‘Mad’ Anthony Wayne Saved by the Politically Correct?
Some are confused by the Fort Wayne mayor’s apparently sincere desire to find a better place for his city’s famous statue of Gen. “Mad” Anthony Wayne, resplendent in bronze with sword in hand in full battle gear on horseback.
Mayor Tom Henry, as socially sensitive and gun-controlling a mayor as you will find in Indiana, surely knows General Wayne’s history. Indeed, if the mayor had been in office in 1794, his administration might have viewed Wayne’s armed assault at Fallen Timbers reprehensible, if not prosecutable.
And some in City Hall might find laughable the general’s defense that the native Americans there were in fact terrorists, in secret alliance with a foreign power, the British, and intent on killing every white man, woman or child they came across.
Others, certainly, would be horrified to learn that Mr. Wayne actually believed that the native-American culture, aside from specious claims it treated torture as recreation, had repeatedly rejected any concept of individual liberty or rule of law that would have made peaceful co-existence possible.
These rationales, even the youngest mayoral staffer knows, must be deconstructed by root cause and dismissed. Historical and moral relativity must be applied.
Moreover, Wayne’s own words would convict him in the mayor’s eyes. “Charge the damned rascals with the bayonet,” are the only recorded orders the general gave during the decisive battle.
Damned rascals? Let’s just say that’s not going to be on the plaque at the foot of Wayne’s statute, wherever it ends up.
And bayonets? Well, at least it wasn’t a concealed weapon, a concern of Mayor Henry and others in the group, Mayors Against Illegal Guns.
Indeed, some of us would have thought that the mayor, instead of fighting for an honorable place for Wayne, would be melting the general into plowshares . . .
No, that couldn’t be right, the mayor might be a no-till environmentalist. Melting the general, then, into windmill blades or perhaps electric-car batteries would be a better solution.
Political correctness by definition demands such consistency, especially in the treatment of our statuary.
djv
Comments...