Dear Editor:
This is a response to Mr. Landis regarding the removal of the Confederate memorial in Eastville.
I think that people today have a very good idea of the history represented by that memorial. What is to be lamented — what is downright tragic — is the wasted valor and courage of men deceived into thinking that they were fighting for the “cause” of states’ rights and independence, when in reality they were fighting to protect the moneyed interests of the landed gentry who owned the slaves and controlled the state governments of the Confederacy.
The quote from Orwell’s “1984” is misapplied. The goal of Big Brother in that story was to distort, invent, or erase the past in order to control a tyrannical present. The goal today of people in our free and open society is to see the past as it actually was, and to honestly face the realities of that past as they actually happened.
It is high time that all of these memorials come down. There is no honor to be found in any of them.
Brian Bloedel,
Accomac
