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[smjjames]

Gah, okay, lets just all CHILL OUT for a moment here!

edit: Unlocked. Hopefully the interruption was enough to make people snap out of it.

[Helgoland]

Hell no I won't chill out. Seriously, explain to me the difference between defending the Confederates because your Grampa caught a Yankee bullet, and me defending the Wehrmacht because surely my Grandfather, having grown up during the Depression and under Nazi rule, couldn't possibly have been part of something evil.

This is not a rhethorical question - that's a real example. And yes, I know what regiment they were in, and yes, I know where they're buried - in my parents' village. They made it home alive and in one piece, thank God.

[smjjames]

Hell no I won't chill out. Seriously, explain to me the difference between defending the Confederates because your Grampa caught a Yankee bullet, and me defending the Wehrmacht because surely my Grandfather, having grown up during the Depression and under Nazi rule, couldn't possibly have been part of something evil.

This is not a rhethorical question - that's a real example. And yes, I know what regiment they were in, and yes, I know where they're buried - in my parents' village. They made it home alive and in one piece, thank God.

I meant chill out as in STOP FIGHTING EACH OTHER WITH PERSONAL ATTACKS. If you want to be passonate about people who fought and died in WWII or otherwise, fine, but I'm trying to nip a firestorm/flamewar in the bud. Though playergamer seems to have nipped it between himself and redking.

[Playergamer]

Shut the fuck up. My family's from Virginia. I can list by name my ancestors who died in the civil war, their relatives who died in the civil war, which battle they died at, and where they're buried. If you want me to drop the "faux tears," you should drop the high and mighty liberal shit. Of course I don't approve of racists waving confederate flags, but at least they're not giving war memorials the Saddam treatment.

Maybe you're not shedding a tear because you care more about self-flagellating for other people's racism than you do about your own goddamn history.

Wait, so it's okay now for me to claim the Wehrmacht wasn't all that bad, because one of my grandfathers spent the war dropping bombs on Russian cities, and another one spent quite a bit of time in a special unit* that didn't exactly fight clean? Should I maybe put up a Göring statue in my front yard?

I'll go one step further than RedKing: Fuck your tears, whatever their origin. The confederates were literally worse than Saddam, so it's only good and proper to give them the Saddam treatment - regardless of whether the crotch to which you trace your lineage belonged to a slave owner or just a fellow doing the dirty work for them. Fuck heritage, fuck ancestry, fuck honoring the dead, if it means developing selective moral blindness and not acknowledging what happened in the past. Just like we make mistakes and own up to them, we should accept that our ancestors made mistakes - and even if they did not own up to them, we at least are still alive to do just that.

Why is it important to remember them as Confederate soldiers, as opposed to remembering them as your forebears?

I can't help but notice I never claimed the Confederacy "wasn't all that bad." Perhaps you read that due to your own implicit bias towards restoring the Fourth Reich? /s

And as to that blatant disregard for history, I really don't know what to say. I'm trying pretty hard to be civil here, but fuck the utopian leftist idea that everything is black and white, and nothing is sacred. Sure, the confederacy was a slaveholding state. So was America for half its history. Should we not honor the soldiers who died in the revolution, because one of the sparks was that the British might end slavery? Should we take down the Washington Monument and the Jefferson Memorial, because they were old white men with slaves?

I know that's different, I know. The soldiers who died on the Confederate side of the civil war were fighting against the US Government, and in favor of slavery. Except most of them weren't. Most of them were fighting against what they saw as a government attack on their states (yes, even though most of the war was fought in the Union.) They were wrong. They fought on the wrong side, but after the war was over, America made a big deal about bringing them back into the fold. In history's eyes, they're Americans who temporarily ended up on the wrong side.

TL:DR: I don't want this country to be like Germany where it's nearly impossible to have a war memorial because they were the bad guys. Maybe that works for you, but the divide that caused the civil war here (which was a civil war, not an invasion of foreign countries: another big difference) still exists, and walking over the losing sides consolation prize in the name of "social justice" or whatever it is doesn't seem like a great plan.

Sorru for the probably not well written rant. Still tired.

[Starver]

Point is that ALL of us had at least one ancestor who had some sort of role in it, so lets freaking stop fighting each other over it.

Or at least keep it civil.

* Starver trolls the colonials?

[sluissa]

There are a couple of arguments I'd make here.

Erasing history is bad for the sake of erasing history. I would rather have what's standing stay there with context given for why it's there rather than just try to wipe the slate clean and I oppose any "across the board" attempt to simply clear away any trace of something that happened. We're not there yet, but it appears that some people want that to happen.

Localities have the right to remove things from their area if they feel it no longer represents them. I do oppose the NC governments attempt to forcibly keep unwanted statues in their locations against the will of city/county governments and their populations.

Just on a personal note, I like visiting parks. I do go up to statues, read their plaques, try to understand the story of why the statue was put there.(Sometimes the plaque doesn't tell the whole story, either.) Only a few weeks ago I was in Tennessee and visited a park that was built over a Civil War battlefield. There were memorials there for both sides which I think is very fair. I'm not saying the answer to every objectionable statue is to put up another statue. But I am saying there are other options beyond simply tearing things down. There are options beyond trying to erase the history. Space is limited, government resources are limited. I understand that, and I understand that sometimes statues and memorials will have to go, either through necessity or through the will of the people who have to live around that statue. But I find more value in that piece of data being there than not. More value in surrounding it with contextual data to tell even more of the story. If you're going to remove it, try to have something worthwhile to replace it with. But better to add more data than to remove it and leave people with less information overall.

[smjjames]

As far as war memorials, I'd still be fine with those commemorating particular battles, and some of the bloodiest did take place in the South. The main hotpoint seems to be ones remembering particular figures or ones that neonazis are using as rally points.

A memorial to both sides at the same time would be fine too since it doesn't leave one side or the other out.

after the war was over, America made a big deal about bringing them back into the fold. In history's eyes, they're Americans who temporarily ended up on the wrong side.

True, people tried to bring them back into the fold, but the kind of reconcillation that happened in Germany after WWII and in South Africa after the end of apartheid, never really did happen. It's like we've never REALLY and honestly took pains to reconcile with our past. Though instead, it's kind of turned into a many-generation long spasmy reconcillation.

Point is that ALL of us had at least one ancestor who had some sort of role in it, so lets freaking stop fighting each other over it.

Or at least keep it civil.

* Starver trolls the colonials?

lol, nice pun.

[Trekkin]

But I find more value in that piece of data being there than not. More value in surrounding it with contextual data to tell even more of the story. If you're going to remove it, try to have something worthwhile to replace it with. But better to add more data than to remove it and leave people with less information overall.

Sure, but statues aren't artifacts. They're just a big lump of bronze that somebody was willing to finance and then stick on a big rock; they can only tell you about the views of the people living when they were made, not when their subject was doing things.

If we're going to preserve history -- and we certainly should -- perhaps the alternative could be museums, where the data on the past can be curated and subjected to scholarly examination and presented in their proper context? It just seems like there are ways to take down the statues and gain more data rather than losing it.

[wierd]

Sometimes a statue, is more than just a statue trekkin.

Would one of the seven wonders of the world meet your definition of artifact? Say, the colossus of rhodes?  Too old maybe? How about the statue of liberty, or the arc 'd triumph?

All three are statues-- Is the first just bronze, the second just copper, and the third just stones?

[Neonivek]

Technically if we are talking about Hate...

Shouldn't we dismantle Mount Rushmore?

Which is the BIGGEST F-U America has ever given the Native Americans... and pretty much is a testament to their subjugation.

Goodness... Would be interesting in 1000 years if the next racists started to flock to Mount Rushmore as a symbol of Native American Oppression... so people are like "We should demolish it! It is racist!"

[WealthyRadish]

I don't believe there's any obligation to maintain public monuments from a previous time that do not reflect the current values and preferences of the people living in that area. Public monuments are an explicit statement of a people's supposed values (not just historical touristy oddities) and if the values expressed by the statues are counter to the actual held values, they should go. Mobs carrying it out is far from ideal since mobs never fully represent a large population's sentiments and tend to be needlessly destructive, but in the case of the statue that was pulled down there was no legal recourse to get public monuments removed due to state legislation aimed specifically at preserving these confederate revisionist monuments (as RedKing mentioned) and the protesters did not seem to resemble an unruly mob acting violently.

As to why people would be offended by these monuments and want them taken down, the context is extremely important. Almost all of them were put up by "redeemer"-era state governments that enacted some of the most shameful legislation in the country's post-war history, and publicly (and for the most part successfully) worked to reverse all the policies imposed on the south after the war and recreate the disenfranchisement and economic subordination of slavery. Part of this involved putting up these politically motivated monuments to aid in their campaigns to revise history and make the confederacy more sympathetic, and wouldn't you know, it worked.

If I lived in the south, I would absolutely be ashamed that these statues are still up publicly, and would have no qualms whatsoever about their removal being an attempt to "erase history". The history of southern revisionism can be preserved by sticking them in storage or a museum dedicated to the era, but leaving them up only damages our understanding of history by giving more credence to the modern groups that continue to milk confederate romanticism as a thinly-veiled screen for values most of us today find abhorrent and publicly unacceptable.

[Neonivek]

I don't believe there's any obligation to maintain public monuments from a previous time that do not reflect the current values and preferences of the people living in that area

Waaait a minute... isn't this revisionist?

That we should teach history in a way that benefits our current morals and ideals?

would have no qualms whatsoever about their removal being an attempt to "erase history".

Ohh it is!

[wierd]

Not to mention that it is foolish and wrong-- Find me a Greek alive today who would venerate Helios the way he was when the colossus at Rhodes was built-- If the statue had survived the earthquake, should it be removed because the cult of helios isnt the dominant religion?

After all, it was JUST an over-done monument to surviving a siege by some dusty old king from the ancient world-- and has little bearing on the thoughts, minds, or concerns of modern people..


Personally, a better approach to "I am ashamed of my past, so I will delete and deny!!", which is exactly what destroying a monument is, I would erect a new monument next to, or around the old one, which changes the tone.  Fancy memorial statue making some war criminal asshat out to look like some tragically misunderstood messiah? Erect a monument around it, depicting the truth as you see it, employing the imagery of the first monument against itself, and give a plaque on both.

[Criptfeind]

I think, you know. Books, are to teach history. Statues are to venerate it.

I don't see too many people clambering to set up Isis statues to teach us about the horrors that whole shit show.

[wierd]

Clearly, you have never been to an egyptology exhibit at a museum of world history then.