First They Came for the Confederate Statues, Then they came for the...

[Burhead]

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/ma.../bs-md-key-statue-painted-20170913-story.html

This is what everyone was worried about when they started taking them down. It is s slippery slope that will continue until history is sanitized, in the article they mentioned a monument to Columbus was defaced a few weeks earlier. So my question is where is the line drawn? I've said before it won't be long before they start coming after the Founding Fathers.

 

[n_huffhines]

Not sure an act of vandalism is an indication that the anthem is toast.

 

[Burhead]

Not sure an act of vandalism is an indication that the anthem is toast.

Perhaps, but the bigger issue is that you can't look at the past and judge based on 2017 morals and thinking. Nor should we be cleansing history to appease the fragile minds of the modern generation.

 

[volinbham]

I'm sure their parents are super proud

 

[Boston Vol]

I figured it wouldn't be long before they went after UVA. Yesterday BLM protesters put a shroud over the Thomas Jefferson statue on campus and issued a list of demands. Here's a write up from the Daily Progress in Charlottesville:

The list calls for a balance of UVa’s “historical landscape,” and dubs the Jefferson statue “an emblem of white supremacy” that should be “re-contextualized with a plaque to include that history.”

It further demands that the university increase the enrollment of African American undergraduate students, increase the proportion of African American faculty and require all students to undergo some form of education on “white supremacy, colonization and slavery as they directly relate to Thomas Jefferson, the university and the city of Charlottesville.”

“The same moderates who condemn the hate that came to Charlottesville one month ago fetishize the legacy of Jefferson, and imagine him as our collective moral compass,” the primary speaker said. “We cannot create a hierarchy within white supremacy.

“We can and must condemn the violence of one month ago and simultaneously recognize Jefferson as a rapist, racist, and slave owner,” she continued. “The visibility of physical violence from white supremacists should not take our attention away from condemning and disrupting more ‘respectable’ racists that continue to control the structures that perpetuate institutional racism.”

 

[lawgator1]

Bunch of kids riling up trouble. We've seen this movie a thousand times. Get over yourself. The fake hysteria from the right that this is some real threat to rewrite history is just terri-stupid.

 

[volinbham]

BLM is to Democrats what Trump is to Republicans.

Both step all over the message and drive people away with their extreme/absurd views and actions.

 

[lawgator1]

BLM is to Democrats what Trump is to Republicans.

Both step all over the message and drive people away with their extreme/absurd views and actions.

Correct.

I for one do think we have a long way to go on race relations. And the fundamental thesis of BLM does not bother me, i.e. highlight it when there is a concern about law enforcement overstepping its bounds where race is an issue.

But of course the extremes make me wince, when protest turns to rioting and injurious behavior.

 

[NashVol11]

There is no slippery slope. It's ridiculous that people think our entire country will collapse if we take Confederate soldiers off of pedestals in public places.

 

[allvol123]

What did people think was going to happen when ignorant thugs start this. You think any of them are educated enough to know what they are destroying?

 

[volinbham]

There is no slippery slope. It's ridiculous that people think our entire country will collapse if we take Confederate soldiers off of pedestals in public places.

straw man - show me one place where people made such a claim.

This example along with the Colombus and many others do show it's a slippery slope from Confederate monuments to others that someone finds offensive. That has been established.

The implications for the country are unknown but that doesn't mean those predicting the spread were incorrect in that prediction.

 

[Burhead]

There is no slippery slope. It's ridiculous that people think our entire country will collapse if we take Confederate soldiers off of pedestals in public places.

Who is taking about collapse? The most reasonable among us are worried about the rewriting of American history: right or wrong. I think Condoleezza Rice put it best:

"“If you forget your history, you’re likely to repeat it,” Rice said.

When you start wiping out your history, sanitizing your history to make you feel better, it’s a bad thing,” Rice said.

“I’m a firm believer in ‘keep your history before you.’ And so I don’t actually want to rename things that were named for slave owners,” Rice said during an interview on Fox and Friends earlier this month. “I want us to have to look at the names and recognize what they did, and be able to tell our kids what they did and for them to have a sense of their own history.”

 

[NashVol11]

It is s slippery slope that will continue until history is sanitized,

"Sanitizing history" is pretending the Confederacy was a glorious movement worthy of statues, conveniently created right around the same time as the KKK and Jim Crow

 

[NashVol11]

Who is taking about collapse? The most reasonable among us are worried about the rewriting of American history: right or wrong. I think Condoleezza Rice put it best:

If you think we need giant statues to remember something, it's pretty hard to call yourself "the most reasonable."

If I said we needed a statue of Osama bin Laden in order to remember 9/11, how do you think that would go over?

 

[NashVol11]

straw man - show me one place where people made such a claim.

This example along with the Colombus and many others do show it's a slippery slope from Confederate monuments to others that someone finds offensive. That has been established.

The implications for the country are unknown but that doesn't mean those predicting the spread were incorrect in that prediction.

"Oh noes, maybe this will make people stop overrating Columbus and start noticing his actual flaws! It's a slippery slope where people become more knowledgeable about history! How scary!"

 

[Burhead]

If you think we need giant statues to remember something, it's pretty hard to call yourself "the most reasonable."

If I said we needed a statue of Osama bin Laden in order to remember 9/11, how do you think that would go over?

So using the same logic, that we don't need giant memorials to remember, should tear down Auschwitz-Birkenau because of what the Nazis did instead of using it as a teaching tool and a warning to future generations?

 

[NashVol11]

So using the same logic, that we don't need giant memorials to remember, should tear down Auschwitz-Birkenau because of what the Nazis did instead of using it as a teaching tool and a warning to future generations?

A better comparison would be Nazi memorials, which they certainly did take down, so yes. "Teaching tool" implies condemnation; putting it on a pedestal in a public park is the exact opposite.

 

[LouderVol]

If you think we need giant statues to remember something, it's pretty hard to call yourself "the most reasonable."

If I said we needed a statue of Osama bin Laden in order to remember 9/11, how do you think that would go over?

We do have a big freaking monument to 9/11.

The issue is you have American's who identify with those statues. Not from any slave holding stand point. 95% of southerners never owned slaves. Its a symbol of their history, they can look at it and say that is the man your great great whatever served with. Or if they were a good general from their state they can look and say "this was a good general from our state". I would say for the same 95% of southerners these statues have nothing to do with the general personally or slaves.

also feeling free to tear down old monuments opens up some real interesting doors to any historic building/monument/marking/whatever that is otherwise protected. The north had slaves too, plenty of things on the chopping block outside of the south if we want to start pointing fingers.

 

[volinbham]

"Oh noes, maybe this will make people stop overrating Columbus and start noticing his actual flaws! It's a slippery slope where people become more knowledgeable about history! How scary!"

You continue to be king of the straw men.

Can you point to a statue of anyone where we cannot find flaws in their background?

What statues should we keep?

 

[DinkinFlicka]

You continue to be king of the straw men.

Can you point to a statue of anyone where we cannot find flaws in their background?

What statues should we keep?

Rocky Balboa.

 

[Obsessed]

Rocky Balboa.

You know there's a movie out/coming out about the real Rocky?

 

[NashVol11]

You continue to be king of the straw men.

Can you point to a statue of anyone where we cannot find flaws in their background?

What statues should we keep?

Your edit is funny, because you're making the biggest strawman argument ever.

"Everyone has flaws." Well hell, let's just throw Saddam up on a pedestal then

 

[volinbham]

Rocky Balboa.

celebrate mumbling and illiteracy? no thanks

 

[ajvol01]

Rocky Balboa.

He was afraid of Clubber Lang.

 

[NashVol11]

Can you point to a statue of anyone where we cannot find flaws in their background?

What statues should we keep?

This is for America to decide, and all this "slippery slope" crap is mostly paranoia about America making the "wrong" decision.

There are thousands of black or white abolitionists that we know about, many of whom were killed for their efforts, and yet the people we put on pedestals are the Confederates fighting to preserve slavery. The fact that people know that, and respond with "Yeah, sounds about right," blows my mind.