Lt. Gov. Dan Forest Calls for Investigation into Apparent ‘Stand Down’ Order in Toppling of UNC Statue

RALEIGH – By now you have heard that Monday night students and activists tore down the statue of ‘Silent Sam,’ a monument to UNC alumni that died fighting for the confederacy in the Civil War. After months, if not years, of extra security around the statue to guard against vandalism from social justice warriors unconcerned with the idea of law and order, the Chapel Hill police were faced with a large crowd protest at the statue coinciding with UNC students returning for fall semester.

Someone just wanted it to be over with apparently, because this time, after spending hundreds of thousands to protect it in past months, the police merely backed away and let the mob takeover. The statue was down soon thereafter and the mob rejoiced.

During a radio interview Tuesday morning, Lt. Gov. Dan Forest called for an investigation into the apparent stand down order, why it was given, and why officials would abandon the lawful process for dealing with the controversial statue in favor of mob violence.

To be clear, the First in Freedom Daily team does not harbor any real sense of loss upon the absence of a confederate statue. While honoring those former students that died in a war is seemingly innocuous, the dedication of the statue itself was replete with the basest boasting racism that should be universally condemned. It was a time (1913) when such social attitudes were rampant, blatant, altogether disgusting.

It is a credit to the founding fathers’ codification of each person’s inalienable liberty, that those individual rights were finally recognized and enforced equally.

However, this is 2018, and this inanimate object, controversial and uncouth though it may be, is not actively oppressing anyone. Even the more generous definitions of ‘oppress’ require one assign that power of oppression to a statue. This is what the social justice class has done, assigning oppressing power to statues in such a way as to in their minds justify mob action.

The Chapel Hill Police Department, and someone in the higher ranks of the University of North Carolina submitted to that mob Monday night. In doing so they subverted the very moral values that the ‘offended’ are so quick to claim as their motivation.

How ironic is it, that a protest against a statue, a protest against the scourge of slavery, was led by a mob of young collectivists that likely support the very identity politics that created led to that statue in the first place?

Because to be anti-slavery should equate to being pro-individualism – something this mob is decidedly opposed to.

Remember, it was Democrats who erected this statue. It was Democrats who fought to keep the institution of slavery. It was Democrats who for years hung on to the misguided notion that all men are not created equal when it comes to just government.

Mob violence was a tool the racists used to execute their oppression in the first place, for crying out loud.

Forest is right to call for an investigation into the ‘stand down’ order. Because there is no telling where the mob will go next, which mob will attack which symbols (or people). Where does it stop?

It should stop with the lawful process established to handle this very issue. The commission charged with considering the removal of these statues was scheduled to meet Wednesday. If the statue were to be removed it should have come from that body, not a body of crazed activists emboldened by their collective sense of mob justice.

In the end, what did they accomplish? There is precisely the same amount of (negligible) racism in the nation today, as there was yesterday when this statue was still standing.