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Do you personally agree with taking down confederate monuments? (1 Viewer)

Gachi

Gachi

Footballguy
In New Orleans 4 confederate monuments were recently taken down, including a statue of Jefferson Davis, and there has been some violent backlash. 

People are complaining that it's disrespectful to those who served in the confederacy. 

There are hundreds of confederate monuments around the country. There's one in my hometown in front of the courthouse. 

How do you guys feel about removing these monuments?

 
Gachi said:
In New Orleans 4 confederate monuments were recently taken down, including a statue of Jefferson Davis, and there has been some violent backlash. 

People are complaining that it's disrespectful to those who served in the confederacy. 

There are hundreds of confederate monuments around the country. There's one in my hometown in front of the courthouse. 

How do you guys feel about removing these monuments?
Click to expand...
No one should give a crap if we disrespect a bunch of traitors.  I still wouldn't take down the monuments.

 
Keep the monuments up but everyone of them must have a plaque on it reading "This man betrayed the United States in the name of keeping slavery alive".

 
Monument - a structure erected to commemorate something

Commemorate - recall and show respect for

It's time for them to come down and be put in a museum

 
Anybody that wants to keep them on public display to honor a bunch of traitors should be put in shackles and beaten with a whip. 

 
Never should have gone up in the first place.

So only 152 years too late

 
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Gachi said:
In New Orleans 4 confederate monuments were recently taken down, including a statue of Jefferson Davis, and there has been some violent backlash. 

People are complaining that it's disrespectful to those who served in the confederacy. 

There are hundreds of confederate monuments around the country. There's one in my hometown in front of the courthouse. 

How do you guys feel about removing these monuments?
Click to expand...
Honestly, I really just don't give a crap about it.

 
One of my best friends in college was this black dude whose race I never really gave a second thought about until one year we made a road trip from New Mexico to Virginia. Some of the graffiti we saw in the bathrooms as we entered the South and the looks we got when walking into a restaurant together just made it obvious that he was considered a second class citizen. This culminated in some memorial where he pointed out that all the statues had their backs to the North...symbolizing that the South would never capitulate or some nonsense.

Ever since then it struck me just how bizarre it must be to live as a black person in a place where the Confederate flag is still flown or where those who fought for slavery are celebrated and revered...like your country talks a good game about equality but their actions speak the opposite. Obviously I'm happy the statues are being taken down. Never should have been erected in the first place, nor the confederate flag flown. Disgraceful if you ask me.

 
Service in the Confederate military didn't automatically mean you endorsed slavery personally; some of the higher-ranking officers saw the conflict as one of state's rights and fighting Union "tyranny" and were neither slaveholders nor racists.  

However, that's an argument for not executing them for war crimes or treason.  It is not an argument for erecting monuments to them.  

Tear them all down.  

 
After decades of liberals despising the label of patriot and nationalistic ideals, they now throw the term traitor around like candy.  

 
jon_mx said:
After decades of liberals despising the label of patriot and nationalistic ideals, they now throw the term traitor around like candy.  
Click to expand...
What are your thoughts on taking down the statues? You know, the topic of this thread.

 
Uruk-Hai said:
What are your thoughts on taking down the statues? You know, the topic of this thread.
Click to expand...
Seems like an issue which should be left up to the people of the area.  The mayor was elected and choice to remove.  So I don't see the issue.  I just see the traitor rhetoric as ignorant.  

 
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I think it's opening up a can of worms.  All those old guys have baggage.  Unless we are going to erase everyone's name who owned a slave.  Adios, Jefferson.  Goodbye Washington, and even Lincoln.

 
I'm torn on this.  I understand the objections to the statues.  I agree that we shouldn't revere those who endorsed slavery.

However, history is important, and recognizing that things happened or people existed does not necessarily imply that we endorse all things about a topic or person.  For example, I imagine there are countless status of Christopher Columbus standing, despite the fact that he was an absolutely vile human being.  Few complain about the Thomas Jefferson memorial, a man who owned, and likely raped, slaves.

I don't agree with the "leave it up to the local leadership" comment, either, as that would imply that the behavior of groups like ISIS in destroying historical sites is acceptable.

I certainly don't agree with the traitor comments, as I strongly believe in self-determination and that states should have the ability to secede.

 
bananafish said:
One of my best friends in college was this black dude whose race I never really gave a second thought about until one year we made a road trip from New Mexico to Virginia. Some of the graffiti we saw in the bathrooms as we entered the South and the looks we got when walking into a restaurant together just made it obvious that he was considered a second class citizen. This culminated in some memorial where he pointed out that all the statues had their backs to the North...symbolizing that the South would never capitulate or some nonsense.

Ever since then it struck me just how bizarre it must be to live as a black person in a place where the Confederate flag is still flown or where those who fought for slavery are celebrated and revered...like your country talks a good game about equality but their actions speak the opposite. Obviously I'm happy the statues are being taken down. Never should have been erected in the first place, nor the confederate flag flown. Disgraceful if you ask me.
Click to expand...
See.  This is a well articulated and persuasive argument.

 
Quez said:
I think it's opening up a can of worms.  All those old guys have baggage.  Unless we are going to erase everyone's name who owned a slave.  Adios, Jefferson.  Goodbye Washington, and even Lincoln.
Click to expand...
Wait. You think Lincoln owned slaves?

 
Do I care if we keep British or Mexican monuments?

Confederates were another country. I don't really care.

Hell Spain not only founded many American/U.S. areas but also helped us against those who foght against us when we went on to become our own country.  Rather see theirs.

 
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I live in an area where people use Confederate flags for curtains. It's their property and, as much as it sickens me, their right.

I draw the line at having monuments to traitors on grounds that I pay taxes to support. I'll budge on museums, but not on active government sites. 

 
Uruk-Hai said:
I live in an area where people use Confederate flags for curtains. It's their property and, as much as it sickens me, their right.

I draw the line at having monuments to traitors on grounds that I pay taxes to support. I'll budge on museums, but not on active government sites. 
Click to expand...
Props to your people for telling Lee to blow it out his ### when he came marching through on the Maryland Campaign.

 
Kind of tying into what bananafish said, the statutes would be a lot less of an issue if there wasn't also serious problems with racism in those areas still. The incarceration rates for LA is the highest in the entire world by a wide wide wide margin and it's very disproportionately black. There's a very interesting thread about this on twitter. 

https://twitter.com/samswey/status/865602050209357825

 
Parrothead said:
we should learn from our mistakes..  why be afraid of history?
Click to expand...
You're correct. But the mistake we need to learn from is leaving the statues up this long.

 
I get what one person said about a can of worms. Why not take down any statue of a former slave owner or colonizer or whatever? My thought with the Lee, Davis statues or Confederate flag is they  represent slavery and extreme hatred to a significant portion of our population. If we want to keep moving forward with race relations, make all people feel welcome and respected, then we should remove these giant icons of race based hate. It's simple a gesture of saying, "remembering the past isn't as important as being respectful to the people of the present". 

 
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Also saying we want a different future. A future where this area is no longer partly defined by racial divide and historic injustices. It's not erasing the past but redefining legacy and an opportunity to highlight other parts of the culture. Put up statues for those who fought against slavery, jazz musicians, the heroes/fallen from Katrina, artists, chefs, etc. New Orleans has such a rich culture and history. 

 
As much as I like to clown around about the North making the South their #####....I don't see the point in removing the statues now just because (to generalize) the Northerners then didn't seem concerned with total subjugation of Southerners who fought.  IIRC, there wasn't war crime tribunals, there weren't Southerners hung for treason. To me, it doesn't seem like the Federal Government wanted to eradicate the memory of the South ala the Allies did with the Nazi Party or Emperor worship post WWII. 

Where I do think there is a problem today is in the co-opting (generally speaking) of Southern Civil War ideals by hate groups today. I think if you're a proud "Son of the South" you need to be at the tip of the spear in shouting these people down for trying to glom onto and corrupt what (I'm assuming) you hold sacred. 

 
Quez said:
I think it's opening up a can of worms.  All those old guys have baggage.  Unless we are going to erase everyone's name who owned a slave.  Adios, Jefferson.  Goodbye Washington, and even Lincoln.
Click to expand...
There's no reason to take down a statue for commemorating something no one thinks it is commemorating.

Almost no people are going to look at a statue of Washington or Jefferson and think it was meant as a tribute to slave owners. A lot of people are going to look at a statue of a Confederate general and see their willingness to take up arms against those abolishing slavery as being an inseparable part of what it is commemorating.

If it was about Southern history, aren't we smart enough we could craft a monument to what the the South, including the slaves, went through and what ultimate good hopefully came out the other side the conflict? One that doesn't seem to commemorate an implicit support and defense of slavery.

 
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