I think we can all put aside our differences long enough to come together to wish your mother well in battling this horrible disease. All the best to you and your family.
You can’t, and have never been able to just say “I’m not an officer anymore because I want to wage war on the country who’s army I’m an officer in” and have it not be treason. Seriously, your defense of Lee makes him look even worse, because in the ‘standard’ narrative he’s at least a man of honor torn between loyalties, here he’s just a dude who like ‘lol, an oath?’.
First off, it doesn’t matter if the government of Virginia considers something illegal to be legal, because the constitution is clear on who gets the final say in that. And firing on US Army troops is clearly illegal, regardless of what a treasonous government in Virginia says about it.
Secondly, they didn’t, full stop. Are you seriously not aware of the entire state of West Virginia? You can’t sustain the claim that the people of Virginia considered the referendum valid when a significant part of the state considered the referendum so invalid that they split off and formed their own state to protest the treasonous actions of the rest of the state. This whole ‘the people at the time considered it valid’ is not true in general, but is absurdly and blatantly untrue when they state you’re using as an example split into parts over the question of valid.
No, the point of the Civil War was to protect the institution of slavery and the system of white supremacy surrounding it. And there was no debate about whether the actions were illegal or not, they clearly and obviously were. There was debate about whether secession was allowed under the constitution, but there was absolutely no debate that firing on US Army troops who were on US government property was illegal insurrection. Had the Confederacy attempted to peacefully secede there could be room for debate, but they waged war on the US, which is simply and obviously illegal under the constitution.
Waging war against the United States as a citizen is treason. There’s nothing unclear or open to debate.
Note that the traitor waged war against “them” and “their” army and you want to ignore that.
This is ironic coming from a defender of Confederate revisionist history; it’s the people who put up the Confederate statues that have been trying to change history by teaching that the Civil War wasn’t about slavery, and instead was about “States Rights” or something similar.
I don’t defend the Confederate statues. I don’t care if they come down. There is a clear reason why they should: They were traitors, who worked war on the United States.
What I am opposed to is the removal of statues of our Founding Fathers, or incidents like the destruction of the Revolutionary War statue, or the vandalism done to the statue of Abraham Lincoln done in the aftermath of Charlottesville. We are a young country; having a history we can take pride in and celebrate to a certain degree (while not forgetting the warts) is a good thing.
I personally believe only Confederate monuments or monuments in general which are celebrating slavery should be taken down. Some would argue “But Washington and Jefferson and Grant were slaveholders”, yes they were, but that wasn’t the sum total of their contribution to our history. Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Grant worked to create, and then defend, this country. In my opinion, being the founder of a country, and being a man who turned down the opportunity to be a dictator (Washington) overrides these men’s imperfections, or their moral failings as viewed through today’s lens. With a statue of Washington or the others, you’re celebrating something that transcends slavery. The Confederacy did not stand for anything except the preservation of slavery and of a snobbish Southern aristocracy that fancied themselves nobility. There is nothing to promote or worth celebrating there, so the statues of those should come down (or should have ever been put up in the first place). If there was a statue of Washington which featured him whipping a slave, I’d want that taken down. But Washington himself does not stand for white supremacy or slavery. He was one of a majority of people who took part in a shameful practice; but he was also the father of a country whose ideals became the eventual end of slavery. Whereas when the Confederate cause was purely to defend slavery; they had no nobler or higher aim than that.
My worry though is that the revolutionary fervor and cultural anger which is overtaking reason will result in the loss of monuments to men simply because they were either slavers, without looking at the larger picture of their historical gifts to history, or because their values don’t line up with today’s morals. I fear the slippery slope which will lead from the destruction of Confederate statues to the destruction of non-Confederate statues and monuments.
But, my opinion on Confederate statues is that they all should be taken down. If someone wants to put up a monument to Robert E. Lee, it should be of his earlier days when he was a loyal officer of the US Army who fought bravely, or of his later days when he was the President of a College. Lee, in his own lifetime, I think paid enough for his treason. The best revenge that could be served to him was done in his lifetime: The removal of his beloved home, and the conversion of it into the cemetery for dead Union troops. That, along with his lifelong loss of citizenship, was enough for me. I would say the political leadership should have hung, though.
Then it’s reasonable both to advocate for talking down confederate statues, and against taking down statues of our founding fathers. Those two things can be consistent.
Where does that put you then on taking down statues/etc of Christopher Columbus?
For or against?
For.
Are you suggesting Columbus is a founding father?
I’m willing to listen to arguments either way, and it doesn’t have to have anything to do with taking down Confederate statues. Every statue can be evaluated on its own merits, as future generations will do no matter what we do.
:rolleyes:
I didn’t realize or see where you argued that only the founding fathers statues et all were exempt from removal, renaming, and deletion.
And as much as I’m rolling my eyes at your comment it occurs to me there wouldn’t be much for the fathers to found had Columbus not come along when he did, and how he did.
What merits are those?
Huh? Which statue are you asking about? The only ones I’ve advocated for removing are those honoring the fight for slavery and white supremacy.
When I was in high school, 50+ years ago, they already had texts noting that fishermen on the Grand Banks, Cabral, de León, de Balboa, the Cabots, Hudson, da Verrazano, Cartier, Vespucci, Frobisher, and many others were out exploring what was later to be identified as the Americas. If Columbus had not sailed in 1492, it was more than merely likely that the same lands would have been colonized by Europeans in a similar time frame.
You need to go back and sue your high school for not explaining that to you.
Which then of course opens the question of whether colonialism is something to celebrate, and if so, by whom.
I took your “every statue” to really mean every statue.
If that wasn’t your intent, I’m sorry. I read it wrong.
If it was your intent, it brings up what I and others (I think) are talking about - the merits that are being used to take down (and rename, remove, etc) statues and the like are far from clear, concise, or limited. They’re all over the place and changing by the day.
meh
Defending Columbus as necessary to the opening of the Americas is factually wrong. Debating the opening of the Americas is a separate topic for debate.
Who said it wasn’t?
I was saying that had he not, when he did, it’s possible, if not merely likely, that the same people that we revere today as the founding fathers quite possibly wouldn’t be the same people had it been ‘discovered’ by someone else some other time and in some other place.
Unless you’re arguing that it was an inevitable consequence that those people who did would have done so irregardless of when and where it first kicked off.
And if that really is your argument, maybe you too should go back and sue a few teachers yourself.
What does this have to do with anything? I don’t think the concept of a butterfly effect is why we put up statues to certain people.
I don’t think anyone is saying Columbus himself was necessary to the opening of the Americas. If he didn’t, like you said, somebody else would have. But then he would have gotten the statue. There’s a kind of virtue in being the one who actually does it.
Here is another snag for me.
I do not like what Columbus did, but he is - murder and all - perhaps the singular symbol (I mean in terms of how universally known he is and such) of the Age of Exploration, one of the most important periods in modern history. There are other great explorers as has been noted such as Verrazano, Leif Erickson, etc, but none are so unusually tied to the image of that age in popular memory as Columbus is. One of the first rhymes I was taught in Kindergarten - not so long ago, back in 1995 - was “In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue.” He has become in our culture more than a flawed man; he is a symbol; a mythical figure in the vein of Davey Crockett. I do not approve of his statue being taken down for the sole fact he contributed greatly to our knowledge about the geography of the world. When one celebrates Columbus Day, or a statue is put up of him, they’re not celebrating Columbus the man; as Tony Soprano put it, he “might as well be a fucking movie” at this point - they’re celebrating what he symbolizes, which is exploration.
It’s quite different from a statue of Robert E. Lee. A person looks at a statue of Robert E. Lee and thinks of how the South rose in some noble quest to reclaim “State’s Rights.” It presents an inaccurate version of history. I would doubt most of the bigoted look at Columbus and get a hard-on thinking about how he murdered Natives.
Also, it’s different in another sense. Lee’s Confederacy is within living memory, in the sense that old men now had grandfathers who were slaves, perhaps even slaves who lived in the Confederacy. The Confederacy is thus still a part of living history. There are living people who, while not having been enslaved themselves, are touched by the scars of slavery.
No one alive can say they are the victims of Columbus’ tyranny. That for me is the difference. If there is a statue of limitation on such things, 500 years is more than past that time.
When you think of Julius Caesar, do you think of how he subjugated and humiliated his fellow human beings and had men executed? Or do you think of him as more of a symbol, almost a mythic figure due to the length of time that’s passed - a great man of war whose actions helped lead to the founding of a great Empire, which lasted almost two thousand years, and who helped to create Western civilization?
I would not have an issue with every statue of Columbus noting BOTH his status as a symbol of exploration, and his moral and ethical evils as a man. When history goes back far enough, for me at least, a person stops being a person and takes on a more mythic shape.
This is strictly an Americanism - in other places, Vasco da Gama and Prince Henry the Navigator are the icons of that Age. I mean, we know who Columbus is, and all that he did. All that he did.
I have no problem with evaluating any statue, and I’ll listen to any merits anyone proposes. I’ve only proposed removal of Confederate statues, but I’m willing to listen to anyone who wants to make the case for or against any other statues as well.