The wave of statues being vandalized has started to get out of hand. What started as a campaign to expunge monuments of Confederate war heroes has spread to just about every edifice of bronze or stone that commemorated figures from history. A statue of Martin Luther King that stands in Bricker Park in Houston had white paint poured on it. Meanwhile, a statue of Joan of Arc that resides in Decatur in the French Quarter of New Orleans had the words “Take it Down” sprayed in black paint on its base.
Martin Luther King statue doused in white paint
The statue of Martin Luther King was doused in white paint around the same night that a statue of Christopher Columbus had red paint poured on it.
Thus, Houston law enforcement believes that the two may be related.
However, just on the surface, one might think that the culprit in the attack on the King statue was one of the alt.right crowd. Nevertheless, Dr. King believed that civil rights could only be achieved when people start to judge one another by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin. That sentiment runs counter to the beliefs of Black Lives Matter and the Antifa.
Who attacked Joan of Arc’s statue?
On the other hand, the identity of the person or persons who vandalized the Joan of Arc statue is a complete mystery. Saint Joan, as she is in the Catholic Church, was a peasant girl living in 15th Century France who claimed that she had been called on by divine authority to lead the armies of the French King to turn back the English invaders.
Such was her charisma and her conviction she succeeded in lifting the siege of Orleans and had the French well on their way to driving the English out when she was betrayed, captured, and burned at the stake as a witch. France won the war anyway and avoided becoming a possession of England. Joan was later canonized as a saint.
In any case, Joan of Arc has nothing to do with American history, not to mention the Civil War, living as she did decades before the discovery of America. One suspects that the deed was done more out of mischief than political extremism. No one alive cares about the outcome of the 100 Years War one way or another.
The point of all this is that some desire to destroy and defile has been unleashed for some Americans that has nothing to do with slavery or any other historical grievance. Issues have been substituted by the visceral desire to destroy for destruction’s sake.
