President Trump's Executive Order
Protecting American Monuments
A Word from Gene Kizer, Jr.,
Charleston Athenaeum Press
I can not WAIT to celebrate the 4th of July this year!
I have always loved the 4th but this year it has special meaning as my personal protest against the hate-America mob that has wreaked havoc across the country in recent weeks.
I am going to think about every veteran who has ever served and especially our Confederate veterans who had the right to secede from what was, at that time, a tyrannical wealth-sucking government dominated by a region that sent terrorists into the South to murder Southerners.
They seceded with the greatest expression of democracy and self-government ever conducted on American soil, by conventions of the people which, like the ratifying conventions of the Constitution, were there to debate one issue: Secession.
I am so proud of the democratic republic they set up which was a true federal republic in which states were sovereign. In their government, the president served one six-year term so that he could concentrate on governing and not be constantly running for reelection.
Their constitution required bills to be labeled accurately and state exactly what the law was they were voting on.
Their constitution allowed free and slave states to join. It was up to the state what to do about slavery. This worried Lincoln to death because several states, especially along the Mississippi, would likely have joined the Confederacy because of its free trade and low tariff philosophy. Protective tariffs were unconstitutional in the South.
Below is the entirety, verbatim, of President Trump's June 26, 2020 "Executive Order on Protecting American Monuments, Memorials, and Statues and Combating Recent Criminal Violence."
Many thanks to the Georgia Division, SCV, for their press release June 29th publishing this important Executive Order, and to President Trump for issuing it.
It has teeth and quotes many different laws that can be used to prosecute vandals attacking not just monuments on federal property but in many cases on state property as well.
It appears that Democrat run cities, states and police departments that do not enforce the law as we have seen recently when police, under orders from Democrat mayors, stand around and watch violent mobs destroy monuments and other property, will face the loss of federal funds. Criminals will face prosecution for serious crimes.
The mob is specifically defined as "Anarchists and left-wing extremists" who "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."
You may want to have legal people in your camps study this order and the various laws quoted, and see how they apply to your area then use it to make sure Democrat mayors and city councils know what they face if they acquiesce with the mob.
In fact, keep an eye on these spineless "leaders" and report them to the Department of Justice if you have a good reason for doing so, and are on solid ground, then let these so-called leaders know they have been reported.
There are also many state and federal laws against destruction of headstones and monuments in cemeteries, and destruction of church property.
National SCV Headquarters should study this order as well as other laws protecting monuments and graves and tell us what we can do to be more aggressive in the fight.
I know SCV Divisions in several states are doing an outstanding job empowering their camps and compatriots. I appreciate and benefit from the press releases sent out by the Georgia Division and the things they do such as filing law suits and offering rewards for criminals.
Camp 129 in Waco, Texas assembled 200 compatriots at Belton Courthouse to guard the Confederate monument there, and with Texas's open carry law, many were legally armed and looked like they were ready to ride with Forrest and take on the entire Yankee army! Don't mess with Texas!
Fort Sumter Camp in Charleston, South Carolina has spearheaded the guarding of the Confederate Defenders of Charleston and Fort Sumter monument at the Battery with compatriots taking daytime shifts, and a security guard hired for the night. Secession Camp is contributing.
Camps should communicate with each other so they can assemble men when needed and the more the better.
The Southern Legal Resource Center has filed a Writ of Certiorari with the United States Supreme Court "asking that the Court recognize heritage groups as having standing to sue to defend threatened monuments AND that the class of persons with standing be broadened to allow someone to be able to fight to protect monuments in court." This would be a GREAT thing if they can get it. We should try to pass state laws that help in this way too.
Get on the Southern Legal Resource Center newsletter list and keep up, and support them financially: https://SLRC-CSA.org.
Ultimately we need political power and lobbying that can strengthen heritage laws. I know of the SCV's restrictions as a 501 (c) (3) but a lot of politicians need to be targeted for DEFEAT and are vulnerable because the public is fed up with the hate and violence these Democrats are promoting by coddling and encouraging the mob.
God Bless President Trump for issuing his Executive Order Protecting American Monuments and God Bless America!
Happy 4th of July!
Deo Vindice!
Gene Kizer, Jr.
Charleston Athenaeum Press
Executive Order on Protecting American Monuments,
Memorials, and Statues and Combating Recent
Criminal Violence
Issued on: June 26, 2020
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:
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 understanding. In the last week, vandals toppled a statue of President Ulysses S. Grant in San Francisco. 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, a memorial commemorating an African-American regiment that fought in the Civil War was defaced with graffiti. In Madison, Wisconsin, rioters knocked over the statue of an abolitionist immigrant who fought for the Union during the Civil War. Christian figures are now in the crosshairs, too. Recently, an influential activist for one movement that has been prominent in setting the agenda for demonstrations in recent weeks declared that many existing religious depictions of Jesus and the Holy Family should be purged from our places of worship.
Individuals and organizations have the right to peacefully advocate for either the removal or the construction of any monument. But no individual or group has the right to damage, deface, or remove any monument by use of force.
In the midst of these attacks, many State and local governments appear to have lost the ability to distinguish between the lawful exercise of rights to free speech and assembly and unvarnished vandalism. They have surrendered to mob rule, imperiling community safety, allowing for the wholesale violation of our laws, and privileging the violent impulses of the mob over the rights of law-abiding citizens. Worse, they apparently have lost the will or the desire to stand up to the radical fringe and defend the fundamental truth that America is good, her people are virtuous, and that justice prevails in this country to a far greater extent than anywhere else in the world. Some particularly misguided public officials even appear to have accepted the idea that violence can be virtuous and have prevented their police from enforcing the law and protecting public monuments, memorials, and statues from the mob's ropes and graffiti.
My Administration will not allow violent mobs incited by a radical fringe to become the arbiters of the aspects of our history that can be celebrated in public spaces. State and local public officials' abdication of their law enforcement responsibilities in deference to this violent assault must end.
Sec. 2. Policy.
(a) It is the policy of the United States to prosecute to the fullest extent permitted under Federal law, and as appropriate, any person or any entity that destroys, damages, vandalizes, or desecrates a monument, memorial, or statue within the United States or otherwise vandalizes government property. The desire of the Congress to protect Federal property is clearly reflected in section 1361 of title 18, United States Code, which authorizes a penalty of up to 10 years' imprisonment for the willful injury of Federal property. More recently, under the Veterans' Memorial Preservation and Recognition Act of 2003, section 1369 of title 18, United States Code, the Congress punished with the same penalties the destruction of Federal and in some cases State-maintained monuments that honor military veterans. Other criminal statutes, such as the Travel Act, section 1952 of title 18, United States Code, permit prosecutions of arson damaging monuments, memorials, and statues on State grounds in some cases. Civil statutes like the Public System Resource Protection Act, section 100722 of title 54, United States Code, also hold those who destroy certain Federal property accountable for their offenses. The Federal Government will not tolerate violations of these and other laws.
(b) It is the policy of the United States to prosecute to the fullest extent permitted under Federal law, and as appropriate, any person or any entity that participates in efforts to incite violence or other illegal activity in connection with the riots and acts of vandalism described in section 1 of this order. Numerous Federal laws, including section 2101 of title 18, United States Code, prohibit the violence that has typified the past few weeks in some cities. Other statutes punish those who participate in or assist the agitators who have coordinated these lawless acts. Such laws include section 371 of title 18, United States Code, which criminalizes certain conspiracies to violate Federal law, section 2 of title 18, United States Code, which punishes those who aid or abet the commission of Federal crimes, and section 2339A of title 18, United States Code, which prohibits as material support to terrorism efforts to support a defined set of Federal crimes. Those who have joined in recent violent acts around the United States will be held accountable.
(c) It is the policy of the United States to prosecute to the fullest extent permitted under Federal law, and as appropriate, any person or any entity that damages, defaces, or destroys religious property, including by attacking, removing, or defacing depictions of Jesus or other religious figures or religious art work. Federal laws prohibit, under certain circumstances, damage or defacement of religious property, including the Church Arson Prevention Act of 1996, section 247 of title 18, United States Code, and section 371 of title 18, United States Code. The Federal Government will not tolerate violations of these laws designed to protect the free exercise of religion.
(d) It is the policy of the United States, as appropriate and consistent with applicable law, to withhold Federal support tied to public spaces from State and local governments that have failed to protect public monuments, memorials, and statues from destruction or vandalism. These jurisdictions' recent abandonment of their law enforcement responsibilities with respect to public monuments, memorials, and statues casts doubt on their willingness to protect other public spaces and maintain the peace within them. These jurisdictions are not appropriate candidates for limited Federal funds that support public spaces.
(e) It is the policy of the United States, as appropriate and consistent with applicable law, to withhold Federal support from State and local law enforcement agencies that have failed to protect public monuments, memorials, and statues from destruction or vandalism. Unwillingness to enforce State and local laws in the face of attacks on our history, whether because of sympathy for the extremists behind this violence or some other improper reason, casts doubt on the management of these law enforcement agencies. These law enforcement agencies are not appropriate candidates for limited Federal funds that support State and local police.
Sec. 3. Enforcing Laws Prohibiting the Desecration of Public Monuments, the Vandalism of Government Property, and Recent Acts of Violence.
(a) The Attorney General shall prioritize within the Department of Justice the investigation and prosecution of matters described in subsections 2(a), (b), and (c) of this order. The Attorney General shall take all appropriate enforcement action against individuals and organizations found to have violated Federal law through these investigations.
(b) The Attorney General shall, as appropriate and consistent with applicable law, work with State and local law enforcement authorities and Federal agencies to ensure the Federal Government appropriately provides information and assistance to State and local law enforcement authorities in connection with their investigations or prosecutions for the desecration of monuments, memorials, and statues, regardless of whether such structures are situated on Federal property.
Sec. 4. Limiting Federal Grants for Jurisdictions and Law Enforcement Agencies that Permit the Desecration of Monuments, Memorials, or Statues.
The heads of all executive departments and agencies shall examine their respective grant programs and apply the policies established by sections 2(d) and (e) of this order to all such programs to the extent that such application is both appropriate and consistent with applicable law.
Sec. 5. Providing Assistance for the Protection of Federal Monuments, Memorials, Statues, and Property.
Upon the request of the Secretary of the Interior, the Secretary of Homeland Security, or the Administrator of General Services, the Secretary of Defense, the Attorney General, and the Secretary of Homeland Security shall provide, as appropriate and consistent with applicable law, personnel to assist with the protection of Federal monuments, memorials, statues, or property. This section shall terminate 6 months from the date of this order unless extended by the President.
Sec. 6. General Provisions.
(a) Nothing in this order shall be construed to impair or otherwise affect:
(i) the authority granted by law to an executive department or agency, or the head thereof; or
(ii) the functions of the Director of the Office of Management and Budget relating to budgetary, administrative, or legislative proposals.
(b) This order shall be implemented consistent with applicable law and subject to the availability of appropriations.
(c) This order is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person.
(d) This order is not intended to, and does not, affect the prosecutorial discretion of the Department of Justice with respect to individual cases.
So thankful for this information. Oh, how we the people need to be more informed. People need to read our constitution for themselves. There is a great publication of the constitution in its original form and an easy-to-understand form on the opposite pages for helping us understand what it is saying. in a book and session everyone can attend called “Biblical Citizenship” The course alone is so helpful in gaining understanding on our constitution and our rights also. “We the People” are the most important part of our constitution. We are the ones to demand our branches of government keep check and balance of each order to follow the constitution. We must demand it be followed by anyone that holds any part in office of any federal provisions by supporting us or they can and will be removed by the other branches of government or they can all be replaced and stopped by the demand itself of our constitution. Please, we must rise up to the call of being capable to make a stand for anything we know is not right. Our nation depends on it and anyone that has played a part in making us who we are! And, though many may not believe it the main person that has made this nation what we are is the Lord God himself using the people he has chosen in the past. I hope and pray I’m one he uses now and, in the future, to keep us trusting and depending on Him with the faith we all need. Don’t you want to be one, that will be told, “Well done, faithful servant. God help us!