Scott Powell wrote in his Aug. 28 Newsmax column:
The restoration of an obscure monument in Arlington Cemetery known as the Reconciliation Monument may serve as the catalyst and spiritual portal that brings America back to its origin in greatness as the nation of e pluribus unum — meaning one out of many.
In a recent X post, U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth reiterated that the reinstatement of the 1914 Reconciliation Monument, which celebrates the bringing together of the South and the North after decades of post-Civil War division, was important because it fosters the unity of America, and its removal by “woke lemmings” in December 2023 was inconsistent with honesty and openness about the past.
Hegseth added: “Unlike the Left, we don’t believe in erasing American history – we honor it.”
As we documented, the history Hegseth is choosing to “honor” is a dishonest, anti-AmerIcan one. The cemetery’s own website states that “The elaborately designed monument offers a nostalgic, mythologized vision of the Confederacy, including highly sanitized depictions of slavery,” and that the only two African-American figures are stereotypical — a “mammy”-type figure and an enslaved man following his owner to war. Further, even the descendants of the monument’s sculptor have endorsed its removal.
But Powell doesn’t want to hear about that. After detailing an alleged history of the monument in which the word “Confederate” does not appear at all, he defended the monument:
More than any other monument in Arlington Cemetery, the Reconciliation Monument captures the essence of what makes America great: the willingness to see our faults, forgive our transgressors, the quest for unity, and the celebration of beauty and freedom.
[…]The battle over the Reconciliation Monument has been a lightning rod, revealing how good and evil operate. It’s instructive in discerning good from evil.
Pursuing reconciliation, forgiveness, unity based on truth, honesty, morality, transparency, goodwill, beauty, merit, and respect for the past can be trusted.
Those who foster vice, secrecy, divisiveness, hatred, dishonesty, destruction, lawlessness, fear and rewriting of history can’t be trusted.
[…]The COVID-19 pandemic and the George Floyd riots catalyzed the removal of some 260 historic monuments and statues across America.
Most will probably never be restored.
It’s incredibly significant that Defense Secretary Hegseth has taken a hard stand in the restoration of the Reconciliation Monument.
Being one of America’s most important monuments with powerful symbolic and spiritual significance, such an accomplishment is a vital key to an important door to America’s spiritual revival.
Actually, we’re pretty sure that a monument to the enemies of America, no matter how beautiful and “spiritual,” is most definitely not “a vital key to an important door to America’s spiritual revival.”