Confederate Monuments

[Phoebe]

Can anyone explain to me why these are a contentious issue in 2017? I thought they were making progress with the flags. People can still fly them all day; they're not outlawed! Maybe we don't need anti-American symbols promoted by the government, that's all. I get why racists and other assorted confused Southerners are pro-flag and pro-Confederate monument, because their identities are somehow tied in there in a bad way. But why is anyone else concerned? Why are Republicans in, say, Union States concerned if Confederate monuments are removed? Because I look inside and find only one reason: being a racist asshole. Not just one or the other, but both. How is that wrong? I am asking honestly; have I missed something?

[WillyGilligan]

Believe it or not, there are non-racist ideas behind the confederate worship. My brother has a tattoo of the battle flag that he's had for over 20 years (more recently he added an American Flag). He is not a racist, though he would dispute the need for things like affirmative action. He equates the Confederacy with general rebelliousness and "liberty". The Confederate issue is not always about hatred (but almost always belligerent).

This is partly the result of trying to claim that the Civil War wasn't about slavery, but that's the basic thrust. Conservatives are tapping into the idea that the South just wanted to be left to run their own affairs...just like your basic conservative.

Edit: Forgot to say that I'm leary of the movement to remove these monuments. History happened. Especially the ugly parts. Their removal fixes nothing and as we are seeing, is just further entrenching the Right on this issue. Take someone with a persecution complex, start actually attacking them, and I don't see any good coming from it.

[Cazmonster]

Here's my two cents.

To my knowledge, there are no monuments of Nazi-era German generals. No matter how gallantly they fought or what victories they won. There are no monuments because that gallantry, those victories meant the deaths of millions of civilians.

Confederate Generals fought to preserve their state's rights to treat people as property. I do not see a reason to commemorate that.

[Tahlvin]

I try to fight against the urge to judge historical figures by modern day standards and morals. I've seen some comments recently that these Confederate generals were traitors. Sure, based on today's standards and view of national vs. state citizenship, they were traitors. But it's the Civil War that shaped that view of the nation being more important than the state. Prior to that, it wasn't uncommon to be viewed first as a citizen of a particular state rather than the nation as a whole. So to call General Lee a traitor because he chose his loyalty to the State of Virginia over his loyalty to the United States is disingenuous. And making blanket comparisons to Nazi Germany isn't particularly helpful. While slavery was abhorrent, and certainly included the suppression of rights of a whole race of people, there's a vast difference between that and the systematic genocide that the Nazis inflicted on the Jews, Roma, Eastern Europeans, and more.

And I'm with WG in large part, in that I think a general trend of removing monuments to historical figures who don't stand up to all of our modern morals is trying to sweep away an inconvenient part of history. Most people are a mix of good and bad. We should be able to celebrate the good done by the people, and recognize the bad, without completely eliminating the person entirely from the public discourse. And having been a northern boy that spent a bit of time with extended family that lived in Charleston, SC, in the 80's, I can agree with WG that a large part is the claim that the Civil War wasn't about slavery, and attempts to gloss over those uglier parts of antebellum life.

Having said that, the Confederate flag and Confederate generals certain DO represent something completely different to African-American citizens than they represent to white Southern citizens. So removing public funds from their support, and removing them from government lands (except where appropriate, such as Civil War battle fields), is appropriate in my opinion. If private organizations wish to display the on private lands, with appropriate historical context and recognition of the different meanings to different groups of citizens, that's within their rights as well.

[Tahlvin]

Was a bit rushed on the last post. Let me say that some folks would say slavery was a type of genocide. I wouldn't necessarily disagree, but the point was not the elimination of the people including their lives; the point was to use those lives. The Nazi form of genocide involved killing whole categories of people.

[poorpete]

If you have not listened, check out New Orleans' mayor Mitch Landrieu's speech on the matter. Key takeaway: Removing them isn't denying history, these statues were added to tell a lie about our history and to send a message of white superiority.

[Bluedevyl]

My sister lives in New Orleans, and very recently their Mayor, along with the city council, led a campaign to remove all of the confederate landmarks from within city property. The text of his speech was very interesting. I've included it below. I'd be very interested in knowing what you all thought of it.



EDIT: Damnit, Pete!

[Mike]

The idea that we are trying to erase or sweep away part of history is a bit disingenuous though, isn't it? I thought these were being moved to museums and such and not destroyed. So really, this is communities choosing what they want prominently displayed in their public spaces to represent their community to the world. This is not a rewriting of history, but a change of emphasis.

[salvation122]

[bralbovsky]

I just reread Grant's memoir, where he catalogues the march to secession. Hes very insightful and pretty balanced as most of this happened when he was between gigs and living as a civilian. He observed very similar opinion profiles to today's. Lincoln received no votes, zero, in a number of states. It was all about a near religious belief that slavery was a birthright. I submit Zero votes of sympathy for patsies who laid down their lives for the manipulative aristocracy that convinced them their lives were somehow less shitty because slaves had it worse. (And without slaves, well you're just shit)

The whole pretense burns me. Speakers arguing in the same paragraph that Northerners were too cowardly to fight so they'll be easy to kill and defeat, yet they're on their way right now to invade and deprive us of our heritage. Mendacity. Self serving, cotton gin defending, "I don't have privilege" pretending, flat out liars.

There's some idea that every state should have the right to go its own way. Bullocks. Maybe in the original 13, where they fought individually and faced individual peril and penalty, and held together during the conflict as much out of necessity as anything else, ok, maybe then. But we paid for the Louisiana Purchase with collective funds. We bought/stole Texas with collective blood (not to mention we've been shoveling cash into it for decades since). The whole idea of the Confederacy and its misty nostalgia is a sick, psychotic deception.Toleration of wrong, dead wrong, entirely wrong conclusions leads only to wrong policy, wrong decisions, wrong actions. Sorry, Ima stop here. It's a thing of mine.

Should there maybe be a statue of Lee at Appomattox? Sure. We can even make him look wise, but before that, he was just as wrong as anybody else, and with his intellect, he should have known better..

[Tahlvin]

[Zen]

If you've ever read any Harry Turtledove alternate history, he is extremely good at putting you in the mindset of the time period, even if the events he's depicting are different from what actually occurred. I highly suggest his work! It helps in understanding our own history as well as being entertaining in its own right.

[WillyGilligan]

I think that Lincoln's handling of the post war period had some of the same issues as Ford pardoning Nixon. You can do the thing that feels good, and is perhaps even Just, but how do you get back to normal after the War is decided?

For another example, look at what we did with the Ba'ath party after invading Iraq.

[Phoebe]

This has been an interesting discussion so far, so glad I asked. My greatest puzzlement concerns the former-Union states conservatives who now identify so much with their white Confederate brethren that they at least pay lip service to the outrages of statue removal and stuff. I get that racism is alive and well everywhere, but support for idealizing leaders of the Confederacy? That I didn't expect.

I know I always say this but I can't help saying it again: racism is so huge here, and I still don't understand fellow white people who don't see it because I feel like I've been bathed in it my whole life. I would have thought events of the past year - not to mention the Obama Presidency (sorry, the Kenyan Muslin O'Bummer fake presidency) were enough to convince people I wasn't making this stuff up. I remember many past discussions about it. Seems someone is in a bitter, toldja so mood, eh?

[bralbovsky]

Puerile selfishness.
Totally understand imprinting post modern ethics on industrial revolution society. Not buying it. Europe was over it by then; the supposedly cultured (read admiring pseudo European fashion) south took no hints. Two states held basically tied referenda to do away with it, but when it became a profit making engine, that was it.

Totally pre-meditated, calculated too. Buchanan's secretary of war (pro-slavery) sent garrisons to vulnerable positions in order to make them easier to capture, and wholesale reallocated materiel, cannons, ammo, horses to units in the south in order to prepare for the war they didn't just expect, but wanted. They weren't willing to have any mediated or financially appropriate solution. They were happy to enforce federal mandates when they were in charge (we can come get escaped slaves because you're required to hold them), until it wasn't in their control any more. They wanted all the marbles. They planned to break the democracy to get them.

Lincoln wrote that he felt Africans would never be the equals of whites, even after meeting Douglass. But he didn't doubt their humanity. That was a bill of goods sold by an elite who was draining the middle and lower classes at the same time it was enlisting them to die in the fight for. Prison psychology: as long as I'm not the lowest rung, I'm somebody. If it hadn't been the same trick that was played pre-revolution to divide the lower classes against each other, I might have patience with it (fool me once...).

And after....Johnson allowed the pillaging of the south (financed and ordered by some of the same guys who should have been hanged), and then allowed it to be blamed on folks who never profited from it.

This would probably irk me less if we weren't reliving it today. Same scam. Same players. Fool me twice or five times or whatever.

[Phoebe]

[akiva]

[salvation122]

[salvation122]