(Sorry for the multiple posts – I don’t know how to multi-quote yet)
Astura, c’mon, give me a break. Or, in GD terms, please provide a cite for this claim.
And, your next post about there not being any prominent progressives involved makes this whole thread uninteresting. You can find nuts and crazies of every stripe. Until this becomes a real thing, it’s not really worth discussing.
I’ve already laid out why I think we can preserve statues and memorials for great historical figures who happen to have done some bad things, as long as we’re celebrating their positive contributions. So, I don’t think I have anything else to add to this thread.
Well quite simply the protestors who hold this view are wrong and behaving like children. They should concentrate on removing Confederate memorials and the traitors flag, something that they can logically get support on broadly and win. To attack the founding fathers for being people of their times is unamerican since the protesters would not have the right to assemble and protest without them. Pick your battles, ones you can win.
When the emphasis that America is the product of evil, evil English colonialism, genocide, and slavery, which ultimately resulted in evil, evil capitalism being introduced to the western hemisphere, and then people start tearing down statues of Columbus, Jefferson, Washington, etc., do I really need to connect the the dots that European expansion into the western hemisphere was a bad thing?
Look, I don’t know know why the mobs are tearing down the statues, but I think it’s pretty easy to infer.
No, that is called a wide brush argument with a pinch of straw man and a dash of Red Herring.
Not a good recipe.
For myself and many that I have seen posting here, I’m not supporting the toppling of statues of the founding fathers, I can understand why some are upset with them, but it does not follow that I would not agree on persecuting the ones doing the vandalism.
Now if the statue was put in place to celebrate someone that mostly became famous for defending or profiting from slavery, I would still prosecute the statue removers and make them pay for the proper statues of the ones that we need to remember. I would not be surprised that they will be bailed out, but again, I would not pay a single cent for their bail out if they did topple a statue with no sense of context.
I’m not talking about whether a statue should be toppled or not. I’m trying to get at motivation. If you have a better explanation of motivation I’m all ears.
I think the fact that most people in this thread, including progressive voices, generally disagree with the destruction of the Lincoln Memorial might indicate that your understanding of what progressives think or want is woefully misinformed. Hopefully you’ll use this as an opportunity to expand your understanding!
In response to the OP’s question of whether it’s “morally right” to remove monuments, my take is that removing these memorials and artifacts would be a morally neutral act.
I don’t believe that America is inherently better or worse with the Washington Monument standing or removed. It makes a lot of people feel comfortable because it’s familiar, and maybe it makes a lot of people uncomfortable because for them the story of that period of American history is the story of slavery. Is one more correct than the other? Will we lose our ability to remember our stories, or tell them the way we want to because some statues are missing? I don’t think so.
Most of our understanding and internalization of history is based upon false, incomplete, or, um, mythologized narratives. While folks are arguing about what the truth is about the “founding fathers”, the real question is which truth we want to tell. I, for one, don’t have a problem with a “mostly good” George Washington who led America to freedom. But I also totally appreciate that there are other ways to look at George Washington that may have value to people.
In the end, I think the existence of these monuments justifies a certain narrative, and silences others. So, I appreciate the desire some may have to remove them.
A) The good things they did don’t matter. A slaver is a slaver is a slaver, and slavers don’t deserve to be memorialized. Period.
B) The fact they’re memorialized is an insult to black people in the present day.
The counter arguments only address point (A) as far as I can see. On that score, I don’t think a protester would find them persuasive. You’re saying it’s possible to separate the good things the Founders did from the bad things they did. Therefore, you can have a memorial to honor only the good things and that’s OK. But the protesters are saying the opposite: You can’t separate them, and no amount of good can outweigh a lifetime of slave-driving. There’s no common ground here, so I can’t imagine a protester being persuaded.
That said, I’m not a protester, and I’m sympathetic to the counterargument. People are products of their environment so it’s unfair to judge people like Washington and Jefferson by today’s standards.
However, the counter-arguments presented don’t address the protester’s second argument: that the statues are an insult to black people in the present day. As I said earlier, a black person living in a white supremacist society is right to think of them as slavers first and Founders second, because black people are still living with the consequences of slavery. Therefore, keeping the statues up is a big middle-finger to black people. It makes them feel alienated from, and unsafe within, their own country. That harm outweighs any good which could possibly come from having the statues up in the first place, so the statues have to go. Otherwise, the message is that the statues are more important than black lives, which they aren’t.
I would not remove any statues of Washington, Jefferson or Grant.
I get the criticism of the first two, particularly; they did own a lot of slaves. But they also were vitally important in the founding of the country. We wouldn’t have the republic we have today, had it not been for their hard work and commitment. I’d have no objection to placing signs near any of their statues to provide historical context, but would strongly oppose actually removing them.
Grant briefly owned a slave two years before the Civil War but freed the man at considerable financial cost to himself. He arguably did more than anyone other than Lincoln to defeat the Confederacy. A better general than a President, his statues should be allowed to remain standing.
However, I support the removal of statues of Confederate leaders and generals, where the local citizenry votes for it. They tried to break up the country in reaction to the mere election of Lincoln, leading to a war in which hundreds of thousands died. The Confederate elite were traitors largely, if not exclusively, motivated by a desire to defend slavery and ensure it could spread to the west, and are unworthy of commemoration. Many of their monuments were erected as a means of reinforcing Jim Crow and ought to now be in a museum, if not destroyed outright.
I disagree that they are an insult to black people (what are Grant and Lincoln even doing on that list?). The Confederate statues were put up specifically to celebrate white supremacy, slavery, and treason. Many were funded or installed by the Daughters of the Confederacy, an organization devoted to honoring the racist, slave-owning traitors who led the Civil War for the traitors in the South. Those statues should be repugnant to black people, and all non-racist, non-traitorous Americans.
The memorials to Washington and Jefferson celebrate their roles in founding this country. I don’t see how that’s insulting – America, as a whole, has been a positive force in the world. Washington and Jefferson had much less to do with the current influence of slavery in this country than the Confederate leaders.
I would really appreciate you arguing what you think, rather than what you think others think. Or, at least provide cites from prominent people (anyone can go nutpicking) laying out the arguments.
Eh, I don’t know. Frankly, I’m not that moved one way or the other. “Majority rules” sounds a little like Democracy, so that’s one way to go about it.
I just don’t think these monuments are important enough to get in a tizzy about the idea of removing them. Monuments make some people feel warm and fuzzy about certain things. That’s it. When enough people stop feeling warm and fuzzy about them, then it’s understandable that they might want to remove them. The only things that change if the Washington Monument is removed are:
Some people lose the ability to look at that monument and feel good feelings about George Washington and America, and maybe freedom?
Some people gain some room for their narrative about America’s history to take up space.
My only point here is that there’s no inherent right or wrong in the decision making. Or, if there is, I haven’t heard it communicated.
Again, prominent people aren’t pulling down the statues. Prominent people are irrelevant. The movement pulling down the statues is leaderless. Also, you are not the arbiter of what is insulting to people.
