Ah, but that’s just it: He is not honored or revered. But we know who he was - he was not erased.
Similarly: the leaders of the Confederacy including the commanders of their armies deserve NO honor or reverence or celebration. But taking that away does not mean “erasing” them. Let everyone know Lee was a perfectly good officer… until he decided there were things more important than his oath to America. Let all know Jeff Davis had a record of public service… until he led a rebellion into utter failure.
And let all know that this deserves shame. It is not rewriting history to treat deserving losers like deserving losers.
Then you are granting there’s absolutely nothing heroic about them. If their actions serve to aid the side of evil, and prolong an unjust war, they are not heroes, and their actions are not heroic. This isn’t Bronze Age Greece - only the good guys get to be heroes.
Me, I just love watching the mental gymnastics people go through when they simultaneously argue that the GOP is the party of Lincoln & the GOP is dedicated to preserving Confederate statues. Warms my heart, it does!
Like what? Like Auschwitz? If so, perhaps you could link to what you’re talking about. The plantations I’ve seen bill themselves as romantic wedding venues.
This. If the statues are down, they won’t be there to reinforce the notion that those men were worth honoring. And in general, the less official honoring of a cause and the people who fought for it, the more work it is for private individuals to sustain the notion that it and they deserve honor.
And that’s a good thing. I remember my fourth-grade Virginia History book, which conveyed the notion that the slaves were happy under slavery, while freedom made them discontented. I presume that that text stopped being used decades ago (though I think copies should be preserved in museums so that people know how that era was being officially represented as recently as the 1960s) and as the teaching about the antebellum, Civil War, Reconstruction, and Jim Crow eras in Southern schools becomes more honest, again, persons trying to preserve the notion that the Southern side in the Civil War was worth glorifying will have less to hang it on, and have to do more of the work themselves.
Over time, they’re more likely to let it go. But nobody in their right mind is expecting that to happen overnight. It’s the work of a generation or two.
Not because the people are worthy but because it is part of the country’s history. And understanding why a person used to be honored but isn’t anymore can be useful to understand other things, like why racism is more prevalent in some areas than others. I’d prefer something like a historical correction. As in, “This factual event happened and this person used to be honored. But he was on the wrong side, etc, etc.”
And if Germany still had a statue of Hitler standing I imagine it would serve as a warning to not allow it to happen again. The Germans I’ve met are not proud of that part of their country’s history.
You can do that without making a statue praising them that people who they wanted to torture, rape, murder, and exploit have to walk by every day. This weird myth that people learn history from statues is bizarre; no one sits around wondering who was running Germany from 1935-1945 even though there aren’t any statues of him.
You don’t need monuments celebrating white supremacy to learn that the US has (and had) a big infection of the philosophy, getting rid of monuments celebrating it is actually a good step to getting rid of white supremacy in general.
That’s exactly my point. Very, very few Germans are proud of that part of their history, which is absolutely how it should be (well, it would be better if NO Germans were proud of that). That’s why they would never stand for a statue of Hitler.
While the Nazis weren’t big fans of statues of living individuals (maybe they wanted to distance themselves from the example of Stalin, who loved statues in his image) they did have plaques in every town square and quite a few busts of Hitler himself. But they didn’t leave them there to “serve as a warning”, whatever the fuck that menas – those statues and plaques were torn the fuck down.
Meanwhile the American South idolized and continues to idolize Confederates. That needs to stop; it needed to stop 150 years ago, but better late than never.
Does history belong in a museum or in the town square?
When I go to pay my taxes, I am going to pay my taxes, not to receive a history lesson.
As a white guy, I don’t really need or want to be reminded of our racist past. If I were a minority, I don’t know that I would want to be reminded that our racism is not in the past, but is there on display in bronze and marble.
As well we can contrast the current attitude of the German & Japanese people (and their governments) to WWII.
Both countries were ruled by nasty totalitarian regimes and waged aggressive imperialist genocidal warfare against what they claimed were inferior races. Over the same time frame to boot.
So it stands to reason that today they’d have similar attitudes to their role in the war? Not so fast.
In Germany today the common attitude is “We screwed up. Never again!” Because that’s what the post-war school system taught them and that’s become an accepted narrative of what happened. It also happens to be factual.
Meanwhile in Japan the far right continues to idolize the tyrant, excuse the genocide, and generally say “What? We were just defending ourselves!”. And the ordinary right warms themselves in the self-righteous indignation of the wackos.
As a result of this conscious effort to whitewash cleary attested and accepted facts the general public is stuck in a state of at least passive, and very often quite active support for the whitewash narrative.
The US South has been pulling a Japan now for 160 years. No wonder it seems like an inevitable unalterable piece of the landscape, sort like the Rocky Mountains. It’s just there.
But Germany teaches that in as little as 20 years the reality of nearly universal public behavior, public attitudes, and public belief can change. And can be changed.
Truth MUST precede reconciliation. These statues are part of why this wound still festers.
Because the TRUTH is, these people are not worthy of glorification today.
It’s also true that they never were.
All that, ‘they fought bravely‘, crap doesn’t fly unless you can describe the people who brought down the towers ‘bravely fighting‘ for their ideals, and are ready for a statue of them to stand in your country.
Well it has been 75 years since WWII ended and the Germans have done a pretty good job of deprogramming. Why has it taken the south more than 150 years? Are they special?
Huckleberry Finn deals directly with social conflict. Huck agonizes over going to hell because he helps Jim recover children that “ain’t even his’n”. It provides insight into social attitudes of the time.
Little House… is a sweet memoir that intentionally obscures social conflict. The little house was part of an illegal squatter settlement on the inside edge of Osage Indian Territory. It was carved out by murdering the Osage inhabitants. Pa explains that when white people move in the indians must move out. Laura asks if that will make the indians mad and Pa doesn’t answer.
Huck Finn explores the issue, Little House IS the issue. Both are literary monuments that should be preserved intact. But, I don’t believe Laura Ingalls Wilder should be the icon for children’s books that “demonstrate integrity and respect for all children’s lives and experiences”. She ignored the Osage children whose poverty made the Little House possible.
I certainly do not think that we should be changing any books. At very most, I can see creating editions that are easier and maybe a bit more sanitized, but making sure that it is known that these are derivatives of the originals.
But yeah, I don’t think that renaming an award for Children’s literature is anything like censorship.