• This is a political forum that is non-biased/non-partisan and treats every person's position on topics equally. This debate forum is not aligned to any political party. In today's politics, many ideas are split between and even within all the political parties. Often we find ourselves agreeing on one platform but some topics break our mold. We are here to discuss them in a civil political debate. If this is your first visit to our political forums, be sure to check out the RULES. Registering for debate politics is necessary before posting. Register today to participate - it's free!

What do I find wrong with Confederate Monuments?

Grokmaster said:
"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?
Click to expand...

You're wrong. But that's not surprising:

While it was true that the cotton gin reduced the labor of removing seeds, it did not reduce the need for slaves to grow and pick the cotton. In fact, the opposite occurred. Cotton growing became so profitable for the planters that it greatly increased their demand for both land and slave labor.Sep 23, 2016
Click to expand...

Just admit you'd be much happier sitting on a porch watching black and brown people you own working in your yard. The truth will set you free, my friend.
 
Lursa said:
Holy ****

That's all you wrote? It's like seeing Nazi Germany attempt to justify their treatment of the Jews.
Click to expand...

Disgusting wasn't it? But we can't avoid reality. The Roman Empire, The Persian Empire, The British Empire, and a thousand other built on the backs of slaves.

I hire a subcontractor or contractor to paint my house because he offers the lowest bid, yet I know the only method he can do so is with cheap labor, from the market which provides workers from among illegal immigrant workers. I am a slaver. Who manicures your yard?

I engage the services of a call girl, who has to bring home the green to "Daddy," her pimp. I am a slaver.

Do you want more examples? I've got plenty. But don't be a hypocrite. You enjoyed that 60 Minutes "glorification" of slavery with another label. I have to call you a slaver for the misery you vicariously enjoyed. Are you enjoying "The Deuce" on HBO with millions of others, fantasizing about those girls, or being one of those pimps along with millions of other watchers?

There are approximately 1 million prostitutes in the US and they generate more than $15 billion of annual income as an industry. We'll just make it legal and all will be fine. Think of the tax revenues. Reality. The US is a slave nation. Slavery has not disappeared with laws denouncing it, nor have those laws changed history. Robinson Crusoe still had his man Friday, Natty Bumpo (the protagonist of the first American Novel) still managed to out Indian the Indian and prove his white man superiority over Indians who did his bidding, Frank Serpico, a brave man, is still making a living giving speeches about the slavery of drug addiction. Who is fooling who?

I'm willing to wager, if you saw it, you really enjoyed Gene Hackman in the French Connection, a tale of white powder slavery.
 
When my older son was eight years old, I augmented his reading list with books I believed were important for his growth. One of the books was Edgar G. Riceborough's Tarzan. Edgar was an elementary school teach attempting to encourage children to read and the character, out mighty Tarzan, because of his superior intellect, teaches himself to read with alphabet blocks long ago abandoned by his dead parents in the jungle. Inspiring. During a parent teacher conference his teacher expressed her outrage, "that book is disgusting, foul, racist at its core, how could you allow your child to read it?" I replied, "it was an opportunity to discuss the how's and why's of the thinking of men, how we are a product of our times, an opportunity the show heroes are not heroes, but vain little men who take all that is wrong and make it right for their convenience. Ask my son how he feels about race and religion, you are in for an earful, and don't forget Disney is coming out with a new animated Tarzan adventure."

Confederate statues and monuments are not disgusting where they should be torn down. They represent how people felt about their heroes. They are an opportunity for many to learn and discuss why and how that tho they may have been good people, they were frail humans who make mistakes. Tearing them down is a lie for our children. Give them a truth instead.
 
Grokmaster said:
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...
Click to expand...

As a person with a economics degree and having studied economic history of our country. slavery was a profitable business at the time of the Civil War and was not on its way out. The slave states were fighting not because slavery was ending, it was fighting to expand slavery to the new states joining the union and thus there business. There were not many in the North who actually were seriously discussing ending slavery at the beginning of the war. Lincoln freed the slaves hopping it would help end the war.
 
Grokmaster said:
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-ConstitutionActually the Spanish were huge into the slave industry. The word Negro comes from the Spanish word for black.
Click to expand...
 
Grokmaster said:
"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?
Click to expand...

It's true that most of the world used slaves 'back in the day' but I have yet to see any other country that has a past of having enslaved millions of black people build statues to those men who fought for the right to keep those people enslaved. Only in the U.S.A. will you see statues honoring men who fought and died for the right to own another human being.
 
Felis Leo said:
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?
Click to expand...

Actually I now live in the North, but my first 21 years as a service brat i spent in the South. I am old enough that I actually went to a segregated school. I remember a Southern friend repeating thee old saying,"save your confederate money boys the South will rise again". With Trump in office the meaning behind what was a joke is coming true, but not only in the South. The rise of White Supremacy groups all over the country reminds me of all of the KKK people I met in my early years,
 
independentusa said:
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.
Click to expand...

Committing treason for all the wrong reasons, no less. Had the treason been to stop slavery, like John Brown, I would actually support the traitors. But, these morons rebelled in order to preserve slavery.

They are garbage.
 
Grokmaster said:
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.
Click to expand...

They did leave, and then got their ass beat. Now, they want statues commemorating their stupidity. Stupid is as stupid does. That's fine. But, that does not mean we will pay for it. The racists should pay for their own monuments, out of their own pockets.

I thought you opposed socialism?
 
maxparrish said:
Having majored in foreign policy, and a life long interest in political development, you are incorrect. The recent reaction against White nationalism has colored or stunted your learnings; nationalism as an intellectual fashion (e.g. Ho Chi Minh was alleged to be a nationalist (good) not a communist (bad)). This was, in part, a reaction against colonialism and spawned nationalism (and liberation) as good thing - including self-determination.

Indeed, the all-purpose excuse for pan African dictatorships and one-party states were the assurance that they were not communists, just legitimate nationalists.

PS - The right of self-determination for a people is in the UN Charter...how much more "nationalist" can you get?
Click to expand...

You have to determine the use of words in the era they are being used in. You may be right about your interpretation of what Nationalism meant 100 years ago, but today the word has a whole new meaning when used in this country and you must know that. The word nationalism in this country at this time is closely related to white national groups. It is the same as the words like "states rights" were used to mean segregation in the 1960's through even today in parts of the country.
 
Oh, for God's sake.

Some people demand that those statues be taken down.
Some people demand that those statues be allowed to stand.

The silent majority could not care less about those darn statues.

This is 2018.


It's time to move on!

Here in Los Angeles, we do NOT celebrate Columbus Day. We celebrate Indigenous People's Day. (Columbus was a baddie, you see.) Our local leaders cannot solve present-day problems, so they rename holidays (and hide Columbus's statue. I kid you not).


The silent majority is too busy making a living and taking care of their families and enjoying their lives to waste a minute thinking about some statues!

Get a life!
 
Grokmaster said:
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.
Click to expand...

They had no right, the Supreme Court ruled that unilateral secession is unconstitutional.

You're also ignoring a big difference between the south's attempt at maintaining slavery and our war of independence.

If the we had lost our fight with England, all the leaders of our revolutionary army would have been rightly put to death. That's what happens to losers of revolutions, get over it.

Yet after the south was finally put down, we erected statues to honor the slavers. It's way past time they were torn down, melted and using the metal, replace all their confederate traitors with statues of the generals who saved our union...
 
Grokmaster said:
"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?
Click to expand...

Oh good god the ignorance.

Not sure if you know this, but the cotton gin doesn't pick and dry tobacco... or any other crop for that matter.
 
OldFatGuy said:
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.
Click to expand...
OldFatGuy said:
Disgusting wasn't it? But we can't avoid reality. The Roman Empire, The Persian Empire, The British Empire, and a thousand other built on the backs of slaves.

I hire a subcontractor or contractor to paint my house because he offers the lowest bid, yet I know the only method he can do so is with cheap labor, from the market which provides workers from among illegal immigrant workers. I am a slaver. Who manicures your yard?

I engage the services of a call girl, who has to bring home the green to "Daddy," her pimp. I am a slaver.

Do you want more examples? I've got plenty. But don't be a hypocrite. You enjoyed that 60 Minutes "glorification" of slavery with another label. I have to call you a slaver for the misery you vicariously enjoyed. Are you enjoying "The Deuce" on HBO with millions of others, fantasizing about those girls, or being one of those pimps along with millions of other watchers?

There are approximately 1 million prostitutes in the US and they generate more than $15 billion of annual income as an industry. We'll just make it legal and all will be fine. Think of the tax revenues. Reality. The US is a slave nation. Slavery has not disappeared with laws denouncing it, nor have those laws changed history. Robinson Crusoe still had his man Friday, Natty Bumpo (the protagonist of the first American Novel) still managed to out Indian the Indian and prove his white man superiority over Indians who did his bidding, Frank Serpico, a brave man, is still making a living giving speeches about the slavery of drug addiction. Who is fooling who?

I'm willing to wager, if you saw it, you really enjoyed Gene Hackman in the French Connection, a tale of white powder slavery.
Click to expand...

I can recognize the examples....but not the conclusion about morality. Your convoluted way of trying to make it morally ambiguous on the issue of slavery isnt valid IMO at all.
 
OldFatGuy said:
Every time you read or hear any words extolling a pimp as a human being with problems, a common source of discourse in out literature and media, you are reading or watching a slave trader. Every time you hear someone with pity in their voice for unlawful immigrants, you are hearing the slave trade being touted. Need I continue?
Click to expand...

Comparing unlawful immigrants to slaves is nonsense. The immigrants made a choice, and for many of them that live here there is greater opportunity for their kids if not themselves. They aren't beaten or lynched or raped with impunity by their owners, their kids aren't seized and sold from them.

And those who speak with "pity" for unlawful immigrants are in fact attempting in some way to write the wrong of their fate, which is to sometimes be exploited labor who cannot speak out for fear of deportation. Providing them a path to legalization is to improve that condition, not sustain it.
 
OldFatGuy said:
Disgusting wasn't it? But we can't avoid reality. The Roman Empire, The Persian Empire, The British Empire, and a thousand other built on the backs of slaves.

I hire a subcontractor or contractor to paint my house because he offers the lowest bid, yet I know the only method he can do so is with cheap labor, from the market which provides workers from among illegal immigrant workers. I am a slaver. Who manicures your yard?

I engage the services of a call girl, who has to bring home the green to "Daddy," her pimp. I am a slaver.

Do you want more examples? I've got plenty. But don't be a hypocrite. You enjoyed that 60 Minutes "glorification" of slavery with another label. I have to call you a slaver for the misery you vicariously enjoyed. Are you enjoying "The Deuce" on HBO with millions of others, fantasizing about those girls, or being one of those pimps along with millions of other watchers?

There are approximately 1 million prostitutes in the US and they generate more than $15 billion of annual income as an industry. We'll just make it legal and all will be fine. Think of the tax revenues. Reality. The US is a slave nation. Slavery has not disappeared with laws denouncing it, nor have those laws changed history. Robinson Crusoe still had his man Friday, Natty Bumpo (the protagonist of the first American Novel) still managed to out Indian the Indian and prove his white man superiority over Indians who did his bidding, Frank Serpico, a brave man, is still making a living giving speeches about the slavery of drug addiction. Who is fooling who?

I'm willing to wager, if you saw it, you really enjoyed Gene Hackman in the French Connection, a tale of white powder slavery.
Click to expand...

So, basically, there are still wrongs in this world so it's legitimate to celebrate other wrongs, such as slavery. Using this boneheaded logic, no one can criticize any wrong until all wrongs in this world, in this country, are eradicated. Furthermore, you're equating the conditions of someone in slavery with the undocumented.

Alternatively, you're taking a position that to criticize one wrong means to in the same breath list and acknowledge all others. Silence on those subjects means to at least accept them as inevitable, or perhaps necessary.

I have a feeling the undocumented who paints your house, goes home to a wife and kids, and whose family isn't seized, separated and sold to another painting company 1,000 miles away would disagree. His wife who isn't raped with impunity would disagree, the kids who aren't whipped bloody would recognize a fundamental difference between being a slave and arguably exploited labor. And the key to the undocumented is they made a choice - slaves had no choice, no opportunity to improve their lot, their kids doomed to the same fate as the parents, for all time.
 
independentusa said:
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.
Click to expand...
Here's a thought problem for you: Where in the Constitution does it prohibit states from seceding? Theoretically, at least, states are given all powers not specifically granted to the federal government, including the right not to belong.
 
TheParser said:
Oh, for God's sake.

Some people demand that those statues be taken down.
Some people demand that those statues be allowed to stand.

The silent majority could not care less about those darn statues.

This is 2018.


It's time to move on!

Here in Los Angeles, we do NOT celebrate Columbus Day. We celebrate Indigenous People's Day. (Columbus was a baddie, you see.) Our local leaders cannot solve present-day problems, so they rename holidays (and hide Columbus's statue. I kid you not).


The silent majority is too busy making a living and taking care of their families and enjoying their lives to waste a minute thinking about some statues!

Get a life!
Click to expand...

Columbus was a POS. Quite pleased that here in LA we don't celebrate him.
 
Grokmaster said:
"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?
Click to expand...

Your support of honor treason and traitors duly noted.
 
OldFatGuy said:
When my older son was eight years old, I augmented his reading list with books I believed were important for his growth. One of the books was Edgar G. Riceborough's Tarzan. Edgar was an elementary school teach attempting to encourage children to read and the character, out mighty Tarzan, because of his superior intellect, teaches himself to read with alphabet blocks long ago abandoned by his dead parents in the jungle. Inspiring. During a parent teacher conference his teacher expressed her outrage, "that book is disgusting, foul, racist at its core, how could you allow your child to read it?" I replied, "it was an opportunity to discuss the how's and why's of the thinking of men, how we are a product of our times, an opportunity the show heroes are not heroes, but vain little men who take all that is wrong and make it right for their convenience. Ask my son how he feels about race and religion, you are in for an earful, and don't forget Disney is coming out with a new animated Tarzan adventure."

Confederate statues and monuments are not disgusting where they should be torn down. They represent how people felt about their heroes. They are an opportunity for many to learn and discuss why and how that tho they may have been good people, they were frail humans who make mistakes. Tearing them down is a lie for our children. Give them a truth instead.
Click to expand...

We all know when and why these monuments were put up, and the vast majority were erected by white supremacists to celebrate white supremacy in the post Civil War period of Jim Crow in the South. They were monuments to the continued suppression of blacks, the state-enforced second class citizenship of them in the South at that time.

There's a good argument for keeping the monuments, at least some of them, somewhere, but no one is arguing for them all to be destroyed, just not left up in the 'town square.' Put them in context, in a confederate battlefield or museum. That's how the "truth" is taught to children. Besides, every generation has the opportunity to celebrate their own heroes with monuments. Just because some white supremacists in 1919 decided to erect a monument to a confederate hero doesn't obligate all future generations to maintain that monument in a place of honor. And doing so does not as you suggest teach anyone about any "truth."

We have discussions on here all the time that are full of Lost Cause bull****. The truth isn't getting conveyed in any kind of meaningful way for a huge chunk of the population, and part of it is the continued celebration of guys like the leaders of Confederacy as fighters for a righteous cause, states' rights, freedom, and not the slavery they told us was the reason they seceded, or the century of Jim Crow that followed.
 
Grokmaster said:
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...
Click to expand...

The Southern states fought a war that resulted in half a million deaths to preserve slavery. No amount of spin will change that.
 
Grokmaster said:
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.
Click to expand...

You sit here today as an American because of Washington's so called "treason", which was against the tyrannical Crown of England, so it wasn't treason in American terms. But you can't grasp that, can you? Of course not.

The South was trying to exercise its right to leave the Union?
They tried, and they lost, so if they still feel that way, they should pack their **** and get out.
That's what losers have to do.
Or...they can accept that the Union was right and they were wrong, and they can let the healing begin, and they can be Americans.

But no, instead we have coddled them throughout their 165 year tantrum, and allowed them to nurture insurgency, which is now a fulminating infection, thanks to their enabler-in-chief.
And using HIS own logic, if this were any other country besides ours, a benevolent democratic republic, they'd be rounded up and incarcerated, and their orange haired sponsor along with them.
And their precious Confederate flags and symbols would be incinerated and forgotten.

ConfederateBURN.jpg

It is well past time for the would-be "new" Confederates to put the past in proper perspective, admit that they lost the war and stop trying to promulgate a brand new slow motion civil war, because eventually it won't even be in slow motion anymore.
When a host body senses an infection, it either sends antibodies to wipe out the hostile bacteria, or it succumbs.

You and yours are the infection, you and yours believe in the rights of a hostile insurgency, and Americans are under no obligation to coddle and tolerate your intolerance.

Karl Popper - The Paradox of Tolerance
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom