‘It’s past time that these painful memorials be moved in a legal, safe way…’
(Michael Barnes, Liberty Headlines) Removing historic monuments from the North Carolina state Capitol without legislative approval isn’t just a submissive nod to violent mobs, but it’s also expensive.
A multi-day effort to remove a single 75-foot tall monument commemorating fallen Southern Civil War soldiers will cost “hundreds of thousands” of taxpayer dollars, a member of the removal crew told WRAL.
Additional heavy equipment will continue to arrive on tractor-trailers this week to remove the memorial.
Rather than uphold the rule of law, North Carolina’s Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper recently directed law enforcement to stand down from protecting Capitol monuments.
He then issued an executive order circumventing the legislative process for “public safety” reasons.
“I am concerned about the dangerous efforts to pull down and carry off large, heavy statues and the strong potential for violent clashes at the site,” said Cooper.
Instead of confronting lawless rioters, Cooper blamed state legislators who oppose his unilateral approach. He even repeated incendiary language used by far-left protestors and rioters.
“Monuments to white supremacy,” he said, “don’t belong in places of allegiance and it’s past time that these painful memorials be moved in a legal, safe way.”
Cooper, who is both white and the state’s supreme government official — and whose family was recently revealed to have owned slaves — added that the legislative process creates unnecessary “roadblocks” to avoid dangerous incidents.
State House Speaker Tim Moore, a Republican, disagreed.
Moore ripped Cooper’s weak-kneed response to violent Capitol riots last week and blasted Cooper’s cynical use of the riots “to justify removing the statues unilaterally instead of following the process laid out in state law.”
Moore also blasted Cooper for continuing to drag his feet on reopening the state economy.
“Remarkably, Gov. Cooper’s actions come just one day after he blocked legislation providing a lifeline to struggling families across North Carolina. Not only is Gov. Cooper failing our small businesses, but he is failing to uphold his constitutional duty to execute the law,” Moore said in a statement.
Efforts to remove monuments began on Saturday and include one statue dedicated to the Women of the Confederacy, and another placed by the United Daughters of the Confederacy honoring Henry Wyatt, the first North Carolinian killed in the Civil War.
Both statues stood for over a century.
But on Friday night, vandals pulled down two other statues that were part of a larger obelisk. They were dragged down a street and one was strung up by its neck from a light post.