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I tend to agree that Robert E Lee doesnt need to watch over a traffic circle. And there doesnt need to be a auction block on a street corner (which was removed this week). But museums should be a safe way to teach and learn about painful parts of history. These 11 statues are in the Hall Of Statues in DC which could be considered a museum and you can 100% avoid coming in contact with them if what they represent is offensive.
It seems a dangerous precedent to set to hold historical figures to the morals and ethics we decide. Human rights establishment and the abolishment of slavery were the correct moral choice but these men lived in the world that had not established this as the moral majority and its dangerous to start reevaluating every name on a building and a street and statue to determine who does or does not adhere to our current moral standings. By removing all trace of someone who does not meet the standard you erase all historical significance that person represented. And none of the people who are being attacked were immortalized simply for being racist. They contributed something people considered historically significant, even if that was military prowess on the losing side.
History is written by the victors. But in the US, there is a lot of history also written by the losers. History becomes very one sided and incomplete when only the winning side gets to contribute to the conversation. By destroying the history the losers contributed you lose half of a very short history. We are very young in the world and we are already trying to eliminate the bad things weve done because they hurt us to be reminded of them, but reminded is what we need to be. If you look closely enough everyone does something or participated in something that is now considered morally reprehensible. and Im very concerned that slowly we are going to erode what has historically birthed our country in favor of only things that are easy to digest.
The issue of Columbus is different. I think images of him are symbolic, but he himself would be odious to native peoples, I would think. I think his beheading is odd.
In terms of holding people to modern ideals, I think we could all agree that rebelling against one’s country, leading armies against it, and invading it are treasonous actions. Just because most of the generals got pardons, doesn’t make them heroic.
The First Nations should remember that they were not, in fact the first nations. They themselves forced out the Clovis Culture who came before them. That's life (and history).
We need to remember that the Rebels were acting bravely and didn't consider themselves traitors, but as patriots to their Homeland. Eighty years earlier, people in a similar situation realized that "If we don't hang together we shall surely hang separately." The Founding Fathers were rebels, traitors if you will, but they won, so are now considered heroes. Same difference, except for the victory part, of course.
Destroying monuments is nothing more than childish temper tantrums. by people who have no better ideas to communicate their opinions. If they feel insulted by the statue and knock it down, they may be insulting others. Who determines who is right today?...and what about tomorrow? Are Barry Bond fans justified if they knock over the statue of Henry Aaron in Atlanta?
I find the treason charge quite curious. The treason charge was moved on from *at the time* at the behest of people actively involved in the war. Thereafter generations of people view Lee as a hero and icon..and somehow the folks born well over 100 years after the event are qualified to call the man 'a traitor' sneeringly. It certainly looks to me like the 'statue topplers' are really fighting a 2020 battle using the men of the 1860s as proxies for who they really want to topple.
I'm okay with those who worked for the Confederate army. But if it goes farther than that, I'd get concerned. Most people centuries ago did terrible things. The world was a cruel place back then. The Spanish Inquisition. Christian Crusades. Murder, mayhem, invasions, pillaging, rape. Enslaving others, no matter who. Rome was a big slavery proponent. The natives in South America sacrificed people and enslaved others. England & France & Scotland & Ireland were particularly cruel centuries ago, with beheading people, sticking heads on poles on bridges, pulling people apart with horses, torture....
Christopher Columbus was not the great guy that was portrayed in history books years ago. But he did ultimately do some things that resulted in our country's existence. Was he bad in certain ways? Yes. Was he worse than many others in that era? I don't think so.
Do we banish all references to Thomas Jefferson, Washington, and others because they had slaves?
I think it's warranted to remove the Confederate statues & flag. The Confederates were in fact committing treason and waged war on the country. That flag has also come to mean certain things to white supremacists and those of that ilk...they wear it on their clothes, put in the windows of their vehicles, fly it in their yards. It's a symbol of cruelty and oppression to a group of people who still live in our country as full fledged citizens, the same as everyone else. I think those are good reasons to abolish the statues & that flag, as Germany has abolished the use of the swastika, the Nazi flag, and removed the Nazi soldier/leader statues.
Do we banish all references to Thomas Jefferson, Washington, and others because they had slaves?
Of course you do. They were slave owners and they were white. Guilty a priory.
Folks, you can't initiate a process of such nature and stop half way. You have to go all the way through. In for a penny - in for a dollar. As immediately someone will notice that, why statue of person A was demolished and, statue of person B, who is as bad as person A, was not?
Do you even understand, what kind of genie was let out of the bottle?
I am more curious, what will happen to those, who orchestrated all this behind the scene, for their own political profit and, what they gonna do, when it will backlash into THEM?
It is a cultural and historic PURGE of epic proportions. Erasing history from the public view and hence public conversation, good, bad, or indifferent. A true tragedy and a sign of societal BULLYING and intimidation.
Nah, I don't buy the "every act leads to a slippery slope" horse biscuits. It's the argument used by those who can't really defend something on its own terms so they have to make bogus deflections.
The US Civil War is, as nearly as I can tell, completely sui generis. It is (AFAIK) the only war in remotely modern times fought over slavery. It is the only war to completely engulf the US. Its losses — all American — come close to exceeding all other US war casualties excepting WWII. And half the combatants were, whether it was their hearts-blood reason or not, fighting to preserve slavery, a human institution that has no justification and for which there can be little consideration or mercy. It's one thing to argue for it or take an anti-abolition stance; it's quite another to kill a couple of hundred thousand countrymen in its name.
That puts it all on a plane of its own — sui generis, a thing unto itself — and not one example of the many things we could start sniping at, like the founding fathers who owned slaves. Those things need to be dealt with more in the context of the individuals involved, one by one. Going to war to the tune of 215,000 dead to preserve slavery can be considered as a blanket cause.
Nah, I don't buy the "every act leads to a slippery slope" horse biscuits. It's the argument used by those who can't really defend something on its own terms so they have to make bogus deflections.
The US Civil War is, as nearly as I can tell, completely sui generis. It is (AFAIK) the only war in remotely modern times fought over slavery. It is the only war to completely engulf the US. Its losses — all American — come close to exceeding all other US war casualties excepting WWII. And half the combatants were, whether it was their hearts-blood reason or not, fighting to preserve slavery, a human institution that has no justification and for which there can be little consideration or mercy. It's one thing to argue for it or take an anti-abolition stance; it's quite another to kill a couple of hundred thousand countrymen in its name.
That puts it all on a plane of its own — sui generis, a thing unto itself — and not one example of the many things we could start sniping at, like the founding fathers who owned slaves. Those things need to be dealt with more in the context of the individuals involved, one by one. Going to war to the tune of 215,000 dead to preserve slavery can be considered as a blanket cause.
That's treating it far too simplistically. While slavery was the leading motivation for secession, there was a constitutional case for secession. One that can be debated, and certainly was a partisan controversy at the time, but it wasn't taken out of thin air either. So there were certainly options other than war to handle the matter.
In other words, if the U.S. had chosen to led the Southern states part in peace, there would have been no war. Heck, Virginia may not have seceded as it was Lincoln's calling of volunteers which really triggered secession mania in the Upper South and border states.
Ultimately, the matter that led to the drawing of the sword was the proposition of the Union's existence as a nation state rather than a loose federation of sovereign states. Lincoln's position - and that of most of his Republican party allies - was clear that the preservation of the Union was the main motivation to fight the war.
In this constitutional argument the matter of slavery was incidental, even if it was psychologically the main driver of Southern secessionist aspirations.
The First Nations should remember that they were not, in fact the first nations. They themselves forced out the Clovis Culture who came before them. That's life (and history).
We need to remember that the Rebels were acting bravely and didn't consider themselves traitors, but as patriots to their Homeland. Eighty years earlier, people in a similar situation realized that "If we don't hang together we shall surely hang separately." The Founding Fathers were rebels, traitors if you will, but they won, so are now considered heroes. Same difference, except for the victory part, of course.
Destroying monuments is nothing more than childish temper tantrums. by people who have no better ideas to communicate their opinions. If they feel insulted by the statue and knock it down, they may be insulting others. Who determines who is right today?...and what about tomorrow? Are Barry Bond fans justified if they knock over the statue of Henry Aaron in Atlanta?
You cannot justify how native Americans were treated by supposedly civilized people. Not only were they dispossessed, they were deliberately exposed to disease and forced to live on reservations, and their children were forcibly removed to be re-educated.
Rebels’ bravery under fire is one thing. But they sought to sever ties with their government because they did not like who was elected president, and their economic system was too profitable to give up. It is hard to see a moral high road here.
Personally, I don’t see the point in beheading Columbus. I think it high time to remove Confederate generals’ memorials.
I think the mob will move on to Martin Luther King statues, and then to sports figures.
Although not a statue or monument, what does the US Navy do about USS Chancellorsville?
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