After a long weekend of hearing politicians and talking heads gabble on about honoring those who “protect our freedoms”, then the reason for the holiday is obviously being misinterpreted.
I await your manifesto.
I was not aware of all that; thank you for the info.
I’d note that General Lee was at one time a United States soldier and was, apparently, instrumental in the Restoration. Perhaps the Camp (and later Fort) were officially named for the years he spent in service to the United States?
I’d also note that he was stripped of his citizenship after the war and only had it restored posthumously a century later by President Ford.
In any case, I’d be in favor of re-naming each of those places for other (less traitorous) people.
Would you distinguish, say, between the fallen of the Second World War and of Vietnam? Idle curiosity.
It’s written in crayon on the back of a coupon for Fruit Loops. It sounds a lot more impressive than it looks.
Irrespective of their individual motives for fighting, soldiers in these wars fought under the US flag, in US uniform, on behalf of Americans.
So no, I wouldn’t.
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Or better yet, we could have Memorial Day to honor all fallen American soldiers, no matter how unpopular the war they died in.
That rules out anything like Memorial Day, though. Unsavory motivations have been part of every conflict every fought, and a mass celebration like Memorial Day precludes going soldier-by-soldier to decide whose motives are documented and worthy of honoring.
Must be, since protecting our freedoms accounts for a very small portion of the armed conflicts ever waged by the United States.
That would cover Vietnam, but I’d still only support a holiday that honors soldiers who fought for the U.S. of A.
So what? :rolleyes:
You can try to handwave it away all you like, but they were fighting for slavery. That’s why the Confederacy existed.
There’s “unpopular”, and then there’s “pure evil”. The cause of the Confederacy was the latter.
Would you be in favor of honoring soldiers who died in “The Rape War”, a hypothetical war whose official and only purpose was to invade some other country and rape as many women as possible? Because that would be if anything less evil than the cause of the Confederacy. To make it as evil, the war would have to be fought by Rapetopia, a nation that was founded for the purpose of protecting and promoting rape, and wrote its unalterable support of rape into its Constitution.
Yeah, that’s why they are traitors.
Do we honor Benedict Arnold? Would we honor the Rosenbergs? Robert Hanssen? Aldrich Ames? They are all Americans.
Maybe Robert E. Lee was the picture of noble gallantry, but Henry Benning was a pretty despicable pro-slaver and secessionist. It’s a sad historical mistake that we allow such a man to be honored in this way.
If your oath of enlistment did not include something about bearing true faith and allegiance to the United States of America, then you don’t deserve to be honored on Memorial Day nor Veterans Day nor the 4th of July. None of it. The war was a long time ago, we need to move past reconciliation. If anyone can’t handle that their great-grandpap fought on the losing side for wrong reasons, they just need to get over it.
That’s your choice, sure. You don’t have to honor anyone you don’t want to.
Well, either they were Americans, and thus covered by a holiday that honors all Americans who died in the armed services, or they weren’t, in which case the Confederacy was a legally-valid entity and Reconstruction was based on a lie. You can’t have it both ways.
It’s not a handwave, it’s the truth. Fighting for the Confederacy is not the same as fighting for slavery. Certainly, many were explicitly fighting for slavery, and while they were wrong to do so, they died in honorable combat as Americans and should be honored as such.
As noted, some of Indian Wars are rivals in the pure-evil department.
Were they Americans, fighting honorably in a regular army? If so, then yes, they should be honored as such.
You seem unable or unwilling to separate the men from the cause (even such a varied cause as it was), but I am not.
Let great-grandpap’s grave overgrow with weeds, in the name of presentism? That won’t hold much appeal for many folks who actually have Confederate ancestors to honor.
All of those installations were built in the south during the early part of the 20th century and named after prominent local military leaders from the areas they were built. In this case prominent does not equal good. Braxton Bragg sucked ass as a general and his namesake is the home of some of the elite units of the military.
Not to mention the USS Dixon, launched 20 June 1970 – and, for that matter, the USS Hunley, launched 28 September 1961.
Missed your edit. In order: Probably not, though I wouldn’t have a huge problem with it (if ever treason was justified, Arnold would have to be the test case, he was done wrong by the colonies over and over again, and he fought well for them for a time); no, espionage isn’t honorable combat; no, same reason; no, same reason.
Yes, it was. That’s what the Confederacy was for.
I’m not willing to just give someone a pass for fighting for pure evil, no. Fighting is not a good thing for its own sake.
Yes, it’s the whole country, and those who fought in an army who fought against the whole country should not be honored.
Tell you what, put all the officers and volunteers of the Confederate army in unmarked mass graves or dump them in the ocean and tear down all public-sponsored monuments and memorials to Confederate officials and soldiers and institutions, and we’ll discuss and exception for the conscripts.
Nope. False dichotomy. On memorial day, do we honor Americans who fought on the side of the Nazis, or defected to the Soviet Union and joined their military? We sure as hell don’t. Confederate soldiers were Americans, but their service in a military was in a military at war against the United States. That’s not what we honor on Memorial Day.