Seeing the out-of-control mobs roaming city streets, tearing down statues and destroying historical markers should shock every American. The fact that most of the thugs are ignorant of who they are attacking is a sad commentary on the education system. For decades, liberal progressives and revisionists have been ignoring or deleting much of this nation’s foundational history, including its strong religious and military heritage.

The hypocrisy of many liberal officials is also disgusting. During a news conference last week, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said that in 2015 he joined House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the pope for a prayer in front of a statue of St. Junipero Serra, the heroic Spanish priest who founded the California mission system and who the pontiff had come to Sacramento to canonize.

The statue honoring the Franciscan friar was targeted in recent rioting because Serra was reputed to be unkind to the indigenous people whom he was seeking to convert. Pelosi, who’s been very vocal in condemning Confederate statues, was silent when the rioters and criminals destroyed the famous priest’s monument in her home district.

It’s clear political hypocrisy. The war on America’s statues has been a centerpiece for radical groups like Black Lives Matter and it’s obvious Pelosi doesn’t want to upset those on the radical left.

Rep. McCarthy, one of the few congressmen bold enough to denounce the thugs destroying our history, said civil society cannot survive with this type of lawlessness.

“If cities and state leaderships failed to uphold the rule of law, Congress should move to withhold their funding,” he said in his news conference. “The time for warnings have elapsed.”

Last November, Los Angeles removed a statue of Italian explorer Christopher Columbus on the premise that his discovery of the Americas precipitated a genocide in the Western Hemisphere.

San Francisco activists also toppled a statue of former President Ulysses S. Grant, who led the Union Army during the Civil War. After a Black Lives Matter rally, Mayor London Breed also ordered another Columbus statue removed from its spot where it stood since 1957, promising to throw it into the bay.

Liberals have suggested replacing the Columbus statue with another famous Italian-American - like House Speaker Pelosi.

Regardless of the selection, Victor Davis Hanson, the noted author/historian, said that destroying history will not make you feel good about the present.

He said that the destruction of statues usually reflects a general insecurity and a lack of confidence. Destroying mute monuments or the legacies of the dead offers no rebuttal or resistance. Some people also blame their current plight on the past and believe that destroying long-dead supposed enemies will liberate them - or at least make them feel better in the present.

After the statue of Father Serra was removed, Hanson said that Stanford University joined the mob rule mentality by changing the name of two buildings that had been named for the canonized priest. Hanson feels that the founder of their university - Leland Stanford - would have been a more appropriate target since he was a 19th-century railroad robber baron who brutally imported and exploited Asian labor and was explicit in his low regard for nonwhite peoples.

Renaming a building, however, is much easier for progressives than to rebrand a university like Stanford which they see as their gateway to career advancement.

Hanson sees another cowardly element to erasing our historical monuments. The destruction is often done at night by roving vandals or sanctioned by extremist groups who bully any objectors. Most of the prime targets - the statues of Confederate leaders - have been torn down or defaced at night.

Vandals in North Carolina showed their ignorance of history when they recently set fire to a statue of General Lee, but it wasn’t the Robert E. Lee of the Southern Confederacy. They targeted a statue of World War II Major Gen. William C. Lee, who campaigned for the creation of a U.S. Army airborne division and helped plan the invasion of Normandy.

In a number of cities, historical illiterates have destroyed the statues an abolitionists who died fighting to end slavery during the Civil War.

A statue of Col. Hans Christian Heg, who campaigned against slavery and was killed leading his regiment against Confederate troops at the Battle of Chickamauga in 1863, was torn down by protesters in Madison, Wisconsin. They also went after Lady Forward, a symbol of the women’s suffrage movement. A Democrat state senator was kicked in the head by mob members for supposedly using his camera phone.

After a monument to George Washington, erected in the 1920s, was ripped down in Portland, Oregon, Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton tweeted that the mob tearing down statues of Washington are not protesters but criminals who should be arrested for destroying public property. He also blamed the Democratic leadership - many career politicians - in the riot-torn cities.

“The liberal local officials allowing and encouraging this madness are a disgrace,” Cotton said.

Millions conservatives agree with Victor Davis Hanson, Rep. McCarthy, Sen. Cotton and President Trump that the cancel culture mob must be stopped and the criminals arrested, sentenced and convicted.

By Jim Zbick | tneditor@tnonline.com