It’s ridiculous virtue signaling that is counterproductive. You may want to get rid of references to practically every queen and king of antiquity and the generals that served under them in some vain attempt at enacting cosmic justice but practical people realize the futility. Furthermore you are inviting ridicule and a backlash. The few people alive today who still own slaves are in Africa and Asia. Why not deal with real problems?
Hope France doesn’t have anything named after Napoleon or any WWII military leader.
So what exactly do people think the Confederate memorials’ purpose is? What are they commemorating, lauding, what have you?
Our dead ancestors? People still love their alcoholic aunts and lecherous uncles and racist grandparents. The fact that old Grandad fought for a country that supported slavery doesn’t seem too different. They’re not supporting slavery, they’re remembering their families, despite the terrible causes they fought for.
But people here think a statue of a Confederate might as well be the same as a statue of a whipped slave with the words “Slavery is Great!” on the plaque. I think there’s a significant difference.
RT, do you have any pictures of racist old grandparents in your house anywhere? Or are you ideologically pure on this point?
I have ancestors who fought for the Confederacy, and I certainly don’t honor their service. Being high up in the Confederacy, whether civilian or military leadership, reflects as poorly on someone (and should be treated the same) as being high up in Nazi leadership, civilian or military.
We should take the example of the modern Germans – honoring Confederate leaders should be as anathema as they consider honoring Nazi leaders.
Sure, but plenty of those men did good stuff before and after the war, even though they were Confederates.
For example, Lawrence Sullivan Ross was a Texas Ranger of some acclaim, and after the war, was a county sheriff, state senator, 19th Governor of Texas, where he presided over the expansion of the state’s charitable services, and was President of Texas A&M, and more or less saved the school.
So nowadays, there’s a statue of him front and center on the A&M campus, a university (Sul Ross State) and a San Antonio elementary school named after him.
And yes, he was a Confederate cavalry general. But it hardly seems to me that the state ought to perform some kind of damnatio memoriae on him just because he was a Confederate, especially not 150+ years later.
But everyone who fought for the Confederacy is now dead. Everyone who ever knew anyone who fought for the Confederacy is now dead. It’s long past time to let it go.
The difference between that and the statues is that its private vs. public. You may love old racist Nana because she baked you pies and knitted you sweaters, but your neighbor doesn’t give a damn about her. And if the neighbor knew your grandma casually dropped the N-word all the time, they may not like it if you lobbied the local city council to put a statue of her in the park.
There is no way, NO FUCKING WAY, that any Confederate can ever be completely extricated from the politics that the Confederacy espoused. For every guy who wants to honor Stonewall Jackson because he personally kissed their great great grandma’s hand and helped her across the street, there are a million others who see him as an unrepentant slaver. Why in the hell should he ever get his name honored in public because he wasn’t a 100% cartoonish villain? Even Hitler was vegetarian, you don’t see PETA lauding him for not eating animals
It doesn’t matter what the extreme minority of people think about Confederate soldiers or choose to ignore because they were personally not wronged by them. Each Confederate soldier stood for an extremist, traitorous faction that wanted to destroy the US and enslave people. None should ever be honored and their names and likenesses should be stripped from all public places.
Not true, the last civil war veteran died in 1956. His widow died in 2003. The last Confederate combat veteran died in 1951. There are still plenty of people around today who knew them.
Not directly relevant to the discussion, but “fighting ignorance” and all that…
No, I don’t. I want all those references in textbooks and the media and school and wherever kept firmly in place. I am all in favour of keeping those names in our collective memory. Even more so than they are now. What I don’t like is to see them honoured. Big difference.
And, as I’ve already said a couple of time, on a practical level I know that in fact nothing’s actually going to happen. If you read my posts you’ll realise I’m aware of that. That would actually seem to be a bit of a poke to your argument that my views are “dangerous” - as you say, they’re futile. I’m not going to be agreed with on any significant scale.
Again, if I’m inviting ridicule and a backlash, that would make my views even less dangerous. If people don’t take me seriously, hey, I’m not shocked, and I’m clearly nothing to worry about.
As to your second point here, oddly enough, I do feel that what I’m suggesting does help today with “real problems” of today. Celebrating people who owned slaves sends a message that says that if you’re good enough in other fields of endeavour, we’ll be happy to celebrate you. That Bob Slaveowner can think, hey, I’m a slave owner, but in 200 years time as long as I have some other big notable goods to my name, my name will be celebrated.
Think that’s silly? How many dictators have spent money and manpower on building great monuments to their name, or having parades thrown, or other great things that they can point to?
And, of course, the whole “But here are some bigger problems!” argument is a non-starter in the first place. I mean, if nothing else, my thinking these things is a smaller problem than actual current slavery, I hope you’d agree. So why aren’t you out there doing something about that instead of wasting your time with me?
I’m sad to say that in fact I have not only a racist old grandparent but also racist younger members of that branch of my family. No, I do not have pictures of them in my house.
In a kind of related matter: there is now a controversy in Los Angeles over a German heritage group’s paying for a sign in Crescenta Valley Park (a public facility) that says Wilkommen (Welcome) to Hindenburg Park.
The group says it’s honoring German-American heritage - a bust of Hindenburg used to be at that location, and locals of German ancestry used to congregate in that section of the park for picnicking, merriment, and unfortunately also as members of the pro-Nazi Bund, which held rallies there complete with swastikas and military-style uniforms.
This is isn’t sitting well with a local Jewish group, noting among other things this more sinister history and the fact that the park’s official name is not “Hindenburg Park”.
So, should the locals just remember the good things about Hindenburg (successful WWI general) and not think about him as the guy who acquiesced in Hitler’s taking power? And should the “renaming” only conjure up happy times and steins of beer, or does it also in part remind everyone of local goose-steppers in the 1930s?
Hindenburg was a old, sick, senile man, who was forced back into office by others to oppose Hitler’s party. He was being pushed around by various factions. He cant be blamed for Hitler. The Nazi party had the most seats in the Reichstag, violence and anarchy was out of control, and appointing Hitler to Chancellor was pushed by many as a solution. Hindenburg was too sick, too old and too senile to do anything else. He died just one year later.
Two recent developments - Yale U. will not (for now) rename a building named after John C. Calhoun, and a Tenn. college is considering renaming a building named after Nathan Bedford Forrest.
But this is exactly the kind of parsing of grey areas that supporters of honoring the Confederate Army do. In their view honoring eg. Robert E Lee is for his achievements as a military man serving his state and defending his homeland. Which was in practical fact his contribution, brilliant general, not really a political figure, and clearly his personal reason for leaving the US Army and serving for the Confederacy was Virginia’s secession, not his views about slavery. And I think many in favor of honoring Lee or Jackson would distinguish that from honoring say Jefferson Davis. And I think they could make a reasonable argument that your position is inconsistent in that Thomas Jefferson for example was mainly a political figure, directly involved in constructing the US constitutional government on slavery-friendly terms. Washington straddled both spheres.
Your position, and my position. I tend to agree with you. I would not honor anything or anybody related to the Confederacy (Stonewall Jackson was a brilliant general, so was Rommel, I wouldn’t ‘honor’ either one), a political entity that deserves its place in the trash can of history. OTOH the USA unlike the CSA has a present and future not only a past. Wiping out reference to notable Americans of the past who advocated or tolerated racial inequality (or even slavery) has the potential to be a whitewash, not a catharsis. And I think in general people have the ability to honor somebody like Washington or Jefferson for the positive things they did which relate to the present and future without forgetting that they practiced slavery. ‘Honor’ doesn’t mean ‘worship’.
But, I don’t think our position is logically unassailable, either by those advocating ‘Yorktown DC’ or those arguing to honor Confederate military achievement. It’s a judgement call, as you say.
Going back a bit, here, but…
He committed treason against his native land. He committed it against both the United States, and against every constituent state of that nation. That includes even Virginia, which like all the other states, freely chose to join the new nation. In doing so, he did nothing worth honoring.
In the summer of 1861, in “the belief that his native Maryland would secede, Captain Franklin Buchanan, the popular and influential commander of the Washington Navy Yard, brought his commission to Mr. [Gideon] Welles ‘and with studied pathos and manner, and feelings not unaffected, laid it with emotion and tears’ upon the Secretary [of the Navy]'s table. ‘It was,’ he said, ‘tearing out his heart-strings, parting with what was dear as life to him.’ Welles asked him ‘if he had spent his years in the service of the State of Maryland or of the United States government - had he been employed and drawn pay from the treasury of the former or the latter - had his honors from boyhood to age been derived from the state or the nation?’…”
West, Richard S., Jr., Mr. Lincoln’s Navy (Longmans, Green and Co., New York, 1957), pp. 48-49
Various American communities have made decisions to remove statues of Confederate “heroes.” At the University of Texas, a statue of Jefferson Davis was removed from the campus–it will eventually show up in a museum.
Here in Houston, Dick Dowling’s heritage has been considered–an Irish immigrant of the Great Famine era, he had many accomplishments in the young city & also won a victory against Union forces at the Battle of Sabine Pass. (He did *not *start that war.) His little statue will probably remain but Dowling Avenue, prominent in the African-American community, may well be renamed. Because some Black Houstonians have requested it.
Houston is not cluttered with Confederate monuments. The Spirit of Confederacy is an angel with a pissed off expression, looking toward the skyline of our diverse city from a shady corner of a park. Nobody really notices him, so he’s probably safe.
The state capitol in Austin is surrounded by Confederate monuments. But there’s lots of room on the grounds & more relevant statues are being added–like the Tejano Monument.
You bring up all American slaveowners–who are not the issue. Yes, fighting for human rights while some patriots owned people was a grave error only rectified by a bloody war. We can continue to contemplate their failures while appreciating their achievements.
The current issue: Many American communities are objecting to monuments glorifying those who tried to destroy the Union to support slavery. They will deal with each example on a case-by-case basis–and good for them. They will not take orders from a Brit whose empire profited from slavery until well into the 19th century.
Can’t you find some objectionable art closer to home?
Well, there are precedents. Seguin, TX (Guadalupe County) was initially named after Juan Seguin, a hero of the Mexican War. He was a Tejano who fought against Mexico, and he wasn’t the only one. Later in his life, he took up arms against the US, which caused Texas officials to rename the town for the guy’s father–coincidentally also named Juan Seguin.
And why couldn’t a state that was free to join be free to leave? That was not a settled question. It still really isn’t. Scotland just had a referendum on independence. The U.K. could leave the EU. Not all unions are perpetual. The USSR split. So did Yugoslavia. Secession is not some abstract fantasy.