West Point moves to vanquish Confederate symbols from campus

[The flaming lib]

It tells the story of one of the most important periods of this country’s history. History isn’t always good. History isn’t always fair. History isn’t always kind. But history tells the story of who we are, how we got here. Sometimes is just pure ugly. I see no reason to run from it, to hide it. Leave it. Learn from it. Learn from out mistakes.

 

[Jezcoe]

It tells the story of one of the most important periods of this country’s history. History isn’t always good. History isn’t always fair. History isn’t always kind. But history tells the story of who we are, how we got here. Sometimes is just pure ugly. I see no reason to run from it, to hide it. Leave it. Learn from it. Learn from out mistakes.

There is no reason to place the ugly on pedestal and honor it.

 

[VySky]

The Confederacy EXPLICITLY went to war to protect and defend slavery.

Trying to ignore that is ACTUAL historical ignorance.

That’s not true. But you knew that.

 

[Tigerace117]

That’s not true. But you knew that.

The CSA flat out stated they were fighting to defend slavery.

 

[VySky]

I’m waiting for the rubes to come to my neck of the woods on their social justice warrior campaign. We have all kinds of markers and statues they could vandalize. Somehow I just don’t think we will see them down here for some reason.

 

[VySky]

The CSA flat out stated they were fighting to defend slavery.

In part.

 

[Tigerace117]

I’m waiting for the rubes to come to my neck of the woods on their social justice warrior campaign. We have all kinds of markers and statues they could vandalize. Somehow I just don’t think we will see them down here for some reason.

The ”rubes” are the folks who can’t bear to face the fact the Confederacy fought to defend slavery

 

[Tigerace117]

In part.

It was the entire driving force behind the Confederate war effort. Pretending otherwise is ignorant.

 

[VySky]

It was the entire driving force behind the Confederate war effort. Pretending otherwise is ignorant.

Believe in what you may.

 

[Tigerace117]

Believe in what you may.

It’s not a matter of “belief”; it’s a well established historical fact.

 

[Deuce]

These things need to go to a museum. You can't change history and you shouldn't try to hide it. Move those to a civil war museum or some place where anyone interested in history can see them.

This isn't civil war memorabilia. This stuff was put up in the civil rights era specifically to be a middle finger to black people.

 

[Deuce]

It tells the story of one of the most important periods of this country’s history. History isn’t always good. History isn’t always fair. History isn’t always kind. But history tells the story of who we are, how we got here. Sometimes is just pure ugly. I see no reason to run from it, to hide it. Leave it. Learn from it. Learn from out mistakes.

These aren't historical artifacts.

 

[Deuce]

Believe in what you may.

"Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery."

 

[HangLow]

I do not want to honour anyone. Those who have been honoured have been. In thedistantpast. Its alreadyhistory. My objection is to ex post facto revisions.

​

 

[snakestretcher]

I kind of find it funny that the generation that actually fought and died to vanquish the Confederacy was gracious and magnanimous in victory; while a WOKE generation more than a century afterwards displays a viciousness that would have shocked the Grants, the Shermans.

While we are it when are we gonna take down monuments to the notorious industrial scale slavers: Massas Tom Jeff'son and George Washington?

We did in Britain.

The reckoning: the toppling of monuments to slavery in the UK

From Birmingham to Bristol, how the Black Lives Matter protests started a movement for change

www.theguardian.com

Tributes to slave traders and colonialists removed across UK

Almost 70 memorials renamed or being taken down since last summer’s Black Lives Matter protests, investigation finds

www.theguardian.com

 

[MrNiceGuy]

From AP News:

Should not have taken until 2022 for this to happen. Never should have been allowed in the first place. What country honours it enemies at its most prestigious military academy?

A country that was deeply wounded by a massive Civil War that pitted brother against brother and which later was sought to be healed through reconciliation, such that the people of the Confederate states were not to be viewed as traitors or vanquished, but as renewed coequal members of a union of States. The reconciliation was to create a framework where the southern states were not "enemies."

It's also a recognition that in the first 100 years of these United States, persons considered themselves to be citizens of States, and that there were Virginians and there were New Englanders, and North Carolinians and New Yorkers. President Lincoln first offered command of the Army of the Potomac to Robert E. Lee, who turned it down, because he saw his primary loyalty to be to the State of Virginia.

At the time, it was not considered treason to withdraw or secede from the union. Nothing was in the constitution barring withdrawal, and it was understood at the time that States had the right to vote to leave the union. They were not bound without their consent. From 1800 to about 1815 there were three serious secessionist movements in the north. New England Federalists believed that the policies of the Jefferson and Madison administrations, especially the 1803 Louisiana Purchase, the national embargo of 1807, and the War of 1812, were so disproportionately harmful to New England that they justified secession. http://ditext.com/dilorenzo/yankee.html

So, the reason we can honor confederates is that they are still Americans, an in the evolution of our nation from what it was born as, to what it is now, there was much struggle and strife. And, what used to distinguish us as a country, is the ability to respect differences, and to understand that many people were passionate about many different ideas and concepts, and that constitutional structure changed after the civil war, and that what happened before the civil war must be viewed in a light different than what occurred afterward.

It is a shame that today, in our supposed enlightened time, ignorance and political expedience causes people to view the world in a binary sense, good guys and bad guys, black hats and white hats, and in between there is nothing. Gone are the days when the public discourse could view people like Robert E. Lee with nuance and respect. Instead, he's Hitler now.

 

[Tigerace117]

A country that was deeply wounded by a massive Civil War that pitted brother against brother and which later was sought to be healed through reconciliation, such that the people of the Confederate states were not to be viewed as traitors or vanquished, but as renewed coequal members of a union of States. The reconciliation was to create a framework where the southern states were not "enemies."

It's also a recognition that in the first 100 years of these United States, persons considered themselves to be citizens of States, and that there were Virginians and there were New Englanders, and North Carolinians and New Yorkers. President Lincoln first offered command of the Army of the Potomac to Robert E. Lee, who turned it down, because he saw his primary loyalty to be to the State of Virginia.

At the time, it was not considered treason to withdraw or secede from the union. Nothing was in the constitution barring withdrawal, and it was understood at the time that States had the right to vote to leave the union. They were not bound without their consent. From 1800 to about 1815 there were three serious secessionist movements in the north. New England Federalists believed that the policies of the Jefferson and Madison administrations, especially the 1803 Louisiana Purchase, the national embargo of 1807, and the War of 1812, were so disproportionately harmful to New England that they justified secession. http://ditext.com/dilorenzo/yankee.html

So, the reason we can honor confederates is that they are still Americans, an in the evolution of our nation from what it was born as, to what it is now, there was much struggle and strife. And, what used to distinguish us as a country, is the ability to respect differences, and to understand that many people were passionate about many different ideas and concepts, and that constitutional structure changed after the civil war, and that what happened before the civil war must be viewed in a light different than what occurred afterward.

It is a shame that today, in our supposed enlightened time, ignorance and political expedience causes people to view the world in a binary sense, good guys and bad guys, black hats and white hats, and in between there is nothing. Gone are the days when the public discourse could view people like Robert E. Lee with nuance and respect. Instead, he's Hitler now.

There’s absolutely zero reason to honor a regime which explicitly went to war to protect slavery. That’s like arguing that Germany has to honor the SS because they were “passionate” about Nazism. There is no obligation to “respect” slavers. None.

 

[Carjosse]

A country that was deeply wounded by a massive Civil War that pitted brother against brother and which later was sought to be healed through reconciliation, such that the people of the Confederate states were not to be viewed as traitors or vanquished, but as renewed coequal members of a union of States. The reconciliation was to create a framework where the southern states were not "enemies."

It's also a recognition that in the first 100 years of these United States, persons considered themselves to be citizens of States, and that there were Virginians and there were New Englanders, and North Carolinians and New Yorkers. President Lincoln first offered command of the Army of the Potomac to Robert E. Lee, who turned it down, because he saw his primary loyalty to be to the State of Virginia.

At the time, it was not considered treason to withdraw or secede from the union. Nothing was in the constitution barring withdrawal, and it was understood at the time that States had the right to vote to leave the union. They were not bound without their consent. From 1800 to about 1815 there were three serious secessionist movements in the north. New England Federalists believed that the policies of the Jefferson and Madison administrations, especially the 1803 Louisiana Purchase, the national embargo of 1807, and the War of 1812, were so disproportionately harmful to New England that they justified secession. http://ditext.com/dilorenzo/yankee.html

So, the reason we can honor confederates is that they are still Americans, an in the evolution of our nation from what it was born as, to what it is now, there was much struggle and strife. And, what used to distinguish us as a country, is the ability to respect differences, and to understand that many people were passionate about many different ideas and concepts, and that constitutional structure changed after the civil war, and that what happened before the civil war must be viewed in a light different than what occurred afterward.

It is a shame that today, in our supposed enlightened time, ignorance and political expedience causes people to view the world in a binary sense, good guys and bad guys, black hats and white hats, and in between there is nothing. Gone are the days when the public discourse could view people like Robert E. Lee with nuance and respect. Instead, he's Hitler now.

Why should we honour people who fought to preserve the most evil of institutions? They chose to take up arms against the US in the name of slavery. That makes them enemies. Why should we not judge them, it was immoral then as it is now. The point was reconstruction not reconciliation. The South are not victims.

 

[MrNiceGuy]

There’s absolutely zero reason to honor a regime which explicitly went to war to protect slavery. That’s like arguing that Germany has to honor the SS because they were “passionate” about Nazism. There is no obligation to “respect” slavers. None.

Honoring a person is not honoring a regime. Slavery is not Naziism. If you are going to dishonor every slaveholder, then I guess we need to disrespect the Prophet Muhammed, Genghis Khan, every European King prior to the 18th century, if not later, every African King, and the like.

There is no obligation to "respect slavers" in the sense of approving of slavery. There is a difference between doing that and understanding that if we were alive back then, we would have roughly the same beliefs and moralities as we were born into at the time. Even many northerners, who may have been at the tip of the spear relative to abolition of slavery, generally did not believe in equality of the races. Abraham Lincoln didn't. If you were born in Virginia in 1840, you very likely would have thought it absolutely normal and just there was slavery, and that states had the right to secede from the union.

Adolph Hitler and German Nazis were not doing things that most people in the world at the time considered right, good and just or even understandable. Everyone at the time knew that mass murder and genocide was wrong. However, in the early 1800s, that was not the case regarding slavery.

Your argument would require that Italians not honor Caesar as a great man of their history, and it would require that his statues be torn down, just like Robert E Lees statues.

 

[Hatuey]

I know.

So then why the **** are you talking like an old person who hasn't heard of the technology? Young people don't walk into libraries because phones can now pack those libraries. Leave the old people talk for old people. You aren't fooling anyone here with the scream at clouds act.

 

[MrNiceGuy]

Why should we honour people who fought to preserve the most evil of institutions?

You don't have to honor the fight to preserve any particular institution. People are more than just one thing.

They chose to take up arms against the US in the name of slavery.

Robert E Lee chose to joint his countrymen to defend Virginia. Virginia seceded. The north invaded Virginia and engaged Lee at Cheat Mountain, VA.

That makes them enemies. Why should we not judge them, it was immoral then as it is now. The point was reconstruction not reconciliation. The South are not victims.

Judge them all you want, but they were fellow Americans, brother against brother. I didn't say the south were victims. I said that we were reforming a union, and the south was not being brought back in to be subjugated and humiliated. The south was rejoining the union as coequal member states. It's just so weird to me how history has become more about moral judgment than about what happened and why.

 

[Tigerace117]

Honoring a person is not honoring a regime. Slavery is not Naziism. If you are going to dishonor every slaveholder, then I guess we need to disrespect the Prophet Muhammed, Genghis Khan, every European King prior to the 18th century, if not later, every African King, and the like.

There is no obligation to "respect slavers" in the sense of approving of slavery. There is a difference between doing that and understanding that if we were alive back then, we would have roughly the same beliefs and moralities as we were born into at the time. Even many northerners, who may have been at the tip of the spear relative to abolition of slavery, generally did not believe in equality of the races. Abraham Lincoln didn't. If you were born in Virginia in 1840, you very likely would have thought it absolutely normal and just there was slavery, and that states had the right to secede from the union.

Adolph Hitler and German Nazis were not doing things that most people in the world at the time considered right, good and just or even understandable. Everyone at the time knew that mass murder and genocide was wrong. However, in the early 1800s, that was not the case regarding slavery.

Your argument would require that Italians not honor Caesar as a great man of their history, and it would require that his statues be torn down, just like Robert E Lees statues.

Oh look, a whole bunch of tearful wailing. “But Genghis Khan! But Islam! But black people! But but but but!”

I hate to break it to you but none of that excuses the CSA’s fight to save slavery, nor changes the fact that there is no obligation to celebrate or honor anyone who fought for that regime.

Except for the fact that by 1860 most of the world had already abolished slavery, which makes your claim laughably false. It wasn’t seen as “normal” by most folks across the globe, which is why no one ever recognized the CSA.

 

[MrNiceGuy]

Yeah, right. About the only time Gen Z’ers visit a library—any library—is when they can’t plagiarize or purchase a term paper from a website. This is the generation that gets its news from TikTok and Instagram, and thinks the Civil War was fought between the U.S. and Mexico. So no loss there.

My kids are young and tech savvy, knowing their way around computers, tablets and smartphones. However, I have also ensured they can read and write cursive, read a clock with hands, count money and make change, and understand how a physical library works. They love the library. Yes, we can get a lot of information on phones and tablets and computers, but my 9 year old loves physical books. She reads novels. She has learned to read maps, including the various codes, and she has physical dictionaries and is learning all the features of a physical dictionary (which to anyone who knows anything is much more than just looking up the spelling and definitions of words).

I will never understand the all-too-common wish to be ignorant -- it's almost like a badge of honor - ignorance of basic math, for example - innumeracy - it's something people freely admit and revel in. Oh, we have calculators now, we don't "need to know" that. Such bald-faced ignorance. I don't pin it all on Gen-Z. Genz has some commonalities, but there has always been a similar glorification of ignorance out there.

 

[MrNiceGuy]

Oh look, a whole bunch of tearful wailing. “But Genghis Khan! But Islam! But black people! But but but but!”

I don't think you were reading my post, since I'm not whining about anything or saying anything of the kind as "but but but." Whatever you are hearing, that's not what I'm saying. I was explaining consistency to you. But if you lack a basic understanding of history, you won't get it, apparently.

I hate to break it to you but none of that excuses the CSA’s fight to save slavery,

Who said anything about excuses? I find a hereditary monarchy inexcusable, but I don't want to tear down every statue of a king or queen. I mean, if I acted like that, I'd be acting like you, which would be embarrassing, to say the least.

nor changes the fact that there is no obligation to celebrate or honor anyone who fought for that regime.

Nope that is true. You need not "celebrate" anything at all. I don't celebrate them either. It's like I don't celebrate King George the Third, and I don't so much like him as a person, and he had many failings and led an Empire that conquered territories and colonized, right? I don't run around demanding any image of him be destroyed. That would be like you, and that would be, again, embarrassing, to say the least.

Except for the fact that by 1860 most of the world had already abolished slavery,

Completely inaccurate. Most of the world? LOL. The first sovereign state to abolish slavery was Vermont, in 1777. The first non-American nation in the Western Hemisphere to abolish slavery was Haiti in 1804. France didn't abolish slavery until 1848, although France, Sweden and the Netherland abolished "trading" in slaves in approx. 1817. Britain abolished in in 1817. Brazil didn't end slavery until 1888, 25 years later than the US. And, the "rest of the world" meaning Asia and Africa, still had slaves. Shit, today, 30 million people are held in bondage -- where? North Africa, the Middle East and south Asia, among others.

which makes your claim laughably false. It wasn’t seen as “normal” by most folks across the globe, which is why no one ever recognized the CSA.

 

[Tigerace117]

I don't think you were reading my post, since I'm not whining about anything or saying anything of the kind as "but but but." Whatever you are hearing, that's not what I'm saying. I was explaining consistency to you. But if you lack a basic understanding of history, you won't get it, apparently.

Who said anything about excuses? I find a hereditary monarchy inexcusable, but I don't want to tear down every statue of a king or queen. I mean, if I acted like that, I'd be acting like you, which would be embarrassing, to say the least.

Nope that is true. You need not "celebrate" anything at all. I don't celebrate them either. It's like I don't celebrate King George the Third, and I don't so much like him as a person, and he had many failings and led an Empire that conquered territories and colonized, right? I don't run around demanding any image of him be destroyed. That would be like you, and that would be, again, embarrassing, to say the least.

Completely inaccurate. Most of the world? LOL. The first sovereign state to abolish slavery was Vermont, in 1777. The first non-American nation in the Western Hemisphere to abolish slavery was Haiti in 1804. France didn't abolish slavery until 1848, although France, Sweden and the Netherland abolished "trading" in slaves in approx. 1817. Britain abolished in in 1817. Brazil didn't end slavery until 1888, 25 years later than the US. And, the "rest of the world" meaning Asia and Africa, still had slaves. Shit, today, 30 million people are held in bondage -- where? North Africa, the Middle East and south Asia, among others.

No, what you were doing is whining bitterly about how unfair you think it is the CSA is called out on its war to defend slavery and throwing a bunch of irrelevancies out there to “support” that. Here’s a hint: none of what Muhammad did or didn’t do changes the fact that the CSA explicitly went to war to protect slavery.

Oh, we all know you don’t want the statues celebrating the CSA torn down. You’ve made it quite clear fighting to defend slavery is no biggie to you.

Nah, what’s really “embarrassing” is how you can’t bear to see the statues of your slaver heroes come crashing down and the frantic squirming you are engaged in to try and “defend” them.

Lol yes, most of the world. You literally proved my point by demonstrating that numerous nations abolished decades before the CSA went to war to try and protect it.

Just because you would have happily supported the CSA doesn’t change the fact that most of the globe saw going to war to protect it as utterly vile. As usual, your excuses fall flat.