The Dismantling of Confederate Remnants Continues

[mrt144]

I think his point is that everyone is a supremacist to some degree since everyone believes that whatever they believe is the right way and everything else is wrong. They wouldn't believe it otherwise.

There's no room for accepting that you might not have all the answers but you'll search for em until you die?

 

[Commodore]

There's no room for accepting that you might not have all the answers but you'll search for em until you die?

For most people? Nope.

 

[Lexicus]

No need for mind-reading. It's just a crappy little obelisk - no magic powers. And them N'awlins <snip> are tougher than you think.

I'm not sure what you thought you were proving here but I'm pretty sure it was the opposite of what you were trying to prove.

I think his point is that everyone is a supremacist to some degree since everyone believes that whatever they believe is the right way and everything else is wrong. They wouldn't believe it otherwise.

If that's really his point it's a bit...I dunno...hollow? "People who have opinions are just as bad as racists"...yeah, not buying it

Moderator Action: Do not quote infracted language unless you want to share in the infraction. ~ Arakhor
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

 

[Naskra]

The Barbarians from the Northlands are back, and this time they are telling us we must not remember our dead - because it is wrong, because slavery. Men and boys from all over the South went to war. They did it for the usual confusion of reasons: everyone else was going, they were drafted or about to be, chicks dig uniforms, get away from home, the pay sounded good, etc, etc. Many never came back, they died in faraway places, covered with dirt in shallow pits. For so many, that stone marker on the courthouse lawn is all they ever got or ever will get. For all of them, for whatever reason, they answered the call of duty that came from neighbors and homeland. And for this they deserve some modicum of respect. They are long dead, let them be and grant them the amnesty of the grave. If you want to piss on graves, do it at home.

Go to Gettysburg and look at the monuments. There are hundreds. The northern ones are mostly from shortly after the war. The fewer southern ones are clustered around a few dates. The large (and grotesque) monument at the foot of Pickett's Charge "From Virginia to Her Sons" is dated 1917. The Yankees wanted war and needed southern blood, so suddenly it was fine that Virginia should honor her dead.
Or watch the 1939 blockbuster Sergeant York, another stirring blood-drive aimed directly at the south. The hell with you people who want us to fight for you and then despise us for your need. We are civilized people, we will remember those who answered.

 

[RomanKing]

I must say I couldn't be happier with this decision. One thing that always bothered me about Civil War history and southern culture in general, was the honoring of those who fought for the Confederacy. Those traitors don't deserve to be honored. They deserved to be vilified for trying to destroy this nation. So I can't wait until those monuments to the Confederacy are torn down. I hope someone films it and uploads it so I can share it here. I also hope they are replaced with monuments to Union soldiers, maybe a statue of Grant and one of Sherman as well.

The seditious Democrats were indeed traitors in 1861 and may very well attempt to secede from the union again. If they do, they will surely lose and hopefully the Republicans will do the right thing and remove all historic artifacts and relics commemorating the decades of shame they brought upon their nation for a second time in nearly 250 years.

 

[mrt144]

The seditious Democrats were indeed traitors in 1861 and may very well attempt to secede from the union again. If they do, they will surely lose and hopefully the Republicans will do the right thing and remove all historic artifacts and relics commemorating the decades of shame they brought upon their nation for a second time in nearly 250 years.

Don't hold your breath or anything, kid.

 

[Lexicus]

The Barbarians from the Northlands are back, and this time they are telling us we must not remember our dead - because it is wrong, because slavery. Men and boys from all over the South went to war. They did it for the usual confusion of reasons: everyone else was going, they were drafted or about to be, chicks dig uniforms, get away from home, the pay sounded good, etc, etc. Many never came back, they died in faraway places, covered with dirt in shallow pits. For so many, that stone marker on the courthouse lawn is all they ever got or ever will get. For all of them, for whatever reason, they answered the call of duty that came from neighbors and homeland. And for this they deserve some modicum of respect. They are long dead, let them be and grant them the amnesty of the grave. If you want to piss on graves, do it at home.

Go to Gettysburg and look at the monuments. There are hundreds. The northern ones are mostly from shortly after the war. The fewer southern ones are clustered around a few dates. The large (and grotesque) monument at the foot of Pickett's Charge "From Virginia to Her Sons" is dated 1917. The Yankees wanted war and needed southern blood, so suddenly it was fine that Virginia should honor her dead.
Or watch the 1939 blockbuster Sergeant York, another stirring blood-drive aimed directly at the south. The hell with you people who want us to fight for you and then despise us for your need.

We are civilized people, we will remember those who answered.

To him [the black man] your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mock; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are to him mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy - a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation of the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of these United States at this very hour.

-Frederick Douglass, 1852

 

[Commodore]

If that's really his point it's a bit...I dunno...hollow? "People who have opinions are just as bad as racists"...yeah, not buying it

I don't think it's quite that though. I think it's more that supremacism itself isn't necessarily a bad thing, it's the context of a specific brand of supremacism that makes it good, bad, or neutral. I also think the degree to which one takes their supremacist attitude determines whether or not it is "bad".

 

[Traitorfish]

The Barbarians from the Northlands are back, and this time they are telling us we must not remember our dead - because it is wrong, because slavery. Men and boys from all over the South went to war. They did it for the usual confusion of reasons: everyone else was going, they were drafted or about to be, chicks dig uniforms, get away from home, the pay sounded good, etc, etc. Many never came back, they died in faraway places, covered with dirt in shallow pits. For so many, that stone marker on the courthouse lawn is all they ever got or ever will get. For all of them, for whatever reason, they answered the call of duty that came from neighbors and homeland. And for this they deserve some modicum of respect.

I'd be more willing to believe this if Southern romantics had ever proposed raising a monument to Southern Unionists. As it is, what sparse memorials these men get- some of the bravest men in the entire Union, willing to risk exile and dispossession even if they survived- were raised at private expense, by survivors and families, without the aid or sympathy of your civilised people. If these monuments were raised in a spirit of simple respect for the dead, why do those of your countrymen who fought on one side of the war seem to accrue respect so much more easily than those who fought on the other?

 

[Naskra]

C'mon, Tfish, local politics doesn't work that way. Farragut got a statue because TN is a long way from Mobile. But one never knows - Arminius got a hometown statue after 1800 yrs. If you hold that the only good racist is a dead racist, then take note that these men are dead. "Dead for eternity" is far more fundamental political stance than "may have voted for Breckenridge".
Sometimes a statue is just a statue. Beauregard was there because the city wanted an ornament for its spiffy new park. Famed native son Beauregard was the obvious choice. Would you really expect Paul Morphy on a horse? It was a pretty nice statue, and I expect it will be returned someday once the PC fever has broken and passed.
Lee is another matter. A poorly designed monument - you could hurt your neck peering up to see who guy with the big hat might be, and then risk your life in traffic to get to the inscription. Jackson, I dunno, he doesn't rile up the good ole boys so much and may get a death row pardon from the governor.
The case against the Liberty Place Monument, I can understand. It really is a celebration of white supremacy, and no great architectural loss. Still, my view is that it's a piece of the past we have to live with, for better or worse. Waving rebel flags is just as much an affectation as taking offense at statues.

 

[Traitorfish]

C'mon, Tfish, local politics doesn't work that way.

That's rather my point: if it was about respect for those who fought and died in the war, without favour for party or faction, we'd see even-handed commemoration of Confederate and Union soliders alike in the South, at the very least in proportion to their numbers among the local population. In practice, commemoration is near-exclusively of Confederate soldiers. An appeal towards a general and impartial respect for the dead therefore reads as disingenuous, because the monumental commemoration of the Civil War in the American South does not itself express this impartiality.

 

[demiurgenext]

The Barbarians from the Northlands are back, and this time they are telling us we must not remember our dead - because it is wrong, because slavery. Men and boys from all over the South went to war. They did it for the usual confusion of reasons: everyone else was going, they were drafted or about to be, chicks dig uniforms, get away from home, the pay sounded good, etc, etc. Many never came back, they died in faraway places, covered with dirt in shallow pits. For so many, that stone marker on the courthouse lawn is all they ever got or ever will get. For all of them, for whatever reason, they answered the call of duty that came from neighbors and homeland. And for this they deserve some modicum of respect. They are long dead, let them be and grant them the amnesty of the grave. If you want to piss on graves, do it at home.

Go to Gettysburg and look at the monuments. There are hundreds. The northern ones are mostly from shortly after the war. The fewer southern ones are clustered around a few dates. The large (and grotesque) monument at the foot of Pickett's Charge "From Virginia to Her Sons" is dated 1917. The Yankees wanted war and needed southern blood, so suddenly it was fine that Virginia should honor her dead.
Or watch the 1939 blockbuster Sergeant York, another stirring blood-drive aimed directly at the south. The hell with you people who want us to fight for you and then despise us for your need. We are civilized people, we will remember those who answered.

This is hilarious.

Especially as the guy has a location of 'Canada.' Northlands indeed.

BTW, there's ~700 memorials to the confederacy. The only issue right now is whether or not state governments should be openly supporting the Confederacy. Several state and local governments are moving so as to not make the government itself espouse a pro-confederate slant. This is not being mandated by outsiders, its not erasing history, and its not tantamount to the Taliban, as the monuments are being sent to museums, relocated to cemetaries, or sold to NGOs.

 

[mrt144]

That's rather my point: if it was about respect for those who fought and died in the war, without favour for party or faction, we'd see even-handed commemoration of Confederate and Union soliders alike in the South, at the very least in proportion to their numbers among the local population. In practice, commemoration is near-exclusively of Confederate soldiers. An appeal towards a general and impartial respect for the dead therefore reads as disingenuous, because the monumental commemoration of the Civil War in the American South does not itself express this impartiality.

I'm also interested in the hilarious double standard of "this is our heritage" and "slavery was ended 150 years ago, get over it already".

 

[EgonSpengler]

The Barbarians from the Northlands are back, and this time they are telling us we must not remember our dead[...]

This is not being mandated by outsiders[...]

This last is an important point. To my knowledge, no Northerners are directly involved in the dismantling of the monuments in New Orleans and Virginia specifically, however many of us are applauding the decision. In fact, I think much of the recent debate about Confederate flags and monuments is between Southerners. Mitch Landrieu, for example, is no less a Louisiana boy than was Gen. Beauregard; his great-great-grandparents arrived in Louisiana from France in 1848, according to Wikipedia. Richard Spencer led the protest of the dismantling of the statue in Virginia. He's from Texas. If anybody's a carpetbagger in this situation, it's him.

 

[Traitorfish]

I'm also interested in the hilarious double standard of "this is our heritage" and "slavery was ended 150 years ago, get over it already".

The reasoning seems to be that when a bunch of white people die, it is a tragedy we can never forget, but when a bunch of black people die, that's boring, you're boring everbody, quit boring everyone.

But it's not a race thing.

 

[Naskra]

Beauregard the man had a varied life. He personally gave the order that started the war. He died as a disgraced blank-lover. He was a railroad-builder and damned Papist; you might hold any sort of opinion about him. His posthumous career as a statue was quite different - a steady, timeless, and broadly beloved guardian of the park, even if he looked comically out of place. I can see that his most irate defenders are the usual suspects from beyond the Pearl River; I also know that removing him is not a homegrown idea - Nola has homegrown ideas, but they tend not to be new. A homegrown solution would have been along the lines of an annual burying beneath heaps of crawfish. Taking offense at statues is not an innate human quality; it is not one of the classical virtues, nor can it be found in the list of Christian virtues. It is a learned disability, and it's contagious. It's a character flaw, something to be ashamed of, not indulged. There is a big statue of David in Florence. A Palestinian might see it and declare it to be a symbol of Jewish oppression. He'd be quite right - and also quite a jerk.

If a nation is to have an army and fight wars, It must respect the fallen. That's a necessary, not an optional, part of the package. All of the fallen, not just those who are retrospectively found to have fought the "good" wars. Honoring the confederate dead was an important element of the post-war peace - a peace that was more bitter than the war. Do not disturb this peace without good cause. I'll put it this way: when you enter a mosque, take off your shoes. Just do it, and don't offer your opinions about the custom.

 

[Lexicus]

Taking offense at statues is not an innate human quality; it is not one of the classical virtues, nor can it be found in the list of Christian virtues. It is a learned disability, and it's contagious.

Contagious indeed. I think I'm going to start a Gofundme to build a 50 ft tall statue of a carpetbagger overlooking your house; then we'll see if you change your tune.

 

[mrt144]

Contagious indeed. I think I'm going to start a Gofundme to build a 50 ft tall statue of a carpetbagger overlooking your house; then we'll see if you change your tune.

How about a digital sign that shows the flow of federal tax money.

 

[Naskra]

Contagious indeed. I think I'm going to start a Gofundme to build a 50 ft tall statue of a carpetbagger overlooking your house; then we'll see if you change your tune.

Thanks! 25-30 ft would work better in this hood. South-side preferred. And please pay for it yourself, if you crowd-source it, I'd feel obliged to kick in and then, well, committees, you know ....

 

[Zelig]

I'm also interested in the hilarious double standard of "this is our heritage" and "slavery was ended 150 years ago, get over it already".

Not really a double standard, because they're obviously not real positions.