The verbal gymnastics by our Defense secretary whenever he orders a Confederate monument to go back up is truly Olympian.

To wit, Secretary Pete Hegseth just ordered the army to refurbish a 1914 Arlington Confederate Monument to the tune of $10 million and restore it by 2027. Hegseth called it a “reconciliation monument ... taken down by woke lemmings.”

In his announcement, Hegseth avoids the actual name of the monument, “The Arlington Confederate Monument.” In fact, nothing in his statement mentions the Confederacy at all. There’s a reason for that: Congress passed a law in 2019 preventing the Department of Defense from naming or renaming anything after the Confederacy. Hence, “reconciliation monument.”

I study Confederate commemoration. This structure is one the cruelest, most racist monuments in the country, and its location at the sacred ground of Arlington National Cemetery makes it even more offensive. The monument clearly commemorates the Confederacy and its purpose — chattel slavery.

It depicts a tearful, overweight enslaved woman, a “mammy,” cradling the child of her Confederate enslaver, supporting him as he departs for war. The monument portrays faithful slaves and kind white masters, a........

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