OMG. The assertion that because we are rethinking Confederate statues we are ensuring mob behavior regarding statues is simply ludicrous. Much more relevant would be how we handle, you know, defacing or destroying statues through criminal sanction, don’t you think?
I find the arguments raised by so many on behalf of keeping Confederate statuary so pitifully weak, and so laughably illogical as to make me wonder what particularly it is about keeping such statues that is so important to them, that they feel the need to engage in such behavior.
Exactly. Don’t forget about that other time when people tore down a Revolutionary War era statue. Didn’t those fools know about the slippery slope? Why were they trying to erase history?
Vandals have attacked several Civil War statues in recent months. However, I do not recall any serious organization that has promoted the idea of vandalism. A number of groups have called for the removal of Confederate images from public lands where they were (nearly universally) erected for the express purpose of supporting the mythology of the Lost Cause with its attendant belief that the suppression of black people was a good thing. The groups calling for those removals have generally expressed the idea that the statues should be placed in museums, not vandalized. The few occasions when vandalism has occurred has not been met with open support from the groups calling for the removal of such statues.
If it is fair to say that groups calling for the removal of Confederate statues are responsible, in some way, for the vandalism, then it follows that groups calling for the removal of aliens or Muslims are responsible, in some way, for vandalism of mosques and the attacks, (sometimes murderous) on Muslims, and on Sikhs and others whom the uninformed cannot distinguish from Muslims.
Because you wouldn’t be limiting destruction to civil war statues. You’d also have to get rid of treasonous slave owners like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson as well.
And random acts of vandalism aren’t random. That’s like saying random acts of driving a car into people is random. It’s not random. These acts, the vandalism and the violence, are inspired by wretched political ideals.
With regards to not allowed, who are you to regulate what people can say or carve out of stone? What other forms of non-violent expression do you wish to purge?
Furthermore, it’s pretty funny how pointing out that slippery slopes do indeed exist and should be considered is met with mouth foaming hyperbole. Your outrage and some of the other posts in this thread denigrating the idea that this is related are rhetorical deflections. Read some of these threads on controversial subjects such as free speech, you’ll see a lot of advocacy, disguised as hope and wishes, of criminal activity.
No you wouldn’t. Getting rid of statue A doesn’t mean we have to get rid of statue B. Statues have always been removed in various societies, for reasons of convenience, politics, or ideology. Removing one doesn’t mean that we have to remove all of them. We can say these should be removed, and these other ones over here should stay.
Unless you’re arguing that statues must never ever be removed for any reason. But I don’t think that’s what you’re saying.
Fought against US soldiers in order to perpetuate slavery? I think statues intended to symbolize and honor such actions should come down (with a few possible exceptions, like battlefield monument parks, which were not erected in order to symbolize white supremacist ideals, as most other confederate monuments and statues were).
Fought against England in order to be independent? Then I’m not in favor of bringing down the statues meant to honor such actions.
But from the perspective of the slaves, they were enslaved all the same.
If George Washington beat his wife, was she a less-beaten victim than the wife of Jefferson Davis (if Davis was a wife-beater?)
If you’re arguing that the statue of Washington should come down, feel free to make your case. I’ll listen. I think statues that were put up, for the most part, to represent the fight for slavery and white supremacy, and to symbolize resistance to black civil rights, should come down. If you think some other group of statues should also come down, make your case.
Just want to clarify the policy here. If James Fields had swerved at the last second and run into a statue, then it would have been okay to criticize him?
