Lately – in the GOP primary contest, there has been a major hoax which is being played on the voters of the Shenandoah Valley. The hoax is that Ed Gillespie supports the removal of the Confederate monuments. Therefore that Ed Gillespie must be a major shill of big government and political correctness. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Ed has been all of his life a supporter of Confederate monuments and the place that Confederate heroes hold in Virginia history. Ed understands that to remove the statue of Robert E. Lee at UVA is only the beginning. That once the statue of Lee is gone, the Politically Correct Thought Police will not stop until George Washington and Thomas Jefferson have been removed from our history as well.
However Ed – unlike his opponents, understands there is a bigger picture, and that bigger picture is who should have the say in local affairs such as monuments – the city of Richmond or each locality. Ed believes, in line with most small government thinkers such as myself, that local affairs are best handled at the local level. And the more laws which are enacted and passed in Richmond, the less freedom each of the localities will have.
A few years back, one of the local counties in the Virginia northern neck needed state permission to make it illegal for people to have pet alligators. Why should the state be telling a local government whether or not they can ban someone having a dangerous pet? I want my issues to be handled at the local county or city or town level as much as possible. And while it is tempting to want a state law which would ban the removal of statues of Virginia heroes, the fact is that we don’t need more laws coming from Richmond. To the contrary, we need fewer and fewer laws coming from Richmond.
One of the reasons Ed is running for Governor is to remove burdensome regulations so that our industry can take off and we can become a private industry job creator instead of dependent on Washington DC and the federal government for our jobs.
I understand the desire to punish the plantation classes. Slavery was a blight on our history. Millions of African Americans were dehumanized in the name of profit. But sadly, slavery was a custom of the day. And we cannot sanitize our history by removing people from our history. Again the PC police will not stop with the Confederate heroes. They want to ban the name of Thomas Jefferson from the UVA campus. Imagine that, banning the founder of a major university from that university, because Jefferson was a slave owner. This is not just a state issue. Princeton University wants to ban the name of Woodrow Wilson from its campus. Now I’m no fan of Wilson as a president. But to ban a former University President’s name from the campus where he presided is crazy. That would be like banning J Edgar Hoover from the history of the FBI. Yes, Hoover was a gross despicable person. But without that gross despicable man, we don’t have an FBI. Let’s take this one step farther. Martin Luther King Jr. was one of the great men of American history. However, while he helped lead the Black race into more freedom, he was a horrible husband, and was having multiple orgies with women while on the road. Do we ban the name Martin Luther King because some feminists are rightly bothered with how he treated his wife? Of course not.
However making a law which would ban the removal of someone’s name or statue because they committed a horrible sin is as bad as banning the monument – because any government which has the power to do something, will sooner or later abuse that power in the name of the public good. Do you really want Richmond to be in charge of more of your daily life? Ed’s opponents seem to want this. Whoever you vote for on June 13, please make sure that your vote is an informed one.
John Massoud is a local Magisterial District Chair for the Shenandoah County GOP, the leader of the Shenandoah County GOP Freedom Caucus, and the regional field director for Ed Gillespie for Governor.
28 comments
As a three generation Republican and former State Delegate and Captain in two voting Precincts in Portsmouth, and a candidate for Mayor of the City, let my words register with Ed Gillespie. I hope he takes heed. But if he doesn’t change his tune he could end up whistling Dixie. Every day he is loosing the support of Republicans and independents and even conservative Democrats that were hoping that he would take back the Governorship after Terry McAulliff. These votes are being lost because of his stance over the monuments issue. His position shows an inflexible conservative orthodoxy that clouds the actual politics of the matter and the necessary practicality and complexity of the issue. His statement also shows that he is out of touch with current events regarding the matter, and doesn’t seem to understand the State, Federal and local laws that are already in place and how to use them effectively or how to improve government to provide better protections to monuments, historical architecture and battlefields. He is also not reading the poles which show that from 60-67% of Virginians do not want Confederate Monuments moved or removed. His comments are a sad commentary on ignorance and rigid orthodoxy without deeper understanding or practical solution. Particularly disturbing is his endorsement of the current Governor’s position and actions regarding monuments in the aftermath of the Charlottesville incident. He supports the Democratic Governor, whose was part and parcel to that shameful event.
This matter is straight forward and easy to dissect. The “Take down Confederate Flags and Monuments” issue is being driven on the national level by the NAACP. This policy is filtered down to the local organizations who execute it as the Black intelligentsia and leadership in the local communities. That is their policy and they are joined by the Black Lives Matter group which receives its funding from foreign purses bent on destroying the American nation in favor of internationalism.
As affluent whites and blacks have left the core inner cities and the automobile has transformed our nation and state into a vast highway system in support of corporate entities and big boxes, to the determent of sole proprietorship and small businesses, the cities have become corporate high rises during the day and ghettos of hopelessness, welfareism and growing dis-proportionality populated by Blacks. What that dis-proportionality has meant practically is that the inner cities have fallen into political control by the black elites. Generally speaking they are lead or heavily influenced by the cultural stature of the NAACP, which dictates, influences and can control the black community, through its national policy directive. The nation and the Commonwealth can expect more of the same as the white community would rather flee than fight. This is a sad state of affairs for the nation and Virginia. Ed Gillespie’s position on the monuments will in fact encourage more large corporations and hurt small businesses and entrepreneurs, but it will also hurt tourism – the Commonwealth’s biggest business. As the Black community acquires majority power in local governments and are directed and influenced by the NAACP and other radical agendas, the expectation should be fully understood. The re-writing of history and political correctness will be the governing agenda of this new left, amalgamated with the radicalism and distortion of truth and Black racism, being taught in institutions of higher learning as “Black studies” to poison the minds of the educated Black masses. The era of political correctness is over. We are now beginning to relive Mao’s Cultural Revolution in America.
Monuments and memorials are catalysts for tourism and have been since the Roman time and when Bernini, in the Baroque Period, became the first urban planner in his reorganization of the City of Rome with piazza, fountains and monuments. The character of Virginia’s towns and cities are defined by monuments and stimulate tourism. The localities and the state will loose revenue as monuments are moved or removed. Monuments and memorials are not just for the localities. The State and national government and all Americans have a vested stake in this heritage. Blacks now control the inner cities and presume carte blanch authority, under their NAACP policy directives, to transform the major cities of the Commonwealth, irrespective of the damage they will be doing to the State as a whole. Local governments do not have such cart Blanch authority. National and State laws were created to protect historic assets. The National Historic Preservation Act, Sec. 15.2 2306 and 1812, in the State Code, were designed and implemented to protect heritage monuments, battlefields and architecture and provide for architectural and design review boards in cities. It is also why the Virginia Department of Historic Resources exists. Protecting the fragile nature of historic assets and values from the whims of government and greedy corporations is divined to protect tourism and the heritage of all are Citizens in the Commonwealth.
The presumption that all government should be small is not a truly conservative position from a strict constructionist perspective. The strict constructionist Conservative sees Federal Government reduced to its core and essential size and influence, in keeping with the Constitution, but sees the enlargement and responsibility of State governments and programs, were matters are more close to home, better controlled and more efficient. To shrink the Federal Government requires more, not less control, stimulus, efficiency and responsibility at the local and State level. That is not something that should be feared, but rather embraced by Republicans, as accountability and responsibility are returned to the State and Local Governments and dependency and control of the State and local governments is reduced.
Virginia needs stronger and better defined laws that will protect monuments, markers and memorials and specifies monuments already erected as grand-fathered in, and defined prospectively, to be inclusive. Common Citizens need to be able to charge officials with corruption or fraud and other felonies by making a complaint directly to a Magistrate, something which has been removed from the people and is an act of tyranny and promotes corruption and malfeasance in office. The State Inspector General should be empowered to investigate local governments and government officials for corruption and criminality, and not just state departments. Virginia needs criminal laws that put office holders in jail for violations of law and not just taking bribes and corruption, but for a broader scope of criminality that is pervasive. And more germane to the subject, the Commonwealth needs a law that makes the removal of historic monuments by a local authority without approval of the State or Federal authorities (if the monument is on the National Historic list) a felony, whose sanctions is imprisonment. When it comes to good governance in Virginia, we need more and stronger laws, as the former State Senator from Norfolk, Henry Howell used to say, “to keep the Big Boys honest”.
The policies of Gov. McAullif and parroted and supported by Ed Gillespie are policies that guarantee the removal of monuments from all of the major cities in Virginia. Because those communities are and will be controlled by an ever increasing number of Blacks as time goes on. Unless Whites (and Blacks, who constituted a sizable percentage of the Confederate military), whose ancestors fought and are honored by these monuments, are willing to move back into the Cities proper, to reclaim a voting majority, or the State passes universal protections for memorials and monuments – that is color blind, we in the Commonwealth should be prepared to accept a Cultural Revolution. Ed Gillespie needs to rethink his position on monuments before he fully looses the respect and vote of Republicans across the State, and looses the Republican opportunity to win back the Executive Office in Richmond. His current policy is dividing Republicans and not uniting us, and his thinking and policies are dead wrong!
Corey supporter here. I’m from Northern Virginia and I did NOT want Establishment Ed to be the GOP’s nominee. He’s just another RINO con man in it for the money with NO intention whatsoever to stop the Left from erasing Confederate history, granting amnesty to thousands of illegals here, and creating new sanctuary cities that threaten legal Virginians’ lives. Confederate history is clearly not pretty, but it’s important for us to learn from our mistakes in the past in order to prevent similar ones in the future, and the Left hasn’t learned that. As for illegal immigration, he, like many other RINOs like Robot Rubio, can’t hide where his true loyalties lie, and they definitely are not toward legal Virginians.
It’s pathetic enough we have him as the nominee when he cannot even support our legitimately elected president like the rest of the RINOs in last year’s primaries. What’s the point of voting for him come November if he’s just going to stab us in the back with empty lip service?
Lmao, “conservatives”, smaller localized govt is only good until it’s not….
I personally am SMDH at the fact that Gillespie’s supporters are pretending they don’t know that localities do not have the same rights and responsibilities vis-a-vis the state as the state does vis-a-vis the federal government.
I will repeat there is nothing that localities are allowed to do… from taxation to education to social programs… absent the permission of the state.
Wow, the fact that Ed’s shills keep posting this defense, while claiming he is being misrepresented and really loves Confederate monuments, shows his campaign is rattled. His operatives probably told him not to worry, this would not be an issue, when the controversy started.
And then Ed’s campaign tries to keep telling us that we are being lied
to about his position on the Lee and other statues by Stewart’s campaign
and various heritage groups. No, I understood perfectly. The “leave it up to the locality” excuse is just that. What if Fairfax wants to impose transgender bathrooms in schools? What if another locality decided to reintroduce segregated schools? What if some town decided they weren’t going to pay Va. taxes anymore or send delegates to the Gen. Assembly?
To be honest, I think Ed, being from the NE and mainly working with the establishment wing of the party, didn’t really even grasp how important this issue would be to Southerners/Virginians. It is true that Corey is also a Northerner,
but he connects more with the grass roots type than Ed does, and is more
conservative. Stewart has been underfunded, and therefore has to actually appeal to working class and average voters. Ed can just wave $$.
Let me ask Ed what he is prepared to actually do if elected governor to fight back against this latest cultural war of the left? Will there be any more statues, streets and schools named after Confederates left under his governorship than, say Ralph Northam’s? Is he prepared to sign any type of heritage strengthening bill into law such as the one passed by the Gen. Assembly last year and vetoed by McAwful?
Unlike states’ positions vis-a-vis the federal government, localities have no sovereignty and are creatures created by the states. Gillespie pulling a Nicky Haley about our heritage is an act of cowardice (or complicity with progressives) NOT a sign that he is a respecter of limited government.
The Commonwealth funds UVA. Or does C’ville want to forgo that and any other state aid?
Exactly… localities are not independent and cannot do things the state does not allow them to do.
I can’t stand Ed Gillespie. He is a big government establishment hack, just like Karl Rove and Newt Gingrich. All three are ‘pretend limited government ‘ peas in a pod. Hell, Ed worked for both. BUT, rather lip service or not, the position Ed and the author espouses about more local control instead of Richmond control is the same as more federal instead of world/global control and more State instead of federal control. It is the ultimate limited government position. Or do we only support the limited government position when its not our issue? P.S. I not for removing Confederate Monuments.
Declaring it as a local issue is really the same position as McAuliffe and La. Gov. John Bel Edwards’ position. In Ed’s case, it was probably scripted by his campaign as a response to try to placate both sides. He could tell conservatives in the party prior to the primary that he really didn’t want to see the statue go, while at the same time giving a green light to the removal crowd should he become governor.
This is not the only issue carefully scripted to appear to each side that he has their back. There is also the case of his response to Tmac pardoning an illegal aliens woman recently, and many other non-stances.
Since Gillespie is an “amnesty yesterday, amnesty today, amnesty forever” guy, it is no shock that he supports the Governor’s pardon.
That’s how Establishment Ed rolls….
But it is a local issue.
Well done !
It is our history if THEY proceed as planned
Take down the Civil War Trails signs around the state that bring in
Millions in tourism dollars.
Where those who want to revise history. Such as cities localities and employees. Make their living.
For every Confederate statue
Take away on Union ans one Civil rights leader street sign or statue
That should end this utter nonsense.
You know, Ed is supposed to be sooooooo far out in front in the governors race. And yet, Ed seems to have very little support in blog comments, other than from those who are cashing checks that he sent them as some type of compensation.(All legal in our corrupt system)
If Ed is going to win anything, it sure looks to me like he better start mailing out more checks.
Has the White House asked Putin to help Ed out?
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/bc39f69f7d9c152de46e51fc1fb68e9820bf00b9bb1f813b8210c0be26a58369.jpg
Ed has NEVER won ANY campaign. It’s BECAUSE the VOTERS are TIRED OF RINO candidates! Ed is McAwful 2.0
McAuliffe 2.0 , no much worse.
Ed has not and will not and address McAuliffes Executive Order 24.
At least McAuliffe will combat fraud and illegal employment Ed does not meet this standard.
Confederate Monument ? OK how about the stump in Fredericksburg they used to sell slaves on?
Ed keeps it to sell Contractors exploitated human trafficked illegal aliens, if he does not address EO24 and dressed JLARC 427
So when will he talk about Statutes or statues.
Ed is flat wrong for Va.
The practical outcome of Ed’s position is essentially no different than McAuliffe and the Democrat’s position. The statues go, schools and streets are renamed, future generations will probably grow up thinking Va fought for the union. All the same garbage taught in schools that they do in the North. Ed, you are not helping. You are complicit in cultural destruction.
In addition to this, there are a whole host of other issues Ed is straddling the fence on, including his lobbying for Tyson’s Food in its importation of thousands of illegals who are probably still here pilfering off various social welfare programs and dropping anchor babies.
Is the RPV so afraid at this point that we have to elect a token Republican, just essentially kicking the can of Dem. win forward only a year or two? Or are we really going to elect a principled conservative?
If this is Ed’s stance then it is exactly what I thought it was all along. I keep getting told by ed’s supporters that I have misinterpreted something or been lied to. If a woman were screaming while being raped, would Ed plug in his ear phones and decide that it was not his problem? Leave it to law enforcement? Well, this is our state and we don’t want our heritage sacked because one session one too many leftists got elected to the C’ville city council. The monument removal was never even put to a referendum, because they know it would fail.
Sorry Ed, VIRGINIA IS OUR STATE! I realize it is NOT yours and you are from the North and really only have to give us lip service down here because you are running for governor, having landed in Va only due to being RNC chairman. All of Virginia’s history belongs to all Virginians. If this is your stance than you have lost my vote, but don’t try to pawn it off as were are getting fake news on your real position. Seems like I had it right all along.
Remember the 84 lumber add during the Superbowl.
Has Eddie taken any contributions from Maggie Hardy.
Will Ed allow his Appointed VEC Commissioner to classify unlicensed contractors as “bona-fide independent contractors” although the existence of Statute 54.1-1100
Does Eddie believe in States rights? The right to enforce our laws? OR His right not to enforce our State laws?
Would Eddie veto HB253?
I would if you are requiring Worker Comp Insurance shouldn’t this bill also require a VEC Account?
This is an excellent question that Executive Leadership should be able to answer.
Corporate Eddie? You decide.
Corey Stewart for Governor
the candidate with the fortitude to attack fraud.
This is a damn good piece. Well done!!
I’m sure it was well compensated too. Vote for a Democrat for governor to stop another McDonnell like Republican tax increase. Sure, Ed will call it something else, just as ole’ Bob did. Just look at the mess in Washington now to see what K-St.’s own Ed Gillespie will do to Virginia.
Gillespie is a flat out Trump/Hillary type liar with his 10% tax BS. You get Tommy Norment and Speaker Howell/Cox to say that they will pass a 10% across the board tax decrease in the House and Senate and I will put a Gillespie sign in my yard, send Ed a check, and vote for him. It ain’t going to happen. Ed knows it. If you do believe it, then Ed is going to cut about 105,000 state employee’s pay 10%. I am certain those 105,000 state employee’s are anxious to vote for Ed?????
Please people, do not forget what the Republicans did to the middle-class in 2013, with their largest tax increase in Virginia history. HB 2313. Do it for the children. Make Republicans pay for HB 2313. Make them pay.
And Frank Wagner screwed Virginia taxpayer’s and corporations out of BILLIONS OF DOLLARS in electricity refunds with his SB 1349 power company bill in 2015. Frank Wagner has never seen a power company lobbyist or executive ass he wouldn’t kiss. SB 1349 may not even be legal with a case now pending in the Virginia Supreme Court. Make Frank Wagner and Republicans pay for making Virginia pay BILLIONS MORE FOR ELECTRICITY. And, how many jobs has the increased cost of electricity cost Virginia? Make them pay!
Putting a lobbyist or power company robot in the governors mansion will be a disaster for Virginia. Virginia would be better off with a Democrat in the governors mansion for the next four years. A Democrat who would be occupied trying to find their sexual identity, and figuring out which shitter to use. And, we would have Republicans in the House and Senate brag about stopping any Democrat tax increases.
Just vote for Corey Stewart.
Yes, it pretty much clarifies what we all knew all along. Ed pretends to be against the destruction of our heritage, but will allow leftist cities and counties to do the dirty deeds. We DO get his position. Some may be okay with it, but some are not.