What do I find wrong with Confederate Monuments?

[independentusa]

It is simple, they are memorials to the people who committed treason. People say they are part of our heritage, and if that is true then you are saying that committing treason is not only okay, but we should honor the people who knowingly committed treason. And we should do this by building statues to them and putting them in our parks and along side our roads to remind us of those who committed treason. Many of the leaders of the armies of the south had sworn an oath to the United States and yet they broke that oath and committed treason. So you can go on telling yourself that those statues are part of our heritage and I will go on knowing that they are part of a history of treason against our country.

 

[Checkerboard Strangler]

Confederates should be told to purchase the plots that the statues and monuments are located on and pay for their upkeep themselves.
Instead, taxpayers, even people of color, are being forced to pay for them.
That's my objection.

If I was a person of color living in a Confederate state and I had to walk by statues commemorating people who likely helped sell my ancestors on an auction block, it would be bad enough just seeing them every day, but at least if their admirers had to pay the upkeep I could tell myself it's their own business who they celebrate.

The fact that even one penny of my hard earned money has to go to keeping them maintained and in good repair would stick in my craw.
If their admirers don't want to pay the upkeep, then the statues should be left to rust, rot and crumble with the help of nature.
No one else should be required to contribute a single penny.
In fact, refunds should be handed out for all the money taken over the last decades.

 

[RaleBulgarian]

The inconvenient truth behind Civil War Confederate war monuments is that they were meant to glorify those who believed in the right to own other people and to remind those people of “their place”, plain and simple. It is no coincidence that most of them went up years after the Civil War ended, during the Jim Crow years. Any suggestion or assertion to the contrary is made out of ignorance or a desire to sugar coat the past.

I believe every one of them should be removed from public lands and either destroyed or put in museums as reminders of one of the worst (if not the worst) periods in America's history.

 

[ecofarm]

ISIS also murders Americans to preserve slavery. Maybe they should get some monuments as well.

These monuments were not built to honor anyone anyway; they were built a hundred years after the war to intimidate black people.

Let's stop pretending to honor the last stand of Western slavers, and let's admit why the monuments were built.

 

[Grokmaster]

It is simple, they are memorials to the people who committed treason. People say they are part of our heritage, and if that is true then you are saying that committing treason is not only okay, but we should honor the people who knowingly committed treason. And we should do this by building statues to them and putting them in our parks and along side our roads to remind us of those who committed treason. Many of the leaders of the armies of the south had sworn an oath to the United States and yet they broke that oath and committed treason. So you can go on telling yourself that those statues are part of our heritage and I will go on knowing that they are part of a history of treason against our country.

George Washington and every other Founding Father COMMITTED TREASON....and?

The South was trying to exercise its RIGHT to leave the union when it so desired.

 

[ecofarm]

George Washington and every other Founding Father COMMITTED TREASON....and?

The South was trying to exercise its RIGHT to leave the union when it so desired.

The betrayal of tyranny is just. The betrayal of mankind is not.

 

[Grokmaster]

The betrayal of tyranny is just. The betrayal of mankind is not.

"The Betrayal of Mankind". Really? Drama Queen much?

What a pile of euphemistic bull****.

Most of the world practiced slavery then, and the cotton gin had already been invented here, so slavery was on the way out , anyway.


The South saw the Union as tyrannical, were typically more loyal to their STATES, and tried to exercise it right to leave, which it absolutely had, as an exercise of STATES' RIGHTS, per the 10th Amendment.

They lost the war over it. End of story.


Confederate monuments are part of our history. Why fear the past?

 

[yankintx]

There is no issue with the South honoring their dead. Just as there is no issue Germany honoring their dead. The problem arises when you honor the cause they died for which would include statues of Confederate Generals.

 

[PleasantValley]

It is simple, they are memorials to the people who committed treason. People say they are part of our heritage, and if that is true then you are saying that committing treason is not only okay, but we should honor the people who knowingly committed treason. And we should do this by building statues to them and putting them in our parks and along side our roads to remind us of those who committed treason. Many of the leaders of the armies of the south had sworn an oath to the United States and yet they broke that oath and committed treason. So you can go on telling yourself that those statues are part of our heritage and I will go on knowing that they are part of a history of treason against our country.

...and I would like to thank you for this OPINION piece.

 

[Grokmaster]

There is no issue with the South honoring their dead. Just as there is no issue Germany honoring their dead. The problem arises when you honor the cause they died for which would include statues of Confederate Generals.

States' rights was a noble cause, IMHO. Slavery was already on the way out, due to the cotton gin.

There were honorable and decent men, who OPPOSED SLAVERY, that fought for the South's right to secede, and the defense of States' Rights.

It happened...why FEAR IT?


Only the left seeks to ERASE HISTORY...ALWAYS....just like Mao , Lenin, Pol Pot and Stalin...

 

[ecofarm]

"The Betrayal of Mankind". Really?

Slavery was banned in Europe. It was banned on the sea, no new slaves. It was banned in new US territories. It was banned to degrees in the North. The Underground Railroad was in operation before the war.

Yes. Betrayal of mankind.

 

[Grokmaster]

Slavery was banned in Europe. It was banned on the sea, no new slaves. It was banned in new US territories. It was banned to degrees in the North. The Underground Railroad was in operation before the war.

Yes. Betrayal of mankind.

Bull****. The English and Dutch were the world's Number One slave traders at the time of the Civil War.

And "indentured servitude" was RAMPANT there as well.....

Slavery was not even the REAL ISSUE...Lincoln "made it" the issue, to appeal to peoples' EMOTIONS, as there was no INTELLECTUAL or LEGAL POSITION that the secession of any States was illegal, or Un-Constitutional.

 

[spud_meister]

States' rights was a noble cause, IMHO. Slavery was already on the way out, due to the cotton gin.

It happened...why FEAR IT?


Only the left seeks to ERASE HISTORY...ALWAYS....just like Mao , Lenin, Pol Pot and Stalin...

Erase history? We're not the one's pretending the monuments were erected over some noble ideal of "states rights" instead of monuments of oppressors to intimidate and marginalise the black population.

 

[ecofarm]

Bull****. The English and Dutch were the world's Number One slave traders at the time of the Civil War.

False. England banned slave trading 50 years before the Civil War.

The Slave Trade Act 1807, officially An Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade,[1] was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom prohibiting the slave trade in the British Empire.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slave_Trade_Act_1807

 

[maxparrish]

It is simple, they are memorials to the people who committed treason. People say they are part of our heritage, and if that is true then you are saying that committing treason is not only okay, but we should honor the people who knowingly committed treason. And we should do this by building statues to them and putting them in our parks and along side our roads to remind us of those who committed treason. Many of the leaders of the armies of the south had sworn an oath to the United States and yet they broke that oath and committed treason. So you can go on telling yourself that those statues are part of our heritage and I will go on knowing that they are part of a history of treason against our country.

I don't find it particularly useful to fight ideological wars against acknowledgement of the far past, anymore than I would rail against acknowledgement of the legacy of colonial Britain. Secular Taliban sanitization of long past history is the sort of idiocy by fanatic "other" haters that only the knuckle draggers find emotionally rewarding. The past was not written to please some unknown future.

Of course, there are those who want to refight arcane causes and characters no longer in existence, just as Northern Ireland and its generations of its people fought for score settling … schooling their children's children to hate those other children's children, and then be expected to rage against profane symbol left by the long dead.

Which brings us to you inane obsession with a statue of 'traitors' in the town square, located in a region that is likely more nationalist and patriotic than today's home-states of their conquers.

So no, I don't find your civil war statue melodrama as anything other than an excuse for being self-righteous.

 

[ecofarm]

a region that is likely more nationalist and patriotic than today's home-states of their conquers.

Glorifying nationalism and supporting confederate monuments. Whatever could that mean?

 

[OldFatGuy]

Slavery was banned in Europe. It was banned on the sea, no new slaves. It was banned in new US territories. It was banned to degrees in the North. The Underground Railroad was in operation before the war.

Yes. Betrayal of mankind.

Laws made by men are bypassed by more creative men. Banning a time honored institution because it is momentarily out of "moral" fashion does not make it disappear. It may change form, but it remains. In Europe, the real slavery had metamorphosed into feudalism, and the class structure remains for many, either still in the rural areas more strictly or on the assembly line, the guilds, the travelers. Here in the US the immediate response was share cropping, company stores, antiunionization, again assembly lines, segregation, almost invisible class structure, not much actual change, except a lack of responsibility for those who did the hardest labor, their living wage irrelevant to CEO and CFO's. We never put the brakes on the slavery of the Indians lands. Not even federal laws can abrogate their sovereign rights.

That an active abolition movement existed before the civil war, does not make it an end all. We still have sweat shops, migrant workers, and others who sad to say would be better off as named slaves.

Slavey is not a betrayal of mankind, it is a time honored system for building and maintaining empires. It is a betrayal of yours, of the modern morals of others. Your morals are not the only morals, nor the only extant.

 

[OldFatGuy]

False. England banned slave trading 50 years before the Civil War.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slave_Trade_Act_1807

Yet the jolly old British continued to rape and pillage their colonial holdings. India remained in slavery with its outlawed caste systems and England profited. The hypocrisy of talk.

 

[ecofarm]

Slavey is not a betrayal of mankind, it is a time honored system for building and maintaining empires. It is a betrayal of yours, of the modern morals of others. Your morals are not the only morals, nor the only extant.

When slavery is banned all around you and everyone knows it's wrong, murdering Americans to preserve it is a betrayal of mankind.

 

[ecofarm]

Yet the jolly old British continued to rape and pillage their colonial holdings. India remained in slavery with its outlawed caste systems and England profited. The hypocrisy of talk.

I proved his claim is utterly stupid, ignorant and false. Of that there can be no doubt.

 

[eohrnberger]

Sums it up rather nicely.

 

[Felis Leo]

It is simple, they are memorials to the people who committed treason. People say they are part of our heritage, and if that is true then you are saying that committing treason is not only okay, but we should honor the people who knowingly committed treason. And we should do this by building statues to them and putting them in our parks and along side our roads to remind us of those who committed treason. Many of the leaders of the armies of the south had sworn an oath to the United States and yet they broke that oath and committed treason. So you can go on telling yourself that those statues are part of our heritage and I will go on knowing that they are part of a history of treason against our country.

If I may, independentusa, why do you care? Do you live in the South and are forced to swallow a constant stream of Southern revisionist history or Lost Cause propaganda?

 

[ecofarm]

If I may, independentusa, why do you care? Do you live in the South and are forced to swallow a constant stream of Southern revisionist history or Lost Cause propaganda?

If I may, I care because it's disgusting to glorify terrorists and intimidate black people in the name of America.

 

[maxparrish]

Glorifying nationalism and supporting confederate monuments. Whatever could that mean?

One thing is for sure, hounding those who support American nationalism and patriotism more than the hounders means the animosity of the howling had nothing to do with anger at traitors.

 

[ecofarm]

One thing is for sure, glorifying American nationalism and patriotism more than those who hound them means that carpers motives have little to do with 19th century "traitors".

Nationalism is a pathetic small minded ideology created so losers with no self worth become orcs of the state. It's white trash bait employed by statists.