Enough is Enough

Quote: AceCrAAckers

Why stop at just the Confederate monuments? Lets get rid of all monuments that honor slave owners.

Totally miss the point
Its not about slave owners
Its about people willing to kill our patriotic soldiers to keep slavery
Its killing another human being simply keep slavery

Quote: AceCrAAckers

Why stop at just the Confederate monuments? Lets get rid of all monuments that honor slave owners.

I see that no one wants to address George Washington, the slave owning master. His plantation is preserved and we can get rid of this.

Jefferson had a paramour relation with at least one of his slave, resulting in a bastard child. We can tear down the Jefferson memorial.

Ford was a known anti-Semite. Don't drive a Ford. Mercedes and BMW helped the Nazi so don't drive them either. Mitsubishi help the Japs so let's not drive those cars either.

Where does all this self righteousness stop?

USA is the greatest country ever conceived by men. It is not perfect and the history shows this, but it is a work in progress and I pray that we are better tomorrow than we are today.

Did any of those people lead an armed rebellion against our country? Any of them command troops that killed hundreds of thousands of Americans?
Any of those people take up arms to defend slavery?
If Nazis were running Germany, I wouldn't buy a German car. Same thing if Tojo was running Japan. We fought and won a war and made peace. Do you see any statues to Rommell in this country? Want to send your children to Adolf Hitler High School?
You are defending the very people who want to change our way of life. Watch the interview with the leader of the group from Virginia who wants to burn all minorities. When asked how he would do it, he says we burned six million jews last time. Last I looked, America has burned very few Jews or even witches.
neo-Nazis and the klan don't want progress, they want to regress to a time that never really existed.

‘All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing’

Quote: AceCrAAckers

Why stop at just the Confederate monuments? Lets get rid of all monuments that honor slave owners.

I see that no one wants to address George Washington, the slave owning master. His plantation is preserved and we can get rid of this.

Jefferson had a paramour relation with at least one of his slave, resulting in a bastard child. We can tear down the Jefferson memorial.

Ford was a known anti-Semite. Don't drive a Ford. Mercedes and BMW helped the Nazi so don't drive them either. Mitsubishi help the Japs so let's not drive those cars either.

Where does all this self righteousness stop?

USA is the greatest country ever conceived by men. It is not perfect and the history shows this, but it is a work in progress and I pray that we are better tomorrow than we are today.

I think Bill addressed that quite explicitly. He thinks there shouldn't be monuments to the confederates because they were 1)Traitors 2) fighting for an evil cause - if not slavery per se, a separate country that would continue slavery. And if they'd won, btw, the USA you are celebrating would not exist.

This is different than saying it's because the individual men had failings or owned slaves.

While I'm not sure I agree--I lean to keeping even monuments to bad ideas in tact--that is a pretty clear distinction.

You, however, didn't explain how whites bayoneting each other in a war that wasn't about slavery means they redeemed themselves for slavery.

Seems like a weird concept to me. If I cheat on my wife, and then find another guy who cheated on his wife, and we beat the crap out of each other, we've somehow cleansed ourselves?

Quote: AceCrAAckers

Why stop at just the Confederate monuments? Lets get rid of all monuments that honor slave owners.

I see that no one wants to address George Washington, the slave owning master. His plantation is preserved and we can get rid of this.

Jefferson had a paramour relation with at least one of his slave, resulting in a bastard child. We can tear down the Jefferson memorial.

Ford was a known anti-Semite. Don't drive a Ford. Mercedes and BMW helped the Nazi so don't drive them either. Mitsubishi help the Japs so let's not drive those cars either.

Where does all this self righteousness stop?

USA is the greatest country ever conceived by men. It is not perfect and the history shows this, but it is a work in progress and I pray that we are better tomorrow than we are today.

As I just said elsewhere, it's the rightwing that goes on about winners and losers being important, and not to give everyone a trophy. So ya'll make up your mind.

Confederacy was loser.

Quote: terapined

Totally miss the point
Its not about slave owners
Its about people willing to kill our patriotic soldiers to keep slavery
Its killing another human being simply keep slavery

I got it now.
Slave owners are OK. We do not need to remove their statues or monuments.
The south succeeded from the Union because they wanted to keep slavery and the people who fought for the south wanted to kill "our patriotic soldiers" so they are all traitors.
The average Confederate soldiers fought and killed another human beings simply to keep slaves and slavery. Most of the Confederate soldiers must have owned slaves also if they are risking their life for this!?

Lincoln allowed the south to keep slavery so why did they fight and succeed?

Quote: AceCrAAckers

I got it now.
Slave owners are OK. We do not need to remove their statues or monuments.
The south succeeded from the Union because they wanted to keep slavery and the people who fought for the south wanted to kill "our patriotic soldiers" so they are all traitors.
The average Confederate soldiers fought and killed another human beings simply to keep slaves and slavery. Most of the Confederate soldiers must have owned slaves also if they are risking their life for this!?

Lincoln allowed the south to keep slavery so why did they fight and succeed?

If only there were books that could explain this. If only there was a place where one could go and get such books.

Something I didn't know, but learned through discussion this week: most of the monuments, at least in the South, were erected between 1905 and 1920 to remind Blacks of their place, and keep the Confederate flame burning. Not particularly to honor the Civil War dead, but as a menacing reminder.

So pulling them down doesn't particularly change history; it removes an INTENDED odious symbol of oppression. I looked into the original proclamations for some of them, because I thought that origin story was slanted, and it seems to be true. For me, that changed my opinion from leave them alone to, remove them from public places and put them in a museum.

For example, I'm spending some time in Biloxi lately. They have Beauvoir, which is the beautifully restored home of Jefferson Davis. Private property, maintained with entrance fees, several statues and other honoraria on site. They have every right to do that, IMO. If it was a public park, maintained with tax money, I can see the argument about removing it.

Intent does matter. This just proves that dog whistles are nothing new.

Quote: billryan

If only there were books that could explain this. If only there was a place where one could go and get such books.

There is. It is called a library.

I read US Grants memoirs and as dry reading as it was, he explained what Lee fought for and why he was against him. There was never any mention about fighting for slavery.

Our new government is founded upon exactly [this] idea; its foundations are laid, its corner- stone rests upon the great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery -- subordination to the superior race -- is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.

This is the government that Lee fought for. His own beliefs are irrelevant.

I am a northerner who has lived in the south for over 30 years in a region (East Tennessee) that tended to side with the north (Union) during the Civil War. I have never had a shred of sympathy for slavery. This is what I observe:

- most of the confederate soldiers (>90%) never owned a slave -they were too poor to own anything and too uneducated to have a strong opinion about the institution of slavery. They joined the confederate army to defend their homes, their families and all they knew and loved from invasion from the north. They experienced years of incredible hardship in the war and many of them died.

- you may think the Vietnam War was an illegal and immoral act of aggression by America -but should we tear down the Vietnam Memorial in Washington DC?

- confederate monuments in the South were originally established to honor fathers, brothers and sons who died in the Civil War. The people of the South suffered grievously during and after the War (and the South was impoverished for almost 100 years in the aftermath of the Civil War) but they still found the resources to honor their dead and build the memorials.

- today, Southerners view the monuments as honoring their ancestors who died in the Civil War, and as honoring the historical people who originally settled and lived in the areas that we live in today. They are about regional pride and honoring our heritage.

- the entanglement of these monuments with slavery seems wrong to me. And the demonization of people that you disagree with as racists is worse than irresponsible - it is hate mongering, it is evil. Have some human decency.