Opinion

ROOKE: Virginia Has A Problem Only Governor Glenn Youngkin Can Fix

OPINION
Virginia Gov. Youngkin Speaks At Grand Opening Of Amazon HQ2 In Arlington

(Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

Mary Rooke Commentary and Analysis Writer
Font Size:

Armed with the executive branch’s veto power, VA Gov. Glenn Youngkin is the only person able to protect important historical sites under attack by activists in the General Assembly. It’s up to him to decide if future generations of Americans will have access to the homes where the men responsible for forming the U.S. were raised.

On Feb. 6, the Virginia Senate passed SB517. This bill removes the tax-exempt status for the Virginia Division of the United Daughters of the Confederacy and all property owned by the group and by the General Organization of the United Daughters of the Confederacy.

At first glance, it doesn’t seem like a big deal. The Union won the Civil War, so why should Americans care whether or not the descendants of the Confederacy get a break on their taxes for their organizations or property? Despite what the left would have Americans believe, these memorials carry an important historical lesson for future generations that shouldn’t be forgotten.

Properties like Stratford Hall, the Stonewall Jackson House and others owned by the Robert E. Lee Memorial Foundation and the Stonewall Jackson Memorial are funded by the United Daughters of the Confederacy. These homes are now museums that showcase important Southern artwork, sculptures, and historical information that allow Americans a glimpse into the men who are an important part of understanding the complexities of the American Civil War. (ROOKE: The Left’s Cultural Revolution Comes For America’s Most Hallowed Grounds)

Thomas Jonathan “Stonewall” Jackson was born in Clarksburg, Virginia, now West Virginia. He survived his father’s death and horrible stepfather to rise to graduate from West Point. He served as a lieutenant, then brevet major with the 1st U.S. Artillery in the Mexican War. For a decade after the war against Mexico, he taught as a professor at the Virginia Military Institute.

Jackson didn’t want Virginia to secede from the Union. Still, once the Commonwealth voted to leave, he accepted a colonel position in the Confederacy, where he was later promoted to brigadier general. He was impressive on the battlefield, leading his men with honor and distinction in the Battle of Bull Run (where he got his nickname “Stonewall”), the Battle of Antietam, the Battle of Fredericksburg and the Battle of Chancellorsville.

Our nation is divided into two groups: one trying desperately to hold onto the ideals of the men who built America into the greatest country ever formed, and the other tirelessly working to erase the history that binds our republic together.

Leftist activists come for our history because it’s easier to erase it than explain that their tropes about U.S. history are false and filled with anti-American hatred. It’s hard for the modern American to grasp a time before the behemoth that is now the federal government with its spy agencies and power to arrest citizens for political differences. But for some, whether you joined the Union or Confederacy was as simple as answering the call of their home state. (ROOKE: So-Called Republicans Are Helping Biden Gaslight Americans)

The Commonwealth of Virginia was the birthplace of so many of our Founding Fathers and important American intellectuals who helped form America from a colonial society into a republic. To erase this history won’t make up for the cruelty of slavery. It will just ensure that the lessons fought with the blood of men far greater than us are lost.

Americans have a common bond. It seems strange to say that today, with the level of division facing society, but it’s nonetheless true. Perseverance against all odds, rising to the call of your brethren, and fighting, sometimes to the death, for the honor of your homeland is something so inherently American.

The Confederacy lost and the Union became stronger because of it. Future generations need the ability to walk through the museums and touch this history to live what it means to come together. In times such as the ones modern Americans face, erasing the lessons of our forefathers means death to the nation they formed for us. (ROOKE: Biden’s Border Crisis Exposed America’s Dirty Foreign Agent Secret)

Americans are the descendants of men who tamed a vast wilderness filled with hostile inhabitants to build a land of freedom for all those who aspired to protect the natural rights of men. These Western ideals created a world where slavery rightly became an abhorrent act. There is no country greater at protecting individual freedom than the U.S., and its history deserves to be preserved in its entirety.

Youngkin finds himself a Virginian called to action. He is the only man who can stand like a stone wall against the foes cheering on the downfall of America through the selective erasure of its legacy.