OK, the Washington Monument should now be demolished and replaced with the Martha Washington Monument (a hole 555 feet deep on the same site).
No one else was in the room where THAT happened…
Let’s not expect intellectual honesty of logical consistency. It doesn’t suit the political narrative in this case.
Wrong. It was a successful, treasonous act. It just so happens that success trumps treason.
So, you’d be okay with “Acceptance of the Surrender of Cornwallis After the Battle of Yorktown, D.C.”?
I’ve actually already answered this question. I’m not certain where precisely the line should be drawn, but yes, in theory.
No, I’m not. I am judging us with the morality of our time. It is wrong, today, for you or me or anyone to celebrate a slave owner. It isn’t a grand expectation that people, today, should celebrate slave owners (though it seems it does happen).
I agree that most people don’t think that historical figures are pure as the driven snow. That’s the problem. We know what they’ve done, to a greater or lesser extent, and yet we celebrate them when the option to simply celebrate the good things they did and said is sitting there, seemingly unused.
I actually quite like lengthy, Culture-esque names. But it’s not really workable. I’d be fine with some of the things I suggested earlier, though - Victory, DC, Revolution, DC, or Independence, DC seem applicable in this case. You could even go with just “Yorktown, DC”.
But D.C. is named after Columbus, a far worse person than Washington by any measure.
We celebrate them when we could simply celebrate the good things they did?? Outrageous!!
It’s not wrong at all. Your point of view is dangerous.
It might be a little bit silly, but how dangerous?
It’s all balance and grey areas – everyone draws the line somewhere, just at different places. Some folks would prefer not to honor Hitler and Stalin, but pretty much everyone else would be okay, and others draw the line at any slave-owners, or even farther.
I draw the line somewhere around folks whose biggest accomplishments and reasons-for-celebration/honor were connected to white supremacy, other forms of extreme bigotry, and other man-made horrors like genocide and the like. So, by my measure, we should avoid honoring or celebrating anyone whose greatest fame is fighting for or playing a prominent role in support of the Confederacy, Jim Crow, segregation, or the like; but honoring or celebrating someone like Washington or Jefferson who is not primarily honored for white supremacy, but rather for other accomplishments, is acceptable to me, even if they did own slaves or have white supremacist beliefs.
I don’t know how hard and fast this rule is for me, but this is where I start, when considering whether something or someone should still be honored publicly.
Franklin: *Treason is a charge invented by winners as an excuse for hanging the losers. *
You laugh, but here’s the thing; right now, people are celebrating slave ownership when they don’t have to at all.
I actually do feel that’s outrageous. Others are free, of course, to not be too bothered about the minutiae of people owning other people.
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It’s not wrong at all. Your point of view is dangerous.
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I’m interested in this one too. I’m even more interested in why you would say my opinion was dangerous and not explain why automatically. I mean, if I thought you were doing something dangerous, I would quickly attempt to stop you and explain the danger.
Simply saying “Your point of view is dangerous” is kind of like looking at someone with a lit firework held in their hand and saying “Huh, That’s not a good idea.” And leaving it at that. Please do tell me if I’m in danger of losing a hand.
They are not. I’ve seen a great many memorials to Confederate figures, and Confederate soldiery in general. None that I have seen celebrate slave ownership. (A few specifically condemn it.) What they celebrate, or honor, is defense of the South. Hundreds of thousands of Southern men–most of those who served–took up that cause at a time when ending slavery was not a Northern war aim.
Can you understand how many Americans can regret, even condemn, the decisions of politicians to take our country to war in Vietnam, or Iraq–and yet at the same time honor our troops who served there? If so, how could you imagine that Southern Americans could reject their neighbors and kinfolk who resisted an invader in their own lands?
I can understand their thinking, just as I can understand the thinking of the average Wehrmacht soldier who believed he was fighting for his homeland – but they were still fighting to support and defend slavery and white supremacy (and genocide, in the case of the Wehrmacht soldier).
In my opinion, the cause of the Confederacy should be as reviled in the United States as the cause of the Nazis is in Germany. I wish most moderns Americans rejected and reviled the Confederacy as much as most modern Germans reject and revile the Nazis.
I’m afraid they are, excepting those that specifically condemn it, so long as they celebrate or honor something so general as “defense of the South”. Because a part of that defense was a defense of slavery, and what’s being celebrated is the general.
You can’t cite the hundreds of thousands of Southern men who served when slavery ending wasn’t an option when what’s being celebrated is everyone, including those who fought when it was, and including those who fought specifically, partially or otherwise, to keep it as an institution. It really boggles me, I have to admit. Why not just celebrate the good parts? You’ve already separated out who you consider noble (or at least, not horrendous).
Yes, I can understand it, because it’s a *perfect *example of what I’m in favour of.
Separate out the bad - the decisions of politicians to go to war in Vietnam or Iraq - and honour only the good, those who served there honourably. What I would be against would be people holding parades every year in celebration of “the war in Vietnam”; because that would include both bad and good. Likewise, a memorial to the Confederacy or to someone like Washington would be a poor idea in my eyes, but a memorial that separates out the bad from the good and honours the good alone would be perfectly fine.
That’s what they do. The war memorial in front of the courthouse in my town honors Continentals, Confederates, and USF-I on equal terms. In no case is the political cause mentioned.
That’s not what they do at all.
You’re taking the examples of differentiating over Vietnam - decision-making politicians, and members of armed forces serving - and applying that directly in those groups to that memorial. I don’t care that one group is the politicians and one group is the soldiers; I care that one group that did bad stuff isn’t honoured by people today, and one group that didn’t do bad stuff* is honoured. That one is politicians and the other soldiers makes no difference to me on this subject at all. It’s what they did, and said.
The Civil War memorials separate out serving armed forces members, but that’s not the characteristic I’m giving out passes to honor based on. It’s whether they did bad shit we shouldn’t honour. And some of those Confederate soldiers were fighting to keep slavery. Honouring ALL of them honours that fight in defense of slavery.
*Simplistic, which I why I added “honourably” to my prior post.
My personal view is that no public spaces or public money should ever be honoring a member of a traitorous, violent faction that tried to destroy the US to support slavery
Well, not really. It says that the losers chose to cling to their defeated heroes.