Do YOU Think confederate monuments should be taken down?

My view is that I think they should be taken down; however, I also believe they should be placed in museums since they do deal with the country's history.

Another option would be to leave them up but put new plaques on them that give the persons name and then say "Historical Asshat".

 

I think they should be taken down because a monument is made to honor an individual's achievements, and there was nothing honorable about the confederates/confederacies desire to have and own slaves. Leaving these monuments up would be the equivalent of saying the country honors these men for what they honored and fought for, which would be ethically wrong. You can find what these men honored and fought for in the Declaration of Causes of Seceding States.

Now some would argue then that monuments to Thomas Jefferson should be taken down since he owned slaves, but they would be forgetting that Jefferson has a monument not because he was a good man but because he wrote the Declaration of Independence, which was and remains to be a positive contribution to the country and which upholds the countries values.

 

https://www.livescience.com/18863-civil-war-myths.html

 

Why is one of the tags for this thread, distractions?

 

This is a very interesting situation. Is it a federal law, or just local governments taking these monuments down? Any good links to this topic?

 

I think it should be up to the states and left at the state level. The federal government should have as little control as possible, since I believe that would be in keeping with the spirit of the constitution.

 

From the sociological perspective, it may only further exacerbate old wounds, and further radicalize the remnant of the old culture. Perhaps it can only be radicalized when the dominant ideology marginalizes it.

I mean if a practical politics doesn't keep some dialogue open it only leads to violence. I think the great danger facing the US today is a loss of faith in rational dialogue between parties and causes.

 

I believe there needs to be more rational dialogue, but how do you have that when one side holds irrational views? Also I think we tried the marginalization approach, which clearly didn't work. You can't have a huge monument of a person(s) that were enemies of the current system and then say "oh that big thing? Yeah, pay no attention to that it's not important". Someone thinking rationally would say "if that person isn't important then why is there a monument?"

Also I agree that there is a chance removing the monuments might work to further radicalize the other side, but we would only need to deal with that problem for oh a generation, if that. On the flip side future generations wouldn't have such monuments to idolize or rally behind. No one said change would be easy or come without sacrifices.

 

Yeah once all the monuments are gone all the racism will be gone. It's those damn monuments. Nevermind that blacks are the most racist group in America. That makes as much sense as your "logic" that the monument to Jefferson won't get taken down because he wrote the declaration of independence.

I don't even know why I argue with someone likely dressed in nikey shoes and sweats crying about the horrors and evils of slavery.

http://www.loc.gov/teachers/classroommaterials/lessons/equal/anti.html

We know Abraham Lincoln was cool with the south having slaves. We also know Britain abolished slavery long before the USA did. And we know the war wasn't about slavery and that the North allowed it still.

General Lee was a brave honorable man according to history and a huge figure in American history someone to look up to. And the south was no more the BAD GUYS than the north.

If you can turn a blind eye to America killing 60million + people, polluting the world, raping and destroying the economy of nations, and all their slavery sweatshops in Asia I think you can deal with some history that is a little unsavory. Can you say the word HYPOCRITE?

This crap will make people radical, but it isn't the far-right it's regular everyday Joes. And I love [ sarcasm] how you claim everyone who is in favor of the statutes is some old-school KKK type. That is really tolerant and open minded 'waiting for people to die off'.


You also never mention that whites and other races were slaves as well. It didn't start with the Africans.

 

Perhaps the ideal and practice of democratic and political tolerance is too complicated for us.... perhaps political practice involves not thinking of your own position as absolutely correct/ the rational one, and not painting your 'opposition' as the irrational one.

It seems to me that unless there is this critical distancing of political beliefs then politics will devolve into two conflicting parties.. or a dominant ideology, and a reactionary minority that might reject the 'old out-dated middle-class values holding power'.

Perhaps this a problem inherent to mass politics and democracy - a real democracy, at the practical level, can lead to parties rejecting that democracy... or reject the way in which they think democracy has been represented. All values are up for re-valuation.

And when it gets to this level of theoretical and ideological infighting between alienated parties, our History can be more of a help here than a hindrance. We don't want to obliterate real history [and keep our black and white version], but turn to it and learn from it.

 

Here's my take on it. The 'alt right' represent postmodern [arguably hyper-modern] forces emerging on to the political stage. The left is the old modernity trying to hold things together. As they belong to two utterly distinct paradigms, or ways of interpreting the world, the dialogue between them is breaking down.

The modern - reason, rights, equality... the liberal culture and values popularized in the past century

The postmodern - what are the forces underlying the above superficial thinking of the modern... Nietzsche, Freud and Marx... but these thinkers themselves re-interpreted in the light of American Capitalism and Individualism.

 

ill say this. it may not be the strongest argument ever but it resonates with me. the United States was born on the principles that if a government got too tyrannical we had a choice to over throw it and form a better union. what we did in 1776 by defeating the British, a shot heard round the world as they say that sparked revolutions all over. so the US flag is a symbol of defiance, of standing up for what you believe in even if its wrong. at the time the CSA thought the north was being too tyrannical. regardless of where you fall in your opinions about the civil war, and slavery in general. the confederate flag and its symbols and monuments are testaments to the very ideas that America was founded on.

for me and for most people I believe it isn't about slavery, did it exist yes and it was cruel and hundreds of thousands of lives were lost. its also not about being a white supremacist or a fascist. it's about to stand up and fight against a tyrannical government and stand up for what you believe in that is what the confederate flag as well as many other symbols and monuments means. it is a manifestation of the American spirit to fight for what you believe in even if its wrong. That is my problem with the removal of all the monuments and hubbub about the confederate flag. sure the CSA was all about slavery but that is not what those monuments, and symbols mean to us.

if we allow this ... the removal of monuments and "offensive stuff" where does it end? will George Washington be removed? what about Thomas Jefferson? all of whom were great American patriots but will they be removed to because they owned slaves? should all of their achievements be wiped away and forgotten because of one thing that was at the time social acceptable? I'm not making excuses its that these people have become symbols of freedom not slavery and that is the problem I have with all of these monument removals. they are turning these monuments and symbols into some perverse twisted image of which are not part of.

 

Yes, I also think it helps if we don't read history anachronistically. That is, we shouldn't project our own contemporary values onto the past. We should instead see that our own society/ culture has evolved over a period of time, and is in fact dependent on the past.

A culture without a history, would be like a person without a memory. And we are all works in progress...

 

I dont think so as it really is a part of our history. Racism is one of the founding values of our country. You can tear down the racist monument and you still have the racism so i really dont see the point. More silly PC bullshit as far as I'm concerned.

 

Oh someone has their big boy pants on today. You make a ton of assumptions about my character and beliefs over a couple of posts which, to me, is pretty hilarious.

Nowhere did I say:

• The civil war was all about slavery.
• The North wanted to abolish slavery.
• Lincoln cared about ending slavery.
• Removing the monuments will remove racism.
• That all supporters of the moments are racists assholes that I want to see die off.
• That blacks were the only slaves. I mean I could have mentioned the Irish slaves but I didn't see what relevance that had in a conversation about civil war memorials you top asshat.

 

The men in the memorials fought for a lot of things, unfortunately one of those things was to own slaves. What's PC about that?

I wonder if you would have the same position if there was a monument of a man who in history fought for some fair trade agreements and also the right to fuck children. Would you leave up a monument to such a person? Would you still call him "honorable"? Would you protest against the removal of such a monument honoring that man? Would you be here saying "blah blah blah he was a great man though blah blah blah don't take them down for historical reasons blah blah." No my guess is you would probably logically say "while he may have fought for some good reasons, ultimately he also tried to fight for the right to fuck children, and probably did fuck children, and that's just too disgusting and evil to honor with a monument".

 

I'm indifferent really, there is no confederate monuments in my area so I really don't have a connection with them. Who cares what they do with them? I don't.

 

Well technically the civil war wasn't all about slaves, that was just a portion of the war. (That luckily got resolved in the right fashion). The war was more political. The south wanted state's rights, while the north wanted more central rights. It just happened that the slaves were more in the south bc that was an agricultural area, as compared to the north.

The war was more than race. It's just that's how it's perceived nowadays. However, people won't listen to reason bc it is such a sensitive issue.

I don't think the government has the right to decide what to tear down and what to keep up. It's a historical landmark and they have don't have the power to. If they transported these monuments to museums that would be cool w me.

I was throughly surprised at the white supremacist that were in Charlottesville (although that doesn't represent C-ville). Alot of them seemed to be extremists, although perhaps some werent. Still, it's stomach turning.