Assuming that the purpose of the vast majority of statues and memorials is to honor their subject, I see it pretty simply – I think in a just society, good people and good achievements are honored, and bad people and bad achievements are not. Of course, most people (and many achievements) probably can’t be categorized this easily, but this is what I think we should shoot for. So I’d be in favor of taking down statues and memorials for people and achievements that shouldn’t be honored (like fighting for the Confederacy), in my view, especially when honoring them is so egregiously offensive to so many Americans for good reason – that the principle purpose of the Confederacy was to perpetuate and enshrine a specifically horrible form of white supremacy (all forms are bad, but the Confederate version was perhaps the very worst of a bad lot, and by quite a margin).
Yeah. I and millions more don’t want leftist censors acting like the Taliban with regards to historical artifacts.
And that’s a destructive point of view. Should England not celebrate their successes over other civilizations and nations in their own country because someone may take offense?
That’s up to the English. If I were English, it would probably depend on the nature of the “success” in question. If it involved mass murder, pillaging, and rape, then I would probably oppose its celebration.
Success on the battlefield involves terrible carnage. Should all war memorials be replaced?
In my view, it depends on the nature of the war and battles being honored, as well as the nature of the memorial. The Vietnam Memorial celebrates and honors those Americans who died, rather than honoring the purpose of the war, which seems entirely appropriate to me.
My statistic on the value of America’s four million slaves before the civil war is one that I have seen more than once.
For example, I find the following quote in “Industry and Economy during the Civil War” by Benjamin T. Arrington, National Park Service:
“In 1860, the economic value of slaves in the United States exceeded the invested value of all of the nation’s railroads, factories, and banks combined.”
I have seen this estimate (which you can find at Article Search (U.S. National Park Service)
and others like it in a number of serious works on the civil war (unfortunately, I do not have those books near at hand at the present time.)
Another idea of how valuable slaves were can be gleaned from the article “The Economics of the Civil War” by Roger L. Ransom, University of California, Riverside. You can find it at the website of the Economic History Association at https://eh.net/encyclopedia/the-economics-of-the-civil-war/ In this article we read:
“In the seven states where most of the cotton was grown, almost one-half the population were slaves, and they accounted for 31 percent of white people’s income; for all 11 Confederate States, slaves represented 38 percent of the population and contributed 23 percent of whites’ income. Small wonder that Southerners — even those who did not own slaves — viewed any attempt by the federal government to limit the rights of slaveowners over their property as a potentially catastrophic threat to their entire economic system.”
The civil war was about slavery, and slavery was based on hard economics. Under this atrocious, inhuman and criminal system, millions upon millions of innocent human beings over 400 years were deprived of any right to enjoy the fruits of their labour and had the productivity of a lifetime stolen from them. No bullshit movies like Gone with the Wind with their comical mammies can change that fact. And no sanctimonious appeals to God and dear old Dixie can erase the fact that the CSA was fighting to perpetuate this monstrous injustice.
Lee once said that slavery would be dealt with by God in his own time, and that for God a thousand years is like a single day. I wonder how he would have felt after hauling his old gray ass out to the cotton field for a 12-hour day, with no more incentive than a whip across his back. Maybe a thousand years of God’s time would have seemed longer to him.
I know you never really studied American History. But the war we’re discussing here is the American Civil War. The monuments, flags & names that have been in the news over here relate directly to* that* conflict. And each community is deciding how to deal with these matters. Especially because some of the imagery is still used by modern racists.
Yes, Americans who are aware of history are also dealing with American Revolution–what preceded it & what came after. I’m glad you have zero expectations about convincing us how we should deal with the flawed people who beat the British Empire. (With the help of France, Spain & the Netherlands, of course!) You will not be disappointed.
Hey, don’t you have a few statues of Cromwell? He was a bit problematic, as the kids say…
Ignorance fought! Still none in this thread are advocating slavery. A human condition that spans thousands of years and most of the globe.
Which historical artifact of Jack the Ripper are you concerned leftist censors will deface or destroy?
He was quite a shit. I am all in favour of not celebrating Cromwell - among many other British historical figures. I can’t quite help but think you’re still trying to push a “Aha, but you don’t think that about YOUR guys!” point on me. Perhaps I’m wrong, but for the record, I really don’t think I have any kind of anti-US or pro-British bias on this. If you feel otherwise, I’d appreciate it if you pointed to some nationalistic bias on my part. There’s a long, long, long string of British people who I would say it’s a bad idea to celebrate in their totality today. In fact, I’d go as far to say that our lengthier history (depending on how you track nation-states and where American history goes back and so on and so forth, of course), that there are by far a great many more British people that shouldn’t be celebrated than American.
That aside, did you have any thoughts on my “celebrate the good things instead of including the bad” proposal?
150 years…
Do I “have any thoughts”? This is not front page news, but have you followed current Jefferson scholarship?
I can’t say I have, except maybe second-hand. I know that he owned slaves and that he fathered children by one of them, and that there’s uncertainty about the exact relationship or lack thereof there. And that he freed them after he died, I think? Which seems dickish. But no, I’m very much not up to date on that, I think. Could you explain?
Here’s the problem though. What makes our generation and our way of thinking the right one? What’s to stop a future society from tearing down the Lincoln Memorial because Lincoln is an offensive figure according to their standards of morality?
I obviously wouldn’t favor any NEW memorials to Robert E. Lee, but I also don’t favor substituting our judgment for those who actually lived through that time. Robert E. Lee was fully pardoned, as were other Confederate figures. I don’t think we should posthumously relegate them to places of dishonor. To cite non-confederate examples, I also don’t think we should tear down statues of Andrew Jackson or remove Franklin Roosevelt from Mount Rushmore. But FDR’s done enough that future societies might try to do just that. Indiscriminate bombing of civilians, using German POWs as slave labor, even after the war ended(Truman actually implemented it, but FDR laid out the rules), and of course internment of Japanese Americans put some serious stank on his legacy. FDR is loved primarily because there are still people alive who remember what he did for them. 100 years from now people might feel differently. Leave the destruction of historical monuments to the Taliban.
Nothing, that’s for them to decide. And it’s for them to decide no matter what we do, unless we pass a Constitutional amendment that says “The Lincoln Memorial stays forever!” or something.
Each generation will decide for themselves. I don’t see why this is a problem, especially since there’s nothing we can do about the decisions of future generations.
I fully favor modern judgment over past judgment for things like memorials and honors (and similarly, I’m fine with future judgments over modern judgments). We get to decide what memorials we want, and future generations will get this choice as well, whether we like it or not.
That doesn’t mean I want to spend billions on pulling down memorials – that’s a pretty low priority compared to what I’d like the US to spend its resources on. But things like the Confederate flag, which can come down for free, ought to, and others I’ll take on a case-by-case basis.
Obviously, natural law says that whoever owns the memorial at the time gets to decide, but since we’re arguing higher concepts of morality here, I think that we have a responsibility to take past generations’ opinions into account as well as future generations. Think about why you admire certain historical figures and then imagine those figures reviled and dumped into history’s trashbin.
We set examples of future generations through our restraint, and by highlighting counterexamples, such as the Taliban. Tearing down monuments is bad. There might be certain exceptions which are so obvious that even the people of the time should have known better(Nathan Bedford Forrest should just be gone from any place of honor, even then most people knew he was a shit. Adolf Hitler in Germany obviously), but as a general rule we shouldn’t start judging historical figures solely by the standards of our time. Because we’d start that precedent(at least in a widespread fashion), and then all historical monuments would be subject to removal. Mount Rushmore prepare to be just another mountain, or perhaps the four South Park kids will be put there instead(hey, we’re pretty snarky, future generations might be ten times as snarky).
I get the confederate flag in state flags, because that’s a present honor as well as a historical honor. But purely historical sites shouldn’t be screwed with. Why not start messing with place names? Shouldn’t Columbus, Ohio be renamed? Or at least the capital moved? Sure, the people get to decide that, but it shouldn’t be based on moral fads. Columbus was a terrible person in many ways. He also earned his honors. Same goes for Robert E. Lee, who actually was a better person than Andrew Jackson by an order of magnitude. I’d actually rate pretty much every confederate figure as a better person than Andrew Jackson, actually, unless the treason thing is the main issue you have with the Confederacy. Except they were forgiven, and I don’t think we should piss on that judgment made by men who were far greater than we are.
Place names are different than memorials and statues. But I have no philosophical problem with changing the name of a school or building or place named after an odious person.
In general, though, I would try to judge people by their contemporaries, not by modern standards. I just don’t think this changes much – Adolf Hitler was odious by the standards of his time. Slavers of the 19th century were similarly odious by the standards of the time – just not by the standards of their place, necessarily. There were plenty of slavers’ contemporaries who recognized the incredible evil of slavery – those are the standards I judge them by. Lincoln was a white supremacist – but by the standards of the time, he was very racially progressive. Slavers, by the standards of the time, were still monstrous – it was just that they (generally) lived in pockets of the country in which this monstrosity happened to be widely accepted, even though there were so many other places in the country in which it was recognized for the monstrosity that it was.
Yes, I agree. And I’d note that many Confederate figures were honored as a form of passive aggressive rebellion in the wake of the Civil War loss. Some were actually named fairly recently(as in the 1930s or later). So I think in some cases it is justified to take stuff down. But I think we should have an extreme bias towards not doing it. The burden of persuasion should be entirely on the side of those who want to change things. yet I get the impression that they think modern sensibilities simply entitle them to make the changes they want. I’d caution that a lot of their heroes, probably nearly all of them, will occupy similar places of dishonor in the future, and it’s a lot more likely if we start that precedent in a really noticeable fashion.
And yes, I know each generation decides for itself, but I would imagine that one reason we build monuments isnt’ just for us, but so that future generations remember who we revere. Our heroes are MLK, George WAshington, Abe Lincoln, FDR, JFK, and we’ve also honored Ronald Reagan and will probably honor Bill Clinton with an airport too. I don’t think we’re doing that just for us, not caring if our grandchildren say, “F*&K those guys! We’re honoring Dylan Manning, the greatest QB of all time and removing that sexist pig JFK from New York’s airport!” It could happen. We act pretty trivial at times, I only imagine that trend will continue.
And even more as a reaction to the Civil Rights movement.
I’m curious what you think this persuasion would look like, and how it differs from what’s actually being done on the issue. Lots of people are saying we should take down some of these statues and flags. Sometimes, they get taken down. There’s no law or lawsuit involved, so what is that, other than successful persuasion?
As for the vulnerability of monuments to my heroes at some later date, A) I don’t really have “heroes” and B) if I did, and someone took down their statue a hundred and fifty years from now, I can state pretty authoritatively that I won’t care, on the grounds that I’ll be long dead, and anyway, it’s just a statue.