The ‘Hillbilly Hope’ Defends Lee’s Legacy
J.D. Vance’s Bold Step to Reclaim Robert E. Lee’s Legacy
J.D. Vance invited the ire of countless woke historical revisionists when he pushed back against the suggestion that, when Pete Hegseth removed retired General Mark Milley’s portrait from the Pentagon, this was somehow a sign that the Trump administration will be iconoclastic and authoritarian:
The pulling down of portraits and forced erasing the past is a reminder—check your 20th century history about what kind of regimes do this stuff…
— Susan Glasser (@sbg1) January 28, 2025
Vance’s response perfectly captures what most Americans probably felt in reading Glasser’s nonsense:
Imagine having lived through the last 10 years–the desecration of Washington, Jefferson, Lee, Roosevelt, and even Lincoln–and then drawing the line at…Mark Milley.
— JD Vance (@JDVance) January 29, 2025
Vance’s including Robert E. Lee in this short list of American heroes whose reputations have been wrongfully tarnished could not have been an accident. It is a brave statement for Vance to make and a brilliant cultural flank against those who have been uninterruptedly murdering historical truth throughout the post-Obama era.
Violent mobs and woke social initiatives have led to the defacement or removal of these great Americans’ monuments for many years now. They were to be newly cast as racists and villains, and you were also to be smeared if you didn’t buy into the lies.
You were a racist, for example, if you questioned the claims made in The 1619 Project. This farce-masquerading-as-journalism argued that…