Losing Our History
Ideology trumps truth.

January 17, 2002 8:25 a.m.

as Brooklyn gone nuts? First there was the decision of the city's fire-department leadership to place a politically correct FDNY memorial statue outside department headquarters in downtown Brooklyn. Now the newly elected Brooklyn borough president, one Marty Markowitz, tells the New York Post that he's going to take down the portrait of George Washington that hangs in his Borough Hall office.

Markowitz, a Democrat, told the Post that he would probably replace the image of the "old white man" — Markowitz's phrase for the Father of Our Country — with a portrait of a black or a woman.

"I respect history ... but there has to be a recognition that this is 2002," Markowitz reportedly said. "There's not one picture of a person of color, not one kid, not one Latin. Borough Hall should reflect the richness of our diversity."

Markowitz has this repulsive notion, popular among the militant diversity janissaries, that patriotism and public honor is a zero-sum game. If there aren't enough portraits of women and minorities in borough hall, by all means put them up. But why does Washington have to be dishonored in order to honor great men and women of color? What's wrong with leaving Washington in place, but replacing portraits of lesser historical figures with those of notable minorities? It is a sad fact of history that neither Sojourner Truth nor Cesar Chavez nor a crippled lesbian Eskimo won the Revolutionary War and established a free republic on the North American continent. But as we've seen with the firefighters' statue, truth doesn't matter; ideology does.

And, the idea that George Washington is a hero only for white males, and his historical greatness and relevance is wholly related to the color of his skin or his genitalia, is pure poison. Martin Luther King, for example, is a hero for all Americans, not just those who are black. Have the Marty Markowitzes of the world learned nothing from September 11? What about "United we stand, divided we fall" don't they get?

In Oklahoma, a public-school superintendent says she is "dumbfounded" by angry citizen complaints that her administration is teaching black separatism to students in her almost entirely black school district. Below the Pledge of Allegiance on the school's website is something called the "Black Pledge of Allegiance," which commits those who recite it to be faithful to an ethnic flag, and to struggle for "the land we must obtain." When white people say things like this, we call them members of the Aryan Nations. When black people, or their Markowitzian fellow travelers, promote this kind of segregation, we call them "diversity-conscious."

Markowitz's disgraceful trashing of George Washington is all the more galling when you consider a little known fact of American history: the United States of America was saved — saved! — by Gen. Washington in Brooklyn, on a patch of ground five minutes' walk from Markowitz's office.

I live in Brooklyn, as it happens, and my favorite thing to do with out-of-town visitors is to take them to the Brooklyn Heights Promenade and show them the place where Gen. Washington's headquarters once stood. It was on this site, which is now a tiny park with Old Glory flying from a flagpole in the center, that the miraculous denouement of the Battle of Brooklyn took place. It's a great story, one that is told more fully here and here. It's a story I love to tell visitors, who inevitably have had no idea what a pivotal role Brooklyn played in the American Revolution. Here, in a nutshell, is what happened.

In August of 1776, Washington's badly beaten army was trapped in Brooklyn, the western tip of Long Island, on a ridge hard against the East River. British forces were advancing, and would soon crush the ragtag Continentals. Meanwhile, the largest assemblage of British naval power since the sinking of the Spanish Armada had assembled in lower New York harbor. Gen. Howe, the British commander, delayed his assault upon the American position, hoping that the wind would change to allow the fleet to sail up the East River and cut off any hope of escape across the river to Manhattan.

On August 29, however, a northern wind prevented the fleet from sailing in closer. Howe waited for the weather to change. That night, a thick fog settled over the river between Brooklyn and Manhattan. Washington seized the moment, and silently ferried his entire army across the river, through the shroud.

When the fog burned off the next morning, the Redcoats attacked — and found no one left. Washington's army had landed overnight in Manhattan and escaped to the north. They would live to fight another day — and ultimately, to win a nation's freedom from the Crown. It is no exaggeration to say that world history turned on the decisions made by Washington on that muggy August night in Brooklyn.

On another Brooklyn night — September 13, 2001 — I stood at the site where Washington saved America, looked across the river at the smoking ruins in lower Manhattan, and prayed and wept for our country. There were about 3,000 of my neighbors standing with me, most of us with candles in our hands, silent, except for a few elderly Spanish ladies singing hymns at the flagpole, where Washignton's headquarters once stood.

I wrote about that night for NRO, in context of the nasty comments Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson had made about gays and others having brought the Twin Towers disaster upon America. Brooklyn Heights is one of the most liberal neighborhoods in America, and I often feel like an oddball there. But on that night, there we all were — black, white, Jewish, gay, straight, young, old, you name it — standing together as on, as heirs to what Gen. Washington helped win for us on that spot, 225 years earlier, almost to the day.

I like to think the great man was looking down on us, his fellow Americans, smiling. I also like to think that Marty Markowitz is ashamed of himself, and will ultimately not dishonor the memory of Washington, nor of Brooklyn.