Globalize this! Nearly two-thirds (65%) of Americans recently polled by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) responded that setting up pro-Palestinian tent compounds was “never” or “rarely” justified. Nearly half (47%) said that students participating in college encampment protests should be expelled, suspended, or put on probation. Only 23% thought the demonstrators should not be punished at all.
But breaking university rules against round-the-clock camping on college campuses and chanting, “Globalize the intifada,” pales in comparison to burning the American flag. Eighty percent responded that flag burning is never or rarely justified.
FIRE did not ask about protesters who erected an encampment and burned the flag. View the detailed survey results here.
Explain again, please, why so many statues came down. The Public Religion Research Institute has released polling results for questions on a wide array of issues relating to race relations that are worth examining. What caught our attention were a series of questions about Confederate memorials and statues. While 45% of the 5,500 respondents from around the country view the Confederate flag as a symbol of racism (and 54% say it reflects Southern pride), only 33% regard statues to Confederate soldiers that way (and 63% say they reflect Southern pride).
Fewer than one in ten of those polled embrace removing the statues and then melting them down, as happened to the Robert E. Lee statue in Charlottesville. Only 37% support removing the statues at all. Thirty-five percent endorse the idea of keeping the statues and adding context about slavery and racism, and 26% would like to just leave them alone. The numbers have barely budged over the past two years.
If a large majority of Americans favor the idea of keeping the statues, how did so many get torn down? As occasional Bacon’s Rebellion contributor Don Smith explained to me over breakfast this morning, the statues were erected in prominent places. In the late 1800s/early 1900s, some of the most prominent places were in city centers. Today those city centers are dominated by electorates comprised disproportionately of African-Americans, who understandably are less sympathetic to the memorials, and educated elites, who place great store in signaling their virtue on matters of race.
I’d like to see a poll asking what should be done with memorials to slaveholders… like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison.