That’s not quite accurate: taxpayers can challenge spending enactments that violate a specific clause of the constitution. It’s just that the only case that we’ve seen that in (so far) was an Establishment Clause case.
When my Facebook feed got clogged with references to how they want to dig up the remains of a Confederate soldier and his wife and I Googled it and saw the usual hyperventilating right wing suspects on the case, I figured that there was something else to the story.
Apparently the Memphis City Council “unanimously approved a resolution calling for the removal of the graves of Forrest and his wife from Health Sciences Park, and an ordinance to remove a statue of Forrest from the park received the first of three readings.”
I realize that he is considered the founder of the KKK, but he did supposedly repudiate his past at the end of his life which is something that I think we can all learn from.
I’m not a believer in sacred ground (and, in fact, the remains of the couple were already moved once from a local cemetery to the public park when the monument was built in the early 1900s), but at the same time I do understand that public land is for the public benefit and his past is despicable. And I’m not naive enough to feel that a vast majority of Tennesseans who celebrate Nathan Bedford Forrest Day in Tennessee (which is today!) do so because of his reconciliatory nature.
And I want the Confederate Flag to come down from all statehouses and don’t think that’s a stupid liberal idea at all, but one whose time to come was a long time ago and possibly the only good thing that can come from the tragedy at that Charleston church is that we finally stop doing that.
But come on. This is just fodder for the right wing blogosphere to feed their persecution complex. Digging up the graves of even the most horrible, unrepentant Confederate war veteran is like, dare I say, spitting on a grave.
Make a resolution to put a plaque up at the monument that points this out (from my earlier link):
Even if this isn’t true (I hope it is but you never know) and therefore shouldn’t be posted, leave the graves alone. It gives ammo to the right and little else.
While I get what you are getting at, I can also understand Memphis maybe not wanting to have the body of a man who tooks arms against his nation and has such a racist history (his late conversion nonwithstanding) interred with such fanfare on their soil. The city has spent the last few decades just living down being the city were MLK Jr was murdered.
Now somtimes cities or people can downplay, adapt or mitigate names and things with racist origins. For example last years sucess of the Taney Dragons little league team resulted in some hand wringing due to the fact that the Taney playground is named after the guy who wrote the majority opinion on the Dredd Scott case. As a city, the consensus seemed to be that it was actually nifty ‘screw you’ to the man’s horrible legacy.
But here I can see no real mitigation. Most of Forrest’s late-game conversions are not cause for giving the man a monument, let alone one in a racially mixed city. If the conservative blogosphere cares so much they find a nice place to put his corpse and statue. They can stop dumping shit on citites like they always do.
I won’t say this isn’t a stupid move, it might be, but I have never cried for dead Confederates.
Then let an addition to his memorial be added, to honor his repentance. Who needs to come to Jesus more than the man who is furthest away?
This would save us all a lot of time.
But nobody is clamoring to do that. The issue is a monument that’s already in place and it (and his and his wife’s body) have been there for well over a hundred years now (note that unlike most Confederate commemoration, this happened long before the civil rights era so it wasn’t even a none-so-subtle fuck you to those uppity blacks in the '50s and '60s).
I don’t like the idea of digging people up. Like I said and elucidator agreed, leaving him there with a plaque pointing out his later words that fly in the face of racism will give people something to aspire to and more importantly, all those dumb rednecks flying their Confederate flags next to the monument can have something to read that will piss them off, which is fine with me.
Is there such a plaque in place now?
They’ve already moved him once to bury him where he is now, and more recently they changed the name of the park from being named after him. I’d be content with the removal of his military inspried statue. I think the people of Memphis should be allowed to choose.
As for Forrest’s late conversion, a lot of it seems like self-apologetics. I really have a hard time buying a complete conversion and there is just a lot of *evil *in the man’s history (he didn’t just own slaves, he was a slave trader).
It was a unanimous vote of the city council. Sounds like the people of Memphis have chosen. It’s people not living in Memphis who are complaining, right?
Memphis is good size town,* somebody* must be bitching.
It’s not popularity that makes an idea smart or lack of it that makes it stupid.
I think it’s a stupid idea and I laid out why. Most of this thread is whiny bullshit but this one seems legit to me. YMMV
If his later contrition was genuine, that’s great - there’s some pretty strong evidence that it was a purely mercenary move, but who can say for sure? But “founded the KKK” pretty much permanently puts you on the list of “People who do not, ever, get a memorial,” regardless of whatever else they might have done in their lives. If they were going after monuments to Lee, or Stonewall Jackson, or even Jeff Davis, you might have a point, but Forrest was evil on an entirely different level than those gentlemen.
And this:
…is precisely what makes this brilliant, not stupid. Let the right wing tie itself in knots over the disrespect being shown to the guy who founded the largest and deadliest domestic terrorist organization in the nation’s history. Let them be as loud and public about it as possible. If they want to brand themselves as defenders of the Klan, we should not trying to stop them. We should, indeed, load the the pistol for them, and help steady their aim when they point it at their own foot.
Or at least point out the advantages in a good, reliable shotgun.
How about this:
Leave the bodies.
Axe the monument.
Replace it with a new monument which depicts him kissing the cheek of Miss Flora Lewis while holding the bouquet she gave him and a plaque telling the story outlined above.
No. Not for him. Any other Confederate you care to name, but not Forrest. Dig up his bones and throw them in the ocean.
Why do you hate the ocean?!!?
(I know. But it was inevitable, wasn’t it?) 
I have a friend whose family is multi-generational Memphis. He just posted a lengthy Facebook note supporting the removal. I’m taking his word for the general feelings of Memphis-ians. Oh, and if it matters, he’s fishbelly white from a long line of ‘good ol’ boys’ (I knew his daddy).
How about a compromise? Remove the headstone but leave the bodies.
What could possibly go wrong?
That whole speech at the end just smacks of a staged photo-op for the late 19th century. I think Forrest never really fully disavaowed the KKK, just didn’t lke the membership’s turn for the poorer whites rather than the aristocrats he was used to.
Forrest was a special kind of evil and regarded as such by many even in his time.
I don’t think that example should be applied to most other Confederate soldiers though. If we truly regard Abe Lincoln as one of our greatest Presidents than we shouldn’t be so arrogant as to substitute our modern sensibilities for his wisdom. He felt it best to forgive the rebels and subsequent governments took no issue with the Confederates honoring their dead. We’re free to judge the Confederacy more harshly if we want, but we shouldn’t take irrevocable steps to overrule the judgement of our ancestors because we think we’re smarter and better somehow. These people fought and died for their country(talking about the Union leaders here) and let the rebels be honored. We didn’t fight that fight. So leave Gen. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and the men who fought for them alone.
But Forrest, yeah, fuck him.
I can’t imagine that Lincoln could have anticipated the losers would still be whining about their culture 150 years later though.