BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda

Subject: BS: Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: EBarnacle
Date: 19 Aug 17 - 01:49 PM

I have been watching the removal of Confederate statues and memorials with fascination and horror. They are certainly politically incorrect when treated as symbols . In some cases [not that many] they are also genuine art. To some degree, they honor local heroes. They are no worse than the monuments and statues honoring Union soldiers that can be found on many squares in the Northern states. At the gatherings after the Civil War, the soldiers who fought on the various battlefields greeted each other in a comradely manner.

I completely condemn the neoFascist marchers and KKK members who accompany them and use these removals as an excuse for violent protests. I do not believe, however, that erasing our history will change these vermin. They will just go underground. For good or ill, this is a remembrance of part of our history.

In the Middle East, al-Qaeda destroyed a pair of ancient statues of the Buddha ISIS has destroyed a at least one major world heritage site, which they condemned as idolatrous. The Palestinians are destroying evidence of pre-Muslim history in an effort to deny the existence of any culture before theirs. All of these are history, which may or may not be pleasing to the current denizens but represent facts.

Rather than saying that these people fought for slavery and were therefore evil, we should be saying that these people fought for a cause which was defeated and we must never repeat these sins. On both sides, many soldiers were draftees. Does this make them reprehensible?

What set off this rant is the article linked below reporting calls for the destruction of the Stone Mountain sculpture. Yes, there is unpleasant history here. This also, though, a genuine work of art. Having worked with a major artist, I have learned that art does not have to please everyone. It may even offend. If this current wave of political correctness persists, will we see Washington and Jefferson removed from Mount Rushmore because they owned slaves?   Will Fort Bragg be renamed because Braxton Bragg was a Confederate general? Where will it end?

As much as I hate the current atmosphere, all of these people are exercising their First Amendment rights. We need the people to change, as well as the conditions which create their hate and fear. We should not change the law. I am increasingly questioning whether we should make any of these decisions quickly to satisfy popular opinion.

What needs to change is the attitudes that cause violent behavior. When that happens, the memorials and statues that survive will return to simply being a remembrance of our shared history both nice and not so nice. As any archeologist can tell you, most of the world's art has been destroyed either by the ravages of time or by human action.

Stone Mountain threatened

Will Confederate faces on Georgia's Stone Mountain be removed?

www.msn.com

There are an estimated 1,500 Confederate symbols on display in the U.S. More than half a dozen of them in at least four states have been taken down since Saturday's violence in Charlottesville. Proposals have been made to remove several others including one on Georgia's Stone Mountain, America's largest Confederate monument. Manuel Bojorquez reports.

Subject: RE: BS: Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 19 Aug 17 - 02:42 PM

And, can Confederate songs be sung?

Subject: RE: BS: Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: gillymor
Date: 19 Aug 17 - 03:25 PM

Stone Mountain commemorates one of the most shameful eras of Southern history (along with Jim Crow) and is an affront to any black person or any other decent American who happens to gaze on it. Tear it down.

Subject: RE: BS: Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: gillymor
Date: 19 Aug 17 - 03:38 PM

U.S. Grant characterized the Southern cause as "one of the worst for which a people ever fought."
Why the hell memorialize that?

Subject: RE: BS: Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 19 Aug 17 - 03:40 PM

Worth repeating here from closed thread
Jim Carroll

"An insightful letter in this morning's Irish times on the 'historical value' of the Confederate statues
"Sir, - Oisin Keogh, who objects to the removal of, as he ' calls them, "symbolic monuments" of confederate leaders and generals, says history matters. If he cares that much about his¬tory, then surely he knows that the vast majority of these monuments were commissioned and financed during the 1920s - a period when the Ku Klux Klan was emerging and infiltrating local I and state government in the I US. These monuments are not symbolic in any way other than highlighting the deep-seated racism and anger over the loss of the war of Confederate sympathisers. People of any ethnic persuasion other than white have to walk past a monument to their oppressor anytime they want to go to a park, or school or any other public place where one of these statues has been erected. It would be akin to a statue of Rommel at Normandy, or Cromwell in Drogheda.
History does matter, and I would suggest that Mr Keogh read some to fully understand that while Washington and Jefferson were slave owners, and nobody is forgetting that, they at least created a declaration that stated "that all men are created equal" and a framework to free slaves. The people who marched in Charlottesville under the pretext of "statue rights" do not believe in that last statement. And if you agree with Donald Trump on this matter, then neither do you. - Yours, etc,
DAVID CONLON"

Another letter points out that the only ones with a real grievance about the removal of the statues are the pigeons

Subject: RE: BS: Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Greg F.
Date: 19 Aug 17 - 03:46 PM

They are no worse than the monuments and statues honoring Union soldiers that can be found on many squares in the Northern states.

Actually, they are CONSIDERABLY worse- to the point of obscenity. They are a monument to white supremacy, to slavery, to traitors who took up arms against the United States Government in order to perpetuate slavery. They are celebrating a mythical "lost cause" as if the southern slaveocracy were people in a Sir Walter Scott novel.

I do not believe, however, that erasing our history will change these vermin.

No one is "erasing history"- that's arrant nonsense. As long as there are books and historians, the history of that unfortunate period of U.S. history is abundantly available.

What's being removed, and not before time, is a celebration of the Confederacy, white supremacy, Jim Crow and racism.

Rather than saying that these people fought for slaver

Uh, sorry fella- that is EXACLTY what they did. As they themselves admitted. Do look up the Confederate Constitution, the writings of Alex. Stephens & Jeff Davis, as well as the several ordnances of secession. Its right there in black & white (as it were).

will we see Washington and Jefferson removed from Mount Rushmore because they owned slaves

More nonsense. Washington and Jefferson were not traitors who took up arms against the government of the United States in order to perpetuate slavery. Nor did they violate their sacred oath to protect and defend the United States & uphold the Constitution, as did Lee and other members of the regular U.S. army who defected to the Confederacy.

This also, though, a genuine work of art.

The same can be said for the works of Leni Riefenstahl.

Will Confederate faces on Georgia's Stone Mountain be removed?

One can only hope, as they were specifiacally carved ca. 1920's, during a period of resurgent KKK activity, as a statement supporting segregation and Jim Crow.

There are an estimated 1,500 Confederate symbols on display in the U.S. More than half a dozen of them in at least four states have been taken down since Saturday's violence in Charlottesville.

Well then, we'd better get busy: 1,494 to go, and not a minute too soon.

Isis?? al-Quaeda??? gimmie a fuckin' break. They're the middle east version of the KKK, Aryan Nations, Neo-Confederates, Neo-Or-Not-So Neo-Nazis & etc

Subject: RE: BS: Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Joe Offer
Date: 19 Aug 17 - 10:11 PM

I think Greg is right on this one. One could argue that the Reconstruction (1865-77) was more harsh than it needed to be, but white Southerrners responded with a vengeance when it ended. The Democrats, who opposed Reconstruction, regained control of the U.S. House of Representatives in 1874. U.S. Army troops were removed from the South in 1877, ending the Reconstruction.

During Reconstruction, many African Americans were elected to political office in the South. When Reconstruction ended, whites regained power and enacted Jim Crow laws and built the Ku Klux Klan. Most of those Confederate statues were erected in the early 20th century, to celebrate the return of white supremacy to the South.

But if we remove statues, where do we draw the line? Some of those statues were most certainly built to mourn loved ones who served in battle and died on the battlefield or thereafter. Several years ago, I spent a fascinating couple of hours touring Stonewall Jackson Memorial Cemetery in Lexington, Virginia, in the Shenandoah Valley. The whole town of Lexington reeks of Confederacy. It's the home of the Virginia Military Institute, and Washington & Lee University (where Robert E. Lee is buried). To get rid of the mementos of the Confederacy, you'd have to bulldoze the whole town - and it's a really beautiful town, and I didn't find the mementos of the Confederacy to be overly offensive there. I did find it wonderful to see African American families walking free and proud through the town as tourists, with Barack Obama as President. So, I dunno. I'd like to see open, honest discussion before any more statues are removed - and I think decisions should be made locally.

But Stone Mountain is a big question. I suppose it's a really cool thing, not that I bothered to cough up the admission fee to see it. But it has far too much baggage. The story of the mountain and its carving is just too closely tied to the Ku Klux Klan. The trouble is, the Confederate Memorial is privately owned, while the surrounding property is a state park. This is one memorial that really should be blown to smithereens, but yet the ownership setup makes that very difficult to accomplish. Wish I knew how that one should be handled.

-Joe-

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: EBarnacle
Date: 20 Aug 17 - 12:07 AM

History is written by the winners.
Joe makes my point. At what point do we stop? Do we rename every military installation named after a Confederate General? There are a lot of them.
Do we judge them on artistic merit? Tastes differ. I feel that many "artists" including Warhol and Basquiat are cases of The Emperor's New Clothes. Others disagree.
A lot of major art was funded by pretty nasty people. Should we get rid of it because of the original patron? I believe Stone Mountain falls into this category.
What are the limits to which we go to avoid offending people? I had a discussion with Pete Seeger about the inclusion of the N word in the song "Blow, Boys, Blow." His answer at that time was "If it is essential to the song, leave it in. If you can work around it do so."
There was a chapter in "The Great Explosion," by Eric Frank Russell, entitled "F-IW." Freedom is the right to say, I won't do it. The rule also applies to taking offense. What are the limits to being offended or giving offense?
That is what has to be defined.

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: EBarnacle
Date: 20 Aug 17 - 12:19 AM

There is a point that Bill Moyers makes in his book on Democracy. The Civil War was a major point in the definition of citizenship. A large part of the reason many of the Southern generals elected to serve the Confederacy is that, while they were generals in the American army, they still considered themselves Virginians, Kentuckians, etc. first. Lee struggled with this before going South. He was offered command of the Union army but decided he could not fight against his home state.
Although condemned as traitors, these people were being true to what they considered their true citizenship. The war helped redefine the definition of American citizenship.

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 20 Aug 17 - 03:18 AM

What you say EB, is truw of every war that has ever been fought
Would it be permissible for German towns to erect statues to Hitler, Goebbels and all the heroes of The Reich because they fought nobly for their cause and it was part of German history?
How about marches declaring that Aryans are superior to Jews - would that be OK too?
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: akenaton
Date: 20 Aug 17 - 04:30 AM

Well said Barnacle. Thank god there are still some real people on this forum....not just a group of automatons.

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 20 Aug 17 - 05:34 AM

"not just a group of automatons."
Your aggression towards those who argue against you typifies the Klan whose rights you are supporting
Why is it democratic for armed racists to take to the streets but treasonable for Anti Trump demonstrators to exercise their opposition to him?
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 20 Aug 17 - 05:53 AM

yes

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Stu
Date: 20 Aug 17 - 06:36 AM

"What are the limits to which we go to avoid offending people?"

In the case of statues/carvings/public art etc I agree with Joe, each one has to be looked at on a case-by-case basis by local people, although we also need to consider how our wider society wants to remember the past.

Knowing that a number of our fellow countrymen would consider the statue of a person that was involved in oppression in the past very offensive, we have to decide whether that statue should remain or if choose to accept some responsibility for the actions of our ancestors and remove the offending object. If we don't care about offending others in our society, then keep the statue or carving or whatever.

Why is heartening is the way people have been galvanised into action by the presence of the extreme right on the streets. It might seem that with Trump and (in the UK) Farage plus Brexit the right are resurgent. Luckily there are enough people who won't forget that will go out on the streets to stop that happening.


"Do we judge them on artistic merit?"

Their artistic merit is irrelevant to the discussion.

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Greg F.
Date: 20 Aug 17 - 08:37 AM

So EB- to you, it would be acceptable if Jewish folk had to walk past a statue of Joseph Mengele every day of thrir lives.

History is written by the winners.

Please, not that old nonsense. As if nothing was written by anyone in or from the Confederacy?

Remember, too that Wilson thought the absolute bullshit of "Birth of a Nation" was "history written by lightening". This country has dealt for a hundred and fifty years - and still deals with on a daily basis- the fake "history" of the "Lost Cause" - It was even taught in school when I was a kid.

Although condemned as traitors, these people were being true to what they considered their true citizenship.

So what? The white supremecists and Nazis marching in Charlottesville were "being true to what they considered their true citizenship"- that of a white ethno-state. The parallel is exact.

What are the limits to which we go to avoid offending people?

This is not just about "offending people" tho that's a part of it. This is about celebrating and memorializing individuals, a society and a nation founded upon the principle that Blacks were sub-human property with no rights whatsoever.

Take 'em down & put 'em in an "I Wish I Wuz In De land Ob Cotton" theme park somewhare so real Americans don't have to look at them.

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Greg F.
Date: 20 Aug 17 - 08:44 AM

I think Greg is right on this one.

Thanks Joe - whooda thunkit? ;>)

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 20 Aug 17 - 09:52 AM

Those Confederate war hero statues weren't put up right after the war. They were put up by racists in the early twentieth century to impress upon African Americans to stay in what Southern whites considered the proper place of blacks. Barnacle may have discussed why generals decided to fight for the south; that has NOTHING to do with why statues were up up 50-75 years later.

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Greg F.
Date: 20 Aug 17 - 09:57 AM

And now, for a Brief Musical Interlude

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: robomatic
Date: 20 Aug 17 - 02:11 PM

As for the question posed by the OP: The answer is YES.

I have been to many (American) Civil War sites. I have found them to be a great resource of our common history, full of honest information which provokes great solemnity and emotion in the American heart.

I was taught up North by Mr. Wilkins that the war was fought over slavery. I have maintained that even when challenged with the southern argument that it was over States' Rights. Abraham Lincoln put paid to that argument when he answered simply and effectively that people can't ask for rights that they deny to others: their slaves.

There has NEVER been denial in the United States that from its founding there was an internal contradiction: That the rights the Founding Fathers demanded and debated were denied to millions of other inhabitants. Thomas Jefferson eloquently brought up the subject of the 'peculiar institution' and said among many other things: "I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just."

The wonder of our founding is that this disparate group of people were able to put together a country that lived to fulfill its own betterment to this very day.

It was never a sure thing and it is not a sure thing today.

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: gillymor
Date: 20 Aug 17 - 02:13 PM

I agree with Acme when she wrote 'Barnacle may have discussed why generals decided to fight for the south; that has NOTHING to do with why statues were up up 50-75 years later.' but for the sake of this discussion it's worth noting that Robert E. Lee was a wealthy slave owner by marriage and by some accounts a brutal one, so it's reasonable to assume that his motivation for accepting a commission in the CSA army exceeded just the defense of The Old Dominion. His preference for his home state over the United States is another component in the myth of the "Glorious Lost Cause".

I couldn't begin to articulate the argument nearly as well as New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu so here is a speech he gave explaining the removal of Confederate monuments in his city. Incidentally, I found it at billmoyers.com, an excellent source of information:

billmoyers.com

Excerpts:

"The historic record is clear: The Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis and P.G.T. Beauregard statues were not erected just to honor these men, but as part of the movement which became known as the cult of the lost cause. This "cult" had one goal: through monuments and through other means, to rewrite history to hide the truth, which is that the Confederacy was on the wrong side of humanity. First erected over 166 years after the founding of our city and 19 years after the end of the Civil War, the monuments that we took down were meant to rebrand the history of our city and the ideals of a defeated Confederacy. It is self-evident that these men did not fight for the United States of America. They fought against it. They may have been warriors, but in this cause they were not patriots. These statues are not just stone and metal. They are not just innocent remembrances of a benign history. These monuments purposefully celebrate a fictional, sanitized Confederacy, ignoring the death, ignoring the enslavement and the terror that it actually stood for."

"After the Civil War, these statues were a part of that terrorism as much as a burning cross on someone's lawn. They were erected purposefully to send a strong message to all who walked in their shadows about who was still in charge in this city."

"And in the second decade of the 21st century, asking African-Americans — or anyone else — to drive by property that they own, occupied by reverential statues of men who fought to destroy the country and deny that person's humanity seems perverse and absurd. Centuries-old wounds are still raw because they never healed right in the first place."

"The Confederacy was on the wrong side of history and humanity. It sought to tear apart our nation and subjugate our fellow Americans to slavery. This is the history we should never forget and one that we should never again put on a pedestal to be revered."

Well worth reading or viewing if you're interested in this issue.

Also, I totally agree with Stu's statement "Their artistic merit is irrelevant to the discussion."
If people want to appreciate what they see as their "esthetic value", indeed, put them in museums but get them the hell out of public view for all the reasons Mayor Landrieu mentioned in his speech. I'd prefer to see them torn down and recycled into something useful.

Here is a timeline for Confederate monument and statue building between 1870 and 1980 (source-SPLC):

Mother Jones

and here is the article in which it appeared:

Mother Jones

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: robomatic
Date: 20 Aug 17 - 02:24 PM

Democracy Now has a fascinating interview with some descendants of General Thomas 'Stonewall' Jackson.

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Mr Red
Date: 20 Aug 17 - 02:44 PM

In the recent vociferous debate over a University College founded by a slave trader there were inconsistences like students who were the beneficiaries of subsidies &/or burseries from the college. They wanted his statue removed.
I liked the comment "why not paint the face black" - a serious concept that would remind everyone and add substance to the history. As the epithet goes "Many a true word spoken in jest".
My feelings: why destroy when you can tell a story?
But you can't reason with evangelists. Logic is not their strong point, belief is! It is a religion with them, even though they don't admit it.

But it is a sign of an immature society that re-writes history. Russia did it with communism in 1917, then after Stalin, then Krushev and who knows who else. - Iraq, Romainia and it will continue. Maybe we should resist the conceit to put so many statues in future - knowing what human society will do.

Record history with truth, then cast it in stone. The future will cherry pick but can't deny.

And.......... how do the French depict Agincourt? (what is the imoji for rhetoric ? 🤔 )

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Greg F.
Date: 20 Aug 17 - 04:53 PM

But it is a sign of an immature society that re-writes history.

I'm not sure where you're headed with this? Are you talking about the wholesale re-writing of U.S. history that invented the myth of "The Glorious Lost Cause" ?

My feelings: why destroy when you can tell a story?

Depends on which story you're telling and how, dunnit?

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: gillymor
Date: 20 Aug 17 - 05:08 PM

Not re-writing history, rather correcting a gross misrepresentation of it.

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Greg F.
Date: 20 Aug 17 - 05:19 PM

Its not just the Jackson G-G-Grandsons, Robo.

Descendants of Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis want the monuments gone, too.

Ditto a group of descendants of the sculptor who created the Confederate Monument in Arlington National Cemetery (an anachronism if ever there was one- a monument to traitors in "the" National military cemetery).

Hell, if its good enough for these folks, its damn well good enough for me.

And about bloody time.

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Greg F.
Date: 20 Aug 17 - 06:00 PM

I suppose it was only a matter of time before one of the few people that can out-asshole Donal-Dumbo - Rush-Druggo - spewed this forth:

Limbaugh says white supremacists and the KKK 'are not the problem'.

"They are not the problem. The problem is on the other side," Limbaugh says. By the "other side" he means "the Antifa, the Occupy Wall Street, the Black Lives Matter, the United States mainstream media, the Democrat Party."

Limbaugh describes media coverage of Trump and the Charlottesville white supremacist rally as an effort to "distort information to wipe out from the vestiges of our history and our memory any collection of stories that testify to the greatness of America and her people."

Limbaugh's comments were laced with anti-Semetic tropes, blaming the violence in Charlottesville on "people like George Soros and any other number of international financiers whose objective it is to take the United States out and down as a superpower."

More Here if you have a strong stomach.



Can we get rid of Limbaugh along with the statues?

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: bobad
Date: 20 Aug 17 - 08:13 PM

"The essence of myth -- the knowing of the unknowable, the unknowing of the knowable -- is its capacity for infinite adaptation, its susceptibility to distortion, and, once distortion has occurred, its resistance to efforts to reestablish reality; myth is more stubborn than fact." -- Claude Lanzmann

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: robomatic
Date: 20 Aug 17 - 09:18 PM

"This is the West. . . When the legend becomes fact- print the legend."

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
If you haven't seen it, see it.

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: EBarnacle
Date: 20 Aug 17 - 09:24 PM

I wanted to start a reasoned discussion and it seems we are able to have one on this very divisive issue.
Greg, you are throwing up a straw man with your Mengele comparison. The Germans themselves rejected that as a possibility with their post war anti-racism laws. That has not, however, stopped the skinheads and neos from proliferating in their ratholes. This time, their targets are Muslims--at least initially.
As I said in my OP, we need to change people's attitudes and beliefs. Only then will what the symbols reverence be defused.

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Joe Offer
Date: 20 Aug 17 - 10:30 PM

The monuments in cemeteries and in battlefields don't have the "Southern Triumphalist" tone that is carried by the 20th-century equestrian statues of Confederate generals. On the battlefields, I think it helps that the statues are "bipartisan" - from both the Union and Confederate armies.

I generally think it's a good idea to remove Confederate statues from cities, but I'm not so sure about the cemeteries and battlefields.

Back in the 1980s, I went to the Deep South a number of times as a federal election observer under the Voting Rights Act of 1965. I developed theories about the Civil War memorials I saw in the South. Most notable were Mississippi and Alabama. In Mississippi, I got the impression that they fought the war and lost. In Alabama and South Carolina, I got the impression that the entire state still contended that they won the war - same with Georgia. Virginia and Louisiana and North Carolina seemed to be politely embarrassed that they had been involved in the whole mess - except that the Shenandoah Valley was rabidly pro-Confederacy. These are just my impressions, but I had fun trying to discern the varying attitudes about the Civil War in various states.

I was on the tail end of my agency's Voter Rights trips. In general, we were received very well and there seemed to be a lot of friendly interaction between blacks and whites at the polls - in many places, it was far more friendly than I'd seen in black-white relationships in the North. But there always seemed to be one incident that made me think it was good that we were there to help keep the elections honest and fair.

I think it's a travesty that the Supreme Court more-or-less abolished hte Voting Rights Act. There are still many places in the South where people work hard to deprive African-Americans of their right to vote. I keep wondering what trick they're going to come up with next. The Department of Justice can no longer take preventative action in the South. They have to wait until the election is over, and then they can prosecute - after the damage has been done.

-Joe-

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Greg F.
Date: 20 Aug 17 - 10:41 PM

Greg, you are throwing up a straw man with your Mengele comparison.

I rather think not. I'm not talking about a Mengele statue in Germany. Check with a few black folks & get back to me.

This time, their targets are Muslims.

I rather think it was black folks and Jews, from the chants in Charlottesville.

One way to change attitudes, as a start, is to do away with commemoration and celebration of a pernicious anti-historical "Lost Cause" myth and its trappings - particularly those trappings erected specifically to reinforce white supremacy and segregation and terrorize black folks. The symbols can't reverence squat if they're gone.

Then we can begin to replace the root myth with fact.

Time we got on with it- its more than a hundred years overdue.

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Mr Red
Date: 21 Aug 17 - 02:48 AM

Depends on which story you're telling and how, dunnit?

We are visual beings.
Without the iconography, society will ignore.
Give them the standing statue and put your rewriting of history on it. Then we can read the stories. Blacken the face and it hits home, destroy and it has no ammunition.

Otherwise "History repeats itself, it has to, no-one is listening" (or reading).

Censorship is alt-facts by any name.

There is always a better way. Evangelists don't know that!

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Greg F.
Date: 21 Aug 17 - 08:45 AM

your rewriting of history

Once again: it is not "rewriting history". Nor is it "censorship"- you're starting to sould like Ake on the Boston Demo thread.

It is debunking a myth.

Then we can read the stories.

Plenty of other and more appropriate places to read the real story/ies other than on a monument to slavery & white supremacy.

We don't need these Confederate memorials to tell the true story; moreover thay make telling the real story more difficult.

And they're a poke in the eye with a sharp stick to every person of color who sees them, and an embarrassment to responsible, thinking white folks as well.

Sometimes I REALLY miss Azizi...

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Greg F.
Date: 21 Aug 17 - 09:46 AM

NB to Mudelves: I apologize for the length of this, but felt it needed to be seen in full. Delete if necessary.

Confederate Statues and 'Our' History

By Eric Foner, Aug. 20, 2017

President Trump's Thursday morning tweet lamenting that the removal of Confederate statues tears apart "the history and culture of our great country" raises numerous questions, among them: Who is encompassed in that "our"?

Mr. Trump may not know it, but he has entered a debate that goes back to the founding of the republic. Should American nationality be based on shared values, regardless of race, ethnicity and national origin, or should it rest on "blood and soil," to quote the neo-Nazis in Charlottesville, Va., whom Trump has at least partly embraced?

Neither Mr. Trump nor the Charlottesville marchers invented the idea that the United States is essentially a country for white persons. The very first naturalization law, enacted in 1790 to establish guidelines for how immigrants could become American citizens, limited the process to "white" persons.

What about nonwhites born in this country? Before the Civil War, citizenship was largely defined by individual states. Some recognized blacks born within their boundaries as citizens, but many did not. As far as national law was concerned, the question was resolved by the Supreme Court in the infamous Dred Scott decision of 1857. Blacks, wrote Chief Justice Roger B. Taney (a statue of whom was removed from public display in Baltimore this week), were and would always be aliens in America.

This was the law of the land when the Civil War broke out in 1861. This is the tradition that the Southern Confederacy embodied and sought to preserve and that Mr. Trump, inadvertently or not, identifies with by equating the Confederacy with "our history and culture."

Many Americans, of course, rejected this racial definition of American nationality. Foremost among them were abolitionists, male and female, black and white, who put forward an alternative definition, known today as birthright citizenship. Anybody born in the United States, they insisted, was a citizen, and all citizens should enjoy equality before the law. Abolitionists advocated not only the end of slavery, but also the incorporation of the freed people as equal members of American society.

In the period of Reconstruction that followed the war, this egalitarian vision was, for the first time, written into our laws and Constitution. But the advent of multiracial democracy in the Southern states inspired a wave of terrorist opposition by the Ku Klux Klan and kindred groups, antecedents of the Klansmen and neo-Nazis who marched in Charlottesville. One by one the Reconstruction governments were overthrown, and in the next generation white supremacy again took hold in the South.

When Mr. Trump identifies statues commemorating Confederate leaders as essential parts of "our" history and culture, he is honoring that dark period. Like all monuments, these statues say a lot more about the time they were erected than the historical era they evoke. The great waves of Confederate monument building took place in the 1890s, as the Confederacy was coming to be idealized as the so-called Lost Cause and the Jim Crow system was being fastened upon the South, and in the 1920s, the height of black disenfranchisement, segregation and lynching. The statues were part of the legitimation of this racist regime and of an exclusionary definition of America.

The historian Carl Becker wrote that history is what the present chooses to remember about the past. Historical monuments are, among other things, an expression of power — an indication of who has the power to choose how history is remembered in public places.

If the issue were simply heritage, why are there no statues of Lt. Gen. James Longstreet, one of Gen. Robert E. Lee's key lieutenants? Not because of poor generalship; indeed, Longstreet warned Lee against undertaking Pickett's Charge, which ended the battle of Gettysburg. Longstreet's crime came after the Civil War: He endorsed black male suffrage and commanded the Metropolitan Police of New Orleans, which in 1874 engaged in armed combat with white supremacists seeking to seize control of the state government. Longstreet is not a symbol of white supremacy; therefore he was largely ineligible for commemoration by those who long controlled public memory in the South.

As all historians know, forgetting is as essential to public understandings of history as remembering. Confederate statues do not simply commemorate "our" history, as the president declared. They honor one part of our past. Where are the statues in the former slave states honoring the very large part of the Southern population (beginning with the four million slaves) that sided with the Union rather than the Confederacy? Where are the monuments to the victims of slavery or to the hundreds of black lawmakers who during Reconstruction served in positions ranging from United States senator to justice of the peace to school board official? Excluding blacks from historical recognition has been the other side of the coin of glorifying the Confederacy.

We have come a long way from the days of the Dred Scott decision. But our public monuments have not kept up. The debate unleashed by Charlottesville is a healthy re-examination of the question "Who is an American?" And "our" history and culture is far more complex, diverse and inclusive than the president appears to realize.

******
Eric Foner is a professor of history at Columbia and the author, most recently, of "Battles for Freedom: The Use and Abuse of American History."

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: michaelr
Date: 22 Aug 17 - 06:30 PM

Here's an idea for what to do with Confederate statues. Hungary put their Communist monuments in a lovely park designed for the purpose, where those who are so inclined can visit them, and those who are not so inclined don't have to encounter them in major public spaces. Bonus! Memento Park

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: EBarnacle
Date: 22 Aug 17 - 10:49 PM

On another site, a friend pointed out that many of these statues were essentially mass produced by the same foundries that were producing the "Yankee soldier" statues. Follow the money.

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Mr Red
Date: 23 Aug 17 - 03:59 AM

Nor is it "censorship"

quoted in Merriam-Webster on the very word - permitted a very limited dispersion of facts .

yes it is, like all politically correct proclamations.

As I said, put the alternative argument on the item itself and we get the message. Remove it and we are ignorant.

Are we ashamed of our past? If you ain't then go ahead remove the past and make more similar mistakes. You are following the pattern of history.

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 23 Aug 17 - 07:37 AM

I'm with michaelr. A statue of a political figure is a political statement. I would have hated to have lived in one of those countries in which I was confronted daily by massive portraits of Mao or Ceaucescu or Stalin or Saddam everywhere I went. When I saw things like that on the telly they made me shudder. So what's so different about political statues? In democracies politics is often polarising, even divisive. Your choice of hero may not be mine. That requires respect on both sides and it requires compromise in order to avoid offence. Put the statues in museums or memorial gardens where no-one has to see them if they don't want to. That's freedom.

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Greg F.
Date: 23 Aug 17 - 07:44 AM

yes it is, like all politically correct proclamations.


The old "politically correct" bullshit.You ARE channelling Ake. Whu don't the two of you get a room somewhere?

Are we ashamed of our past? If you ain't then go ahead remove the past

Are you proud of Slavery, white supremacy, Jim Crow and Lynching? If so, then continue to memorialize and celebrrate them with statuary- on your own property, not in public spaces.

Once again, no-one is "removing the past" - which is in itself impossible.

An error is being corrected.

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: gillymor
Date: 23 Aug 17 - 07:59 AM

Mr. Red wrote-"Give them the standing statue and put your rewriting of history on it. Then we can read the stories. Blacken the face and it hits home, destroy and it has no ammunition."

Many of the most offensive of these Confederate statues, that were designed to send a message of intimidation and white supremacy, were strategically placed in high traffic areas where the vast majority of those who see them are zipping past in autos or, in an earlier era, autos and horse-drawn vehicles. I'll wager that of all the folks that encounter them a very small fraction of them ever actually read what's inscribed on their base.

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Mrrzy
Date: 23 Aug 17 - 09:19 AM

Excuse me? "They are no worse than the monuments and statues honoring Union soldiers that can be found on many squares in the Northern states." - so, nobody would have minded a statue of Mengele going up in a Jewish neighborbood in, say, Poland, 75 years after WWII? What twaddle. And I live in Charlottesville now.

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Mr Red
Date: 23 Aug 17 - 09:29 AM

It is removing the past. It is removing the evidence. Like I say, add your story. What are you afraid of?

Public shaming if that is what you want.

It is called context. Move it to a museum if you like. But removing stuff is censorship, or was the last time I read the entry in various dictionaries.

Or is censorship what others do to prevent you saying what you want. And removing is what you do?

Or am I talking in another language?

Now do we have an opinion on Roman statues? Some of the worse despots that maintained a slave culture. Ah! But that is antiquity, it has a different patina! And we value stuff that old.
Context? Try it.

And the UK police currently have an anti-slavery unit. Talk about history repeating itself............ Out of sight, out of mind!

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Vashta Nerada
Date: 23 Aug 17 - 09:43 AM

It is removing the past. It is removing the evidence. Like I say, add your story. What are you afraid of?

Removing Confederate propagandic statues isn't the same as Thomas Bowdler "cleaning up" Shakespeare. It doesn't diminish the lessons of war or the context. It isn't removing the past, it's more like cleaning up the unexploded bombs after a war.

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 23 Aug 17 - 09:59 AM

In fact, the vast majority of those ancient Roman statues are now housed in museums and galleries in Italy. If you look into the "slave culture" of ancient Rome I think you'll find that it wasn't at all the same thing as was practised in the US. And there aren't too many descendants of ancient Rome left to take offence. There may be a debate to be had about when modern history, of the kind that all too sharply informs our attitudes to modern-day events, morphs into ancient history. The cutoff, if there is such a thing, may be at different points in different cultures. There may also be a debate to be had regarding those ancient sculptures about whether they should remain as examples of great art. You tell me at which point, for example, nude art is no longer good enough to not be pornography. There's no black and white, but there is a red line beyond which political partiality imposed on others can cause perfectly unjustifiable offence. And we do live in democracies in which we accept that personal freedoms may be compromised at the point where they start to tread on other people's toes. It's also well worth remembering, when you consider those confederate statues, that slavery is by no means dead in today's world.

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: EBarnacle
Date: 23 Aug 17 - 02:51 PM

Getting back to one of my earlier questions, here is a case in which a broadcaster is so afraid of giving offense that Robert Lee, an Asian, is being removed from a UVa broadcast.

https://patch.com/new-jersey/baskingridge/s/g7n7t/espn-announcer-robert-lee-booted-from-u-va-season-opener-because-of-his-name

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: gillymor
Date: 23 Aug 17 - 03:14 PM

ESPN's explanation for it seems perfectly reasonable to me:

"We collectively made the decision with Robert to switch games as the tragic events in Charlottesville were unfolding, simply because of the coincidence of his name,"

Mr. Lee was switched to another game and won't miss a paycheck. Big deal.

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Greg F.
Date: 23 Aug 17 - 06:42 PM

Mr Red:Or am I talking in another language?

Yes. Gibberish.

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Greg F.
Date: 23 Aug 17 - 06:44 PM

Robert Lee, an Asian, is being removed from a UVa broadcast.

And that incident concerns the removal of Confederate/Confederacy-worshippiong monuments.......... how, exactly?

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 23 Aug 17 - 07:02 PM

Censorship is such a loaded word. It can be tossed around all too easily by scoundrels who want their hate speech or hate-iconography to remain immune from their adversaries' criticism (people who they'd quite likely characterise as "politically correct" or as "soft liberal lefties," etc.). Censorship is the authoritarian, arbitrary removal from public gaze of material that someone (probably no more qualified to do so than you or me) has decided may "deprave and corrupt" or, to be less kind, that might make them turn against their masters. There is nothing authoritarian about campaigning for the removal of statues offensive to a lot of people. In fact, there may well be an authoritarian angle to the attitude of the people who decided, divisively, to put up those statues in the first place and who argue on ideological grounds that they should remain in place. Democracy and common decency demand compromise. Put the damn things in theme parks or museums.

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Greg F.
Date: 23 Aug 17 - 07:46 PM

Or better yet, put 'em in the dump [tip].

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 23 Aug 17 - 08:05 PM

There has stood for over a hundred years in Exeter, very close to where my father-in-law used to live on New North Road, a fine bronze statue of Redvers Buller on horseback, an old Etonian general who was involved in the very questionable Zulu wars and the two Boer Wars. It turns out that he was a man prone to making tactical blunders, ending up as something as a laughing stock. But Exeter and his home town of Crediton loved him, hence the statue. The man was a complete arse but I reckon you'd have an insurrection on your hands if you were to suggest pulling the statue down. Tough stuff, this!

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Greg F.
Date: 23 Aug 17 - 09:23 PM

That's as may be, Steve, but the general didn't try to overthrow the british government by force of arms.

Nor did he enslave the Zulus (which would have been a tough job, any road).

Taking down statues of simple eejits and/or fools is a whole other question.

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: EBarnacle
Date: 24 Aug 17 - 12:49 AM

Greg and Gilly, the question is not whether he will miss a paycheck. It is relevant because his name, Robert Lee, is similar to the General who led the Army of Northern Virginia during the Civil War. His home state was Virginia.
In light of the Alt-Right riot in Virginia, ESPN believes it might be inflammatory to have him broadcasting commentary for a football game. Of course, he said it was all right with him to be moved from his regular assignment--he wants to keep his job. The subtext was probably that, if he did not accept the change he would be looking for other employment.
If ESPN had not made an issue of it, it is quite likely nothing would have happened. Now, he's become a victim of excessive political correctness.

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 24 Aug 17 - 04:34 AM

Point taken, Greg, though Buller and his ilk are emblematic of Empire, every bit as obnoxious as those confederates. I wonder whether Redvers knew Hector The Hero...

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: gillymor
Date: 24 Aug 17 - 06:15 AM

ESPN did not make an issue of it, EB, they showed some sensitivity in the wake of a tragedy and a time of acute social unrest in Charlottesville by reassigning an employee. That's the last I say on this non-issue.

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: akenaton
Date: 24 Aug 17 - 07:17 AM

"Point taken Gilly"......Do you understand the point being made by Barnacle the opening poster?

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: akenaton
Date: 24 Aug 17 - 07:23 AM

The footage of the statues being kicked and spat upon after their demolition is definitely reminiscent of scenes in Iraq, Libya, Syria.

Most thinking people now are appalled at the "summary justice" handed out to dictators like Hussein and Gaddafi, as we begin to realise the nature of the opposition in these countries.

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: gillymor
Date: 24 Aug 17 - 07:39 AM

Folks here might be interested in the perspective of Southerner and Pulitzer-Prize winning historian Jon Meacham on the monuments issue:

New York Times

From the article:

'Facts, as John Adams said, are stubborn things — and, for Southerners, they are also often uncomfortable. If we don't face them forthrightly, we risk living in worlds of fantasy and fable, subject not to reason, the greatest of gifts, but susceptible to passion, the most dangerous of forces. In such alternative realities, the Civil War was not about slavery but about what neo-Confederates refer to as "heritage."'

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 24 Aug 17 - 09:16 AM

"Point taken Gilly"......Do you understand the point being made by Barnacle the opening poster?

No-one has said "Point taken Gilly."

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Jeri
Date: 24 Aug 17 - 10:23 AM

Most of the statues were put up in the eras of Jim Crow, and the civil rights movement. They aren't "historical". They were "in your face" statements. Who puts up that many statues to people who tried to overthrow their government?

I don't have a problem with historical statues, as in if they were there before those times.
I have a problem with statues featuring prominently in towns in a way that pretty much says "fuck you and your civil rights/racial equality", which is why they're there. When they're in the center of a town, they're telling everybody that's what the town believes.

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: akenaton
Date: 24 Aug 17 - 01:03 PM

Well apologies Steve, It should have been "Point taken Greg"

An easy mistake to make I suppose as there doesn't seem to be much difference, other than Greg being slightly more literate and a little more insightful?

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 24 Aug 17 - 05:55 PM

Fine. Keep digging.

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Joe Offer
Date: 25 Aug 17 - 03:45 AM

Here's New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu's Address on Removal of Four Confederate Statues. Some have speculated that Landrieu may be a Democratic candidate for President in 2020. I'd vote for him.
An excerpt:

The historic record is clear, the Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, and P.G.T. Beauregard statues were not erected just to honor these men, but as part of the movement which became known as The Cult of the Lost Cause. This 'cult' had one goal - through monuments and through other means - to rewrite history to hide the truth, which is that the Confederacy was on the wrong side of humanity. First erected over 166 years after the founding of our city and 19 years after the end of the Civil War, the monuments that we took down were meant to rebrand the history of our city and the ideals of a defeated Confederacy. It is self-evident that these men did not fight for the United States of America, They fought against it. They may have been warriors, but in this cause they were not patriots. These statues are not just stone and metal. They are not just innocent remembrances of a benign history. These monuments purposefully celebrate a fictional, sanitized Confederacy; ignoring the death, ignoring the enslavement, and the terror that it actually stood for.
After the Civil War, these statues were a part of that terrorism as much as a burning cross on someone's lawn; they were erected purposefully to send a strong message to all who walked in their shadows about who was still in charge in this city. Should you have further doubt about the true goals of the Confederacy, in the very weeks before the war broke out, the Vice President of the Confederacy, Alexander Stephens, made it clear that the Confederate cause was about maintaining slavery and white supremacy. He said in his now famous 'corner-stone speech' that the Confederacy's "cornerstone rests upon the great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery -- subordination to the superior race -- is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth."

It's worth listening to the entire speech. It shows a lot of wisdom. I fell in love with the people of New Orleans when I was there last fall. Mitch Landrieu is an example of the best of New Orleans.
-Joe-

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: akenaton
Date: 25 Aug 17 - 04:26 AM

I agree with much of that Joe, but it is an over simplification of the problem.
Lincoln also asserted that although slavery was wrong, the Black man was not "equal" to the White, that in itself is racism.
Should all statues of Lincoln be removed?

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Joe Offer
Date: 25 Aug 17 - 04:38 AM

OK, Ake, think deep now. Look above to comments about Washington and Jefferson. No person is perfect, and every person is a product of his/her age. But on the balance, Washington and Jefferson and Lincoln stood for what's right.

I'd also say that Jefferson Davis and Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee were certainly remarkable, and certainly weren't all bad. Indeed, there are many stories that point to the integrity of Robert E. Lee. But they are symbols of a very racist Confederacy that sought to preserve slavery.

But you need to listen closely to the words of Landrieu, a thoroughly Southern mayor. Those statues weren't meant to honor and mourn Davis and Jackson and Lee. They were erected in the early 20th century and meant to celebrate the rebirth of white supremacy and to redefine the Confederacy as some sort of lost, heroic ideal. They were erected as symbols of the domination of whites over blacks. They were erected in the heyday of eugenics, when people tried to come up with "scientific proof" that whites were superior to blacks.

They are racist symbols. And they need to be destroyed.

Why are you so intent on supporting the cause of racism and bigotry?

-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Mrrzy
Date: 25 Aug 17 - 08:52 AM

OK, here is my oversimplification, as a Charlottesville resident for decades:
It was the people who wanted the statues to remain marching through my town with torches in an attempt to terrorize us into not removing them that made me want to remove them.

And that was BEFORE the KKK came and reinforced my desire not to give them anything they want.

That was the month before the they came back and marched through my university with torches in another attempt to terrorize us into agreeing with them.

And after THAT, they committed murder, in an attempt to terrorize us into agreeing with them.

They want me and half my family, dead.
They want my African and black friends and family, dead.
They want my friends and family with accents in English, dead.
They want my friends' newborn baby, dead.

What more do they have to do for you not want them to get what they want?

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: gillymor
Date: 25 Aug 17 - 09:10 AM

Thanks for sharing that, Mrrzy. It must have been traumatic and depressing having those hate groups doing their dirt in your own town.

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Greg F.
Date: 25 Aug 17 - 09:21 AM

Yup, Mrrzy - facts are indeed stubborn things.

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 25 Aug 17 - 09:33 AM

Ake is being willfully obtuse, there is no point in trying to explain anything in a way that will let him see or bring him around. That's not the position he is willing to take in his trolling.

I just finished reading the book Hidden Figures. I look forward to seeing the film soon, but understand full well that much of the history on the pages can't make it into the film. I defy anyone to read that book and not come away understanding completely what all of this Confederate statue discussion is really about.

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Greg F.
Date: 25 Aug 17 - 09:59 AM

I thought the film excellent & I should read the book & likely will.

Problem is that there's a significant segment of the population that doesn't WANT to understand, and whose minds will not be changed by facts.

The myth is easier on their consciences.

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: akenaton
Date: 25 Aug 17 - 09:59 AM

I have no wish to support the Confederacy, colour prejudice, or the KKK, BUT, if we start drawing redlines regarding freedom of speech, we have to be fully aware of our history.
Historical figures were often "bad people" by today's standards, a lot of the UK was built on the slave trade half of Glasgow and Liverpool are named after slave traders.
We cannot re-write history for one part of society only.

As I said above Scotland's premier historical hero was regarded in his time as a traitor, a renegade, and a terrorist.....I suppose he was all of these things to many people, even some Scots and he was eventually taken to London and hung drawn and quartered.
Today anyone defacing his monuments would risk facing the same punishment.

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Greg F.
Date: 25 Aug 17 - 10:17 AM

Willfully obtuse doesn't half cut it.

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 25 Aug 17 - 11:29 AM

This is not about rewriting history. It's about confronting the past (as Liverpool has done apropos of the slave trade) and questioning the motives of those who would wish to misuse it to further their own despicable causes, such as those who try to dignify dark periods in history by erecting public statues many decades later to unpleasant people whose sentiments they happen to share. By the way, for those Americans reading akenaton's post (you poor things), we no longer have hanging, drawing and quartering here. Just in case you didn't know!

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Jeri
Date: 25 Aug 17 - 11:29 AM

It's not that people want to write them out of history.
It's that people don't want to celebrate them.
Being that there are enough idiots down south who say "the south gonna rise again!", hate the United States and want to overthrow its government, go back in time and make sure the "rights" people have are limited to white people, straight, and mostly male, I figure it's a great idea to take those modern statues down and put them in a museum with plaques that explain why they were put up and why they were removed.

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Joe Offer
Date: 25 Aug 17 - 11:51 AM

I dunno, Steve. I thought the statues WERE an attempt in the early 20th century to rewrite history and cast the Confederacy in a heroic light.
Ake refuses to acknowledge this. Not you, too?
Joe

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 25 Aug 17 - 12:01 PM

I was referring to akenaton's remark about rewriting history for one section of society only. Putting up statues decades after events to unpleasant people whose sentiments you happen to share is precisely that. It's an attempt to dignify misdeeds. Which is a way of rewriting, or reglossing, history. And statues generally enjoy an aura of permanence and added-value dignity, so are tendentious when used in a political context. I don't see that we are disagreeing about anything. The only thing I've ever agreed with akenaton about is that he lives in Scotland.

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Jeri
Date: 25 Aug 17 - 12:04 PM

I can understand his viewpoint somewhat, but these more-than-a-century after-the-fact statues were basically a statement that expressed hatred for their country's government, and a message to Black people that "we still think you're less that we are, so forget about the laws of this country we hate. We'll remind you of your inferiority whenever we have the chance. This statue is one reminder."

I can't figure out if Ake thinks Wallace and the Confederacy are equivalent, but I doubt that opinion will change no matter how much he "learns". It's not convenient to get along with people you hate.

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Mrrzy
Date: 25 Aug 17 - 12:12 PM

I also don't see how taking down the statues would "change the past" - the South will still have lost that war.

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Greg F.
Date: 25 Aug 17 - 02:46 PM

we no longer have hanging, drawing and quartering here.

Well, why the hell NOT??

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Joe Offer
Date: 25 Aug 17 - 03:11 PM

I was sure we did not disagree, Steve. I just had to ask to clarify.

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 25 Aug 17 - 05:03 PM

I get that, Joe. I've had to post in haste today as my clan have just gone home after a delightful but long visit and I've been tackling my hugely overgrown garden on and off all day. Life's good!

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Greg F.
Date: 25 Aug 17 - 06:51 PM

- the South will still have lost that war.

Unfortunately, that fact hasn't dawned on a good number of folks.

Hell, several states are still try to seceed from time to time...

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Joe Offer
Date: 25 Aug 17 - 09:59 PM

I'm not sure that removal of the statues will have a great effect on whites, whether or not they support the Confederacy. From what I read, many African-Americans consider the Confederate statues to be hurtful and insulting.
-Joe-

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: akenaton
Date: 26 Aug 17 - 06:40 AM

Well Joe, Ive been having a go at this "deep thinking" business, gosh its hard.....Have you been practicing for long? :0)

What I've finally thunk(clunk) is that this thread does not really concern freedom of speech at all, but rather hurt feelings amongst a particular section of society.

As you are no doubt aware these two factors do not sit well together, in fact it would be impossible to implement free speech if everyone's personal feeling were taken into account.

Now I think that freedom to express opinions which are legal far outweighs hurt feelings, regardless of whether I personally agree with the opinions, or am totally opposed to them (as in the case of the KKK or colour prejudice)

When the Rubicon has been crossed all options are open, political tastes change and we may find ourselves repressed and voiceless.

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 26 Aug 17 - 07:46 AM

"Legal" is a moveable feast. Laws can be changed. "Hurt feelings" are also a moveable feast. You can hurt my feelings by telling me that I'm crap at trimming my beard, or you can hurt my feelings by telling me that I'm inferior or untrustworthy or a disease-carrying being or a terrorist-sympathiser because I'm black or a Jew or gay or a Muslim. Yes you can hurt my feelings by saying something relatively harmless to me and I might need to just get over myself. Or you can hurt my feelings by using threatening talk or hate speech. Talking about having to hold back on untrammelled free speech just to avoid "hurting feelings" is thoroughly disingenuous. You have no moral right to say things that make me afraid or insecure or feel threatened. If you live in a country where you have a legal right to do that, then your laws are wrong and they need changing. If you can't use your freedom of speech mindful of your responsibility to others, then you don't deserve the privilege of having it.

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Greg F.
Date: 26 Aug 17 - 08:43 AM

From what I read, many African-Americans consider the Confederate statues to be hurtful and insulting.

They gotta helluva nerve! Who the hell do they think they are? Citizens or sumptin? Don't they realize its "Southern Heritage".

[Dunno about others, but THIS white boy thinks they're hurtful and insulting as well. In addition, they're perpetuating a lie.]

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Janie
Date: 26 Aug 17 - 01:01 PM

This southern woman, after listening and reading to many voices, has come to the conclusion that these public monuments need to be moved from public places or need to be displayed within an historically accurate framework that tells the full story, including the story, when it is the case, as it is in most instances, that when the monument was installed, a good portion of the public support for the installation was to romanticize the Confederate cause and also to assert the dominance of white society over the descendants of slaves.

The Southern Poverty Law Center specifically excluded monuments to Confederate soldiers in cemeteries, such as the Chase Cemetery in Ohio where Confederate prisoners of war died due to squalid conditions and were buried, and at battlefield parks such as Gettysburg, that do tell the story of war rather than glorifying, in their listing of Confederate monuments.

I have skimmed but not carefully read the thread. My apologies if this link has already been posted.
https://www.splcenter.org/20160421/whose-heritage-public-symbols-confederacy

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Greg F.
Date: 26 Aug 17 - 01:13 PM

YOU GO GIRL!

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Joe Offer
Date: 26 Aug 17 - 07:22 PM

Ake, if the matter were just "hurt feelings," you might have a point. I suppose you think the main impact was just "hurt feelings" for the requirement for separate bathrooms and schools and lunch counters, huh?
If the statues had been erected simply to honor the Confederate dead, then that would be a different matter. But that's not the point, and here's where I need you to think deep instead of trivializing this important matter: The statues were part of a package, meant to impose the domination of whites over blacks, to reimpose slavery in ways that were sometimes worse that slavery was itself. The package included denial of voting rights and the right to hold political office, separate and inadequate bathroom and recreation facilities and schools, separate seating in the back of buses and churches (even Catholic churches, I admit), unequal employment and housing opportunities, and a lengthy list of other offenses - sealed by the universal presence of statues of white gentry on horseback that were meant to remind blacks of their subservient place on society. And on top of all that, were the lynchings.

"Free speech" is a right of citizens, not a right of government. U.S. citizens have the right to express their thoughts freely. Government entitites do not have that same right - they are bound to represent and serve ALL the people, and not to provide symbols that speak loudly of the right of one race to dominate another.

The statues are the visible face of Jim Crow, and that is why they must be removed from public property.

Ake, I have repeated this over and over that the statues are part of the imposition of Jim Crow in the early 20th century, and you have repeatedly chosen to ignore this fact. If you continue this tack, then you must be the bigot people say you are. Is that what you think of Jim Crow - "hurt feelings"? That's pure idiocy.

-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Greg F.
Date: 26 Aug 17 - 07:44 PM

Is that what you think of Jim Crow - "hurt feelings"? That's pure idiocy.

Idiocy indeed - unfortunately, Ake's not alone in this delusion- tRump's supporters are still supporting his racist, white supremecist, KKK, anti-semetic, screw consitutional rights agenda.

HEIL TRUMP!

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 26 Aug 17 - 07:58 PM

The statues are indeed the face of Jim Crow and the vast majority of them were erected in the Jim Crow years, many decades after the Civil War. The statues are not "history." They are attempts to glorify the cause of white supremacy, a cause that should have been lost at the end of the Civil War but which, to the shame of the United States, took another hundred years to discredit. Just to discredit, note. Not to abolish. That, as Charlottesville showed us, is still an ongoing task. The people who claim that those statues are a part of history that we are " trying to rewrite" are charlatans. Sadly, they have got so many people hoodwinked. This weekend, on the BBC radio programme Any Questions, we had a lengthy debate on whether the statues should be removed. Not one panellist pointed out that the statues were erected many decades after the defeat of the Confederates and were an effort to reinforce the sentiment of white supremacy that some southerners were trying to reinstate. History my arse. Stick your statues where the sun don't shine. In fusty museums in other words, where white supremacists can go and see them to their hearts' content and where the rest of us can avoid them.

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Joe Offer
Date: 26 Aug 17 - 08:25 PM

Steve Shaw: 👍

It's not a matter of rewriting history. We need to acknowledge the misdeeds of our history and correct them instead of promoting and prolonging them. The March 6 2017 issue of the Jesuit America Magazine (page 6) quotes a man named Michael Lando of Brooklyn, answering the question, "Is America great" in response to the Trump slogan:

America is not great, but has the potential to be...We have never come to terms with our history: the genocide of native people, slavery, Jim Crow, the mistreatment of immigrants, the second-class status of women, and so on.

In response to the question "Is America Great?" America Magazine readers who responded to the poll said:

• Yes (46%)
• No (6%)
• It's Complicated (48%)

Readers said what makes America great are democratic institutions, freedom, immigrants & diversity, and equal opportunity.

I'd say that America is the preferred publication of U.S. Catholic intellectuals. Almost all readers (yes, no, and complicated) have a different idea of "making America great" from that of Donald Trump.

-Joe-

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: akenaton
Date: 27 Aug 17 - 05:03 AM

I'm no bigot Joe, I've stated several times that I am totally opposed to any colour prejudice, and the KKK.
You seem to be treating this issue in isolation, only involving statues and monuments erected in the "Jim Crow" period, but there is a whole wider issue here regarding freedom of speech itself.

Let's take it a stage further, there are people on this forum and in wider Society who seek the abolition of all religion...and many crimes have been committed in its name over the centuries, but how would you feel about the removal of religious monuments, religious statues, even chapels and churches? Prohibition of religious regalia, based on past misdeeds?

Don't say it can never happen, to the abolitionists Christianity and religion are a serious impediment to the implementation of their agenda

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Joe Offer
Date: 27 Aug 17 - 05:30 AM

You're getting things confused, Ake. As I said before, government does not have "freedom of speech," because government is bound to represent and serve ALL the people. These statues are publicly owned and on public land.

If they were on private land, that would be a different matter. That's where "freedom of speech" might apply. Stone Mountain in Georgia, probably the best-known Confederate monument, is a separate matter on its own. The carving is on private property with roots in the Ku Klux Klan, but that private property is completely surrounded by a state park. How did that come to be?

But no, public land and public money cannot be used for the promotion of racism in the United States.

-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 27 Aug 17 - 06:01 AM

I haven't seen a single post here, or sentiment expressed to the effect, that all religion "should be abolished."

The religious symbolism I see all around can be annoying, though I have no right not to be annoyed. Much of it is of poor or no artistic quality. I've been to Italy, the (non-human) love of my life, twice this year. I am a Dawkinsite atheist but I spend most of my Italy culture-time actually seeking out religious symbolism, hoping always to find it expressed in the highest artistic form. I spent hours in the Uffizi until I nearly collapsed with exhaustion, revelling in the finest, mostly-religious art ever wrought. I spent half an hour staring at the little bas-relief Tondo Pitti by Michelangelo in the Bargello museum. I've never seen a more beautiful object created by any human being. Google it if you don't believe me. I dare the most fervent atheist on earth to tell me that it offends them. All this is my heritage as much as it's the heritage of the most fervent believer.

Diappointingly, in many Italian churches the statuary and other works of art are all too frequently of abysmal quality. I never want to see another painted saintly bearded type glowering over me with hand outstretched. And there appears to be the depiction of a skull, often with crossbones for good measure, somewhere in every church. Several times I've been unexpectedly confronted by the horror of a stash of saintly bones protruding from the top of an urn. Other churches contain some of the greatest art ever produced. My two favourites so far are the rear wall mosaic in the little cathedral on Torcello, one of the islands in the Venice lagoon, and the exterior especially of the Santa Croce basilica in Lecce.

Religious symbolism is not the same thing as those confounded confederate statues. The former is the visible manifestation of what billions of people see as being what is good in their lives and what will make humanity better. They may be largely wrong but those beliefs are generally held without malice. The latter is the attempt by racist bigots and white supremacists to perpetuate what should have been a dead and buried lost cause. The statues are demeaning to black people and they bear an implicit threat to them: "Don't think for one minute that this is all over..." The history happened in the Civil War and those statues are not part of it. They are partial, partisan, subjective and tendentious. History, well told, is none of those things. The statues themselves are the attempt to rewrite history, and that rewriting is not done by historians.

It's quite easy to spot the bigotry in these discussions. The best indicator of its presence is the complaining about the removal of the statues being a violation of free speech.

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 27 Aug 17 - 06:30 AM

The wiki item on the Michelangelo Tondo Pitti doesn't show it in the best light. I'm talking about the white marble piece. The michelangelo-gallery.org website has a good depiction when you click on the image. I won't attempt to confuse myself by trying to do a link.

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Monique
Date: 27 Aug 17 - 06:40 AM

Madonna Tondo Pitti

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: akenaton
Date: 27 Aug 17 - 08:21 AM

"I haven't seen a single post here, or sentiment expressed to the effect, that all religion "should be abolished." .....YET!

Just wait a while till the re-writers gain more strength. Christianity is now in the "front line", soon it will be political opinion.

Joe, perhaps you are correct about the "Jim Crow" statues, but in the foreshore near our nearest little town stands a boulder which has been decorated black red and white in the stylised form of a bird.
It is a well known landmark and on the side is written "Jim Crow" there are photographs of this boulder dating back to the 1800s well before "Jim Crow" in America. There is a small minority locally who want the stone removed.
HERE

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: akenaton
Date: 27 Aug 17 - 08:39 AM

What should be done, Racist connotations or a well loved landmark?
Is it the words or the Decoration? To me it is obviously a stylised bird, in 1880 it was photographed as "The Jim Crow"

Do we remove the landmark because a small minority are offended?

I can think of a thousand more offensive things that these people never contemplate.

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Donuel
Date: 27 Aug 17 - 08:47 AM

Please compare the antiiconoclasts to current day white confederate sympathizing southerners.

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Greg F.
Date: 27 Aug 17 - 08:49 AM

Now Ake's a convert to the alt-right's "Was On Christianity" delusion.

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 27 Aug 17 - 08:56 AM

"there are people on this forum and in wider Society who seek the abolition of all religion"

"Yet" doesn't cut it. The above is what you said. Now tell us which people on this forum seek the abolition of all religion.

Thanks, Monique. I did get some lovely photos myself of the Tondo, though it's behind a perspex screen and it's hard to avoid reflections. A lovely young woman was guarding it like a hawk. After a while she tiptoed up to me and said "It is SO beautiful, isn't it?"

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: gillymor
Date: 27 Aug 17 - 09:22 AM

Old ake is grasping at straws now. I don't know why anyone bothers.

Janie wrote:

"The Southern Poverty Law Center specifically excluded monuments to Confederate soldiers in cemeteries, such as the Chase Cemetery in Ohio where Confederate prisoners of war died due to squalid conditions and were buried, and at battlefield parks such as Gettysburg, that do tell the story of war rather than glorifying, in their listing of Confederate monuments."

I agree with SPLC's exclusions. I lived the first half of my life in the Washington, D.C. area and I'm pretty sure I've walked every major Civil War battlefield in MD, VA and PA, and some of the lesser-known ones, from Gettysburg down to Cold Harbor and Petersburg. With the monuments, statues and historical markers contained in those parks you really get a sense of what happened there and the experience would be much poorer without them. I'd never think of advocating for their removal, in fact I'd fight against it.

What's being discussed here is something very different. The removal of symbols that are tantamount to hate speech which, as many have pointed out already, is not protected by the first amendment. It's not too hard too understand, if you're willing.

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: gillymor
Date: 27 Aug 17 - 10:47 AM

Correction: The first doesn't specifically protect hate speech but nor does it exempt it from protection, I suppose we haven't evolved to that stage yet. Wishful thinking on my part, I guess.

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: akenaton
Date: 27 Aug 17 - 11:12 AM

I agree with Janie and would it not be possible to poll the residents of places where the "Jim Crow" statues exist, as to their removal?
I do think that a statue of Robert E Lee is appropriate historically.
He did have his name used on a very famous steamboat.....or do we have the associated songs proscribed?

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Janie
Date: 27 Aug 17 - 11:56 AM

In 2015, our reactionary, right-wing, racist North Carolina General Assembly passed a law that prohibits local communities from removing Confederate monuments without approval from the politically controlled state Historic Commission.

So, to answer your question, Ake, at least in North Carolina, no, local communities who vote to remove Confederate monuments from public property may not do so.

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Greg F.
Date: 27 Aug 17 - 12:08 PM

He did have his name used on a very famous steamboat

So did Alfred Peter Friedrich von Tirpitz.

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 27 Aug 17 - 12:15 PM

A boat is private property and no one needs to patronize it if they don't want to. The song was set in historic times, and is a straw man in this conversation.

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Greg F.
Date: 27 Aug 17 - 12:23 PM

Well now, lets look at that song Waiting for the Robert E. Lee
by L. Wolfe Gilbert ca. 1912.

Happy darkies shufflin' 'roun' de lebee, plinkin' dey banjos waitin' fo de boat to load de cotton deyey jumped down, turned around and picked a bale of.

I'd say it was a worthy companion piece for white supremecist statues.

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 27 Aug 17 - 12:34 PM

I have just listened to the Radio prog. Steve referred to.
The panel was a political cross section, and all spoke against removing statues.
One likened it to burning books and another to IS vandalism.
One did say she had asked for a picture to be removed from parliament.

I also read this thread, and there is clearly a lack of understanding here in UK of how strongly US folk feel about this issue.
Few here would have any idea who/what Jim Crow is/was.

Here is the programme, if available outside UK.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b091wf86
It is the last item on the programme.

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: gillymor
Date: 27 Aug 17 - 12:34 PM

Here's what Robert E. Lee (the man, not the steamboat) had to say on the subject of Conferate monuments:

PBS News Hour

'"I think it wiser," the retired military leader wrote about a proposed Gettysburg memorial in 1869, "…not to keep open the sores of war but to follow the examples of those nations who endeavored to obliterate the marks of civil strife, to commit to oblivion the feelings engendered."'

'"As regards the erection of such a monument as is contemplated," Lee wrote of an 1866 proposal, "my conviction is, that however grateful it would be to the feelings of the South, the attempt in the present condition of the Country, would have the effect of retarding, instead of accelerating its accomplishment; [and] of continuing, if not adding to, the difficulties under which the Southern people labour"'

And Greg, those darkies were "happy", so what's the problem?☺️

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Stanron
Date: 27 Aug 17 - 12:34 PM

Greg F. wrote: I'd say it was a worthy companion piece for white supremecist statues.

Only if you sing it or quote it.

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Greg F.
Date: 27 Aug 17 - 12:38 PM

Take it up with Ake, Stanron - he's the one singing it.

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: akenaton
Date: 27 Aug 17 - 12:38 PM

Well there are plenty of songs praising Dixie and the War, do you remove all, along with any historical vestige?

You see this is where what seems a very simple matter becomes a very complicated one....where do you draw the line.

I'm studying whaling songs at present, whaling has been outlawed almost everywhere and the ships and men who preyed upon the schools are demonised.....do we proscribe all songs about whaling?
In Scotland we have a large number of anti English historical songs, are they too to be banned as Racist?

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Greg F.
Date: 27 Aug 17 - 12:41 PM

Straw men & cluelessness - Ake's stock in trade. Again

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 27 Aug 17 - 12:42 PM

Greg, are these the lyrics you meant?


"Waiting For The Robert E. Lee"

Way down on the levee in old Alabamy
There's daddy and mammy, there's Efran and Sammy
On a moonlight night you can find them all
While they are waiting the banjos are syncopating
What's that they're saying, what's that they're saying
Well while they keep playing I'm humming and swaying
It's the good ship Robert E. Lee that's come to carry the cotton away

Watch them shuffle along
See them shuffle along
Oh take your best gal real pal go down to the levee
I said the levee
Join the shuffling throng
Hear the music and song
It's simply great mate waiting on the levee
Waiting for the Robert E. Lee

Whistles are blowing smokestacks are showing
The ropes they are throwing, excuse me I'm going
To the place where all is harmonious
Even the preacher they say is the dancing teacher
Have you been down there say were you around there
If you ever go there you'll always be found there
Why doggone here comes my baby on the good ship Robert E. Lee

Watch them shuffle along
See them shuffle along
Oh take your best gal your real pal go down to the levee
I said the levee
Join the shuffling throng
Hear the music and song
It's simply great mate waiting on the levee
Waiting for the Robert E. Lee

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 27 Aug 17 - 01:33 PM

No-one on the Any Questions panel referred to the fact that the statues were largely erected many decades after the Civil War and that the motive for erecting them had nothing to do with honouring brave war heroes and everything to do with clawing back the detestable sentiment behind white supremacy and the subjugation of black people. There was a lot of hot air about free speech, etc., and a lot of arguing from ignorance of the true status of those statues. It was actually quite apalling to listen to.

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: akenaton
Date: 27 Aug 17 - 02:02 PM

I heard the programme, the audience cheered the panellists who objected to demolition of statues.

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: EBarnacle
Date: 27 Aug 17 - 02:14 PM

Here's the complete NPR story Gillymor cited. Note the opening issue.


The Capitol's missing Civil War monument to Ulysses S. Grant
By Jon Perr
Sunday Aug 27, 2017 · 12:23 AM EST
36 Comments (36 New)
90
grant_lee_appomattox.png
There is no massive mural in the Capitol rotunda of Robert E. Lee's surrender to General Grant. President Grant wouldn't allow it.

The neo-Nazi violence in Charlottesville has spurred calls around the nation for the removal of public statues, monuments and symbols venerating white supremacy and the "lost cause" of the Confederacy. Those sites include Capitol Hill, where eight statues of Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, Alexander Stephens and five other traitors to the United States were added between 1909 and 1931 at the behest of their home states. But while Democrats including Senator Corey Booker (D-NJ) and Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) have urged their Republican colleagues to "remove the Confederate statues from the Capitol immediately," Vice President Mike Pence echoed Donald Trump's charge that "they" were attempting "to take away our history and our heritage."

    "Obviously, I think that should always be a local decision. And with regard to the US Capitol, should be a state decision. I'm someone who believes in more monuments, not less monuments."

If he is to be taken at his word that "more monuments" help us "remember our history," then Vice President Pence would surely support the installation in the Capitol rotunda of a massive mural depicting Lee's surrender to General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox. That never-completed tribute has been missing from Congress for 148 years due to the obstruction on one man.

President Ulysses S. Grant.

That's right. As Mark Neely, Jr., Harold Holzer and Gabor S. Boritt explained in The Confederate Image: Prints of the Lost Cause, Grant "wholly disapproved of the artists' enterprise" in capturing Lee's capitulation on canvas.

    When a Congressional commission approach the Northern conqueror soon after the Civil War to propose a painting of Lee's surrender for the Capitol rotunda, Grant refused. He said he would never take part in producing a picture that commemorated a victory in which his fellow countrymen were losers.

In 1885, James Grant Wilson documented Grant's deference to Southern sensitivities this way:

    In 1869, some members of Congress wanted to put a massive painting of Lee surrendering to Grant in the Rotunda of the Capitol. They visited Grant, who was President-elect, to gain his approval. Grant, who was usually calm, got upset and said, "No, gentlemen, it won't do. No power on earth will make me agree to your proposal. I will not humiliate General Lee or our Southern friends in depicting their humiliation and then celebrating the event in the nation's capitol." This immediately ended any discussion of the painting. [Emphasis mine.]

This was hardly the only example of Grant's generosity and compassion towards his former enemies. By the time the Army of Northern Virginia laid down its arms at Appomattox, General U.S. Grant had already embraced Lincoln's admonition during the Second Inaugural to offer "malice toward none, with charity for all." By offering such generous terms to Robert E. Lee and his soldiers, Grant begun to "bind up the nation's wounds" and "to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations." And to be sure, the respect and dignity Grant accorded Robert E. Lee and his surrendering Army of Northern Virginia was offered despite his disdain for their cause of slavery and secession. As he prepared to accept their capitulation, Grant later wrote of that moment in April 1865:

    "I felt sad and depressed at the downfall of a foe who had fought so long and valiantly, and had suffered so much for a cause, though their cause was, I believe, one of the worst for which a people ever fought."

One of the worst causes for a which a people ever fought, indeed. Nevertheless, even after his submission Robert E. Lee, the man who more than any extended the bloody life of the Confederacy, insisted on the rightness of that cause. Not long before his death in 1870, Lee explained:

    "Everyone should do all in his power to collect and disseminate the truth, in the hope that it may find a place in history and descend to posterity. History is not the relation of campaigns and battles and generals or other individuals, but that which shows the principles for which the South contended and which justified her struggle for those principles."

But if Lee sought to propagate Southern mythology, he was opposed to the hagiography of its leaders. "I think it wiser," he wrote in 1869, "not to keep open the sores of war but to follow the examples of those nations who endeavored to obliterate the marks of civil strife, to commit to oblivion the feelings engendered."

On that point, Lee's conqueror Ulysses Grant fully agreed. That's why there is no enormous mural in the Capitol rotunda commemorating the Union general's glorious victory. And it's also why all of the Confederate monuments there, elsewhere on Capitol Hill and on public spaces around the United States of America must go.

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Greg F.
Date: 27 Aug 17 - 02:48 PM

the principles for which the South contended and which justified her struggle for those principles."

Absolutely, EB: the principles of slavery, white supremacy and treason.

Apparently Lee thought these principles were "justified" by what you've quoted.

If so, one more reason to get his memorials off public peroperty.

Now, look up Grant's support of the Reconstruction governments, of Black suffrage, of his attempts to eradicate the KKK.

You're confabulating history with selective cherry-picking to imply that Grant would have approved of these monuments celebrating slavery, white supremacy, Jim Crow & treason and would have been opposed to their removal.

That is demonstrably not the case.

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Greg F.
Date: 27 Aug 17 - 03:01 PM

the audience cheered the panellists [sic] who objected to demolition of statues.

Ever watched film of Hitler's rallies or those of Donal-Dipshit, Ake? Plenty of cheering there, too.

HEIL TRUMP!!

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: gillymor
Date: 27 Aug 17 - 03:28 PM

EB, I thought the Jon Perr story was pretty interesting, particularly the last 2 paragraphs:

"But if Lee sought to propagate Southern mythology, he was opposed to the hagiography of its leaders. "I think it wiser," he wrote in 1869, "not to keep open the sores of war but to follow the examples of those nations who endeavored to obliterate the marks of civil strife, to commit to oblivion the feelings engendered."

On that point, Lee's conqueror Ulysses Grant fully agreed. That's why there is no enormous mural in the Capitol rotunda commemorating the Union general's glorious victory. And it's also why all of the Confederate monuments there, elsewhere on Capitol Hill and on public spaces around the United States of America must go."

However, I'm pretty sure I didn't make reference to the story but I did use the Lee quote above,"I think it wiser..."   from a different different story by another author and an oft-used quote from U.S. Grant that Perr also used, "...though their cause was, I believe, one of the worst for which a people ever fought."

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 27 Aug 17 - 04:27 PM

I seem to think that thinking for myself is far more valuable than thinking that a cheering audience must be right. Fascist crowds cheered Hitler, Franco and Mussolini. I've been catching up with Michael Portillo's history of the Spanish Civil War on the telly and can attest to that. I'm told that the baying crowd persuaded Pontius Pilate to favour a criminal over Jesus. As a matter of fact, it's not beyond the bounds that what you hear on the wireless could just be a quarter of the audience cheering while the other three-quarters sits still, seething. I was once in a Question Time audience, at the Eden Project (I even got to ask a question). When I watched the recording later, the applause and cheering was not especially representative of the general sentiment of the audience in most regards. What you may hear is quite likely the consequence of the accident of microphone placement. But, in any case, think for yourself and beware of being uniformed.

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 27 Aug 17 - 04:30 PM

Uniformed? I've always been opposed to uniforms. But what I meant was uninformed.

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Greg F.
Date: 27 Aug 17 - 06:47 PM

I think beware of being uniformed is pretty sound advice, too, Steve.

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 27 Aug 17 - 07:17 PM

Couldn't agree more, Greg. All the time I worked in secondary schools here I railed against school uniform. I'm still in a minority opposing it. You may be praised or damned for what you wear in this world of small-minded people, but no-one has the right to tell you what to wear. You want me to wear a tie? Great. I'm just not coming to your event, even if it's your funeral!

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: bobad
Date: 27 Aug 17 - 07:53 PM

This sculptor has a great idea, she proposes to replace the likes of Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis with African-American heroes such as W.E.B. Dubois and Fannie Lou Hammer and James Baldwin. It doesn't hurt that she can use the work too. Gabriel Koren

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Joe Offer
Date: 27 Aug 17 - 09:26 PM

Greg_F, where did you get those lyrics you allege come from "Waiting for the Robert E. Lee"? Here are the words you furnished:

Happy darkies shufflin' 'roun' de lebee, plinkin' dey banjos waitin' fo de boat to load de cotton deyey jumped down, turned around and picked a bale of.

We have a thread on the song here (click) that gives lyrics very much like the ones Keith posted. Sheet music for the song is here (click).

Are you trying to pull a fast one on us?

-Joe Offer-

---

Judy Garland performance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmEemOfsxhs (with blackface performers that would no longer be acceptable)

Al Jolson: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAZADY7kzv4

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Greg F.
Date: 27 Aug 17 - 10:36 PM

Joe, were I to explain, you apparently still wouldn't understand.

Have a good evening.

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Joe Offer
Date: 27 Aug 17 - 11:14 PM

Oh. You made 'em up.

Kinda like Trump does when he doesn't have facts that work for him.

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Greg F.
Date: 28 Aug 17 - 07:07 AM

Joe.

Consider for a moment the scene the lyrics of the song are painting.

I did not say or imply that they were the song's lyrics - in fact what is presented is a single sentance, nothing broken into stanzas and lines.

NB:When I quote something, I use quotation marks or italic text.

Not sure what tRump has to do with it- other than he IS a racist & supports white supremecists.

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Greg F.
Date: 28 Aug 17 - 07:07 AM

And boy I REALLY miss Azizi.

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Mrrzy
Date: 28 Aug 17 - 08:20 AM

I gotta agree with, I think it was Joe, saying that it was the original erection of the statues that was about rewriting history.

I would quibble that it was an "attempt" - seems to have been pretty successful to me.

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Greg F.
Date: 28 Aug 17 - 08:57 AM

Actually it was Steve. And you're absolutely correct about the success opf the re-write.

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: gillymor
Date: 28 Aug 17 - 09:25 AM

Actually a number of people expressed the viewpoint that Mrrzy speaks of in response to a post by Mr. Red earlier in the thread.

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Greg F.
Date: 28 Aug 17 - 09:30 AM

I stand corrected, Gilly.

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Greg F.
Date: 28 Aug 17 - 12:36 PM

Thank you Mudelves. Appreciated.

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Mrrzy
Date: 28 Aug 17 - 01:11 PM

Someone has already taken down the covering...

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Greg F.
Date: 28 Aug 17 - 01:26 PM

All the more reason to get it the hell out of there toot sweet. Apparently they've re-covered it- for now.

Hopefully they will prosecute the "uncoverers" for criminal mischieff and theft of city property.

Should be easy enuf to set up video monitoring.

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Greg F.
Date: 02 Jan 18 - 09:35 AM

al-Qaeda? When did they start erecting monuments to commemorate and enshrine a complete fabrication?

South Carolina Goddamn.

Republican Lawmakers Surprised to Learn No Black Soldiers Served Under Confederacy in South Carolina

By Travis Gettys / Raw Story / January 1, 2018

The justification for building a monument to black Confederate soldiers is crumbling as historians point out there’s no evidence such combatants ever existed.

State Rep. Bill Chumley (R-Woodruff) and state Rep. Mike Burns (R-Taylors) pre-filed a bill last month that would establish a commission to design an African-American Confederate veterans monument, reported The State.

The bill would also require public schools to teach the contributions of black people toward the Confederate cause, and Chumley said his proposal had already accomplished his goal even as historians undermine its intent.

The State reviewed pension records from 1923 that show three blacks claimed armed service in South Carolina units under the Confederacy, with two of them confirmed as cooks or servants and none for armed service.

“In all my years of research, I can say I have seen no documentation of black South Carolina soldiers fighting for the Confederacy,” said historian Walter Edgar, the longtime director of the University of South Carolina’s Institute for Southern Studies. “In fact, when secession came, the state turned down free (blacks) who wanted to volunteer because they didn’t want armed persons of color.

Continued here:
https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/republican-lawmakers-surprised-learn-no-black-soldiers-served-under-confederacy

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 02 Jan 18 - 09:53 AM

Greg F: Just a small point. These two sentences do not say the same thing. One is accurate, the other is not:

The justification for building a monument to black Confederate soldiers is crumbling as historians point out there's no evidence such combatants ever existed.

"I can say I have seen no documentation of black South Carolina soldiers fighting for the Confederacy," said historian Walter Edgar

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Greg F.
Date: 02 Jan 18 - 10:43 AM

Both sentances are indeed accurate.

If you check, Nige, you will find the same lack of factual documentation for each and every state of the Confederacy. This has been established by reputable historians and researchtwouders over and over.

The myth of Black Confederate soldiers is just that- as well as a racist trope of long standing.

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 02 Jan 18 - 11:11 AM

The justification for building a monument to black Confederate soldiers is crumbling as historians point out there's no evidence such combatants ever existed.

A recent sale of a revolver on the show "Pawn stars" came complete with documentary evidence which refutes that claim. YouTube

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Greg F.
Date: 02 Jan 18 - 11:27 AM

Nige, Nige, Nige - apparently you didn't actually watch the segment of Pawn Stars. Or wilfully chose to ignore the facts.

The Louisiana Native Guard that Lt. Hayes served in was was a UNION regiment.

Your "Black Confederate Officer" was, like all the rest of 'em, a myth.

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 02 Jan 18 - 11:34 AM

Greg:
Watch it again. I haven't as I don't have access to YouTube in work, but the show made clear that the Union Louisiana Native guard was formed from the members of the 1st Louisiana native Guard (CSA).

While I wouldn't usually quote Wikipedia as a guaranteed source, you can see more Here

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Greg F.
Date: 02 Jan 18 - 11:57 AM

the 1st Louisiana Native Guard (CSA)?

Oh,. you mean the FAKE Louisiana state militia unit (never accepted into national Confederate service) that was never given uniforms or arms or ever saw service of any sort and was used solely for contemporary pro-Confederate propaganda purposes and beloved of Neo-Confederate ideologues spouting the usual racist nonsense??

Plenty of information sources out there on the REAL story, Nige- I give you a gift of this one:

www.people.virginia.edu/~jh3v/retouchinghistory/essay.html

Subject: RE: BS:Statues-Are we any better than ISIS or al-Qaeda
From: Greg F.
Date: 02 Jan 18 - 11:59 AM

PS Nige: I'll take the Universty of Virginia over Blog-O-Paedia any day.