Rep. Johnny Rye files bill to prohibit relocating, removing, or renaming historical monuments
Tis the season to sort through unnecessary bills filed by grandstanding state legislators. Let's take a look at another one from Rep. Johnny Rye (R), previously covered in this space for his bill to enable the state's attorney general to sue Twitter or Facebook in state court on behalf of Arkansas citizens bummed that their social media posts were taken down. Among the pile of other bills he filed earlier this month: "The Arkansas Heritage Protection Act," a bill to keep monuments in place and unchanged in the face of interference by pesky social justice types.
Rye's bill defines the monuments it aims to protect as any "statue, memorial, gravestone plate, nameplate, plaque, historical flag display, school, street, bridge, building, preserve, or reserve" that is located on public property and has been named or dedicated in honor of a historical person or event or a "military organization or military unit."
The bill states that such monuments "shall not be relocated, removed, altered, renamed, rededicated, or otherwise disturbed." Harrumph! And Rye isn't just standing athwart history in an antebellum cosplay getup yelling stop. His bill would have teeth: Anyone who committed such disturbances against the dear monuments would face a Class D Felony! Which is only right. Plaque Lives Matter.
In case your casual reader of the law might be confused about what sorts of military units or historical events we're talking about, Rye takes the musty step of listing seventeen wars and military actions in his bill, spanning more than 250 years, that are "includ[ed] without limitation." You've got your French and Indian War, your War of 1812, your Operation Urgent Fury, your Operation Iraqi Freedom, and so on and on.
Read more: https://www.arktimes.com/ArkansasBlog/archives/2018/12/21/rep-johnny-rye-files-bill-to-prohibit-relocating-removing-or-renaming-historical-monuments
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