Protesters try to rip down statue of Andrew Jackson. Museum removes statue of Theodore Roosevelt. Believe me, they will go after Washington and everyone else. Ideological revolutionaries rarely say “okay, that’s enough revoluting now.”
You say this as if it’s in the future tense.
Fundamentally the issue is that in some sense, anything beyond removing monuments to Confederates erected specifically because they were Confederates is fraught with historical revisionism.
I mean, it’s one thing to take down a statue of Robert E. Lee- it’s almost certainly because he was a Confederate general. But it’s another thing entirely to take down a statue of someone who once owned slaves. It’s about as silly as taking down statues of anyone who was not LGBTQ friendly in the first part of the 20th century. Or for 18th or 19th century people who were unfriendly to Native Americans. I mean, if they are specifically lionized for their anti-LGBTQ or anti-Native American activities, sure. But if it’s just a footnote in their history, and what they’ve been memorialized for is unrelated, it seems to be a bit crazy, and a terrible precedent for the future. Is someone going to come along in 100 years and demand we take down statues of MLK because the man ate meat, and animal rights people have taken a greater prominence in society in that era?
You’re not going to find many, if any examples of people who were perfect in history. I’d say we take down the specifically Confederate memorials, and maybe do what Asahi suggests, and include some contextual information about other historical figures.
You’re not going to find many, if any examples of people who were perfect in history.
Perfect by year 2020 standards…and I think we can be reasonably certain that people who ARE perfect by 2020 standards will fall short of some new standard that will have evolved by 2120 (or sooner). There is no one who will ever be worthy of anyone’s admiration, unless they are evaluated properly - in the context of their times, and whether their deeds ultimately advanced (albeit not necessarily perfected) human progress or opposed it.
(To be clear, this is meant as an amplification of mine to your thought, and not an argument against it.)
I see the urgency of removing statues that were erected to glorify a person who advocated slavery, or fought for the cause and I wholly endorse that.
I don’t think slave ownership in itself is a sole justification to take down a statue if the person is being celebrated for some virtue unrelated to slave ownership.
But on the other hand, I’ll happily go contrarian and say that I don’t really care if this is a slippery slope that leads to Washington, Lincoln, or Jefferson getting the wrecking ball. History belongs in books and museums. Political statues are just propaganda. I see no reason to get worked up about it either way.
I understand their argument, and I acknowledge I would probably feel a little differently if I were not white. We’re all biased to feel the way we feel based on our background.
I absolutely agree with removing the confederate statues because of the context in which those statues were placed there to begin with. But there are degrees, shades of gray and all that. There are things that were intended to be an affront to minorities, and there are other memorials that were not but may be incidentally offensive in some form. For the less obviously offensive statues and monuments, I think we should both listen and find ground on which to compromise, which is why I’m for adding a plaque or something of similar nature next to an existing plaque.
But ‘Let’s burn down the house’ isn’t really a cooperative effort at reaching a common understanding. I reject those who say ‘Let’s burn it all’ as I do those who say “Screw political correctness” all the same.
There’s a vast difference between what you imagine progressivism is and what actual progressivism is.
There are also individuals out there smashing windows and looting stores. That doesn’t mean that a movement will rise up that endorses the breaking of windows and the looting of stores. You have to distinguish between the acts of individuals and the goals of the movement.
But, he said “they”! “They”'re coming for you, Little Nemo!
Pretty scary “they”, Darren Garrison.
Hi, telemachus!
There should only be statues of poets, writers, artists, and musicians. Here in Boston we have an excellent statue of Robert Burns. It used to be in Winthrop Square but for some reason they have moved it to the Fenway.
Of course, now someone will come up with some dirt on Bobby…
From Wikipedia:
His first child, Elizabeth “Bess” Burns (1785–1817), was born to his mother’s servant, Elizabeth Paton (1760–circa 1799), while he was embarking on a relationship with Jean Armour, who became pregnant with twins in March 1786.
So, he was an adulterer who engaged in sexual harassment! #metoo
OP, if the statue to Burns was because of his prowess at sleeping with his mother’s servants, I think that the statue should come down. However, since he’s really known as the founder of the the Romantic movement, and not the founder of sexual harassment, I think his statue is fine.
I have no idea if they exist, but how would you feel about a statue of Bill Cosby.
Certainly cannot argue that he wasn’t influential. He broke down a bunch of racial barriers in entertainment and in the home. He was also hilarious. “Noah, how long can you tread water?” I still find that line funny, even with everything.
But, he also has a few other notable attributes on the negative side of things, which, IMHO, outweigh those he is honored for.
Bill Cosby engaged in behavior that abhorrent and criminal while he was doing it. Owning slaves wasn’t considered abhorrent and criminal in the environment when Jefferson and Washington owned them. There were some who were against it and considered it abhorrent, but it definitely wasn’t criminal.
Andrew Jackson was a genocidal asshole. Ask any Native American.
The Confedearates who have statues and memorials honoring them were traitors. All that bullshit about “war of northern aggression”, and “states rights” was and is just a smoke screen. The treasonous secession and the civil war against their own country was all about slavery, and was even in writing. The statues themselves were mostly put up in the early 1900s by revisionists, and as part of a deliberate propaganda campaignn and Jim Crow intimidation tactics. They ALL need to be torn down, and the military bases named after Confederate traitors need to be renamed. We need to stop glorifying an ENEMY.
Californian schools like Jefferson, Washington are already being renamed. So for talk of Washington or Jefferson statues being taken down, isn’t so farfetched.
You shouldn’t need laws to know owning other people is wrong. Also don’t lump the pair together. Jefferson used and abused (including sexually) his slaves and their numbers increased during his life. Washington was by reports kind to his slaves and by the time of his death had freed all of them.
So I will give Washington more a lot more leeway than Jefferson. Jefferson was brilliant but he was scum.
And yet, while slavery pre-dates written records, there was no serious abolitionist movement until the 1800s. 
Fair enough, just saying that if the bad is bad enough, then it can outweigh the good.
Personally, I don’t really care about the feeling of a bunch of pieces of metal or stone.
If we put a person on a pedestal, we are saying that it is someone to look up to. Our founding fathers were flawed in their anachronistic ways, and it does seem as though there should be more contemporary people for us to look up to.
Some comedian recently expressed the idea of making statues out of much less durable material. That way, instead of trying to determine when we’ve done enough honoring and it is ready to move on, we would instead have to justify honoring that individual all over again.
Obviously not practical for a number of reasons, but I do like the philosophy that those who want to have statues and monuments should have to justify their presence in the public sphere, rather than have those who object to their imposition to have to justify their dislike.
That’s largely because up until the 1800’s, slavery had not been as institutionalized as it became here. Most civilizations that had slavery had much better laws about treatment of slaves than we did. Slaves could buy their freedom, and their children were not born as slaves.
Not saying that slavery was great at other times, just that we made it far far worse.