Comrade Clod
Gay Space Communist
...you fail at reading comprehension.
Alternatively I gave reasons for why what you were disputing was correct.
...you fail at reading comprehension.
Greatly depends on the Confederates and their post Civil War actions. As noted in the thread, many Confederates went on to be reunificationists and contributed to society in ways that had nothing to do with which side they were on in the War. Robert E. Lee and what he did with Washington College (now Washington and Lee University) is a prime example here, the college renamed itself and celebrates Lee not because of his actions in the Civil War, but because of how much he contributed to building up and helping that school (as well, as, let's be honest, branding... putting those two names together in Virginia has been a huge selling point up until VERY recently).actual freaking stain class honouring some confederates
No; all you did was prove his point.Alternatively I gave reasons for why what you were disputing was correct.
I'd imagine he's confusing slaves fighting. With the "20 slave"(then 10) laws. Which allowed a soldier to go home if his family owned 20 (later 10)slaves.What's this about sending a slave to fight in his place? The Confederacy didn't approve slaves actively joining the Army until the beginning of 1865, after tumultuous debate in their Congress, and only a year after Patrick Cleburne was nearly censured for proposing the idea in the army.
Hell, in 1861 free blacks in New Orleans raised a regiment to fight for their state and the Louisiana legislature literally passed a law to make them disband. (Not surprisingly, the unit was re-organized after New Orleans fell to Union forces and wound up fighting for the Union).
There are stories and reports of slaves shooting, but those are, IIRC, mostly personal assistant slaves who picked up their owners' guns to open fire for one reason or another.
I like the idea of adding plaques that give more historical context and looking for onesided monuments and adding the other side.
I also agree with the "those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it" argument for keeping the monuments.
I'm of two minds on the issue. In an apolitical world I'd be in favor of burying the Lost Cause monuments of every era since the Confederacy... lost and deserved to lose... but when it's the fucking Cultural Revolution Brigade going after 'easy targets' when you know for a fact that the very next day they're going to be calling for the tearing down of the Jefferson Memorial and defacing every positive depiction of the United States they can get their hands on 'because slavery' (which is itself an excuse) well... Lee, Davis, Jackson, Forrest and rest of the Lost cause giants are all long dead as are many if not most of the Jim Crow 'Segregation Forever!' politicians... but antifa and the like? They are right there calling everyone who doesn't support their campaign of desecration Nazis/fascists even though of course the Lost Cause / KKK and related movements and groups are all decades older than that.
There's the implicit slippery slope, where good intentions lead pave the road to hell...I appreciate your wariness of the slippery slope. Despite what many may tell you, it's a perfectly valid concern.
That said, all political policies exist on a spectrum. Technically speaking, one could make the argument that introducing any policy proposal on any item of consideration "could lead" to disastrous outcomes by opening the door to more extreme proposals down the road.
So while it is true that removing or destroying statues of Jefferson Davis might provide legal precedent to bad faith actors or fringe elements who wanna tear do the same to, say, George Washington, I think the fact that the CSA was an illegal secessionist movement that - as you say, lost and deserved to lose - is more than sufficient reason to get them the fuck off public/government property.
Whatever cultural fallout may come from that will have to be carefully scrutinized and managed.
There's the implicit slippery slope, where good intentions lead pave the road to hell...
But there's also the explicit slippery slope of bad faith actors using a sentiment to enact their own politics, in this case desecrating the actions of the United States in whole throughout its history just as Stalin desecrated Russia's culture and history, just as Mao's Cultural Revolution desecrated as much of China's traditional culture it could reach, and heck it's not even an exclusively leftist thing as seen with the Taliban and ISIL desecrating Afghanistan and Syria, respectively.
And for the Confederate Monument removers, the explicit slope is as present with them as it is with the Stalinists / Maoists / Taliban / ISIL, they barely started on removing Confederate monuments before switching to the Founding Fathers.
is there a majority that wants to get rid of the Confederate stuff though? or just a very loud minority?Especially when there exists a majority of people who can distinguish between the likes of George Washington and Jefferson Davis.
There's the implicit slippery slope, where good intentions lead pave the road to hell...
But there's also the explicit slippery slope of bad faith actors using a sentiment to enact their own politics, in this case desecrating the actions of the United States in whole throughout its history just as Stalin desecrated Russia's culture and history, just as Mao's Cultural Revolution desecrated as much of China's traditional culture it could reach, and heck it's not even an exclusively leftist thing as seen with the Taliban and ISIL desecrating Afghanistan and Syria, respectively.
And for the Confederate Monument removers, the explicit slope is as present with them as it is with the Stalinists / Maoists / Taliban / ISIL, they barely started on removing Confederate monuments before switching to the Founding Fathers.
is there a majority that wants to get rid of the Confederate stuff though?
or just a very loud minority?
for that matter, is there a majority that can distinguish anymore? there have been some disturbing results from studies looking into how many Americans can do things like, say, name the rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights.
Why do people imagine that the only alternative to allowing Confederate monuments to continue to stand is to destroy and forget history entirely?
The problem with Confederate monuments is not that they preserve history but that they preserve a narrative of history created by a repulsive population hostile to the fundamental spirit if the United States
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.
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.