The Dismantling of Confederate Remnants Continues

[rah]

I have no problem with taking down the statues.
I have no problem with moving some of them to a museum for preservation/teaching.
But putting up a statue of Sherman in Georgia would be rubbing their face in it. And not a good idea.

 

[Commodore]

But putting up a statue of Sherman in Georgia would be rubbing their face in it. And not a good idea.

What if it's a statue of Sherman holding a torch?

 

[Traitorfish]

I often have similar feelings about those pesky Irish, spitting on the great British nation and its ideals.

Bad analogy, because the Irish won their war, and they've been cheerfully bulldozing monuments to British imperialism ever since.

 

[REDY]

To me it seems like Taliban practice. I somewhat understand it but I consider it as barbarian.

 

[FriendlyFire]

What if it's a statue of Sherman holding a torch?

Lincoln with a Gatling gun, underneath a blackslaves being slaughtered by confederate soldiers. Sherman, Grant and Jesus leading the Union troops rushing to save them
Above them all God, angry passing a torch to Sherman and pointing to the slaves

Plus a small statue of Obama with a healthcare bill

 

[FriendlyFire]

To me it seems like Taliban practice. I somewhat understand it but I consider it as barbarian.

Instead of tearing down confederate statues, we could just build a bigger statue of Linlcon looming over Davis, Linlcon with an Angry face, holding up the constitutions in one hand and a torch in the other hand
Every few minutes Linlcon voice booms out, death to traitors, God bless the union with the anti slavery song plays to mark every hour.
Problem SOLVED !

 

[Manfred Belheim]

Bad analogy, because the Irish won their war, and they've been cheerfully bulldozing monuments to British imperialism ever since.

Surely how the war turns out is of little importance when judging how it started. A traitor is a traitor regardless of if he wins or not.

 

[Berzerker]

if your state secedes would you be a traitor if you sided with the Union?

 

[warpus]

Ops, crosspot with warpus

Tbh you said it way better than I did. There was even a picture

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Surely how the war turns out is of little importance when judging how it started. A traitor is a traitor regardless of if he wins or not.

In other words, there is absolutely no basis in morality for the United States to begin with so the entire union/confederacy issue is moot.

 

[Commodore]

Lincoln with a Gatling gun, underneath a blackslaves being slaughtered by confederate soldiers. Sherman, Grant and Jesus leading the Union troops rushing to save them
Above them all God, angry passing a torch to Sherman and pointing to the slaves

Plus a small statue of Obama with a healthcare bill

That sounds like it would be a pretty awesome monument. I'll get started on the proposal and submit it to the necessary authorities.

 

[rah]

Losers are traitors, winners are founding fathers.

 

[EgonSpengler]

Losers are traitors, winners are founding fathers.

I think that's also often the difference between a "rebellion" and a "revolution."


On that subject, I do feel a little itchy referring to Confederates as traitors, but not because I don't think they were. I worry that it risks conceding the question of what it was they were fighting for, or at least getting side-tracked a little. I mean, people aren't wrong when they claim the Civil War was about States' rights. It was. It was about one 'right' in particular, the 'right' to own other people as property (I know it's pedantic, but I feel I have to put the word right in quotes there). And the northerners who refused to repatriate escaped slaves were refusing to honor an agreement with the southern states. It's also true that not all northerners were abolitionists, that some abolitionists were still racist, not all southerners were slave-owners, northerners also owned slaves, northern factory owners treated their "free" workers so badly it's almost hard to believe, and in 2017 no Southerner alive has ever owned a slave or been owned as a slave. All true. Yet none of that refutes the fact that any monument to the Confederacy is a monument to a group of people who were willing to go to war because they really, really wanted to own people as property and treat them as beasts of burden. Whether or not such people were also traitors to their country is like calling Pol Pot dishonest. I mean, sure, it would be bad if he was, but is that really important?

 

[Lexicus]

On that subject, I do feel a little itchy referring to Confederates as traitors, but not because I don't think they were. I worry that it risks conceding the question of what it was they were fighting for, or at least getting side-tracked a little.

To me calling them traitors is more of a commentary on the hypocrisy of people who are all like "America! fudge YEAH" and yet also revere the Confederacy.
Like if you celebrated when bin Laden was killed, what are you doing flying the flag of people who killed more Americans than bin Laden ever dreamed of?

 

[EgonSpengler]

To me calling them traitors is more of a commentary on the hypocrisy of people who are all like "America! **** YEAH" and yet also revere the Confederacy.
Like if you celebrated when bin Laden was killed, what are you doing flying the flag of people who killed more Americans than bin Laden ever dreamed of?

I agree. I also take Confederate flags and monuments as a distant, implicit warning, because they venerate people who would have been eager to shoot me, if I'd been alive back then. If I see a Confederate flag or monument, I see a ghostly "watch your step" sign hovering beneath it. If that's the intention of the people displaying those symbols, then I suppose we're on the same page and I can just get myself out of town as quickly as possible.

 

[Lexicus]

I also take Confederate flags and monuments as a distant, implicit warning, because they venerate people who would have been eager to shoot me, if I'd been alive back then.

Well, in my case the eagerness would have been somewhat mutual. Of course, if you think this way imagine how a lot of African Americans must feel about it.

 

[Traitorfish]

To me it seems like Taliban practice. I somewhat understand it but I consider it as barbarian.

I mean, there's a difference between a statue of Buddha and a statue of Magog the Despoiler, and the motivations for iconoclasm can be similarly distinct.

Surely how the war turns out is of little importance when judging how it started. A traitor is a traitor regardless of if he wins or not.

Treason is most usually determined in retrospect, and winners are in a better position to negotiate.

Besides, the point was, the Irish pursued a policy of gradual but steady iconoclasm following independence, so it seems inappropriate to cite them in support of an anti-iconoclast position. You'll find few friends in the cause of preserving monuments for their own sake in a country which sent a song about blowing up Admiral Nelson to the top of the charts.

 

[Kyriakos]

^+1

 

[abradley]

Look away, look away

Imo it is a bit reactionary to tear down confederate monuments. They were a side annexed as a result of a war, and now is (again) part of the US, so why open that nest of hornets, moreso in this period of ludicrous high polarization?..

IIRC the USA never accepted that the Confederacy had a right to secede, so people fighting for the South were always Americans. Rather like brothers having a falling out, re uniting was a time for joy.

 

[Cutlass]

The real problem here is people that aren't willing to just accept that the South lost, and that they deserved to lose. And then move on. They keep trying to turn the clock back.