The Shame of Bentonville

Bentonville is the lovely little town in Northwest Arkansas that I have spent nearly my entire life in. At the heart of Bentonville, in the center of our town square, there has rested a Confederate monument for the last 112 years, honoring the Southern soldiers who, carrying on the spirit of their Revolutionary fathers and grandfathers, gave their lives for the freedom of their fellow Southrons and all of their descendants. For over a century, not one man quarreled with our monument. That changed within the past few years, just as Bentonville has, just as our whilom nation has. Last autumn, our monument was attacked and seriously damaged by two egalitarian brownshirts, both of whom are members of the nouveau riche that have lately colonized our town. Now, without one single vote cast, without a single town hall, without a single word of notice, the rulers of Bentonville have unilaterally decided to remove our monument.

I embarked upon this investigation to answer one simple question: Who removed our Confederate monument? After weeks of obfuscation, unreturned phone calls, and warnings to not tread where there be dragons, I was able to unearth the truth. What I discovered was an extraordinarily vast conspiracy, three years in the making, planned and carried out by a culprit so powerful that the local newspaper refused to print a condensed version of this piece. While it was initially written for the citizens of Bentonville, its microcosmic message applies to all of us, in every defiled town across this country that once was ours.