Swastika? Maybe. Swastikas are a common symbol in many cultures dating back thousands of years way before nazis.
And the depictions of Lee, Jackson, and Davis are NOT, NOT, NOT showing what you claim they are. Its just 3 old guys on horseback. And the park sounds pretty fun.
BTW, is there a 3000 acre park dedicated to liberals that has golf, hiking, roller coasters, dinosaurs, flume rides, and other fun things?
I don’t understand this at all. Are you saying that we should have statues and monuments that honor traitors to the United States? That we should have statues and monuments that honor those who fought to preserve slavery? Is that really what you are saying? And you provide a statue in Mongolia as your argument?
Build new ones? Of course not. Stone Mountain was started over 100 years ago. Dedicated 55 years ago. Times change.
But its there and we should deal with it. We LEARN from the past. Both good and bad.
Communities should feel free to remove any statue they like. I mean its their property. But you dont permit every whacko with a grudge to go around pulling down statues of whomever they like.
Now after saying that if the state of Georgia chooses to dynamite Stone Mountain, then I say they have the right.
Blame the Nazis then, for ruining a perfectly good symbol
But yeah, if someone in the US or Europe is using Swastika’s, then they are almost certainly doing it for reasons that most of us would find quite objectionable.
Now, in India, apparently, the Swastika is a fairly common symbol, and a Hitler is just a grumpy man.
Context matters.
Shows me three traitors who took up arms against their country in order to keep owning people. What do you see?
No, we don’t dedicate amusement parks to liberals, we mean them to be all inclusive. But thank you for admitting that this is a park that caters to a particular political position.
If I were Mongolian, I’d probably have an opinion on it, and my opinion would be relevant.
Of interesting, if not necessarily relevant note, he is the great…grandfather of nearly a percent of the world’s population.
Yes, times change. Now we no longer honor those who took up arms against our country in order to be able to keep owning people.
Yes, and that is the difference between remembering the past and honoring it. Seeing a picture of it in a hitory book may teach you something. Seeing it in all its “glory” only tells you that the people who made this really like people who took up arms against our country in order to continue to own people.
So, would you say that if a city wants to get rid of a statue in it’s jurisdiction, the state that that city is within should not interfere?
I agree, and as a non-resident of Georgia, I can only offer opinion, not actual call to action. But I think that we’d be better off as a nation and as a world if our history books have a picture of stone mountain next to a picture of stone mountain being dynamited.
I’d be more worried about environmental concerns and, as you said, encroachment onto territory that others find to be sacred than about who exactly is being depicted.
But, you seem to miss the point. We do honor these people for what they did right. I don’t know if we need their giant busts on a mountain to do so, but it is a bit different than honoring those who turned against their country in order to keep owning people.
I honestly don’t see how it makes us any better off. Intrinsically, it is no better or worse than the worlds largest ball of rubber bands as a tourist trap.
Stone mountain is morally bankrupt and nothing more than a shrine for racists pretending that their way of life is decent and noble, when the reality is that their history and culture is an abomination.
Billie Holiday sang Strange Fruit for two decades until her death, the year following the purchase of Stone Mountain [ibid], and said that the imagery of the song reminded her of her father’s death due to racial prejudice denied medical treatment.
Here are the lyrics of Strange Fruit. Read them slowly and carefully. Imagine a person whom you love more than the world itself – your child, your spouse, your sibling, your parent – suffering such a fate at the hands of racists. Then ask yourself what you can and will do to about racism.
For any who do not understand the lyrics, here is a film of Billie Holiday singing Strange Fruit in her final year, overlayed with images of the 1911 lynchings of Laura and L.D Nelson in Okemah Oklahoma.[spoiler]
Despite this, the shrine of the white racists stands and generations of black blood is on their hands and the hands of all who, whether they accept that they are racists or not, prefer for the racist shrine of the fractured country to remain.
So should we also tear down any statue dedicated to venerating Americans who fought in the Vietnam war?
Should we instead put up statues dedicated to Jane Fonda and other members of the antiwar movement?
I mean think about it. Americans went over and invaded a foreign nation. We bombed the hell out of that country. We spread agent orange. We left mines everywhere. Our soldiers murdered and raped innocent Vietnamese (ever heard of the Mai lai massacre?). So why the hell do we have statues and monuments honoring Americans who served in that war?
And what about the Alamo? When we ignore Hollywood the Alamo was part of a war by Americans to steal land from Mexico. And part of why they wanted to steal Texas was so they could import slaves into Texas. Note - Jim Bowie was a slave trader and had his slave with him and yep, there is a statue to him. many Mexicans have a totally different perception of the battle and look at Mexican general Santa Anna as a a hero. So should we tear down the Alamo and all statues and monuments to the dirty rotten slave holding "Norteamericanos" who stayed inside?
How about monuments to the war War of 1812? England at that time, had outlawed slavery and during the War of 1812 British ships raided the American coast and freed about 4,000 slaves held in the US. Also American indians with weapons obtained from the British, fought Americans in order to save their homelands. So why should we honor the Americans who fought in that war?
Getting back to the Civil War and Stone Mountain. Yes, I guess you could say the men were traitors. But then what was George Washington and the men of the American revolution (which really was a civil war also between the loyalists and the separatists)? Were they not traitors to the crown? If the American revolution had gone the other way with the British winning would there be still statues to George Washington (also a slave owner)?
Should we destroy the Hunley and the museum dedicated to it?
To add on to what I said earlier, most things “Dixie” related used to be very common all over the south but they are being quietly removed. For example Dolly Parton owns a restaurant called “The Stampede”. But just a few years ago it was called the "Dixie Stampede" and depicted a tribute to rebs, yanks, and the antebellum south. Partons theme park “Dollywood” was built upon a previous park that had gone under calledThe Rebel Railroad". In the old tv show “Dukes of Hazzard” they drove a car called the General Lee and had a confederate flag on top. That has ended.
So the world has moved on and with it, the honoring of the south. Not thru tearing down statues but just thru quiet pressure and the recognition that things related to the confederacy are not so good.
This is part of that process of “the world moving on with it”. Yes, we’re moving on, and getting rid of those symbols that were largely put in place to demonstrate support for white supremacism.