United States Confederate Statues, symbols, and memorials debate thread

[Battlegrinder]

Your argument defeats itself. You are simultaneously that the monuments address history (by saying that they won't be replaced with something that "still addressed history") and that they don't address any history ("dosen't really seem to be pushing any particular narrative or history.")

I didn't say they didn't address history, I said they were not pushing a particular narrative or history. It's the difference between "these people died and we are sad" and "these people died in defense of the glorious southern cause and we are sad".

 

[OliverCromwell]

Because there's never, or at least almost never, a proposal to replace them with something that still addresses history, it's pretty much always just a demand they be removed and nothing more.

Simply removing them would be far preferable to leaving monuments to the Confederates standing, but even ignoring that there are plenty of proposals out there suggesting that names and monuments commemorating the Confederates be replaced by civil rights leaders or loyalists like George Thomas or any number of other people who would also commemorate America's history with the South without celebrating the treason of the south or antebellum Southerners. Beyond that, you do realize that it is possible to suggest new ideas in a political discussion instead of mindlessly siding with one group or another, correct? If you think that it would be best to replace monuments celebrating the Confederacy with monuments celebrating the righteous glory that was the Union's victory, then it is entirely within your power to show others why that would be a better option.

And how do they do that, exactly? Like I said before, most them are just "blah blah, commemorate the death of these brave soldiers, blah blah". That dosen't really seem to be pushing any particular narrative or history.

2.75 million people fought in the Civil War, including about two million Americans. Even more supported the war effort from their homes in other ways. In choosing to erect statues to a small handful of leaders in the Confederate army, we are implicitly deciding that these people are more important and more worth celebrating than all the other millions of people who fought in the Civil War--why does Atlanta or Montgomery or Charlottesville have monuments to Robert E Lee and not to George Thomas or the 1st Alabama Cavalry? Why not to the union soldiers of the north who fought to impose on the south the civilization and development that has allowed the modern south to escape the poverty and barbarism of the antebellum, for which all southerners should be grateful? By chosing to honor not them but the Confederate generals, by buidling monuments to Confederate soldiers instead of Union ones, they are inherently saying that the lives of those Confederate soldiers are more worth remembering. And they most certainly are not.

The Civil War is worth remembering. The righteous struggle that America undertook to free a people in bondage and bring civilization to the savage and backwards South is worth remembering. The generals and the politicians and the soldiers who helped lead our nation to victory against the tumorous growth that was the Confederacy and the planter class are worth remembering. Those who chose to fight for the Confederacy are not. To build monuments to them, to afford these traitors memory within public space, is inherently pushing a narrative--that these people are part of what defined the civil war experience of America, and that they are worth remembering and commemorating. And they are not--their deaths and their experience in war means nothing to America, the country to whom they were nothing more than an enemy. To build them statues is to acknowledge them as anything more than an enemy of the nation that was, and was rightfully, crushed--and that is all they really were, and all they should ever be remembered as.

If some local government were to erect a statue to Osama Bin Laden today, I think we would all be justified in demanding its removal, and I think we would all acknowledge that such a statue is promoting a narrative that is contrary to the fundamental spirit of America. Why is a statue to a Confederate any different?

The monuments are fact. They serve no cause, they block no people from success, they are silent, mute markers to the belief of a people. One can derive from them just as well "here evil people rewrote history to conceal their defeat" as well as "here is glory". The power of the human mind is that you can interpret them how you like.

Precisely! The statues serve as a symbol of the belief of a people, and that belief is one that the United States has no business tolerating--one so fundamentally in contravention of the spirit of our nation that to allow any celebration of it to stand is an insult to every true American. The "glory" of which you speak, and of which so many Southerners hold these statues in, is an act of mass treason, for which a savage, backwards enemy population murdered scores of Americans in the name of maintaining a system of chattel slavery keeping millions of people in bondage. That a statue exists that anyone could interpret as giving "glory" to a national enemy on American soil is an insult and a humiliation. We would not allow men to erect statues to bin Laden or some other national enemy on our sacred national soil--so why should the enemy that was the Confederates be any different?

If my government were to allow people to erect a statue of feces on public property, I would be well within my rights to demand that it be removed. I find feces to be revolting. Most people find feces to be revolting. That our government should allow such a thing to pollute our vision every time we step into a public space is intolerable.

A monument of a leading Confederate is a statue of a man who willingly committed treason against my nation, and who in the service of that treason helped kill scores of my ancestors in the name of keeping the ancestors of even more of my countrymen in bondage. It is a monument of a man who conspired to invade and defile American soil, to abduct and enslave American citizens, and to undermine the strength and liberty of our nation and its people. It is a monument of a man who fought to defend a savage, backwards, barbarian realm controlled by a despotic planter class which had for a century spread its poisonous influence across the body of our nation--a culture whose notion of liberty was slavery, whose notion of respect was violence, and whose notion of citizen was oligarchy, a culture which fundamentally opposed American values and which reacted with unrestrained, animal, murderous violence to the mere notion of abolition or even simply civilization and development. A monument to a Confederate is a monument to human refuse, whose mere existence polluted the spirit of our nation.

Americans should no more be expected to tolerate a monument to such vermin whose very existence was an insult to the soul of our nation than they should be to tolerate a monument to an obscenity. In the end, an obscenity is all the Confederates were.

 

[ProphetOfTruth]

If some local government were to erect a statue to Osama Bin Laden today, I think we would all be justified in demanding its removal, and I think we would all acknowledge that such a statue is promoting a narrative that is contrary to the fundamental spirit of America. Why is a statue to a Confederate any different?

Because the Confederate in question was most likely white and born in America and bin Laden was neither of those things.*

*I'm halfmostly joking

But your eloquent point is well taken. No one here would support a statue of publicly erected statue of bin Laden; I suspect many wouldn't even support a citizen erecting such a monument on private property. The Confederacy were traitors, enemies of the state, and triggered an unprecedented American body count.

Confederate iconography belong in museums, history books, and if you want - in your house or on your property. But not on public ground in the United States.

 

[Deleted member 1]

@OliverCromwell, why not? The British erected a memorial to the Zulu dead after killing them in the Zulu War. Benedict Arnold arguably deserves a memorial for Lake Champlain despite his later treason. A truly honourable people respects and honours its foes as well as its own.

 

[ProphetOfTruth]

@OliverCromwell, why not? The British erected a memorial to the Zulu dead after killing them in the Zulu War. Benedict Arnold arguably deserves a memorial for Lake Champlain despite his later treason. A truly honourable people respects and honours its foes as well as its own.

Not to invoke Godwin, but where would you like your hypothetical statue of Arnold to be placed? To the left or right of our very tasteful and equally hypothetical Hitler monument?

@OliverCromwell made an eloquent case why it's morally repulsive to publicly commemorate the CSA.

 

[Deleted member 1]

Not to invoke Godwin, but where would you like your hypothetical statue of Arnold to be placed? To the left or right of our very tasteful and equally hypothetical Hitler monument?

@OliverCromwell made an eloquent case why it's morally repulsive to publicly commemorate the CSA.

You may note, Sir, that I named men who fought battles. The Zulus, also, fought battles. Hitler was responsible for the systematic extermination of millions.

I will assent to the idea that statues of Forrest should be taken down; Fort Pillow was a war crime and he should have been shot for it. But I have grown very hesitant to play this game of erasing history, because the consequences are worse than the benefits, even if you can create and quote a perfectly appropriate hour for it, there is a cultural slippery slope around the whole affair.

 

[ProphetOfTruth]

You may note, Sir, that I named men who fought battles. The Zulus, also, fought battles. Hitler was responsible for the systematic extermination of millions.

Hitler's also responsible for "battles" you seem willing to grant a level of moral leeway to by starting the wars those battles comprise.

I'm not sure why fortitude in total service to an indisputably wicked cause is worthy of public celebration on the sovereign soil of a nation that wicked cause tried to destroy.

I will assent to the idea that statues of Forrest should be taken down; Fort Pillow was a war crime and he should have been shot for it. But I have grown very hesitant to play this game of erasing history, because the consequences are worse than the benefits, even if you can create and quote a perfectly appropriate hour for it, there is a cultural slippery slope around the whole affair.

It's not erasing history. No one here is suggesting that Confederate iconography be destroyed; what's being suggested is that they be removed from the public property of the country the Confederacy tried to destroy. That's a colossal distinction.

 

[prinCZess]

In the end, an obscenity is all the Confederates were.

In most ways. But it's more relevant here to this and the preceding words to remember the 'Confederates' weren't Confederates. They were Americans who erected a slightly more fanciful fantasy based on their masturbatory love for owning other people as property than did their northern compatriots--they weren't another country before, during, or after the war (and, in truth, shared cultural elements with broad sections of other states which stayed in the Union--detest for blacks chief among them, as the success of the KKK in the midwest and, hell, nationally, went on to demonstrate).

The Confederacy were traitors, enemies of the state, and triggered an unprecedented American body count.

To carry on the pedantry--no Confederate was ever found guilty of treason*. In point of fact, Jefferson wasn't prosecuted for such precisely because of a worry no conviction would be obtained.
Colloquially...Yes. Traitors and slavers who engaged in an unjustified and detestable attempt at severing themselves from the nation in the name of owning other people...But they were Americans who did it on very American reasoning--including an American defense of and justification for slavery. The unprecedented body count of the Civil War came about because it was a war between Americans that, rightly, counts the dead on both sides.

Presenting the Civil War as some crusade against another country of plantation-owners who enshrined slavery and rejected American values is...simply inaccurate. Distinct as Southern cultural values were, they were very much American--with slavery as the most malicious and detestable example which the country had been birthed with and compromised with (too much, one can argue quite righteously) in the name of maintaining the Union.

*I learned today! Turns out I'm wrong--William Mumford was apparently found guilty of treason. Though not, oddly, for serving in the Confederate army or being a governmental figure or such but for removing a US flag from its pole in New Orleans? Still probably counts as a 'Confederate' but...I dunnow...Weird fricken' time in history.

 

[ProphetOfTruth]

To carry on the pedantry--no Confederate was ever found guilty of treason. In point of fact, Jefferson wasn't prosecuted for such precisely because of a worry no conviction would be obtained.

That the victorious Union was not as punitive as it might have been to the defeated Confederacy owes to political pragmatism, not moral concession. They wanted to mend the nation and reconstruct as quickly and efficiently as possible; rounding up all the CSA leadership and hanging them for treason would've destabilized an already ludicrously precarious domestic situation.

Colloquially...Yes. Traitors and slavers who engaged in an unjustified and detestable attempt at severing themselves from the nation in the name of owning other people...But they were Americans who did it on very American reasoning--including an American defense of and justification for slavery. The unprecedented body count of the Civil War came about because it was a war between Americans that, rightly, counts the dead on both sides.

Presenting the Civil War as some crusade against another country of plantation-owners who enshrined slavery and rejected American values is...simply inaccurate. Distinct as Southern cultural values were, they were very much American--with slavery as the most malicious and detestable example which the country had been birthed with and compromised with (too much, one can argue quite righteously) in the name of maintaining the Union.

Respectfully, none of this offers a credible moral or intellectual defense to the notion of preserving Confederate statues on public property, nor does it change the fact that the soldiers and officers they commemorate were voluntary enemies of the Union.

 

[OliverCromwell]

@OliverCromwell, why not? The British erected a memorial to the Zulu dead after killing them in the Zulu War. Benedict Arnold arguably deserves a memorial for Lake Champlain despite his later treason. A truly honourable people respects and honours its foes as well as its own.

The Zulus weren't in any sense fundamentally contrary to the spirit and culture of the United Kingdom (and in fact the contrary was true--if you suggested that the Zulus ought to erect statues to the British I'm sure they would laugh at you) as the Confederates were to America. Likewise the notion that we should erect a monument for an outright traitor like Arnold strikes me as rather odd--what right does he have to commemoration in the first place? Hundreds of millions of Americans have lived throughout history and most of them have managed to get through life without fundamentally threatening the existence of the United States--why should we build a statue for him and not any of them?

 

[OliverCromwell]

In most ways. But it's more relevant here to this and the preceding words to remember the 'Confederates' weren't Confederates. They were Americans who erected a slightly more fanciful fantasy based on their masturbatory love for owning other people as property than did their northern compatriots--they weren't another country before, during, or after the war (and, in truth, shared cultural elements with broad sections of other states which stayed in the Union--detest for blacks chief among them, as the success of the KKK in the midwest and, hell, nationally, went on to demonstrate).

To carry on the pedantry--no Confederate was ever found guilty of treason*. In point of fact, Jefferson wasn't prosecuted for such precisely because of a worry no conviction would be obtained.
Colloquially...Yes. Traitors and slavers who engaged in an unjustified and detestable attempt at severing themselves from the nation in the name of owning other people...But they were Americans who did it on very American reasoning--including an American defense of and justification for slavery. The unprecedented body count of the Civil War came about because it was a war between Americans that, rightly, counts the dead on both sides.

Presenting the Civil War as some crusade against another country of plantation-owners who enshrined slavery and rejected American values is...simply inaccurate. Distinct as Southern cultural values were, they were very much American--with slavery as the most malicious and detestable example which the country had been birthed with and compromised with (too much, one can argue quite righteously) in the name of maintaining the Union.

*I learned today! Turns out I'm wrong--William Mumford was apparently found guilty of treason. Though not, oddly, for serving in the Confederate army or being a governmental figure or such but for removing a US flag from its pole in New Orleans? Still probably counts as a 'Confederate' but...I dunnow...Weird fricken' time in history.

Well this depends on what you mean by "American", doesn't it?

I suppose if I were to be more accurate I would argue that there wasn't really an "American" culture at all but rather distinct northern and southern ones which were deeply different from each other and united only by a quirk of geography--I say that northern culture is "American" because it the north was always the majority of the nation and because the north didn't betray and take up arms against the United States.

I don't mean this in the sense that the South was racist and the North wasn't, that would obviously be a ridiculous claim--the North was very much racist as well, although the South was obviously more racist and I would argue that the infectious influence of the South certainly frequently exacerbated racism in the North as well. I mean this in the broader sense that Northern and Southern culture were vastly different in... well, almost every respect. The North was founded as a refuge for protestant dissenters, with grand ambitions of building a new, better society on the basis of liberty and communitarianism. The South was a cynical profitmaking venture intrinsically tied to the concept of unfree labor from quite literally the first days of its existence, and an enclave for English gentry royalists to preserve their aristocratic traditions--its values were altogether alien to those of the north. I'm not kidding when I say, for instance, that the South's conception of liberty was slavery--that slavery and subjugation of many was necessary for the aristocratic elite to enjoy "liberty" was an inherent part of southern culture, drawn as it was from its aristocratic royalist roots. The north was industrious, educated, and civilized--the south was none of these things, a backwards society whose wealth was entirely rooted in slavery and whose culture was characterized by a savage, violent nature barely concealed by a thin veneer of chivalry, one which responded murderously to even the mere notion of development (as the reaction to Helperism demonstrates). The north was genuinely faithful and always interested in exploring its relationship with God--the religion of the south was a sham that largely served as a means of social control. In most fundamental respects, these two cultures were far more different than alike, and where the North represented all the virtues of the American grand experiment, the South was one of the most savage, despotic cultures on the face of the earth.

This is, of course, much less true today, but that's only because the South was defeated, and in time it has been developed and civilized and brought in line with American culture. Of course, our failure to properly transform the South after our victory meant that this influence unfortunately went both ways and the South was once again permitted to pollute the rest of America with its influence, but regardless--like I said, the South should celebrate the North, it's only through our blood and toil that they were uplifted from their savagery.

 

[Battlegrinder]

Simply removing them would be far preferable to leaving monuments to the Confederates standing, but even ignoring that there are plenty of proposals out there suggesting that names and monuments commemorating the Confederates be replaced by civil rights leaders or loyalists like George Thomas or any number of other people who would also commemorate America's history with the South without celebrating the treason of the south or antebellum Southerners.

If such proposals exist, I've never seen them, aside from that "no, we never had a street named after stonewall Jackson, no sir, we're a nice modern progressive city who never did anything racist like that!" thing I mentioned before.

Also, I don't agree that tearing down a memorials honoring fallen confederates and replacing it with one honoring unionists or civil rights leaders is right, that just sounds spiteful. If you feel those people deserve memorials of thier own, then make one for them, but there's no reaso to tear another one down first.

Beyond that, you do realize that it is possible to suggest new ideas in a political discussion instead of mindlessly siding with one group or another, correct? If you think that it would be best to replace monuments celebrating the Confederacy with monuments celebrating the righteous glory that was the Union's victory, then it is entirely within your power to show others why that would be a better option.

I don't think that would be best either, and as I've asked several times and not gotten an answer (that I can find, anyway), I don't see how any of the monuments celebrate the CSA.

2.75 million people fought in the Civil War, including about two million Americans.

Er....who were the other .75 million people? I'm sure both sides had the odd foreign volunteer or so, but not to the point they made up nearly 1/3 of all combats.

In choosing to erect statues to a small handful of leaders in the Confederate army, we are implicitly deciding that these people are more important and more worth celebrating than all the other millions of people who fought in the Civil War--why does Atlanta or Montgomery or Charlottesville have monuments to Robert E Lee and not to George Thomas or the 1st Alabama Cavalry?

Why does George Thomas get to be more important and more worthy than the common soldiers, but Lee doesn't, in your view? Also, did you know that both common soldiers and leaders get memorials and statues made in their honor?


As for you second question, their home state does in fact commemorate the 1st Alabama calvary specifically (which is remarkable in its own way, specific units usually aren't singled out like that):The First Alabama Cavalry U.S. Army - Hamilton, AL - American Civil War Monuments and Memorials on Waymarking.com

And while the specific cities you mention don't have a statue of George Thomas, he has at least two, including this massive one in DC, set in a square that's also named after him:

He's not exactly forgotten.

Why not to the union soldiers of the north who fought to impose on the south the civilization and development that has allowed the modern south to escape the poverty and barbarism of the antebellum, for which all southerners should be grateful?

Because, leaving aside that whole problematic "we fought hard to force our values on you, why aren't you grateful?" thing of yours, those union soldiers killed a lot of those people's friends and families to do that, and people might want to commemorate thier fallen loved ones too?

By chosing to honor not them but the Confederate generals, by buidling monuments to Confederate soldiers instead of Union ones, they are inherently saying that the lives of those Confederate soldiers are more worth remembering. And they most certainly are not.

You should have fact checked your rethotic here, because the fact that the south does in fact commemorate union soldiers as well as southern ones undermines your whole point here rather badly.

The Civil War is worth remembering. The righteous struggle that America undertook to free a people in bondage and bring civilization to the savage and backwards South is worth remembering. The generals and the politicians and the soldiers who helped lead our nation to victory against the tumorous growth that was the Confederacy and the planter class are worth remembering. Those who chose to fight for the Confederacy are not. To build monuments to them, to afford these traitors memory within public space, is inherently pushing a narrative--that these people are part of what defined the civil war experience of America, and that they are worth remembering and commemorating. And they are not--their deaths and their experience in war means nothing to America, the country to whom they were nothing more than an enemy. To build them statues is to acknowledge them as anything more than an enemy of the nation that was, and was rightfully, crushed--and that is all they really were, and all they should ever be remembered as.

Holy shit dude. The confederates were still Americans, that was the entire fucking point of the war. This is just....vile, if actual civil war soldiers and civilians, people who lost friends and comrades and loved ones to the war, could look past that and, to paraphrase Grant, see the rebels as thier countrymen again, you have no excuse to go around acting like the experiences of those people, of those states, don't matter to the rest of the country, that only the northern perspective on the war matters. Fucking hell, your logic here legitimizes the southern view of the war more than a million old statues ever could, given that you portraythe CSA as not just rebels, but a genuinely separate country the north forcefully conquered to "liberate" from thier ideas that the north didn't like.

I don't think I've ever seen someone hate the CSA so much they start arguing that not only was it was it actually the war on northern aggression, it was the war of the totally justified to save you from yourselves you uncivilized barbarians northern aggression. Do keep going, I want to see if you somehow make it all the way to "The South will rise again!".

If some local government were to erect a statue to Osama Bin Laden today, I think we would all be justified in demanding its removal, and I think we would all acknowledge that such a statue is promoting a narrative that is contrary to the fundamental spirit of America. Why is a statue to a Confederate any different?

As far as I know, many these were erected by private citizens, not the local government itself. Also, I'd rather like it if we had a big statue showing the SEALS kicking in Osama's door and shooting him in the face. Just because it promotes a narrative doesn't mean it's pushing a bad one, and thus far your case against the south has managed to inadvertently paint them as heroes who resisted conquest and subjection by a foreign power, which I'd say is commendable enough.

If my government were to allow people to erect a statue of feces on public property, I would be well within my rights to demand that it be removed. I find feces to be revolting. Most people find feces to be revolting. That our government should allow such a thing to pollute our vision every time we step into a public space is intolerable.

I don't think you would be within your rights, actually. Given that anti-theists are allowed to put up thier various mean spirited "neener neener neener, you magic sky man isn't real" statues, plaques, art pieces, etc, and such displays are allowed despite being not just unsightly but actively and personally insulting to much of the populace, I doubt your case against this hypothetical poop statue would go well either. You don't have a constitutional right to never see an ugly thing ever.

I will assent to the idea that statues of Forrest should be taken down; Fort Pillow was a war crime and he should have been shot for it.

I'd debate that. Forrest is a controversial figure, yes, but as far as I'm aware he has no personal responsibility for the Fort Pillow massacre, and quit the KKK when he realized what it had become. He's certainly on the absolute edge of acceptably and I'd be leery of setting up anything else to honor him given that, but I don't feel his known, provable actions condemn him to the point that any current memorials should be changed.

 

[Deleted member 1]

@Battlegrinder , I used to support all the Confederate monuments coming down but then I realised that was only because I was a northerner and in fact the erasure of history, no matter the justification, is wrong. So the next part of that post you didn’t quote is basically my walking back my own proposition.

 

[7 Gold Eye Heals the Wise]

I'm of the opinion that the Confederacy was a magnitude less evil than the Soviet Union & PRC, so when I see a bunch of commies screeching about tearing down statues, then I rather we didn't.

 

[Battlegrinder]

@Battlegrinder , I used to support all the Confederate monuments coming down but then I realised that was only because I was a northerner and in fact the erasure of history, no matter the justification, is wrong. So the next part of that post you didn’t quote is basically my walking back my own proposition.

Ah, my bad. I interpreted that as "Forrest goes to far, but otherwise we should be careful about what we remove and why".

 

[Deleted member 1]

Ah, my bad. I interpreted that as "Forrest goes to far, but otherwise we should be careful about what we remove and why".

Forrest does go too far, but someone put it up anyway, and now it’s there. It’s as ironic in the modern world as Ozymandias, and that is why it should remain.

 

[prinCZess]

Respectfully, none of this offers a credible moral or intellectual defense to the notion of preserving Confederate statues on public property, nor does it change the fact that the soldiers and officers they commemorate were voluntary enemies of the Union.

But it does?

The central element, I suppose, is the hypocrisy engaged in by condemning the Confederates--on a case-by-case basis, this is speaking for 'war dead' and even 'leader' statues, not potential screwier ones that may exist to Fort Pillow or something.--That the Confederates were Americans who ascribed to slavery and backwards, oftentimes-malicious and undisputably evil theories of racial supremacy is no more reason to tear down the statues to them than it is an argument to do so for any number of other American figures who held to the same philosophies or ideals--and were just as actively perpetrators or defenders of such when carried out by the United States calling themselves the United States (or variations thereof) rather than a portion of them calling themselves the 'Confederate States'. Before and after the Civil War, Americans at times fought and died in the name of slavery or the promotion of it, conquering or civilizing inferior races/'races' (Natives, Filipinos, Hispanics/mestizos in Cuba and S. America), at times actively carrying out campaigns of ethnic cleansing, mass internment or relocation against opponents when they resisted. Hell, the CA school district tearing down murals to Washington because it shows him owning slaves and ordering the murder of Natives is demonstrative here as the 'logical' end-point of this reasoning--much as I object, it's consistent in its seeking-out to properly condemn and refuse to 'glorify' previous individuals abuses (even if seeming to ignore those abuses in the process--but that's another thread ).

The Confederates are special for enshrining slavery in their Constitution and having it as their sole reason for existence...But they're not THAT special in comparison to the United States to call for mass elimination of iconography and memorialization that the United States was fully on-board with in previous years when all it meant was ignoring objections from or how much the actions cast aside the freedmen who southerners went right back to discriminating against.

Americans can (or, at least, should be able to) acknowledge the bad with the good. Just as the Union (eventually) putting an end to slavery was a good, engaging in the practice and treating it sympathetically for almost a century of existence was a bad--and one not solely the fault of a foreign or southern-only 'Confederate' aberration. Congress and the American people (and the Presidents, and SCOTUS) had many opportunities to confront the crisis and try to settle things in a less destructive (English model of compensating slave-holder--repulsive as its--worked) or a more righteous (pushing back against widespread acceptance and attempted spread of slave-holding ideals), and because of either outright sympathy with the slave-states goals and motivations, a lack of character or leadership, or fear over the consequences, instead compromised with and accepted the continuation or even promotion of the system in America in the name of maintaining the union and keeping a balance of power in the federal government (a balance the south disproportionately benefited from with things like the Fugitive Slave Act). Despite valiant efforts by abolition societies and religious groups and the like, only when presented with the collapse of political parties that allowed Republicans to rise and the subsequent possibility of part of America leaving did any impetus towards actually freeing the slaves in slave-states get a firm grip in the US (though even then limiting itself to freeing the slaves in rebelling states--because once again the maintanance of the Union took priority over carrying-through on its goals).

Like...I dunnow how else to put it. Holding a different standard for 'Confederate' monuments versus American ones fundamentally contradicts an (and quite arguably THE) entire central element of the war (that the Confederates were Americans) and then willfully shoves a log into one's own eye that favors 'American' monuments to reprehensible people and shit (Jackson, FDR, Indian removal, the occupation of the Philippines, the overthrow of Hawaii and various banana-republic shenaniganery) solely because the Confederates escalated to treason while others carried such shit out under the blessing and guidance of the United States. Besides which, many of the statues to Confederates were erected in the North or with northerners endorsement--and that's a historical failing they should highlight, because its emblematic of the way the US once again after the Civil War turned its back on freedmen and others in the South because living up to lofty goals was hard--and people should be reminded of that?

But, then, I've a weird bugaboo about memorials and historical philosophy on this topic in general, so maybe I'm all wet...And, frankly, I am sympathetic to the folks who want to remove the memorials--especially when its local groups objecting to the stuff and impeded by preservation laws or the like made in state capitals that are far away and less representative of the community--because they ARE discomforting reminders of past injustices the nation has carried out. It's just...that discomfort and awkwardness itself is basically the reason they should stay up, in my opinion?

Okay--rant over. Bitchiness hopefully minimal in the above, but some might've snuck through. Apologies if so, if not...Well, then I'm sure I shall bitch you or someone else out another time!

 

[OliverCromwell]

If such proposals exist, I've never seen them, aside from that "no, we never had a street named after stonewall Jackson, no sir, we're a nice modern progressive city who never did anything racist like that!" thing I mentioned before.

Also, I don't agree that tearing down a memorials honoring fallen confederates and replacing it with one honoring unionists or civil rights leaders is right, that just sounds spiteful. If you feel those people deserve memorials of thier own, then make one for them, but there's no reaso to tear another one down first.

Of course it's spiteful--that's rather the point, isn't it? Why should the victor be expected to afford the defeated pride and dignity? Why should the remnants of the old South which have so firmly rejected so many of our attempts to civilize and develop them--attempts which have allowed the rest of the South, the new urban centers like Atlanta and what not, to enrich themselves greatly and reach an economic and cultural standing comparable to the rest of the country--be afforded anything other than spite?

I don't think that would be best either, and as I've asked several times and not gotten an answer (that I can find, anyway), I don't see how any of the monuments celebrate the CSA.

I would think that my post answered this pretty well already--they celebrate the CSA simply because they stand. By standing, they tell future generations that there were Confederates worth remembering, Confederates whose faces and names and legacies ought to be preserved by future generations. That, in of itself, is a celebration.

Er....who were the other .75 million people? I'm sure both sides had the odd foreign volunteer or so, but not to the point they made up nearly 1/3 of all combats.

The Confederates, of course--a war has to have two sides, obviously.

Why does George Thomas get to be more important and more worthy than the common soldiers, but Lee doesn't, in your view? Also, did you know that both common soldiers and leaders get memorials and statues made in their honor?

George Thomas deserves statues for his exceptional valor and generalship, and also for his moral courage in resisting the temptation of treason that so many of his peers fell to. Union soldiers also deserve statues, likewise for their valor and sacrifice. Lee and the Confederate soldiers on the other had, do not deserve statues--they were traitors, enemies, of the United States, and savage barbarians of a repulsive, verminous culture whose existence in of itself defiled the face of the world and of the United States, and should only ever be remembered as such.

As for you second question, their home state does in fact commemorate the 1st Alabama calvary specifically (which is remarkable in its own way, specific units usually aren't singled out like that):The First Alabama Cavalry U.S. Army - Hamilton, AL - American Civil War Monuments and Memorials on Waymarking.com

And while the specific cities you mention don't have a statue of George Thomas, he has at least two, including this massive one in DC, set in a square that's also named after him:

He's not exactly forgotten.

That's good! As I've said before, it is heartening to see that so much of the modern South is not like the old one that we fought, and that our efforts to civilize and develop the region have indeed born some fruit, as uneven and incomplete and feckless as it was, to the point where many of the people of the South are so happy to celebrate their liberators!

Because, leaving aside that whole problematic "we fought hard to force our values on you, why aren't you grateful?" thing of yours, those union soldiers killed a lot of those people's friends and families to do that, and people might want to commemorate thier fallen loved ones too?

Why does anyone have a right to commemorate the ancient loved ones of their ancestors of those ancestors were by their very nature and existence as well as their treasonous action antiethical to the spirit of the United States? If Osama bin Laden's grandchildren lived in the US and wished to erect a shrine to him in public space, should we allow them to?

As far as I know, many these were erected by private citizens, not the local government itself. Also, I'd rather like it if we had a big statue showing the SEALS kicking in Osama's door and shooting him in the face. Just because it promotes a narrative doesn't mean it's pushing a bad one, and thus far your case against the south has managed to inadvertently paint them as heroes who resisted conquest and subjection by a foreign power, which I'd say is commendable enough.

You should have fact checked your rethotic here, because the fact that the south does in fact commemorate union soldiers as well as southern ones undermines your whole point here rather badly.

I don't see why it would? Insofar as the South commemorates Union soldiers, that is good. Insofar as it commemorates Confederate soldiers, that is bad. I support the continued commemoration of Union soldiers and oppose the commemoration of Confederate ones. More monuments to Union soldiers should be erected and monuments to Confederate soldiers should be torn down. It really is that simple.

If people put up statues of Osama bin Laden, is it OK for them to do so because they also put up statues to the SEAL team that killed him somewhere else a few miles away?

Holy shit dude. The confederates were still Americans, that was the entire fucking point of the war. This is just....vile, if actual civil war soldiers and civilians, people who lost friends and comrades and loved ones to the war, could look past that and, to paraphrase Grant, see the rebels as thier countrymen again, you have no excuse to go around acting like the experiences of those people, of those states, don't matter to the rest of the country, that only the northern perspective on the war matters. Fucking hell, your logic here legitimizes the southern view of the war more than a million old statues ever could, given that you portraythe CSA as not just rebels, but a genuinely separate country the north forcefully conquered to "liberate" from thier ideas that the north didn't like.

I don't think I've ever seen someone hate the CSA so much they start arguing that not only was it was it actually the war on northern aggression, it was the war of the totally justified to save you from yourselves you uncivilized barbarians northern aggression. Do keep going, I want to see if you somehow make it all the way to "The South will rise again!".

Have you ever read any examinations of the culture of the original colonies? I particularily enjoyed Fisher's Albion's Seed in this respect--it's analysis of the permanent cultural effect of the original colonies is incredibly deficient pop history that ignores all the centuries of changes and the influence of immigration that came from the centuries since the Colonial period, but to the extent that it's an examination of the original culture of the colonists I found it to be both very accurate and incredibly illuminating. Given that the South was also generally less affected by immigration or changes in culture brought about by societal dialogue given its distinct lack of either of those things, I'm also fairly confident that it's depiction of the original Virginian/planter and Borderer cultures remained accurate into the Civil War in a way that doesn't similarly apply to the North.

One of the most prominent things that you can take away from Albion's Seed is the sheer extent to which Southern planter culture was exceptionally, irredeemably repulsive. This was a malicious, sadistic, violent culture of cruel, despotic aristocratic cast-offs, who brought to America an even more deeply exaggerated version of the Anglo-Norman aristocracy that had already shackled and tortured the people of England for so long. They were incestuous and condescending ("condescension" is a word that literally originates from the way Virginians would treat people they perceived as their lessers), they stubbornly resisted industry or urbanization or anything that would move the South beyond a backwards slave-agrarian plantation economy to the point of open violence (witness the Southern response to Helperism), they were essentially godless under a thin veneer or Anglicanism, and above all they were a bloodthirsty, violent, savage people kept underneath a thin veneer of "chivalry", reveling in nothing more than bloodsport and cruelty and doing murder and violence and subjugation to their perceived lessers and anyone who they felt slighted them (this is a tendancy that remains true even today). They were without a doubt clear geneological descendants of the Normans who once raided and looted and raped their way through all of Europe (and the planters were certainly inordinately fond of rape as well--their entire maritial culture was characterized by cruelty to women, in a time when the Puritans established strict provisions against wife-beats and the Quakers went even further).

These were a people who knew nothing about diligent work or learning, and were in fact hostile to both--they believed that as aristocrats they had the active right to live in luxury while doing no labor for themselves, which is why they imported scores of first indentured servants and then slaves to the South to brutalize and make work for them, and they rejected the very concept of learning on many occasions, with Governor Berkeley famously declaring “I thank God, we have not free schools nor printing; and I hope we shall not have these hundred years. For learning has brought disobedience, and heresy and sects into the world; and printing has divulged them and libels against the government. God keep us from both!”. They knew only conquest and subjugation and cruelty, as their ancestors had likewise done to England for so many centuries. I'm not the one claiming this either--the planters themselves from the period actively embraced this Norman heritage with all its repulsive nature.

Reading about the culture of the antebellum planters really reveals the sheer extent to which there was nothing positive about their culture--the romanticism of them is almost entirely a postwar invention. They were not, as is sometimes now claimed, more religious than their northern counterparts--in fact, far to the contrary, they were far more faithless, and their religion was used more as a means of social control than an object of genuine faith as the churches of the North were for its own inhabitants. Nor where they particularly polite or honorable in truth--southern "chivalry" was a thin veneer masking the appallingly violent nature of their people, existing because in the world of the south one wrong misstep could have you challenged to a duel or outright murdered, and thus careful politeness was necessary to save maintain one's life. Their "conservatism" was a sham and they were happy to embrace all sorts of moral degradations just as their Cavalier counterparts across the Atlantic were, as their utter faithlessness might suggest. They had all the cruelty and arrogance of aristocracy without any of the noblesse oblige, and all the vulgarity and sentimentalism of democracy without any of the liberty or equality. They were, in every sense, a blight upon the world, a black smear whose very existence polluted the spirit of this country.

Of course, the aristocratic planters didn't form the whole of the population of the old South either, and the people they lorded over were the Scots-Irish borderers who were little better (and of course the African-American slaves who suffered greatly under the planters' depredations but who are obviously also not very relevant to the character of the culture of the free antebellum South). These were a violent, clannish, barbarous people, characterized by hostility to learning and civilization. Unlike the planters this is at least not their own moral fault--the failings of their culture are largely a result of the deeply unpleasant environment of the English-Scottish border from which they originated--and thus many of them were eventually able to integrate into American culture under the civilizing hands of the North, but it's also not wrong to say that the original culture of the antebellum South poor whites was also deeply flawed and savage, appearing sympathetic only in comparison to the outright malign culture of their planter overlords.

Compare this to the north, where in the early days of this country religious groups like the Puritans and the Quakers built societies that were in their own ways almost the closest you could get to paradise in the 17th century. The North, which achieved an astronomical level of literacy unseen in the rest of the world for centuries early in its history, the North, which built a society of liberty and equality and harmony and tranquility alike in a time when the South had none of these things, the North whose culture of learning and industriousness and commerce built the perhaps the greatest and most prosperous country in the the world by the time of the civil war.

Part of being a conservative means being willing to acknowledge which cultures are greater and which cultures are lesser, and to wish to improve one's own culture and people in accordance with other positive qualities. Should the British, for instance, be ashamed that they worked to better civilize my mother's Hongkongese ancestors? No, of course not--and the Hongkongese were already Chinese, in many ways civilized and learned and developed in their own right, far superior in almost every respect to the repulsive culture of the antebellum South. If that is no shame, then by god, why would the heroic deed that my fathers' ancestors did in the South to civilize the people there and rid the country, however briefly it was, of the cancerous influence of the planters ever be?

I don't think you would be within your rights, actually. Given that anti-theists are allowed to put up thier various mean spirited "neener neener neener, you magic sky man isn't real" statues, plaques, art pieces, etc, and such displays are allowed despite being not just unsightly but actively and personally insulting to much of the populace, I doubt your case against this hypothetical poop statue would go well either. You don't have a constitutional right to never see an ugly thing ever.

I don't have a constitutional right to not see ugly things certainly, but as a citizen of the country I certainly do have a right to have a say in what statues and monuments my government chooses to put up in public space. Public space is maintained by public money--my own tax dollars. I, and all the other citizens of the country, have every right to not want to see an obscenity that offends our sensibilities put up there.

 

[Deleted member 1]

@OliverCromwell , you seem to subscribe to the belief that the rapacity of the victor in no way perpetuates conflict. Let me assure you that the only reason the United States exists as a single united, prosperous country today is because we lifted the south up as our blood kin and conciliated them. Do you think if we had lined the road from Washington D.C. to Richmond with the crucified bodies of Confederate soldiers (very Roman, don't you agree?) that we could have had the modern American political system in the slightest measure?

 

[OliverCromwell]

@OliverCromwell , you seem to subscribe to the belief that the rapacity of the victor in no way perpetuates conflict. Let me assure you that the only reason the United States exists as a single united, prosperous country today is because we lifted the south up as our blood kin and conciliated them. Do you think if we had lined the road from Washington D.C. to Richmond with the crucified bodies of Confederate soldiers (very Roman, don't you agree?) that we could have had the modern American political system in the slightest measure?

No, of course not—had we disposed of the Planters after the war we would have had a far superior system that would no longer suffer from the pollution that was the planter class’ influence, which in turn would have meant that far fewer people in the rest of the country would have been tempted by left-wing political thought in largely part due to aversion to the planters’ repulsive nature. Tell me, were there no planters, do you really believe that so many African-Americans would have been drawn to the left wing, attracted as they were (not unjustifiably) by the fact that the socialists would stand up for them against the planter elites while the rest of us Americans so abandoned them in the name of “national reconciliation”? Would so many upper middle class Americans turn to the liberals out of disgust the backwards savagery of the planter class’ depredations? That America has chosen to embrace the planters back with open arms is the root of so many of our present political ills, and it has lost so many moral, principled people to the arms of the left as they turn in disgust at our alliance with this group that is the scum of the earth. Had we enacted retribution on the south’s elites and seized the property of the planters to hand to their slaves, we would have had none of these troubles.