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All right, everybody. Welcome to the Bucks X and show Jared Stetman my man. He is with us now. He is the author of the war on history, the conspiracy to rewrite America's past.

Jared, great to see you. I could see the book behind you. So tell me this my friend. What did general Skyler do to deserve all of the hate up in Albany, New York recently that he was getting what happened here. I thought I thought Skyler was tied in with what Hamilton's family or something. Right. Isn't this how this all went down. Tell me what's going on here.

Yeah, absolutely. It's amazing. It's to see a general Philip Skyler, the who was a general during the the American Revolution.

To have his statue taken down Albany, which is of course the capital of New York. Skyler was in fact tied to Alexander Hamilton. He was his father-in-law was one of the more prominent men of New York during that time.

He was instrumental during the Saratoga campaign of three the defenses at that time, which is how he became so prominent as a general and at one time he was very well thought of.

He was a prominent member of New York. He was one of the big families being tied to Alexander Hamilton was something that the family was very much proud of. The state was very much proud of him.

He's been a fairly uncontroversial figure and a pretty prominent one until quite recently when he was discovered that well he he owned a few slaves during his lifetime.

So therefore all of his accomplishments are null and void and his statue had to be removed from the front of the Albany state capital because people may have been offended by the fact that he at one point had owned slaves.

His statue was dragged off kind of in the almost in the middle of the night by a truck. There was very little fanfare. There was very little public discussion about whether or not people were actually offended in the community.

They simply removed the statue, got rid of it, done away with. Again of course many of the arguments about taking down statues and figures of America's past revolved around whether or not they were Confederates or something along those lines.

Of course, Skyler was in no way a Confederate whatsoever. He was tied to the American revolution at one time considered a great patriot that could be celebrated by all Americans. Now he's gone and now we have no record of him or his statue in front of the state capital.

So I just need to understand what the rules are because if being a figure from the revolutionary war era in America and having any connection to slavery having owned slaves at any number at any point in time is enough to get your statue torn down.

We got some problems with the founders don't we right like what happens to George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.

Yeah what happens to Washington DC what happens to Benjamin Franklin I mean yes he did release his slaves at some point but is that good enough it doesn't seem to be good enough for those who want to destroy our past.

So yeah we're basically going to have to cut through all the founders the capital city is going to have to be renamed they're going to have to be names across the country that are changed and done away with.

And of course I think there are a number of people would be very happy if that took place but this really gets the heart of the criticism of America it's history are founding itself this idea that because it was linked to ideas and things that again we today obviously reject we're happy that institutions like slavery are gone largely because of the philosophy of the founding fathers because those flaws existed in our founding that means we have to effectively erase our history.

Or somebody somewhere will be a will be offended and will decide that they may either officially try to take down a statue or remove a name or they may do so with a mob as we saw in 2020 where we saw people actually go after figures in history and statues to try to take them down themselves.

It's remarkable you know there's also been recently some situation tell us about this Robert E Lee his horse traveler there was a marker at the grave of Robert E Lee civil war Confederate general of his horse that was messed with what happened here.

This is really quite remarkable traveler his horse that was sort of famous during the war and after it was his favorite horse was there at the Washington and Lee University they buried his horse on the grounds recently they decided that his the plaque to this horse you know the racist horse had to be removed because it reference the fact that it was tied to Robert E Lee one of the men who was responsible for the existence of that college he was the first president.

Of Washington and and Lee when it became a prominent university after the civil war Lee served in a civilian capacity trying to rebuild the country after the terrible civil war.

Traveler was a well more force people came to put apples by the grave and was very much beloved but as we've seen with the icon of class of our moment that's not good enough and it doesn't matter if it's simply a horse.

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