An iconoclast movement that began with the destruction of Confederate statues has now morphed into an anti-Founders campaign, with statues of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson having been toppled in recent days.
Protesters tore down statues of Washington and Jefferson in Portland, Ore., in the last 10 days, while in San Francisco, protesters last week ripped down a statue of Francis Scott Key, who wrote the lyrics to America’s national anthem, The Star-Spangled Banner.
The statues of all three men were targeted because they owned slaves. Jefferson and Washington questioned the morality of slavery but owned hundreds of slaves during their lives. (Jefferson called slavery a “moral depravity” and a “hideous blot.”) Washington famously had his slaves freed after his wife’s death.
According to The Oregonian, Protesters in Oregon on June 14 tore down a statue of Jefferson that stood in front of a high school named for him. On June 18, protesters burned an American flag on the top of a Washington statue before pulling it down. They also wrote “genocidal colonist” on the base. It stood at Northeast Sandy Boulevard and 57th Avenue in Portland.
Last Friday (June 19), protesters in San Francisco tore down a statue of Key, along with ones of Catholic missionary St. Junipero Serra and President Ulysses S. Grant.
Serra founded nine Catholic missions in the…
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