Where FREEDOM Flies #2 - Flipbook - Page 7
Protecting American Monuments,
Memorials, and Statues
Reference Source:
By the authority vested in me as President by the
Constitution and the laws of the United States of
America, it is hereby ordered as follows:
understanding. In the last week, vandals toppled a
statue of President Ulysses S. Grant in San
Francisco.
Section 1. Purpose. The first duty of government is
to ensure domestic tranquility and defend the life,
property, and rights of its citizens. Over the last 5
weeks, there has been a sustained assault on the life
and property of civilians, law enforcement officers,
government property, and revered American
monuments such as the Lincoln Memorial. Many
of the rioters, arsonists, and left-wing extremists
who have carried out and supported these acts have
explicitly identified themselves with ideologies —
such as Marxism — that call for the destruction of
the United States system of government.
Anarchists and left-wing extremists have sought to
advance a fringe ideology that paints the United
States of America as fundamentally unjust and have
sought to impose that ideology on Americans
through violence and mob intimidation. They have
led riots in the streets, burned police vehicles, killed
and assaulted government officers as well as
business owners defending their property, and even
seized an area within one city where law and order
gave way to anarchy. During the unrest, innocent
citizens also have been harmed and killed.
These criminal acts are frequently planned and
supported by agitators who have traveled across
State lines to promote their own violent agenda.
These radicals shamelessly attack the legitimacy of
our institutions and the very rule of law itself.
Key targets in the violent extremists’ campaign
against our country are public monuments,
memorials, and statues. Their selection of targets
reveals a deep ignorance of our history, and is
indicative of a desire to indiscriminately destroy
anything that honors our past and to erase from the
public mind any suggestion that our past may be
worth honoring, cherishing, remembering, or
To them, it made no difference that President Grant
led the Union Army to victory over the Confederacy
in the Civil War, enforced Reconstruction, fought
the Ku Klux Klan, and advocated for the Fifteenth
Amendment, which guaranteed freed slaves the
right to vote. In Charlotte, North Carolina, the
names of 507 veterans memorialized on a World
War II monument were painted over with a symbol
of communism. And earlier this month, in Boston,