is to God you will assuredly answer for its violation. If you find it impossible to respect your elders, attempt at least to revere your betters.  The destruction of Virginia’s monuments to her war dead is sacrilege and those, who urge and execute it, are nothing more than cemetery vandals. There is no honor in this course of wanton destruction and, morally, you equate yourself with ISIS, which shares your contempt for actual culture, something you both so manifestly lack. It is more than history, more than art. 

No matter. No one will remember you in any 150 years. Nothing you do can make anything like the mark these great Virginians made on history’s ledger. Just being you another day is your own punishment and yet you still face God for what you propose to do as well. Something is deeply, horribly wrong with your soul, Sir. And you know it. So does all Virginia. I have strived to be civil, but you do not make it easy. Smearing reputations, slandering saints and tearing down what better men raised has zero to do with love, unity, tolerance, acceptance, diversity and coexistence. It’s just the usual political spoils game, playing one race/class/group against another to score a win at any cost. The mean, petty loathing of Virginia’s first string heroes outs you as a raging hypocrite just as you were trying to pass for intelligent. What a piece of work.  Just leave the statues, graves, monuments and memorials right where the grown-ups put them, Terry. Just fool around doing nothing, you know, like back at Georgetown. Easy.

That’s all I ask. And about the most anybody expects of you. Aren’t you tired yet of just being the same old failure and lurching from bungled debacle to bungled debacle? Why not shock the world: open a book, educate yourself and do something less horrible than usual. Resign, even, and leave Virginians to govern Virginia. What a concept.

With all due respect,
Sherwin W. Dillar

Originally posted 2017-09-07 17:01:59.

9 thoughts on “Letter to VA Governor”

  1. How does anyone born in Syracuse, New York become a governor of Virginia? The simple answer is that the law presently requires a candidate for the governorship to reside in the state of Virginia for ONLY five years. It explains how Virginia ended up with an out-of-state moron as their chief executive … not unlike electing to the US Senate from New York someone who was born in Illinois and lived her adult life in Arkansas before moving into the White House. I don’t think this is what our ethos, ‘America as the land of opportunity,’ really means.

    Virginia’s constitution [indeed every state constitution] should restrict the governorship to those who are natural born citizens of that state in the same way the US Constitution restricts the presidency to natural born citizens (the one exception being the fraud of Barack Obama, of course).

    Consider: the federal Bill of Rights has never extended directly to any citizen of the United States until it is first incorporated into his or her state’s Constitution. This tells us that our primary relationship to the federal government must come to us through state citizenship.

    Pride in our states and their history matters. Why should any true Virginian elect an outsider to the governorship? For that matter, why would any Arizonian elect New Yorker Janet Napolitano as their governor? What could anyone from New York understand about Virginia’s long history, Arizona’s culture, or the impact of those factors on the psychology of its citizens?

    It seems to me that if folks back home are tired of what outsiders are doing to their state’s histories, then they ought to stop electing them. One final thought … perhaps this is why our nation’s history no longer matters to the communist left: it enables them to change our history and our values to suit their own foreign agenda.

  2. Isn’t it amazing that carpet bagger’s are still infiltrating Virginia?

    Great comments brother, Semper Fi!

  3. He should publish a morals handbook for all politicians.

  4. Destruction of these statues sickens me. There is no excuse other then ignorance of history. At least the park service is standing up and saying the statues remain on hallowed ground and one town in Kentucky has offered to take and display statues that are removed. People must fight back against this stupidity and stop allowing a minority of ignorant fools make the rules.

    1. We, the silent majority NEEDS to stop being silent NOW! Before our entire history is decimated. But the silent majority sickens me for their lack of action.

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