# Removing monuments of the Confederacy: Yay or Nay?



## The Nothingness (May 11, 2017)

After hearing about several Confederate monuments in New Orleans were taken down I decided to make this thread for any history buffs or people wanting to engage in a conversation about this topic. So where do people stand on this? Is this like what Allied soldiers did in Germany by destroying all the things associated with the Nazis or is this erasing history because the offended are making noise that is loud enough?

It seems to me that when it comes to historical events, such as the American Civil War, we are given a simplistic view as to not make it complicated (North=Good, South=Bad). And trying to find an objective view on the Civil War seems to be quite a challenge. Will there be a stopping point if the all Confederate monuments are gone or will other things be next such as national parks where the Confederacy won a battle? What happens if historical places such as Jamestown are next because someone might point out how the American Indians were treated by the colonists? 

Should history only cover the "good" stuff or should people take the "bad" with the "good"?


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## AnOminous (May 11, 2017)

I'm going to side with nay on this one.

While I do think some Confederacy shit should go, like flags flown from the statehouse in some states, they should remain on battlefields, military monuments, and similar places where they do not signify endorsement of an ideology, but are simply recognition of an historical fact.

Historical revisionism is shit, and something mainly renowned because of its association with Nazis.  I don't think we should join the Nazis in revising the past, which already happened.


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## Eldritch (May 11, 2017)

Eh. Fuck it, let's just bulldoze the entire planet. last few thousand years didn't happen. Mulligan.

If we only cover the (subjectively) "good" parts of history, then we practically don't see history as it happened at all. "Confederate - Bad. Union - Good. German - Bad. American - Good." Is a child's understanding of history.


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## Gym Leader Elesa (May 11, 2017)

I could hardly post more than a sentence in this thread without devolving into a seething, fanatical, a-logging, mess, so I am just going to say "no" because the South was justified in seeking independence and should still continue to pursue it (blah, blah I'm a faggot, we've all seen me post.) Obviously, though, a Southern Nationalist is going to have an extremely biased opinion- those aren't "historical" flags to me- they're the flags of my country. Those monuments are additionally monuments to a living _nation_ if not a "country." So it's a bit like saying "should we take down all the French tricolors in France" to me. Nonetheless, count me as "nay" for a simple vote.


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## Alec Benson Leary (May 11, 2017)

There's a practical reason to not condemn a historical artifact like these monuments: it comes with the "original sin" connotation that people should apologize for the history they come from.


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## Sperglord Dante (May 11, 2017)

AnOminous said:


> I'm going to side with nay on this one.
> 
> While I do think some Confederacy shit should go, like flags flown from the statehouse in some states, they should remain on battlefields, military monuments, and similar places where they do not signify endorsement of an ideology, but are simply recognition of an historical fact.
> 
> Historical revisionism is shit, and something mainly renowned because of its association with Nazis.  I don't think we should join the Nazis in revising the past, which already happened.


I agree with this.

Commemorative plates and confederate flags on museums and historic landmarks are okay. Confederate paraphernalia of _any_ nature on private property is okay. Confederate flags and general Lee statues on government property like town halls is not okay.


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## Ruin (May 11, 2017)

I'm worried mostly about the precedent this sort of thing sets. If we are obligated to remove or destroy anything that might be construed as "offensive" where does it stop and where is the line drawn? Do we burn all of HP Lovecraft's books because he was kind of a racist douch? Margaret Sanger was a Nazi fangirl and proponent of eugenics so does that mean we should shut down Planned Parenthood? Honestly to me this whole thing looks like a moralistic witch hunt.

tl,dr that's a no from me.


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## millais (May 11, 2017)

Leave it all up. Even if it is commemorating a morally indefensible institution, the value of the monument is in the historical context that it provides to modern day citizens. If we willfully forget and suppress the uncomfortable and unsavory truths of our national history, we will be condemned to repeat them in the future. If you have to, put up a new plaque beside the old monument that tells people the other side of the Civil War's history so they don't get onesided misinformation (like it might be appropriate to put up a new plaque beside a monument to Nathan Bedford Forrest explaining that he illegally executed black Union POWs and founded the KKK after the war), but don't remove the original monument.


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## Gym Leader Elesa (May 11, 2017)

Sperglord Dante said:


> I agree with this.
> 
> Commemorative plates and confederate flags on museums and historic landmarks are okay. Confederate paraphernalia of _any_ nature on private property is okay. Confederate flags and general Lee statues on government property like town halls is not okay.



I assume this includes graveyards and the like (in terms of private property?)

Edited for clarification.


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## Southern Belle (May 11, 2017)

As a Southerner it pisses me right off so mark me as a strong nay.

As an intelligent individual I understand that soldiers do what soldiers do in times of war, and soldiers follow or give orders depending on their rank and who they answer to. I don't always agree with their actions or decisions, but again, understand that they follow orders. And that's what General Lee was doing. If these revisionists looked outside their little safe space boxes of edited history, they'd actually see that yes, while Lee is a problematic historical figure, he also was actually opposed to slavery, and encouraged his wife and daughter in their works to help slaves and former slaves. In the post-war South, Lee actually tried to reconcille the Confederates and the Unionists, and pushed for education for freed slaves. And while yes he was opposed to giving blacks the vote so soon after the war, he wasn't closed off to the idea entirely. In fact, his own statements show he didn't want them to have the vote so soon because the majority of blacks were completely uneducated and therefore were completely incapable of making an informed political or ideological decision that, at the time, was considered one of the most important decisions voters would or could ever make. He wanted them to be educated - able to read, write, do math, etc - before being given the right to vote so they wouldn't make complete asses of themselves, and in turn, the entire country.

The point is, one single event is being used to destroy historical landmarks and works simply because one single event is attached to the individual. For all anyone knows, the statue on govt property may be there to commemorate an event the individual was a key player in which was entirely separate and self contained outside of the civil war itself. And even then, the person's role in the separate event _might actually be something the people calling for it's destruction actually agree with and advocate for._


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## Gym Leader Elesa (May 11, 2017)

Southern Belle said:


> For all anyone knows, the statue on govt property may be there to commemorate an event the individual was a key player in which was entirely separate and self contained outside of the civil war itself. And even then, the person's role in the separate event _might actually be something the people calling for it's destruction actually agree with and advocate for._



This if often the case with monuments to figures like G.T. Beauregard, who was a well-regarded figure in Louisiana before and after the war. He is often beloved either in spite of, or without regards to, his status as a Confederate general.


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## Sperglord Dante (May 11, 2017)

Gym Leader Elesa said:


> I assume this includes graveyards and the like (in terms of private property?)
> 
> Edited for clarification.


I suppose so. There are KKK gravestones out there, so confederate flags wouldn't hurt.


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## Gym Leader Elesa (May 11, 2017)

Sperglord Dante said:


> I suppose so. There are KKK gravestones out there, so confederate flags wouldn't hurt.



Fair enough. That's one of the few concessions from unionists I do get a little "petty" over. Tearing the flags down from graveyards, from the men who fought and died for them, always seemed abominable to me whether one hated their cause or not. I don't think there is any cause or group of people I have ever hated enough for that- but calls to take down the Confederate flags and monuments from Southern graveyards are constant and very venomous.


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## The Nothingness (May 11, 2017)

Ruin said:


> Do we burn all of HP Lovecraft's books because he was kind of a racist douch?


Virtue-signalers never take into account the ripple effect with their reactions. Since Lovecraft's work influenced so many others, does that mean their stuff must be destroyed too? There is always a bigger picture that they don't see


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## millais (May 12, 2017)

Also, if the person or place is not related to the ANV, they shouldn't get to fly the battle flag. The Stars and Bars is good enough for everyone else, plus it probably won't hurt the fee-fees of the easily triggered to the same extent as the battle flag.


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## Jason Genova (May 12, 2017)

We should make a deal with the rest of the country, you can take the monuments of the confederacy and outlaw confederate flags if:
You take all the fucking new yorkers out of Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Florida, and Georgia and all of the Californians out of Texas and New Mexico.


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## cuddle striker (May 12, 2017)

they're historical. they stay.
added context would be a good idea (adding information on plaques, etc)

a flag of a nation that tried to destroy the united states shouldn't be hanging anywhere on united states government property though. except a museum.

and leave the graveyard alone.


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## AnOminous (May 12, 2017)

If this theory is correct, then shouldn't we also take down all monuments to Sherman?  His activities during the Civil War were arguably war crimes even if he was on the winning side.


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## Sergeant Politeness (May 12, 2017)

Ruin said:


> Do we burn all of HP Lovecraft's books because he was kind of a racist douch?


Of course. You don't wanna be on the wrong side of history, do you?

This comes down to if you consider prominently displaying historical artifacts as a seal of approval. To get rid of the dark periods of history is to say they didn't happen. The Confederacy played a role in US history, and racism played a role in the Confederacy. It's part of the history of this country and we need to accept it and educate about it, not hide it. (Also, fucking with graveyards is disrespectful regardless of what they believed, and anyone who says otherwise is just being edgy.)

I also have an issue with simplifying the Confederacy down to "slaveowners"; as someone said earlier, it's historical revisionism. The winning side becomes the right side.


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## Jason Genova (May 12, 2017)

AnOminous said:


> If this theory is correct, then shouldn't we also take down all monuments to Sherman?  His activities during the Civil War were arguably war crimes even if he was on the winning side.


I'm still utterly speechless that people think the Union were the "good" guys rather than just "the guys who fought against slavery because they didn't profit from cotton as much". If cotton could be grown just as well in Alaska as in Alabama there would have been no fucking war and there would probably have been slavery for MUCH longer.

War is never about one side being evil and the other side being Captain America to come save the day, war is almost always about *money, power, and territory*.

All the people who organized the civil war were cocksuckers, confederate and union, and almost all the people fighting on both sides were just regular dudes in the military.

Same reason we fight wars today, because politicians and people who run corporations are cocksuckers who need to be skinned, and because regular everyday dudes are willing to take orders from them.


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## Mrs Paul (May 17, 2017)

Depends on where the statues are.   I don't think they belong in government buildings (I mean, why would you want a bunch of statues of traitors and shit?)  Museums, graveyards, etc?  Let it remain.  As far as war memorials, I have to say, I'm iffy on this.  On one hand, I don't like just erasing the past.  On the other hand, is it really a good thing to have a monument to someone like,  say, Nathan Bedford Forrest?  (The dude who founded the KKK)   

And yeah, the Civil War was not just about slavery.  On the part of the South it was (read the Cornerstone Speech if you don't believe me), but the North was just like, "fuck you, you're not leaving!"  (Although contrary to what some people may think, there were no free black Confederate soldiers -- the army was segregated, and since blacks were still second class citizens, in no way would they have been allowed to serve in combat.  Some soldiers brought their slaves along, but only as servants.  It wasn't until the very end of the war that blacks were allowed to fight)

But the Union just wanted to keep the South from leaving.  Most soldiers didn't give a rat's ass about slavery, and were probably just as racist as the Confederacy.


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## ZeCommissar (May 17, 2017)

I don't see the removal of monuments on public, taxed property to be erasing history, due to the fact that unless we go full Oceania and start re-writing the past while burning all texts associated with the civil war then we can never erase it in the minds of future generations.

A nation divided is a nation destroyed, the south were traitors to the union that reaped what they sowed. I don't see the "it's my southern heritage" argument, is your heritage being a traitor to the United States?
 Now on private property confederate things can be flown and erected, I mean we have a statue of Lenin on US soil on private property, so if we can keep that there than we can keep privately owned confederate statues.

Tearing down the statues because you are offended is a bad reason, a more pragmatic reason would be why would you keep statues of traitors to your government on public government property? That's like the British having a public statue of George Washington outside parliament.

Nay on all of them, yea on public ones.


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## Alec Benson Leary (May 17, 2017)

Mrs Paul said:


> Depends on where the statues are. I don't think they belong in government buildings (I mean, why would you want a bunch of statues of traitors and shit?)





ZeCommissar said:


> the south were traitors to the union that reaped what they sowed. I don't see the "it's my southern heritage" argument, is your heritage being a traitor to the United States?


Good luck pitching this to a lot of southerners who don't view the confederate separatists as traitors though. And we are in a country that not only glorifies its own origin in the fires of a rebellion against a government considered unjust by the governed, but also glorifies the belief that no one else's opinion but the governed was necessary to make that decision. The question becomes a bit more difficult with those factors in mind. Calling the separatists traitors carte blanche is almost inviting the south to criticize you for hypocritically siding with history's winners just because they won.


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## Marvin (May 17, 2017)

As others pointed out, the correct camp is probably "keep it intact, and distinguish historicity from endorsement".


AnOminous said:


> If this theory is correct, then shouldn't we also take down all monuments to Sherman?  His activities during the Civil War were arguably war crimes even if he was on the winning side.


I don't think war crimes developed into a coherent enough branch of law by that point. Like, by my tastes, it's just far enough in the past that it has more in common with memorials to medieval warlords than a modern atrocity that still needs to be dealt with.



Spoiler: off topic



I visited a memorial to Tamerlane when I was in Tashkent. The guy I was hanging out with was laughing about it, as he told me about how the numbskulls in Kazakhstan (or some neighboring country, I don't remember) revere Tamerlane as one of their own, when in fact his army left pyramids of their people's skulls in their wake as an intimidation tactic.

Somehow I suspect the Kazakhs think the same thing about the Uzbeks.

To me, it's just two groups of asian people arguing about whose side the murderous warlord was actually on.





Sergeant Politeness said:


> Also, fucking with graveyards is disrespectful regardless of what they believed, and anyone who says otherwise is just being edgy.


Well, I mean, if they're an average person who just happened to be on the losing side yeah, that's pretty edgy.

But I'm OK with disassembling memorials to recently deceased dictators.


Alec Benson Leary said:


> Good luck pitching this to a lot of southerners who don't view the confederate separatists as traitors though. And we are in a country that not only glorifies its own origin in the fires of a rebellion against a government considered unjust by the governed, but also glorifies the belief that no one else's opinion but the governed was necessary to make that decision. The question becomes a bit more difficult with those factors in mind. Calling the separatists traitors carte blanche is almost inviting the south to criticize you for hypocritically siding with history's winners just because they won.


I don't think winning as irrelevant to the argument as some would say.

To me, a crucial part of the civil war was the legal question. Are states allowed to secede? Why or why not?

If the south had won, the secession would've been declared legal, through some sort of justification, in a similar way to the the US Declaration of Independence.

I don't believe that to be hypocritical because, on an international level, might makes right. That's just how it is. The winner decides the truth. I don't consider that to be a hollow truth either, because at the end of the day, military strength is the only thing that maintains all these definitions (independent nation vs a governed part of another country) to begin with.

I mean, even the UN, a noble attempt to create a peaceful standards body for these definitions, is growing limp and flaccid by the day.

"Traitor" vs "freedom fighter" is a distinction that only established by the victor. Arguing otherwise is like the nation state version of sovereign citizens. (Heh, and really, sovereign citizens are basically doing the same thing, they're just a much smaller minority.)

Of course, all these rationalizations aside, it still doesn't make the proud southerner feel any better. It's a pretty insulting argument to make for someone who really believes they're fighting for a cause and gets slapped down by someone bigger than them.

In general, I wouldn't really argue the point with a southern nationalist. The best way to get past this argument is to make the south feel like a valued part of the US, which it should be.


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## Alec Benson Leary (May 17, 2017)

Marvin said:


> To me, a crucial part of the civil war was the legal question. Are states allowed to secede? Why or why not?
> 
> If the south had won, the secession would've been declared legal, through some sort of justification, in a similar way to the the US Declaration of Independence.


This doesn't feel like a meaningful point though. War is war, and each side will always claim the other was wrong. Writing your claims on special paper and calling it "law" doesn't change that. And if you want to say that might makes right at the end of the day, then the question of legality is a pointless one to begin with. If Congress allowed states to secede, then there wouldn't have been a war, but the whole point was that congress did not do this and the south still decided "we don't like listening to your laws anymore".



Marvin said:


> I don't believe that to be hypocritical because, on an international level, might makes right. That's just how it is. The winner decides the truth. I don't consider that to be a hollow truth either, because at the end of the day, military strength is the only thing that maintains all these definitions (independent nation vs a governed part of another country) to begin with.


See, if it's all about muscle then why claim civility in the first place? Questioning the south's "right" to secede may as well be revisionism if you accept that standard.


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## Marvin (May 17, 2017)

Alec Benson Leary said:


> See, if it's all about muscle then why claim civility in the first place? Questioning the south's "right" to secede may as well be revisionism if you accept that standard.


My point is that it isn't even revisionism. Revisionism suggests a reinterpretation of the past. I'm arguing that the only original interpretation, at all, of these types of definitions, come from power, after the fact.

The rebels were traitors, literally, because they lost. And no other reason.

I don't consider that to be an inconsequential difference because that's the only difference that matters.

Edit: My comparison with sovereign citizens is pretty apt, actually. It's like talking about what the "real" law is with sovcits. They can claim a dissenting view, but because they don't have the power to enforce what they claim is the "real" law, speakers of American English would disagree about the usage of the word "real" there.

When you have the power to enforce the law, you get to decide what the majority terminology is.


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## Gym Leader Elesa (May 17, 2017)

Marvin said:


> When you have the power to enforce the law, you get to decide what the majority terminology is.





Marvin said:


> The rebels were traitors, literally, because they lost. And no other reason.



Might makes right is indeed, the traditional argument in the Union's favor. "You lost the war, therefore your argument is invalid." We are aware. I respect this opinion, it is pragmatic after all. You're not even _wrong. _

But, the fact that your ancestors managed to beat mine in a war doesn't really sway me in terms of your righteousness. It just means I would prefer peaceful secession instead this time around. None of our arguments were ever really beaten or even equaled intellectually. So while we did lose, and now you get to decide "fuck us", it is unrealistic to expect people in the South, who have been harping on this forever, to suddenly surrender their souls because you have more guns and money. Of course most do anyway, because they're ignorant- or they're cowards. But Poland didn't do this for the Soviet Union, Cambodia didn't do this for Vietnam, and I don't really care to do it for America. That flag is my flag. Those monuments are my monuments. Deo Vindice and all that.


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## Alec Benson Leary (May 17, 2017)

Marvin said:


> My point is that it isn't even revisionism. Revisionism suggests a reinterpretation of the past. I'm arguing that the only original interpretation, at all, of these types of definitions, come from power, after the fact.
> 
> The rebels were traitors, literally, because they lost. And no other reason.
> 
> I don't consider that to be an inconsequential difference because that's the only difference that matters.


I think I see your point. It sounds like we are using different words to describe a similar position.

But I would describe "after the fact" to be catering to revisionism, whether it happens a day after the war ends or 100 years after.

I don't think you are saying that the moral or righteous are decided by victory, I think I know you well enough to guess that you are - like me - a lot more consequentialist than that. It sounds like you're basically saying the world we have to deal with is what it is because of who won.

Which I fully agree with, but I think I may give less credit than you to the letter of the law when war breaks. Because war is basically the ultimate "fuck the law".

But I welcome correction.



Gym Leader Elesa said:


> But, the fact that your ancestors managed to beat mine in a war doesn't really sway me in terms of your righteousness.


This is _exactly_ what I was trying to say.


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## Marvin (May 17, 2017)

Gym Leader Elesa said:


> But, the fact that your ancestors managed to beat mine in a war doesn't really sway me in terms of your righteousness.


Fair enough.


Alec Benson Leary said:


> I think I see your point. It sounds like we are using different words to describe a similar position.


Probably, yeah


Alec Benson Leary said:


> But I would describe "after the fact" to be catering to revisionism, whether it happens a day after the war ends or 100 years after.
> 
> I don't think you are saying that the moral or righteous are decided by victory, I think I know you well enough to guess that you are - like me - a lot more consequentialist than that. It sounds like you're basically saying the world we have to deal with is what it is because of who won.


Oh yeah, it's not a moral issue. It's a practical one.

I don't really like to impose my emotions on other people. And "traitor" vs "freedom fighter" are pretty emotional words.

When you ignore emotion, all that's left is some sort of technical interpretation, like a legal one. Or maybe something like international consensus.

So when I look at things that way, I say that I can't really distinguish between traitors or freedom fighters until after the dust settles. To me, neither term has much "meaning" at that point. At least no meaning I would use in an argument, or claim is generally correct for most people.


Alec Benson Leary said:


> Which I fully agree with, but I think I may give less credit than you to the letter of the law when war breaks. Because war is basically the ultimate "fuck the law".


The law has a lot of influence in deterring war. It's an escape valve for pressure.

War is indeed what you get when the law fails. In the case of the civil war, the confederacy's defeat cemented the interpretation of the law that secession is not a right.

I'm sure a bunch of secessionist movements are squashed because of it.

Like with SJWs in California or the Pacific Northwest agitating for secession. The legal precedent from the civil war means that they'd have to fight for independence. Which obviously isn't happening.


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## Alec Benson Leary (May 17, 2017)

Marvin said:


> The law has a lot of influence in deterring war. It's an escape valve for pressure.
> 
> War is indeed what you get when the law fails.


Okay, I get this.

I think then we are settling on that law is ideally preventative rather than reactive.


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## Mrs Paul (May 17, 2017)

I think it also depends on the reason for the memorials.  Some people try to compare them to memorials to Jefferson, or Washington, and say, "well, they owned slaves too!" 

Only they forget that those two aren't being honored for owning slaves.  The Confederacy was based on the idea that all men are NOT equal.  Let's just call a spade a spade.  And I think the reason a lot people bring up the treason angle is because those in favor of Confederate memorials and shit also are the quickest to proclaim how patriotic they are.  Well, how can you say you love your country, but at the same time want to honor a bunch of people who hated it so much they fought a war against it? That doesn't quite make sense.

And as for honoring heritage, maybe it is -- but is it the kind of heritage you want to honor?  You don't have to hide it away, but it's not something you should celebrate, either.  There are plenty of ways to honor being from the South without using negative symbols to do so. 

Russia has pulled down numerous statues to Stalin and Lenin since the fall of the Soviet Union.  And you could argue that Stalin DID achieve things for Russia -- the Allies would never have won WWII without Russia's efforts.  But I wouldn't support a memorial to Stalin. 
The Japanese have this problem -- they still have a lot of memorials to war criminals from WWII, and tend to whitewash thing the whole thing.  There's a big movement to deny the Rape of Nanking, or the comfort women.  It's rather disturbing.

You can acknowledge history without celebrating it.  (Do keep Stone Mountain, though. For the artistic and historical value, not as a memorial or monument.)


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## Marvin (May 17, 2017)

Mrs Paul said:


> And as for honoring heritage, maybe it is -- but is it the kind of heritage you want to honor? You don't have to hide it away, but it's not something you should celebrate, either. There are plenty of ways to honor being from the South without using negative symbols to do so.


I think the argument is that southern heritage groups focus on ethnicity or some sort of regional nationalism, or a military tradition or something like that. Not "they fought for the south to preserve slavery", but "they fought for the south", without the slavery part.


Mrs Paul said:


> Russia has pulled down numerous statues to Stalin and Lenin since the fall of the Soviet Union. And you could argue that Stalin DID achieve things for Russia -- the Allies would never have won WWII without Russia's efforts. But I wouldn't support a memorial to Stalin.


They've still got Lenin's body on display. I saw it.

I would've gotten a selfie with it, but I didn't fancy a beating and a night in russian jail.


Mrs Paul said:


> The Japanese have this problem -- they still have a lot of memorials to war criminals from WWII, and tend to whitewash thing the whole thing. There's a big movement to deny the Rape of Nanking, or the comfort women. It's rather disturbing.


Oh god, yeah. Japan's racist as shit. They're the kinds of racists where, if you're not always watching them, they sorta creep back up into their old ways.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/19/n...des-park-nj-irritates-japanese-officials.html

Like this is my favorite story regarding Japanese war crime denial. Some tiny little city in New Jersey has this monument to comfort women. And the Japanese government sent not just one, but two delegations to complain at them about it.

Fucking goofy.


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## RI 360 (May 17, 2017)

US history began before the 1960's. The Civil war was fought for identical reasons the Revolution (which was also a secession) was, which included cutting ties with central banks. Fuck off with revisionism.


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## Gym Leader Elesa (May 17, 2017)

For what it's worth, as a final note to some earlier comments, I do view my heritage as "treason" to the United States and like many from old Southern families, am not patriotic and do not see myself as American culturally. Not all neo-Confederates are the SCV or rednecks.


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## AnOminous (May 17, 2017)

Marvin said:


> They've still got Lenin's body on display. I saw it.



I'd go to see it.  It would be pretty cool.  How many dead bodies are on display publicly?

It's kind of weird to do that, but I'd go gawk.


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## Alec Benson Leary (May 17, 2017)

Mrs Paul said:


> You can acknowledge history without celebrating it.


Exactly.


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## AnOminous (May 17, 2017)

Gym Leader Elesa said:


> For what it's worth, as a final note to some earlier comments, I do view my heritage as "treason" to the United States and like many from old Southern families, am not patriotic and do not see myself as American culturally. Not all neo-Confederates are the SCV or rednecks.



If you hate America that much, shouldn't you just leave, like the antifa who also hate America that much?

I mean seriously, anyone in this country vastly benefited from the treasure trove we got out of World War I and World War II.  If you're that unpatriotic, why are you sucking up those benefits?


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## Gym Leader Elesa (May 17, 2017)

AnOminous said:


> If you hate America that much, shouldn't you just leave, like the antifa who also hate America that much?
> 
> I mean seriously, anyone in this country vastly benefited from the treasure trove we got out of World War I and World War II.  If you're that unpatriotic, why are you sucking up those benefits?



My family's property has been passed down to me, the South is my home, and no matter how long it is occupied, I will not abandon it. Presumably, that will be "forever" because an independent South is an impossibility if there ever was one. 

In any case, I do not hate the United States. I just don't think this land belongs to it.


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## AnOminous (May 17, 2017)

Gym Leader Elesa said:


> In any case, I do not hate the United States. I just don't think this land belongs to it.



A lot of Southerners agree with you, don't they?


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## Gym Leader Elesa (May 17, 2017)

AnOminous said:


> A lot of Southerners agree with you, don't they?



Yes, but if you have any fear of us (and you don't, of course, because you're not insane) they are far out-numbered by normal, patriotic, people who don't base their political views on a dying lineage of old delta and coastal families. My family has been here at least since Plymouth to give you an idea of how entrenched some of these groups get.

We are irrelevant and politically marginalized in all but either the richest or poorest areas. The fact that this thread exists is proof of that. My views are a matter of pride, tradition, nostalgia, education, religion, and politics, but it's not a blend that's going to ever go anywhere at this point. The South did lose. I would only ever want a peaceful revival even if that weren't true. A constitutional amendment, a court case, a referendum. I think our arguments and beliefs deserve re-examining. I think those monuments and flags deserve to exist. I consent to removing them from U.S. government property because I don't expect America to honor a rebel government and I don't ask it to. But families like mine should be allowed to purchase and preserve them on private land or in a park or something.

I literally only state my views as a matter of personal honor.

Edit: I guess, all I am asking is, let us die with dignity. Just let the last few of us who still venerate the southern way of life, and its confederacy, go out quietly. Just relocate all of those things. Give us the artifacts from whatever gets torn down.


----------



## AnOminous (May 17, 2017)

Gym Leader Elesa said:


> I literally only state my views as a matter of personal honor.
> 
> Edit: I guess, all I am asking is, let us die with dignity. Just let the last few of us who still venerate the southern way of life, and its confederacy, go out quietly. Just relocate all of those things. Give us the artifacts from whatever gets torn down.



Thanks for this explanation.  It's sad that this may be the only site on the Internet where we could have this exchange without it being drowned out by screaming from idiots.

I generally agree with everything you've said, and do not view everything remotely connected with the Confederacy as a symbol of hate, or whatever.


----------



## Sperglord Dante (May 17, 2017)

Gym Leader Elesa said:


> In any case, I do not hate the United States. I just don't think this land belongs to it.


There's some fine people who would agree with you on this...I doubt you'd agree with them, though.


Spoiler: Might really does make right


----------



## Gym Leader Elesa (May 17, 2017)

AnOminous said:


> Thanks for this explanation.  It's sad that this may be the only site on the Internet where we could have this exchange without it being drowned out by screaming from idiots.
> 
> I generally agree with everything you've said, and do not view everything remotely connected with the Confederacy as a symbol of hate, or whatever.



I'm sorry if I ever gave you the idea that I hated the United States. As even Davis admitted, while it was our second choice, that second choice was and remains better than literally any other option. I am grateful that if we had to lose, we lost to the U.S. I think we could have had our way and you have had yours, but this is what it came to. In any case, I'm glad you took the time to hear me out.



> There's some fine people who would agree with you on this...I doubt you'd agree with them, though.



@Sperglord Dante, I am perfectly amicable to recognizing the autonomy and sovereignty of the First Nations. I think a beneficial arrangement can be achieved between them and the U.S., or some now-absurd hypothetical C.S.A. I am not sure why I would be opposed to them having a right to their way of life and their self-governance. It's impossible to undo everything that happened, in the way it is impossible to undo something like the South losing the war, but I want the best for them, and wouldn't seek for myself and my kin something I wasn't willing to give to other people.


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## Woodcutting bot (May 17, 2017)

It's probably already been said, but the left is never satisfied. 

Once all the confederate monuments are gone, they will turn their attention to the next target. I'd give it 30 years tops before the "muh ebil white founding fathers" drum starts beating loudly.


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## Mrs Paul (May 17, 2017)

I have no problem with monuments to the Founding Fathers.  I do find it a wee disturbing to see monuments to Oliver Cromwell in Ireland.  Cuz fuck that dude.  (I mean, he outlawed Christmas!  WTF?)



AnOminous said:


> I'd go to see it.  It would be pretty cool.  How many dead bodies are on display publicly?
> 
> It's kind of weird to do that, but I'd go gawk.



I've seen plenty of dead bodies -- my dad's a funeral director -- but I've always wanted to see Lenin's tomb.  I mean, just for the historical significance, and just, how the fuck do they do they manage to keep him preserved like that?  Dude was a bastard, but that's still pretty cool.


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## Absolutego (May 17, 2017)

Mrs Paul said:


> I've seen plenty of dead bodies -- my dad's a funeral director -- but I've always wanted to see Lenin's tomb.  I mean, just for the historical significance, and just, how the fuck do they do they manage to keep him preserved like that?  Dude was a bastard, but that's still pretty cool.



According to this, he's bathed in a bunch of preservatives every other year, and part of his skin is plastic at this point. His eyelashes are also fake. By now he's the human equivalent of a formaldehyde pig crossed with a doll. 

Also, how surreal must it be to be the guy whose job it is to apply plastic decals and fake eyelashes to Lenin's corpse?


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## Mrs Paul (May 17, 2017)

Stupid double post.  Sorry.  I is autistic here.


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## Marvin (May 17, 2017)

AnOminous said:


> I'd go to see it.  It would be pretty cool.  How many dead bodies are on display publicly?
> 
> It's kind of weird to do that, but I'd go gawk.


His was the only one that I saw. They have a bunch of people interred in the Kremlin Wall necropolis.

Also there's no glass between you and Lenin's papery corpse. You could just reach out and grab him.


Sperglord Dante said:


> There's some fine people who would agree with you on this...I doubt you'd agree with them, though.
> 
> 
> Spoiler: Might really does make right


I have the same view towards Indians (and Indian reservations) that I do towards the South and pretty much anyone within the US.

Treaties with the Indians should be upholded of course, but I see reservations as damaging in the long term. Sometimes Indians benefit from reservations, but, by and large, they're pretty much just hotbeds of alcoholism and poverty. I would very much prefer they were dissolved, and some actual effort be spent to improve their conditions.

The midwest and the south have similar economic problems. Just without reservations.


Absolutego said:


> According to this, he's bathed in a bunch of preservatives every other year, and part of his skin is plastic at this point. His eyelashes are also fake. By now he's the human equivalent of a formaldehyde pig crossed with a doll.
> 
> Also, how surreal must it be to be the guy whose job it is to apply plastic decals and fake eyelashes to Lenin's corpse?


His body looks like paper.

They were considering burying him but then Putin decided it would be disrespectful to all the soviets to prayed at his mausoleum over the decades.


----------



## Nacho Man Randy Salsa (May 18, 2017)

Once they start wanting to remove the graves and corpses of the many confederates buried in Arlington, then it'll be totally fucked u.


----------



## Florence (May 18, 2017)

Definitely nay. I say people should follow Joshua Chamberlain's example and show them a little respect — we're not talking about the SS here, after all.


Mrs Paul said:


> I do find it a wee disturbing to see monuments to Oliver Cromwell in Ireland. Cuz fuck that dude.


I'm surprised they even considered building them, given what he did to Drogheda and Wexford.


----------



## Caesare (May 19, 2017)

Woodcutting bot said:


> It's probably already been said, but the left is never satisfied.
> 
> Once all the confederate monuments are gone, they will turn their attention to the next target. I'd give it 30 years tops before the "muh ebil white founding fathers" drum starts beating loudly.



As a matter of fact, this begun already close to 25 years ago. A black communist professor at Southern University in Louisiana successfully lobbied the city council of New Orleans (which was all black at that time besides I think one member) to have an elementary school changed from George Washington elementary (because he was a former slave owner). 

Forget that he is the first President of the United States, a war hero, and one of the most important men that we owe our very existence to as Americans, nope, not good enough. The fact that he participated in the "peculiar institution" at a time where it was completely legal and accepted in the world by just about everyone was enough for these clowns, these fools in the N.O. city council to side with him and change the name of a school named after the Father of our Nation. 

That is complete revisionism and completely disgusting any way you look at it. 

This same man is also one of the biggest supporters of removing the Confederate monuments in New Orleans, another disgusting, revisionist attack on history and the culture of Dixie. 

It really enrages these people that despite winning a war that they were completely over prepared for in the first place that the Southern United States still has its own unique culture, accent, and a sense of regional pride. These facts alone really upset the Yanks.


----------



## Hui (May 19, 2017)

Gym Leader Elesa said:


> I could hardly post more than a sentence in this thread without devolving into a seething, fanatical, a-logging, mess, so I am just going to say "no" because the South was justified in seeking independence and should still continue to pursue it (blah, blah I'm a faggot, we've all seen me post.) Obviously, though, a Southern Nationalist is going to have an extremely biased opinion- those aren't "historical" flags to me- they're the flags of my country. Those monuments are additionally monuments to a living _nation_ if not a "country." So it's a bit like saying "should we take down all the French tricolors in France" to me. Nonetheless, count me as "nay" for a simple vote.


But how are you a weeb and believe that the south will rise again? Honest question not a diss or anything.


----------



## Tranhuviya (May 19, 2017)

what's done is done.


----------



## Caesare (May 19, 2017)

Hui said:


> But how are you a weeb and believe that the south will rise again? Honest question not a diss or anything.



Not to jump on Elesa's spot, she'll give you a more accurate answer, I'm sure. But really, what does one thing have to do with the other? Have you not been reading this thread? She says she has family that dates back to the Plymouth colony, and has a lengthy family history that has very strong ties to New Orleans, the South, and the Confederacy. 

This is family history though, which I'm sure she is quite proud of, but she, like all of us are a product of our time. Japanimation is extremely popular right now and is growing in popularity all of the time. 

What does being a fan of a popular form of media in the present have to do with respecting the unique culture of Dixie, its monuments, its accents, its rich history, and the beauty of its architecture? 

I'm not making fun of you, but do you actually think that because someone is a fan of history, especially when it is directly tied to your own family that you have to abandon anything and everything modern??? Seriously, I'm not trying to make you feel like an ass or anything, but can you at least see now how silly that question was for Elesa?


----------



## Caesare (May 19, 2017)

Tranhuviya said:


> what's done is done.



Landrieu is out of office in 2018 IIRC, which is why he is making a big fuss about these monuments. He thinks somehow that by pandering to the uneducated, young sjw crowd of misfits, maybe he'll stand a chance getting the Democratic nomination 


EDIT:

Anyway, don't get me wrong though. Although I disagree with everything thy stand for (including their wanton ignorance in wanting to rip down these magnificent statues representing my city's rich cultural heritage). I still standby and support the idea of them demonstrating peacefully. civilized, and without incident.


I actually went to the demonstration in Lee Circle last weekend on Sunday. Jazz Fest was that same weekend so I predicted in chat earlier that the protest would be small in number and uneventful. While is was rather uneventful, quite a few people showed up.

On our side: we had biker clubs, Confederate organizations and clubs waving "stars and bars" flags and chanting "CSA, CSA" intermittently , as well some undergrads from the local city colleges from New Orleans, who were studying a variety of different fiels. The college aged guys and gals that I talked to were mostly "history buffs" that were appalled at the mayor and city council acted like dictators and just declared that they were removing the monuments without having a vote to let the people decide. Although I graduated from college years ago, these are the people I talked to and related to the most, since they were just regular people, the bulk of the New Orleans natives who love their city and hate to see it lose some of its magical charm due to a failure of a mayor who is exploiting a National tragedy (that asshole Dylan Roof who murdered those ppl in church) to further his own doomed political aspirations once his mayoral term ends in 2018.



The counter protesters, on the other hand were a mixed bag. Remember, this is New Orleans. It's probably the most gay friendly city in the county besides maybe San Francisco, and we have a very large black population (not so much in the central part of the city like the CBD (Central business district), or the French Quarter, Garden District, and St. Charles Ave. Those areas are amost exclusively white.

But you have these rubes that visit here or even move here to go to college and have zero understanding of the rich and extremely complicated culture.

They see a gay festival and conclude, "Oh, Gay liberal paradise". They see lots of black folks and that Orleans Parish has a lot Democratic city council members and a Democratic mayor, and they think, "Oh, this is just like Seattle, San Francisco, Austin, some other stereotypical "lefty" city, but its not that at all.

New Orleans is a VERY conservative city. Just because we have a friendly populace that frankly, doesn't care who consenting adults choose to sleep with, gay or not, doesn't mean we are a type of "anything goes hellhole".

And they see Democrats in power in Orleans Parish, make the usual assumptions about the black folks and white Democrats, but the thing about here is, although the blacks vote Democrat, they are probably some of the most conservative people in the county.

They are family oriented, extremely religious, and while they accept the fact that N.O. has a very gay friendly city and many of them may even have a gay individual in the family, the fact of the matter is, the black community, especially in New Orleans and the Southeastern US in general, have an extremely outdated view on homosexuality.

They have a word for them here, they call them "punks". As in, "Oh, you know that nigga Stacy's cousin?" "Yeah, that bitch a punk lol."

Finally, surrounding the city you have the large suburbs. Places like Metairie, Kenner, the Westbank of New Orleans, etc. These areas are 15-20 drives from the city center itself, traffic permitting. While New Orleans is a very conservative city, these areas are even more so.

Metairie, for instance, is where David Duke was elected as a State House Representative and served from 89' to 92'' In fact, at a parade during Carnival in Metairie in around 96' I got to shake his hand lol.

To sum up an already too long story, New Orleans isn't the "liberal paradise" these lowlife transplant's think it is. They move here from the Midwest, up North, or whatever cornball city they come from and attempt to sanitize it and make it as just as culturally bland as whatever shithole area they come from, which is highly unfortunate. Maybe after Landrieu is gone we'll get a mayor with a backbone again who will put these historical statues back in their rightful place.


----------



## The Nothingness (May 19, 2017)

Coleman Francis said:


> As a matter of fact, this begun already close to 25 years ago. A black communist professor at Southern University in Louisiana successfully lobbied the city council of New Orleans (which was all black at that time besides I think one member) to have an elementary school changed from George Washington elementary (because he was a former slave owner).
> 
> Forget that he is the first President of the United States, a war hero, and one of the most important men that we owe our very existence to as Americans, nope, not good enough. The fact that he participated in the "peculiar institution" at a time where it was completely legal and accepted in the world by just about everyone was enough for these clowns, these fools in the N.O. city council to side with him and change the name of a school named after the Father of our Nation.
> 
> ...


Now in the northern portion of Virginia, which pretty much controls the rest of the state, there is debate over changing the name of high school because it is named after J. E. B. Stuart and I won't be surprised if Robert E. Lee High School is next along with a highway named after Jefferson Davis. And as @Nacho Man Randy Salsa stated, there are Confederate graves in Arlington that could also be next.


----------



## Hui (May 19, 2017)

@Coleman Francis

I'm not asking her anything regarding her roots, I'm asking how she can be both.  I just find it odd.   As another weeb that pretty much pays no mind for any culture in general and happens to also come from the South.


----------



## Gym Leader Elesa (May 19, 2017)

Hui said:


> But how are you a weeb and believe that the south will rise again? Honest question not a diss or anything.



I'm going to say something in good faith that is going get me laughed at but is honestly true: I'm not a weeb. I just enjoyed like two or three of the Pokemon games. The fact that I enjoyed Pokemon, especially as a child, is irrelevant to my support for the Confederacy. The main reason I picked this  user name is because I like her style and she's as far from anything I have ever gone by as you can possibly get. For an account on KF, the disconnect is what I wanted. In any case, I don't believe the South actually will rise again, but I would really like people to consider the possibilities!

And with that sentence, the internet has achieved its purpose.



Coleman Francis said:


> Not to jump on Elesa's spot, she'll give you a more accurate answer, I'm sure. But really, what does one thing have to do with the other? Have you not been reading this thread? She says she has family that dates back to the Plymouth colony, and has a lengthy family history that has very strong ties to New Orleans, the South, and the Confederacy.
> 
> This is family history though, which I'm sure she is quite proud of, but she, like all of us are a product of our time. Japanimation is extremely popular right now and is growing in popularity all of the time.
> 
> ...



Coleman honestly has the right of it in any case. Plenty of people enjoy the odd thing all the time and just incorporate it into their wider perspective. My grandmother enjoys Studio Ghibli films and she personally knew veterans War of Secession. History is a lot more connected than you think.


----------



## Hui (May 19, 2017)

That makes more sense tbh.


----------



## Lorento (May 19, 2017)

Gym Leader Elesa said:


> I'm going to say something in good faith that is going get me laughed at but is honestly true: I'm not a weeb. I just enjoyed like two or three of the Pokemon games. The fact that I enjoyed Pokemon, especially as a child, is irrelevant to my support for the Confederacy. The main reason I picked this user name is because I like her style and she's as far from anything I have ever gone by as you can possibly get. For an account on KF, the disconnect is what I wanted. In any case, I don't believe the South actually will rise again, but I would really like people to consider the possibilities!
> 
> And with that sentence, the internet has achieved its purpose.



Such honest support for an ideal really does make me tear up a little, its such a wonderful thing to see someone so quietly passionate about something. 

Now, onto the matter at hand. 

Tearing down monuments because of what they represent is completely pointless and revisionist. There are plenty of nazi monuments still standing in Germany, among them the Olympic Stadium and particularly certain parts of Nuremberg. A simple statue, a name, or a flag for a group that were not nearly as insane as the Nazis.

Let's take Constantine's statue in York in the UK. He was a slaver as well, a murderer, a opportunistic bastard who took over the entire Roman Empire. He was the head of a force that occupied the known world and killed vast numbers of people, all in the name of Rome. Why does does he get a statue? Why do we not just tear that down? Why don't we tear all Roman statues down outside of Rome itself, because they enslaved people?

No matter what the reasoning is behind tearing things down, it is cultural vandalism, destroying a culture because you don't like it is utterly barbaric.


----------



## Takayuki Yagami (May 19, 2017)

AnOminous said:


> A lot of Southerners agree with you, don't they?


Not really. Most of us got past this kind of shit generations ago. The worst I've seen is my uncle quibling that saying the Civil War only being about slavery is stupid.


----------



## Marvin (May 19, 2017)

Coleman Francis said:


> To sum up an already too long story, New Orleans isn't the "liberal paradise" these lowlife transplant's think it is. They move here from the Midwest, up North, or whatever cornball city they come from and attempt to sanitize it and make it as just as culturally bland as whatever shithole area they come from, which is highly unfortunate.


Why do you think they come from culturally bland places? What would make a place culturally bland?


----------



## Takayuki Yagami (May 19, 2017)

Marvin said:


> Why do you think they come from culturally bland places? What would make a place culturally bland?


Because outside of some random shit midwesterners/bay area people/the general schmucks he's talking about are among the most anodyne people you will ever meet. That is to say the antithesis to old, strange, good-kind-of-trashy places like New Orleans.


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## AnOminous (May 19, 2017)

I think removing things like this is highly contextual, in that public art is something that supposedly benefits the public.  People pay taxes, and if most of the people paying those taxes don't want them spent on some particular monument or memorial and its upkeep, their wishes should be respected, to some degree.

It also has a lot to do with the placement of the monument and whether it signifies government endorsement of what that monument represents, or whether it is simply there for historical significance.

If the majority of the people experiencing public art like this actually hate it and want it destroyed, they shouldn't necessarily immediately get their wishes, but perhaps it should actually be removed from public spaces where the government is essentially endorsing the view represented by the art.  In that case, it's still very likely that it should actually be preserved at least in a museum.

The only place I'm absolutely opposed to removing every remotely Confederate-related thing is military parks, where the educational purpose of the park is essentially completely destroyed by the historical revisionism of pretending that somehow, one side of the conflict literally didn't even exist.

(As for the specific Robert E. Lee monument, I personally disagree with removing that.  At the same time, though, it seems like an issue for the people who actually live in that area and have strong opinions about its presence.)


----------



## Caesare (May 19, 2017)

AnOminous said:


> (As for the specific Robert E. Lee monument, I personally disagree with removing that.  At the same time, though, it seems like an issue for the people who actually live in that area and have strong opinions about its presence.)



The thing about the monuments in New Orleans, the people here (and in the region in general) have very strong feelings about it. There was no vote for the people to decide to take them down, Landrieu just decided to make a name for himself in the media and pushed through the removals. It's going to literally cost millions to remove these monuments. Have you ever seen the monument to General Robert E. Lee? It's humongous. The statue itself is much larger than life sized, and it sits on a pillar that extends close to 40 feet in the air (though I could be mistaken, I'm not good at eyeballing distances even though I drive by the thing every day.)

I'm positive that the money used on the upkeep of these statues is a mere fraction of what its going to cost to remove them. The millions that it will cost to take them down is probably enough to maintain their upkeep for the next fifty years. And they are all important monuments: they beautify the city, they can be used as teaching tools to school children, and they are tourist destinations where people can visit and take pictures of them.

This whole thing is just extremely unfortunate, more so that its completely politically motivated by Landrieu, who has absolutely no chance at winning the Democratic nomination for the next presidential election anyway. He's just a small, weak man with an inferiority complex and an inflated ego.


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## AnOminous (May 19, 2017)

Coleman Francis said:


> The thing about the monuments in New Orleans, the people here (and in the region in general) have very strong feelings about it. There was no vote for the people to decide to take them down, Landrieu just decided to make a name for himself in the media and pushed through the removals. It's going to literally cost millions to remove these monuments. Have you ever seen the monument to General Robert E. Lee? It's humongous.



I have, actually, in person.  It's an impressive monument.  I don't think it should be removed.  My personal preference would be that it be kept up, but that the general area around it be used educationally, and the historical context behind it explained with some kind of tour, with plaques around it, as is often done with other Civil War-related scenes.


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## millais (May 20, 2017)

Huh, I never thought about it from the taxpayers' perspective. I guess carpetbaggers are necessarily taxpayers too, so if it really would save money to pull them down, that is a pretty good argument. In the southern state where I am living, there aren't any Confederate statuary or memorials I can recall, just a monument to some German-American Unionists who got lynched for dodging the Confederate conscription board, so I never see anything about monument removal propositions showing up on the municipal ballot.


----------



## Gym Leader Elesa (May 20, 2017)

This thread went way better than expected I just wanted to say that. It still has plenty of time to burn to the ground, but I am honestly impressed.


----------



## Some JERK (May 20, 2017)

To me it depends on what type of monument it is, and where it is. There are many smaller monuments in small towns/counties in the south that simply have names of Confederate soldiers from that place who fought and died in the Civil War. I don't think that's hurting anyone. It's not a symbol of anything really, it's more like a headstone. I don't think the huge monuments to Confederate leaders really serve much of a purpose though, and I'm guessing that many of the subjects of those statues would rather they not exist in the first place. I'm almost positive that Robert E. Lee would be mortified at the number of memorials that bear his likeness. He even once said of war monuments specifically: _"I think it wiser, moreover, not to keep open the sores of  war, but to follow the example of those nations who endeavored to obliterate the marks of civil strife, and to commit to oblivion the feelings it engendered."_

That said, I think that tearing down monuments in a place like Gettysburg would be fucked up, and I hope it never comes to that.


----------



## Caesare (May 20, 2017)

millais said:


> Huh, I never thought about it from the taxpayers' perspective. I guess carpetbaggers are necessarily taxpayers too, so if it really would save money to pull them down, that is a pretty good argument. .



That's the thing though, it's actually going to cost much more to take the monuments down than it would to maintain them for likely the next 30-50 years. Plus, you're ruining a culturally significant landmark for the sake of what? A tiny minorities feelings? Why not remove the American flag from buildings? I'm sure there is a minority that hates this country enough that it hurts their feelings as well.


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## Pikimon (May 20, 2017)

The statues who are there to commemorate important shit should stay, the rest should be taken down and put in museums so that Confederateaboos can take notes for their next cosplay meet.

Like who currs theyre basically giant statues of a bunch of losers who died of dysentery


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## AnOminous (May 20, 2017)

Some JERK said:


> He even once said of war monuments specifically: _"I think it wiser, moreover, not to keep open the sores of war, but to follow the example of those nations who endeavored to obliterate the marks of civil strife, and to commit to oblivion the feelings it engendered."_



Ironically, the fact that he was the kind of man who would say something like that is precisely why there are so many monuments to him.


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## Marvin (May 20, 2017)

Coleman Francis said:


> A place without a rich history and traditions that go back hundreds of years like places such as New Orleans and New York City.


History isn't the only component of culture. Hell, it's not even necessarily a big part of it.

I've never really taken seriously the "it's old" argument for something to be good. At least not on its own. It smacks of hipsterism. Like I'm reminded of hipsters who really love mortadella, but simultaneously sneer on bologna, despite them being essentially the same food. (Mortadella is bologna with hunks of fat in it.) Heh, like try offering some of these people a bologna sandwich and then a mortadella sandwich, and compare the reactions you get.

History is cool, but so is art, music, local traditions (of any age), sports, food, beer, etc.

And I say this as someone from a pretty old city and state, where there's lots of history if you're into that sort of thing. At the end of the day, I guess you could say I'm more of a John Waters kinda guy than an Edgar Allan poe kinda guy. (But Poe's cool too.)



Spoiler: don't want to start a fight but...



Maryland style crab cakes > Louisiana style crab cakes


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## AnOminous (May 20, 2017)

Marvin said:


> History isn't the only component of culture. Hell, it's not even necessarily a big part of it.
> 
> I've never really taken seriously the "it's old" argument for something to be good. At least not on its own. It smacks of hipsterism. Like I'm reminded of hipsters who really love mortadella, but simultaneously sneer on bologna, despite them being essentially the same food. (Mortadella is bologna with hunks of fat in it.) Heh, like try offering some of these people a bologna sandwich and then a mortadella sandwich, and compare the reactions you get.
> 
> ...



There is no argument.  Chesapeake Bay crabs are the best ever, anywhere, period.  I will beat anyone who disagrees.


----------



## Caesare (May 22, 2017)

Marvin said:


> History isn't the only component of culture. Hell, it's not even necessarily a big part of it.





Marvin said:


> History is cool, but so is art, music, local traditions (of any age), sports, food, beer, etc.



Of course history isn't the only part of culture, but art, music, food, and traditions are basically always tied into the history of an area. The older the city, the more time there is to develop and nurture the area's culture. Even recent happenings are important for an area to develop its own style and flavor, but age gives it authenticity and renown. For instance, I'm going to have more appreciation for the Taj Mahal than the some place in Wisconsin that is a local cultural landmark for making quirky maple syrup bottles.



Marvin said:


> I've never really taken seriously the "it's old" argument for something to be good. At least not on its own. It smacks of hipsterism.



That is what brings hipsters to places like NYC and NO in the first place. They want to live in a place that is considered "old" and "cool". But then once they move here, these are the exact type of people who want to change and ruin everything. There were a bunch of hipsters at the monument protest. I'm sure you can guess which side they were on. I actually talked to a bunch of them who pretended they were "from here" but couldn't answer basic questions about the city. That is what really enrages the traditionalists who believe in maintaining the beauty and magnificence of these monuments, the fact that there are these hipster rejects that rep the city but haven't lived here long enough to even know extremely basic local history and events. Then they actually have the nerve to pretend they are "old timers", it's fucking pathetic.



Pikimon said:


> The statues who are there to commemorate important shit should stay



Yes, they should stay, as they are all important and every one of them commemorates important events and people.



Marvin said:


> Maryland style crab cakes > Louisiana style crab cakes





Spoiler



Not to start an argument but New Orleans food > The entire American continent's food. This isn't even an argument, it's just the way it is.


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## feedtheoctopus (May 31, 2017)

I really don't see the social or political benefit of keeping around a statue of general lee that was built in 1920 by a segregationist asshat. If that's your heritage it's a shitty one and you should probably hate it. Like, it's not like my guido ass keeps a painting of Il Duce in my living room. Well, guest room, maybe. 

Realistically southerners should resent those aristocratic shitheads who sent your great great great grandpappy to die for their right to own human beings as cattle. In the process of course lowering his wages and takin' his jerb. Like, c'mon, these same people hate immigrants for undercutting their wages. You should hate slaverowners even more. Kinda hard to compete with actual free labor, right?


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## Florence (Jun 1, 2017)

feedtheoctopus said:


> I really don't see the social or political benefit of keeping around a statue of general lee that was built in 1920 by a segregationist asshat. If that's your heritage it's a shitty one and you should probably hate it. Like, it's not like my guido ass keeps a painting of Il Duce in my living room. Well, guest room, maybe.
> 
> Realistically southerners should resent those aristocratic shitheads who sent your great great great grandpappy to die for their right to own human beings as cattle. In the process of course lowering his wages and takin' his jerb. Like, c'mon, these same people hate immigrants for undercutting their wages. You should hate slaverowners even more. Kinda hard to compete with actual free labor, right?


Tell me, as a commie do you think statues of Stalin and Lenin should be removed?


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## Guy With Shit Opinions (Jun 1, 2017)

If Germany decided to keep Auschwitz, why not keep Confederate monuments, too?


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## AnOminous (Jun 1, 2017)

Nobody gives a shit about any of this.  But if you try to take away our delicious crabs or andouille you'd best expect armed resistance.


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## Ol' Slag (Jun 1, 2017)

@Coleman Francis

Thank you for taking the time to write out a well thought and heartfelt argument as to why these monuments should stay.

As a Southern boy, born and raised, I say keep them.


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## El Porko Fako (Jun 1, 2017)

Enlightening and interesting thread. When it comes to monuments of Confederate soldiers and icons, more often not I think they shouldn't be taken down because of their historical and educational worth, but I was anti-Confederate flag all the way.



Spoiler: Slightly Off-Topic, but kind of relevant



Potential power-leveling, but my neck of the woods is nowhere near the Deep South, but I've had some bad experiences of people waving and displaying that flag. Despite its historical importance, I just couldn't get over my past experiences I'd had with it. Anyway, this is my flag story.

Every once in awhile, white supremacists, usually a combination of KKK and neo-nazis,  would hold a rally near my town and they prominently displayed the Confederate flag. I've seen these dip shits try to instigate violence by yelling nigger or wetback at people and sometimes families with small children as well who are just going about there day and trying to enjoy their weekend. Last rally got really violent and someone got stabbed iirc.

My problem is that I've always associated that flag with assholes blocking the fucking sidewalk and yelling obscenities at minorities to pick fights, and nothing else. Reading this thread has let me see how ignorant and petty I've been and realize not everyone who displays it is a racist piece of shit. Congrats Kiwis, consider my opinion somewhat swayed.


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## cuddle striker (Jun 1, 2017)

while I'm impressed by the sentiment in some posts here, I also feel the need to remind people that if they're in the south they're Americans.

you're Americans. you didn't fight in that war, on either side. you were born in, and are citizens of, the USA.


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## Caesare (Jun 1, 2017)

feedtheoctopus said:


> Realistically southerners should resent those aristocratic shitheads who sent your great great great grandpappy to die for their right to own human beings as cattle. In the process of course lowering his wages and takin' his jerb. Like, c'mon, these same people hate immigrants for undercutting their wages. You should hate slaverowners even more. Kinda hard to compete with actual free labor, right?



The same people who hate immigrants? Which people? Wtf are you talking about even?


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## feedtheoctopus (Jun 1, 2017)

NotAKitty said:


> Tell me, as a commie do you think statues of Stalin and Lenin should be removed?


Lenin and Stalin were cocks, so sure.


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## Gym Leader Elesa (Jun 1, 2017)

resonancer said:


> while I'm impressed by the sentiment in some posts here, I also feel the need to remind people that if they're in the south they're Americans.
> 
> you're Americans. you didn't fight in that war, on either side. you were born in, and are citizens of, the USA.



Identity can transcend the bounds of empires. People like Kurdish "Turks", Irish nationalists in NI, etc. would strongly disagree with your sentiments. Some Southerners do as well, and not without reason. Most secessionists here are Southerners first and Americans second, which is how every region should be.

Southern nationality is more than the war. If an independent South sprung up tomorrow that had no links to the Confederacy that was some social democracy with a lotus flag, that would still be my country. The South will always take precedent, just like for a nationalist in NI the arguement that they posess British citizenship is irrelevant.


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## BT 075 (Jun 1, 2017)

If you start removing historical monuments now, I predict in about a hundred years you guys will have the cast of Jersey Shore on Mount Rushmore.


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## Alec Benson Leary (Jun 1, 2017)

Satan said:


> If you start removing historical monuments now, I predict in about a hundred years you guys will have the cast of Jersey Shore on Mount Rushmore.


In other words, tearing down signs of history just because that history may be ugly comes with a terrible price.


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## IwegalBadnik (Jun 1, 2017)

I'm no fan of the Confederacy, but I would be reluctant to say the least when it comes to removing historical monuments.


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## Absolutego (Jun 1, 2017)

Guy With Shit Opinions said:


> If Germany decided to keep Auschwitz, why not keep Confederate monuments, too?



I don't know if you're aware of this, but Auschwitz is in Poland. It was the USSR, then Poland's decision to keep it, it was never up to the Germans.

On topic, I've only ever lived west of the Mississippi and don't claim to understand the deep South on a personal level. My personal experience with both the flag and other Confederate memorabilia is limited to redneck northerners trying to force it as a rural pride or generic anti-government symbol, so I usually find it distasteful. That said, having these monuments around is critical for people to understand how the war came to pass and what underlying philosophical differences fueled the conflict. The Civil War was the first (and so far, thank God, only) war to consist entirely of Americans fighting. Understanding why Americans would split from each other to the point of violence beyond "hurr it was all slavery/it was solely state's rights"  is critical to learning from said war and ensuring it doesn't rear its ugly head again. 

In short: if the monuments are pushing a one-sided propagandistic viewpoint for Southerners to rally around, make them better instead of removing them. Getting rid of them and pretending the whole period never happened encourages us to repeat the mistakes of the past, and this time the philosophical conflict isn't nearly so regionally based as before. It's better to recognize that our forebears were just as stupid and evil as we can be than whitewash the past for the sake of accommodating those taking offense on behalf of their ancestors.


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## cuddle striker (Jun 2, 2017)

Gym Leader Elesa said:


> Identity can transcend the bounds of empires. People like Kurdish "Turks", Irish nationalists in NI, etc. would strongly disagree with your sentiments. Some Southerners do as well, and not without reason. Most secessionists here are Southerners first and Americans second, which is how every region should be.
> 
> Southern nationality is more than the war. If an independent South sprung up tomorrow that had no links to the Confederacy that was some social democracy with a lotus flag, that would still be my country. The South will always take precedent, just like for a nationalist in NI the arguement that they posess British citizenship is irrelevant.





regional identity is like any other identity really. we're all 'merkins whether we're South, Cascadia, Bronx, Yooper or Hoosier.

Talking about your own country like it's secondary to your identity is odd to me. It's almost like talking about your country as secondary to your.. gender identity, race, etc.

identity politics are always strange to me. culture is one thing, identifying yourself as that thing primarily is where it all goes awry.

(I think I said earlier that I thought museums and graves should be left alone, and current monuments should possibly just have more educational or explanatory plaques added, but that no government institution should be allowed to fly the flag outside of an educational, historical context. we did win that war against ourselves, after all.)


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## Lokamayadon (Jun 2, 2017)

Gym Leader Elesa said:


> Identity can transcend the bounds of empires. People like Kurdish "Turks", Irish nationalists in NI, etc. would strongly disagree with your sentiments. Some Southerners do as well, and not without reason. Most secessionists here are Southerners first and Americans second, which is how every region should be.
> 
> Southern nationality is more than the war. If an independent South sprung up tomorrow that had no links to the Confederacy that was some social democracy with a lotus flag, that would still be my country. The South will always take precedent, just like for a nationalist in NI the arguement that they posess British citizenship is irrelevant.



How do you feel towards your/their nationalist counterparts? Like the American (USA as a whole) patriots, people who see themselves as citizens of Turkey first and maybe are nostalgic of the Ottoman Empire,ect...
Heck, what would you feel if your own Southern culture was made up of many smaller subcultures with many of the people from these primarily identifying as members of these subcultures and wanting to become independent, even if it would destroy YOUR whole?
I'm not sure it's oppressed separationists vs the cloaking and faceless empires.


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## cuddle striker (Jun 2, 2017)

Lokamayadon said:


> Heck, what would you feel if your own Southern culture was made up of many smaller subcultures with many of the people from these primarily identifying as members of these subcultures and wanting to become independent, even if it would destroy YOUR whole?
> I'm not sure it's oppressed separationists vs the cloaking and faceless empires.



How would it feel to know that every southern black person is the descendant of slaves and identifies as that, above being southern?
identity politics is messy.


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## Gym Leader Elesa (Jun 2, 2017)

resonancer said:


> Talking about your own country like it's secondary to your identity is odd to me. It's almost like talking about your country as secondary to your.. gender identity, race, etc.



Dixie is my country.


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## feedtheoctopus (Jun 2, 2017)

IwegalBadnik said:


> I'm no fan of the Confederacy, but I would be reluctant to say the least when it comes to removing historical monuments.


They're not really "historical" in the sense a lot of people are using in many cases. Some of these things were erected in the god damn 90's. Most of them are from around 1900-1930. We're quite literally talking about propaganda for Jim Crow in a lot of cases. 

Whether people keep the damn things or not is a matter for people in that individual community to decide, but the idea that they contain some sort of inherent value just because they're old (and sometimes not even that) is kinda ridiculous.


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## Gym Leader Elesa (Jun 5, 2017)

resonancer said:


> regional identity is like any other identity really. we're all 'merkins whether we're South, Cascadia, Bronx, Yooper or Hoosier.
> 
> Talking about your own country like it's secondary to your identity is odd to me. It's almost like talking about your country as secondary to your.. gender identity, race, etc.
> 
> identity politics are always strange to me. culture is one thing, identifying yourself as that thing primarily is where it all goes awry.



This was well reasoned and deserved it a better reply than I gave it. At the time I was distracted with many other things, and I didn't really do right by you at the time. You engaged me and I wasn't fair. So let me try again.

I would counter that the opposite of what you say is true, that identifying myself as "American first" simply by what it is says on my passport is akin to identifying myself by race or gender identity. My family settled this land, gave me a different education, different religious inclinations, a different culture, in my case a different language and accent (Louisiana French), fought to drive off the North (obviously massively unsuccessfully, but we killed and wounded hundreds of thousands, three times as many as we lost) and for generations have raised ourselves as southerners. I have literally nothing in common with someone from Iowa. I know because I've moved around this country for years. The contrast is as stark as a German in Sub-Saharan Africa. We were some of the first Europeans to settle in the Americas, not all of us in the thirteen colonies. My family has kept its flags, passed down, and its way of life and identity for hundreds of years, both before and after the war. We're Dixies. That's what we are. America is the country we belong to, some of us by choice, but the South is our _nation. 



Lokamayadon said:



			How do you feel towards your/their nationalist counterparts? Like the American (USA as a whole) patriots, people who see themselves as citizens of Turkey first and maybe are nostalgic of the Ottoman Empire,ect...
Heck, what would you feel if your own Southern culture was made up of many smaller subcultures with many of the people from these primarily identifying as members of these subcultures and wanting to become independent, even if it would destroy YOUR whole?
I'm not sure it's oppressed separationists vs the cloaking and faceless empires.
		
Click to expand...

_
You're damn sure right about the last part. At least a little. Secessionism is absolutely suppressed by virtue of the fact it's illegal, however. I should have given the United States more dignity, though. You'll see above in the thread that being American, short of an independent South, is still better than anything else on Earth in my view, at least for us. I would still fight for the United States to defend it, if only because the South is in it and this is for now and probably forever what my neighbors, increasingly foreigners and migrants, are choosing. We are indeed made of many subcultures and minorities with a common Southern identity (of which I belong to one of the most prominent.)

That said, identifying with the people who fought and died for me, my land, and my faith, with my language, culture, way of life, and our flag, might be "identity politics" to the both of you. But no more so than calling myself "American" would be. People disagree with my feelings, _and that's absolutely fair and allowed_, but so did many Irish unionists with their nationalists. Yet there the Irish Republic is. All I want is the constitutional right to try. Britain, Canada, and many other fine countries give their constituents the right to secede peaceably. Indeed many would vote against us. By why is the U.S. so afraid of us that it would tear down our flags, denies us this right, and refuses to hear us? Perhaps it is because they fear we really are a nation and wouldn't make the same choice Quebec and Scotland did. They certainly took pains under Grant and others to destroy "Confederate nationalism." Even now, apparently, it is widely feared at least by idiots.

This is a right states should have.


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## Enclave Supremacy (Jun 5, 2017)

ZeCommissar said:


> That's like the British having a public statue of George Washington outside parliament.





Spoiler











They're he is in Trafalgar Square, the Square built to honour Admiral Nelson for winning the Battle of Trafalgar in what is possibly one of the largest dedications to a single non-royal in the whole country. Not quite outside Parliament but right in the heart of London right next to the road of Buckingham Palace.

I'm glad I got to see the statue of Lee before they took it down; was in New Orleans around the 18th last month. America is a young nation and the few organic symbols you've developed in your time people should probably be able to keep, Confederate symbols are part of the South and Southern identity and are not necessarily connotative of racism secessionist ideals.

On that note, the idea that you cannot ever secede from the United States seems insane, an obvious power-play by the Federal Government and another one of America's bizarre historical hypocracies. If the Scots want to leave the UK then by democratic majority then they can leave, we aren't going to force them to stay. Similarly the USA, people have the right to self-determination.

SJW's the world-over are emboldened by stuff like this and it spreads to other countries (see Rhodes Must Fall). Don't give these people an inch.


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## Marvin (Jun 5, 2017)

Gym Leader Elesa said:


> All I want is the constitutional right to try. Britain, Canada, and many other fine countries give their constituents the right to secede peaceably. Indeed many would vote against us. By why is the U.S. so afraid of us that it would tear down our flags, denies us this right, and refuses to hear us? Perhaps it is because they fear we really are a nation and wouldn't make the same choice Quebec and Scotland did. They certainly took pains under Grant and others to destroy "Confederate nationalism."


If different parts of the US broke apart, I don't think they'd maintain the great things the US does on their own. Some parts of the US would turn into India. Some parts of the US would turn into Saudi Arabia. Some parts would turn into a shittier version of the UK. Together, we're greater than the sum of our parts.

This doesn't apply universally though. It's not like we should expand indefinitely. We'd quickly spread ourselves too thin and lose everything. But I'm also against retracting as well. I think we maintain our current territory very well.

I consider it unacceptable for someone to have full constitutional rights as an American, in particular the first amendment, and then to later lose those rights because of secessionists. I feel so strongly about this that I enthusiastically support suppressing secession. By force if necessary.

I know some people might disagree with me here. It's not nice to phrase it that way. And don't get me wrong, I'm all for states rights in lots of ways. But this is something I don't compromise on. I support states rights _only as long as everyone has their individual rights as citizens guaranteed_. I don't trust any subsection of the US to maintain these rights on their own.

(To put things in context, I'm a big fan of the ACLU and FIRE.)


Enclave Supremacy said:


> On a similar note, the idea that you cannot ever secede from the United States seems insane, an obvious power-play by the Federal Government and another one of America's bizarre historical hypocracies.


I wouldn't say it's a hypocrisy. When a state enters the union, it (depending on the circumstances) gives up certain privileges. It has to abide by the constitution, for example. A state can't decide to outlaw offensive speech, for example.

Likewise, one privilege the state gives up is the ability to withdraw from the union. They're consenting to it, essentially.

I see that as a desirable part of the design, not a historical accident.


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## Gym Leader Elesa (Jun 5, 2017)

Marvin said:


> I wouldn't say it's a hypocrisy. When a state enters the union, it (depending on the circumstances) gives up certain privileges. It has to abide by the constitution, for example. A state can't decide to outlaw offensive speech, for example.
> 
> Likewise, one privilege the state gives up is the ability to withdraw from the union. They're consenting to it, essentially.
> 
> I see that as a desirable part of the design, not a historical accident.



Sadly, the South was not told of these terms and the fact that they couldn't withdraw wasn't decided until after they joined by a supreme court decision. Very subjective deciding that a "perfect union" means an "indissolvable" one. How very convenient for the federal government they didn't have to decide that until later. We'll have to agree to disagree. In any case, deciding that the Union is permanent is something all states should have been asked to consent to, not told after a vicious war because "damn, that inconvenienced our robber barons, didn't it?"


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## Marvin (Jun 5, 2017)

Gym Leader Elesa said:


> Sadly, the South was not told of these terms and the fact that they couldn't withdraw wasn't decided until after they joined by a supreme court decision. Very subjective deciding that a "perfect union" means an "indissolvable" one. How very convenient for the federal government they didn't have to decide that until later. We'll have to agree to disagree. In any case, deciding that the Union is permanent is something all states should have been asked to consent to, not told after a vicious war because "damn, that inconvenienced our robber barons, didn't it?"


Yeah... like, a lot of territories were taken against their will. I don't like that that happened and I certainly wouldn't consent to doing that in the future.

However, my most important tenet is that Americans have certain rights that can't be taken away. I would consider a successful secessionist movement to be doing that essentially.

I think if we had bigger regional strife in the US, it might make this position a lot harder to stand by. Like if the US suddenly annexed, say, Saudi Arabia, it might be harder for me to say "lol, ur american now, too late".

But as things are now, I'm OK with things. It's also why I'm for state's rights, giving people plenty of local autonomy helps keep down regional strife. (There's a place for the federal government, but a lot more things really should be decided on the state level.)


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## Gym Leader Elesa (Jun 5, 2017)

Marvin said:


> Yeah... like, a lot of territories were taken against their will. I don't like that that happened and I certainly wouldn't consent to doing that in the future.
> 
> However, my most important tenet is that Americans have certain rights that can't be taken away. I would consider a successful secessionist movement to be doing that essentially.
> 
> ...



I will admit this is one of the better arguments I have heard. Thank you for taking the time to not just go "lol we won." In any case, it would help a lot of that simmering resentment for a lot of people if certain powers were restored to the states. It would be hard at first, but as long as you kept that baseline of necessary powers in the hands of the federal government I think a more decentralized union could work. There's a sweet spot between the disastrous articles of confederation and the current system.  

In any case, I wish New Orleans as a people had gotten a vote on those monuments. There just never has been a local vote on these issues anywhere in the South (that I have heard of) because I suspect our leaders know what the people, including many blacks, would vote for. It sure isn't "spend millions getting rid of a statue of General Lee." I wish there was a more robust, local, democratic process.


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## cuddle striker (Jun 6, 2017)

Gym Leader Elesa said:


> This was well reasoned and deserved it a better reply than I gave it. At the time I was distracted with many other things, and I didn't really do right by you at the time. You engaged me and I wasn't fair. So let me try again.
> 
> I would counter that the opposite of what you say is true, that identifying myself as "American first" simply by what it is says on my passport is akin to identifying myself by race or gender identity. My family settled this land, gave me a different education, different religious inclinations, a different culture, in my case a different language and accent (Louisiana French), fought to drive off the North (obviously massively unsuccessfully, but we killed and wounded hundreds of thousands, three times as many as we lost) and for generations have raised ourselves as southerners. I have literally nothing in common with someone from Iowa. I know because I've moved around this country for years. The contrast is as stark as a German in Sub-Saharan Africa. We were some of the first Europeans to settle in the Americas, not all of us in the thirteen colonies. My family has kept its flags, passed down, and its way of life and identity for hundreds of years, both before and after the war. We're Dixies. That's what we are. America is the country we belong to, some of us by choice, but the South is our _nation.
> 
> ...




yeah I don't have shit in common with people from Iowa either. I get the regional identity thing, and the personal history.

we're Americans though, it's"united states" and "melting pot" and all that. we've got to be on the same team, that war was fought and ended.


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## Gym Leader Elesa (Jun 6, 2017)

resonancer said:


> we're Americans though, it's"united states" and "melting pot" and all that. we've got to be on the same team, that war was fought and ended.



I reject that narrative, as you may have gathered, and aim to reopen that issue. I would like to play for a different team, so to speak, and won't give my up land to do so. The war was settled, the Union was indeed better at fighting, but the right to secession was never put to rest in a legally, intellectually, or politically satisfactory manner. They just killed everyone, which is valid up to a point, but only goes so far. Hence this conversation. Might does not make right. Even if it did, I'm not dead, so here we are.  And here we will remain, until the rest of us are killed or die off. If I live an average lifespan, that should be another fifty years or so. The Union won the war, it did not kill my ideas, or the ideas of my ancestors. I don't really care about "united states" or "melting pot" I want "my nation" and "independent South." I have no desire to see this culture melt any further into the Union. 

I guess, tl;dr "Make me." It's not that your emotional appeals are invalid, it's just that they are by nature ineffective on someone who was raised with a completely different mindset. Up to a certain point, you may as well be telling a Russian "we're all Americans."


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## cuddle striker (Jun 6, 2017)

Gym Leader Elesa said:


> I reject that narrative, as you may have gathered, and aim to reopen that issue. I would like to play for a different team, so to speak, and won't give my up land to do so. The war was settled, the Union was indeed better at fighting, but the right to secession was never put to rest in a legally, intellectually, or politically satisfactory manner. They just killed everyone, which is valid up to a point, but only goes so far. Hence this conversation. Might does not make right. Even if it did, I'm not dead, so here we are.  And here we will remain, until the rest of us are killed or die off. If I live an average lifespan, that should be another fifty years or so. The Union won the war, it did not kill my ideas, or the ideas of my ancestors. I don't really care about "united states" or "melting pot" I want "my nation" and "independent South." I have no desire to see this culture melt any further into the Union.
> 
> I guess, tl;dr "Make me." It's not that your emotional appeals are invalid, it's just that they are by nature ineffective on someone who was raised with a completely different mindset. Up to a certain point, you may as well be telling a Russian "we're all Americans."


the great thing about this all, is that we can disagree on that and I still think you're all right. whenever I get called in to the south, the food is amazing and especially in New Orleans, being mixed race, I don't hear jack shit about it, nobody cares. it's part of the culture.

I didn't realize they hadn't polled the locals on the monuments, what the hell? it's up to the people that live with them, whether or not they stand. That's some serious bullshit. I mean it's definitely a local issue.

Taking a flag down from a federally run building like a congressional office is one thing, removing local landmarks is another.


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## TiggerNits (Jun 7, 2017)

Whatever the locals want to do with them. Hard to give a shit about what the runner up in the Civil War does to lick its wounds and nurse its pride. I grew up spending summers in the South and they're good people, same as the rest of America aside from the hippies. Self government is the cornerstone of what makes America functional. Let the folks living in these places decide what to do with them, not the fucking national news


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## millais (Jun 7, 2017)

Being curious, I looked into the situation some more, and it seems there are a few more Confederate monuments in my state than I assumed, though they are in a much more precarious situation than I expected. On the grounds of the State Capitol, there are at least three monuments, and them being on government property is already not a good sign for their longevity. Even worse the capital is easily the most libcucked city in the whole of the state by a longshot, which is why in the past I never would have thought to look for Confederate monuments there when visiting. Fortunately they seem to have evaded the ire of the college activists and carpetbaggers as far as I can tell, and there is currently no campaign to have them removed or anything like that. If they were ever targeted, I think it would be in their favor that none of the monuments commemorate individual Confederate leaders, just the war dead and the veterans of the two most illustrious military units to leave their mark on the annals of the state's history.







That is a pretty badass equestrian statue; I hope I get a chance to swing by to see it in person sometime. I really appreciate the sculptor's attention to detail and historical accuracy. Long story short, from the style in which the jacket is buttoned down to the make of the carbine, it's a very representative figure of the ideal volunteer from the commemorated unit.


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## Caesare (Jun 8, 2017)

Satan said:


> If you start removing historical monuments now, I predict in about a hundred years you guys will have the cast of Jersey Shore on Mount Rushmore.



It does seem like that's what they're shooting for.



Enclave Supremacy said:


> America is a young nation and the few organic symbols you've developed in your time people should probably be able to keep, Confederate symbols are part of the South and Southern identity and are not necessarily connotative of racism secessionist ideals.



Exactly. I can't understand the mindset of a person who supports removing a historical monument, especially in a free society. It's complete insanity to me. The fact that some people can judge men from over 150 years with today's standards of morality is just mind boggling.

I could never get behind the censorship of our own history. It's just like burning books you don't agree with.



Gym Leader Elesa said:


> In any case, I wish New Orleans as a people had gotten a vote on those monuments. There just never has been a local vote on these issues anywhere in the South (that I have heard of) because I suspect our leaders know what the people, including many blacks, would vote for. It sure isn't "spend millions getting rid of a statue of General Lee." I wish there was a more robust, local, democratic process.



Meanwhile, 3 people killed and 10 wounded in five separate shootings last Saturday. This puts the number of people killed and wounded by gunfire over 300 since the beginning of the year. This is the most frustrating thing in all of this, the fact that Landrieu is more interested in getting his name in the news by ruining historical sites than he is with the long-running crime epidemic in his city.


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## Marvin (Jun 8, 2017)

Coleman Francis said:


> Exactly. I can't understand the mindset of a person who supports removing a historical monument, especially in a free society. It's complete insanity to me. The fact that some people can judge men from over 150 years with today's standards of morality is just mind boggling.
> 
> I could never get behind the censorship of our own history. It's just like burning books you don't agree with.


So it seems pretty obvious that in the case of New Orleans, there's a current political bent to the issue.

However, current politics aside, I think it's completely valid for cities to grow and change over time. Old buildings sometimes need to get torn down, new buildings get put up. Same thing for public art.

If there were 1500 installations of public art in a city, you should probably put effort into maintaining the particularly important ones. But I see no reason why you need to maintain 100% of them.

Furthermore, I think you're dismissing the significance of symbolism of these monuments as they apply today. You talk about these issues as if the only valid context for these monuments is a historical one, and people who don't see it that way are crazy.

To bring up a more extreme example, the Soviet Union is dead and buried, yet Russia is full of its symbols. Is it unreasonable for people to take concern with that?






Heh, like, this video is joking, but that's pretty much how it feels. You walk around Moscow and see giant monuments to the USSR, and you visit Lenin's papery corpse, and then you see a stand selling a bunch of mugs and tshirts with Putin's face glaring at you. Nothing's changed.


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## Bob Page (Jun 8, 2017)

Nay, because this is history revisionism at its worst.



> Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it
> -George Santayana


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## Gym Leader Elesa (Jun 8, 2017)

Marvin said:


> To bring up a more extreme example, the Soviet Union is dead and buried, yet Russia is full of its symbols. Is it unreasonable for people to take concern with that?



Yes. I hate the communists, but yes. What the Soviet Union has left behind in monuments and symbols should remain. They are forever a part of Russia's history, and modern Russia was irrevocably shaped by it. They need to incorporate what happened into the next phase of their existence.

That said, the Soviet Union was a phase of Russia's history. A Southern nation was not a phase of history, it is a thing which in my view still exists today, and so those flags and monuments represent a living people, rather than a failed ideology. Dixie is not an idea, it is a reality. But we all know where I am on that. I fall to the furthest extreme on the "pro" side since the monument's enemies are not "erasing my history" they are directly attacking my country. So of course, I take it in much more hostile terms than even @Coleman Francis or @entropyseekswork or the others.

To  finally wrap up my endless posts in this thread after my hilariously botched attempt to keep my mouth shut, a conclusion:

The South was right.
The monuments and flags should be left there since we should just secede again anyway, fuck the Union.
The black and white people of the South have more in common with each other despite historical racial divides then they do with their northern (or Californian) overlords.
State's rights.
More democracy and voting.
God bless Robert E. Lee one of the greatest men who ever lived.
God Save the South.

And furthermore, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania must be destroyed.


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## Caesare (Jun 9, 2017)

Gym Leader Elesa said:


> So of course, I take it in much more hostile terms than even @Coleman Francis or @entropyseekswork or the others.



Certain people that live outside of N.O. or the South in general wonder why such strong feelings continue to exist for this period in history. For that, the blame falls into the lap of certain units and generals of the Union Army who had zero control over their troops and basically let them run a reign of terror in occupied territory. Murdering innocents, women, children. Burning the workplaces and homes of Southerners who were against the war, etc.

There was a certain Union general who occupied the Florida Parishes of Louisiana, North of Lake Pontchartrain, who had zero control over his men. They waged a reign of terror: pillaging, murdering, burning homes and businesses, raping, you name it they did it.

The thing about it is, the people of the Florida Parishes were poor farmers and store owners. They had no love for the Confederacy, were against the war to begin with, and particularly resented the Southern aristocracy who owned thousands of slaves, who they believed looked more highly upon their slaves than they did these dirt poor white folks.

Long story short, when the reign of terror took place in the Florida Parishes, these individuals who were formerly against the war, became the most die hard CSA supporters. They were tired of the atrocities, so they waged guerrilla warfare against the Union army in the area and were successful! The atrocities stopped once these civilians started hiding in the woods with their rifles, taking potshots at the rear of the Union squads marching through. The best part about it, these "bushwackers" as they were called, were virtually never caught since they knew the land so well.

Had they not been treated so disgustingly by the occupying armies, they would have actually been benevolent, occupied subjects. Case in point, another Union Commander who was responsible for marching through neighboring Mississippi, kept his troops on a tight leach. He only allowed them to destroy government property, such as ammunition dumps, military railroads, etc. He would not allow his troops to run wild, looting and pillaging everything they could.

This gained the Commander the respect of the occupied people of Mississippi, and they were much easier to accept defeat where the individuals in the Florida Parishes engaged in guerrilla warfare even after the war ended.

I'm not going to even get into Reconstruction, but that was an entire other atrocity after the war's end. All because the Puritanical fundamentalist abolitionists believed they were on a mission from God to completely pulverize the already surrendered CSA.

Unlike @Gym Leader Elesa and others I've spoken to online, I have no family connection to the Confederacy besides growing up in the city of New Orleans. I've seen my family tree, everyone on both sides of the family settled here in the very late 19th century and the early 20th century. Yet the more I study this time period, the more strongly I feel part of it.


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## millais (Jun 9, 2017)

Coleman Francis said:


> Certain people that live outside of N.O. or the South in general wonder why such strong feelings exist for this period in history. For that, the blame falls into the lap of certain units and generals of the Union Army who had zero control over their troops and basically let them run a reign of terror in occupied territory. Murdering innocents, women, children. Burning the workplaces and homes of Southerners who were against the war, etc.
> 
> There was a certain Union general who occupied the Florida Parishes, North of Lake Pontchartrain, who had zero control over his men. They waged a reign of terror: pillaging, murdering, burning homes and businesses, raping, you name it they did it.
> 
> ...


From what I recall of history lessons, the Union general in charge of the wartime occupation of New Orleans was a locally hated figure too. On the first day of the occupation, a woman emptied the contents of her household's chamberpot on the Union troops who were parading down the street below. In retaliation for this isolated incident, General Butler issued an order instructing his men in the bluntest of terms to treat all the women of New Orleans as prostitutes. Needless to say, this did not go down well with the local population.


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## Alec Benson Leary (Jun 9, 2017)

War is hell.


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## Marvin (Jun 9, 2017)

Gym Leader Elesa said:


> Yes. I hate the communists, but yes. What the Soviet Union has left behind in monuments and symbols should remain. They are forever a part of Russia's history, and modern Russia was irrevocably shaped by it. They need to incorporate what happened into the next phase of their existence.


You're missing my point though.

You're focusing on interpreting them in a historical context. But there are other contexts to consider, like a modern day context. Those matter too.

"What does this mean for the history of the country?" is an important question to ask to justify keeping a piece of public art intact. But so is "how will it make me feel to live around this?" Same as all other land use issues (like zoning). Like, is it an eyesore? Was the subject important?

I don't see any reason for all public art to be immutable. I mean, I think there should be a _tendency_ to preserve prominent public art, but that's a far cry from "never tear anything down".

Heh, and regarding the Soviet Union: what about if the Soviets had erected a statue in Afghanistan? Like a big old statue of Lenin stepping on the back of some Afghan peasant, holding the hammer and sickle. Right in the middle of Kabul.


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## Alec Benson Leary (Jun 10, 2017)

Marvin said:


> Heh, and regarding the Soviet Union: what about if the Soviets had erected a statue in Afghanistan? Like a big old statue of Lenin stepping on the back of some Afghan peasant, holding the hammer and sickle. Right in the middle of Kabul.


I was trying to figure out a good way to word this. The Soviet Union was all Russia, none of their satellite states/conquered territories had any cultural identification with that shit.


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## Marvin (Jun 10, 2017)

Alec Benson Leary said:


> I was trying to figure out a good way to word this. The Soviet Union was all Russia, none of their satellite states/conquered territories had any cultural identification with that shit.


I think that's debatable. Many of the smaller SSRs were resentful, but quite a few really drank the koolade and got into the whole soviet shtick. It varies.

Heh, when I wrote my last post, I was thinking about the ugliest piece of public art I could think of. I was thinking of this giant, milquetoast tranny statue that's out front of Baltimore's Penn Station. Personally I don't have a problem with it (and I didn't even realize it was about trannies to begin with), but apparently some people got offended at it. If it got taken down and replaced with a fountain or something, I wouldn't sweat it.

Now on the other hand, if some hippies wanted to take down the General Pulaski monument, I'd lose my shit. I cannot believe that they gave Mother Theresa honorary US citizenship alongside Casimir Pulaski. Fuck that shit.


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## AnOminous (Jun 10, 2017)

Alec Benson Leary said:


> I was trying to figure out a good way to word this. The Soviet Union was all Russia, none of their satellite states/conquered territories had any cultural identification with that shit.



That's why I didn't say none of these monuments should ever be removed, ever.  I think if you live in a city, and there's some piece of shit everyone in the city hates installed in the town square, there should be some public voice as to whether it stays there.

I just think it should be something on the level of a supermajority actually voting for it, maybe 70-30 or something.

Not just angry screaming by a bunch of really noisy idiots.


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## Trilby (Jun 10, 2017)

Sergeant Politeness said:


> Of course. You don't wanna be on the wrong side of history, do you?


The notion of "history being written by the winners" has never been so obvious than now.



> This comes down to if you consider prominently displaying historical artifacts as a seal of approval. To get rid of the dark periods of history is to say they didn't happen. The Confederacy played a role in US history, and racism played a role in the Confederacy. It's part of the history of this country and we need to accept it and educate about it, not hide it. (Also, fucking with graveyards is disrespectful regardless of what they believed, and anyone who says otherwise is just being edgy.)


That is excessive and doesn't benefit anyone.



> I also have an issue with simplifying the Confederacy down to "slaveowners"; as someone said earlier, it's historical revisionism. The winning side becomes the right side.


Again, history written by the winners.  



millais said:


> That is a pretty badass equestrian statue; I hope I get a chance to swing by to see it in person sometime. I really appreciate the sculptor's attention to detail and historical accuracy. Long story short, from the style in which the jacket is buttoned down to the make of the carbine, it's a very representative figure of the ideal volunteer from the commemorated unit.


The sad part is thinking the guy who made this put in all that effort in something that may end up destroyed thanks to a generation who doesn't care about what that person did.



Coleman Francis said:


> It does seem like that's what they're shooting for.


Well at least it's not Jesus Christ like some Japanese cartoon did back in the 70's.



> Exactly. I can't understand the mindset of a person who supports removing a historical monument, especially in a free society. It's complete insanity to me. The fact that some people can judge men from over 150 years with today's standards of morality is just mind boggling.


I'd love to think what someone 150 years from now would think of what we're doing today (I'm sure they'll think we're total cucks!)!



> I could never get behind the censorship of our own history. It's just like burning books you don't agree with.


True.  It's like nobody wants to deal with what look like 'blemishes' that can be eradicated permanently.


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## AnOminous (Jun 10, 2017)

Meanwhile, the other side of this debate doesn't seem to have any issues with it being forgotten that Sherman went total war and slaughtered civilians and absolutely destroyed civilian property and land, ensuring it could never be made useful again, on a rampage through the entire South, essentially just to punish the civilian population, something that would be considered a war crime less than 100 years later at Nuremberg.

This is how we treated our own citizens.


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## teh forist speret (Jun 10, 2017)

I have a feeling that if they actually did start removing monuments, we'd have a situation with the confederacy similar to how Germany views its history with WWII; we could scrub it clean on the surface so as to not attract controversy, but the rest of the world still knows and openly talks about it.

Of course removing monuments and such is historical revisionism so SJWs can walk through the South without being triggered, rather than a movement born of any actual shame of that dark period in history.


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## Trilby (Jun 10, 2017)

teh forist speret said:


> I have a feeling that if they actually did start removing monuments, we'd have a situation with the confederacy similar to how Germany views its history with WWII; we could scrub it clean on the surface so as to not attract controversy, but the rest of the world still knows and openly talks about it.
> 
> Of course removing monuments and such is historical revisionism so SJWs can walk through the South without being triggered, rather than a movement born of any actual shame of that dark period in history.


Which they DO NOT FUCKING HAVE!


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## AnOminous (Jun 10, 2017)

teh forist speret said:


> Of course removing monuments and such is historical revisionism so SJWs can walk through the South without being triggered, rather than a movement born of any actual shame of that dark period in history.



There may be shame associated with the Confederacy, but there is also legitimate pride.


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## Trilby (Jun 10, 2017)

AnOminous said:


> There may be shame associated with the Confederacy, but there is also legitimate pride.


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## AnOminous (Jun 10, 2017)

Gym Leader Elesa said:


> And furthermore, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania must be destroyed.



Fite me irl bitch!


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## Alec Benson Leary (Jun 10, 2017)

Sometimes I feel like the argument that we should be so ashamed of the Confederation's part in our history could easily be adapted to find terrible shame in the Revolutionary War, whether you're targeting loyalists or secessionists. Somehow no one ever looks at the ugliness of that conflict though.


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## millais (Jun 10, 2017)

Alec Benson Leary said:


> Sometimes I feel like the argument that we should be so ashamed of the Confederation's part in our history could easily be adapted to find terrible shame in the Revolutionary War, whether you're targeting loyalists or secessionists. Somehow no one ever looks at the ugliness of that conflict though.


It helps that the Americans and British kind of jointly encouraged the relocation/immigration of the vast majority of Loyalists to Canada after the war, so the descendants of the historically aggrieved side are not extensively represented in the modern US population.


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## AnOminous (Jun 10, 2017)

Alec Benson Leary said:


> Sometimes I feel like the argument that we should be so ashamed of the Confederation's part in our history could easily be adapted to find terrible shame in the Revolutionary War, whether you're targeting loyalists or secessionists. Somehow no one ever looks at the ugliness of that conflict though.



Every single war in the history of humanity had utterly awful crimes associated with it that murdered and tortured completely innocent victims.

War itself is the vilest crime humanity ever committed against itself.

So should we pretend it never happens at all?  And just wait until it does again?


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## Trilby (Jun 10, 2017)

Alec Benson Leary said:


> Sometimes I feel like the argument that we should be so ashamed of the Confederation's part in our history could easily be adapted to find terrible shame in the Revolutionary War, whether you're targeting loyalists or secessionists. Somehow no one ever looks at the ugliness of that conflict though.


I suppose it's another 85-90 years out of the way from the Civil War.



AnOminous said:


> Every single war in the history of humanity had utterly awful crimes associated with it that murdered and tortured completely innocent victims.
> 
> War itself is the vilest crime humanity ever committed against itself.
> 
> So should we pretend it never happens at all?  And just wait until it does again?


Thank you!  We should remember!


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## Caesare (Jun 11, 2017)

teh forist speret said:


> I have a feeling that if they actually did start removing monuments, we'd have a situation with the confederacy similar to how Germany views its history with WWII; we could scrub it clean on the surface so as to not attract controversy, but the rest of the world still knows and openly talks about it.



I can sympathize with the Germans a bit more, wanting to remove blatant symbols of the Nazi regime in Germany, due to it being a short lived regime that not only wanted to conquer Europe, but also wanted to exterminate an entire group of people (and nearly succeeded due to the industrialized efficiency in which they carried out the genocide).

Sure, keep the concentration camps as tourist destinations, museums, and reminders of what can happen when a particularly charismatic leader gains control of a powerful nation and uses the population to build a war machine capable of successfully invading most of their neighbors. Then rounding up, kidnapping, and forcing ethnic undesirables into crowded, fenced off ghettos before sending them in crowded trains to camps where they will be worked to death and systematically slaughtered with industrial efficiency in such a way that the world had never witnessed until that point.

My point is, I have zero problem with Germany wanting to remove blatant symbols of Nazism, because the German people of today certainly don't want to be reminded of such a dark period in their nation's history. However, a statue of a brave General unconnected to the Holocaust should be preserved, as well as graveyards of the dead Wehrmacht soldiers who were merely patriots following the orders of their superiors, fighting for their country

This is night and day when compared to maintaining statues and monuments of the former Confederacy. For one, the monuments are typically of famous CSA Generals and battlefields. This is part of history, of CSA history and American history. As someone mentioned earlier in this thread, the United States is a young country without many historical monuments compared to our brothers and sisters in Continental Europe. It is of utmost importance that we maintain these monuments rather than removing them because a small minority decides that they "hurt their feelings" this week.

This is a very dangerous precedent to set. First they want to remove Confederate monuments, but what is next? It's very interesting to note that one of the main proponents (besides Mayor Landriue) who had been pushing for the removal of these monuments in New Orleans has a long history of doing this type of thing.

Back in the early 1990's, he successfully had the name of a primary school's name changed. The reason? Because the school's name was "George Washington Elementary".

This is too ridiculous to make up. Our very first President, hero of the Revolutionary War. Even he wasn't safe from this radical black Professor (a card carrying communist, by the way) and his cronies in the City Council. His reason? Because George Washington owned slaves at one point.

Again, instead of respecting the Father of the United States, a brilliant Statesmen and a Revolutionary War hero, this pseudo intellectual communist who is completely unapologetic about hating America, Capitalism, and everything that entails, takes pride in tearing down American culture.

Marc Morial was mayor when the communist had George Washington Elementary changed (Mayor Morial was another problem), when Mayor Nagin was elected, the communist was largely ignored since Nagin was more of a pro business Democratic candidate who cared little for nonsense like that (Though Nagin had an entire different set of problems as he went to prison for corruption) but now that we have Landriue as mayor and his term will be ending soon. the time was ripe for the communist professor to strike again.

I love my city. But living here is like a circus. Between the Mafia running the Quarters, the police (Who do a great job, all things considered.) I can't think of another city's police force that could successfully handle the millions of people that descend upon the city during Mardi Gras, drinking, drugging, and acting like maniacs.


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## Trilby (Jun 11, 2017)

Coleman Francis said:


> This is night and day when compared to maintaining statues and monuments of the former Confederacy. For one, the monuments are typically of famous CSA Generals and battlefields. This is part of history, of CSA history and American history. As someone mentioned earlier in this thread, the United States is a young country without many historical monuments compared to our brothers and sisters in Continental Europe. It is of utmost importance that we maintain these monuments rather than removing them because a small minority decides that they "hurt their feelings" this week.


It does make it seem like they want to remove actual people permanently, or classify them as "non-persons" due to their actions.  This certainly is a dangerous precedent to take, to suggest these generals never existed.



> Back in the early 1990's, he successfully had the name of a primary school's name changed. The reason? Because the school's name was "George Washington Elementary".


Now that is just wrong.



> This is too ridiculous to make up. Our very first President, hero of the Revolutionary War. Even he wasn't safe from this radical black Professor (a card carrying communist, by the way) and his cronies in the City Council. His reason? Because George Washington owned slaves at one point.
> 
> Again, instead of respecting the Father of the United States, a brilliant Statesmen and a Revolutionary War hero, this pseudo intellectual communist who is completely unapologetic about hating America, Capitalism, and everything that entails, takes pride in tearing down American culture.






> Marc Morial was mayor when the communist had George Washington Elementary changed (Mayor Morial was another problem), when Mayor Nagin was elected, the communist was largely ignored since Nagin was more of a pro business Democratic candidate who cared little for nonsense like that (Though Nagin had an entire different set of problems as he went to prion for corruption) but now that we have Landriue as mayor and his term will be ending soon. the time was ripe for the communist professor to strike again.
> 
> I love my city. But living here is like a circus. Between the Mafia running the Quarters, the police (Who do a great job, all things considered. I can't think of another city that could handle the millions of people that descend upon the city during Mardi Gras, drinking, drugging, and acting like maniacs.


I bet it is.


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## charmaide (Jun 11, 2017)

Removing monuments of the confederacy isn't the best course of action. In a sense, you are removing history even if it is unsavory. The best way not to make mistakes in order to not repeat the mistakes made in the past, but that requires acknowledging the past.

If it is scrubbed away, how could we know we're repeating the same mistakes we had done?

(Late edit. Something was off.)


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## Alec Benson Leary (Jun 11, 2017)

Coleman Francis said:


> Sure, keep the concentration camps as tourist destinations, museums, and reminders of what can happen when a particularly charismatic leader gains control of a powerful nation and uses the population to build a war machine capable if successfully invading most of their neighbors.


Maybe they should open up a modern college campus as a monument to remind people then.

I started that as a joke but maybe there's something to it. Maybe teaching history through spectacles like monuments would be more effective of we found a fair and creative way to make blatant comparisons to the ignorant radicalism going on in current times. Not sure how to do that in a non-partisan way, but it seems worth considering.


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## TheProdigalStunna (Jun 11, 2017)

Let's be frank, there is no shame, no "admission of a dark history," in confederate monuments.

As there shouldn't be.  There is no reason to apologize for celebrating men who fought courageously in the face of war criminals for a legitimate succession.  I'm not even a Southerner, but wave that Rebel flag high and proud, and tell the haters to suck it.


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## Trilby (Jun 11, 2017)

TheProdigalStunna said:


> Let's be frank, there is no shame, no "admission of a dark history," in confederate monuments.
> 
> As there shouldn't be.  There is no reason to apologize for celebrating men who fought courageously in the face of war criminals for a legitimate succession.  I'm not even a Southerner, but wave that Rebel flag high and proud, and tell the haters to suck it.


Thank you!

When I think of how extreme such things could be, I don't think I want to be around if they start weeding out people based on their ancestral history.  Now that's way too far off base!


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## Yutyrannus (Jun 11, 2017)

Nay.

It's history. These people are an important fragment of United States history and should be embraced as such. I was at Appomattox once and the ranger guy who was giving an informational tour said something along the lines of "These guys shouldn't be seen as angels or devils. They're just people in history that were just doing their job and what they thought were right."

So, in lieu of that, imo Confederate monuments and historical sites should be embraced as just that: history.


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## Trilby (Jun 12, 2017)

Yutyrannus said:


> Nay.
> 
> It's history. These people are an important fragment of United States history and should be embraced as such. I was at Appomattox once and the ranger guy who was giving an informational tour said something along the lines of "These guys shouldn't be seen as angels or devils. They're just people in history that were just doing their job and what they thought were right."
> 
> So, in lieu of that, imo Confederate monuments and historical sites should be embraced as just that: history.


Which some people feel needs to be swept under the rug and never be heard of again.


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## Caesare (Jun 12, 2017)

Trilby said:


> Which some people feel needs to be swept under the rug and never be heard of again.



Yup. And these people are known as fools.



TheProdigalStunna said:


> Let's be frank, there is no shame, no "admission of a dark history," in confederate monuments.
> 
> As there shouldn't be.  There is no reason to apologize for celebrating men who fought courageously in the face of war criminals for a legitimate succession.  I'm not even a Southerner, but wave that Rebel flag high and proud, and tell the haters to suck it.



Exactly! The United States is a nation that reveres the men and women who fought and died defending their country, their families, and their ideals. Removing monuments that have been standing nearly as long as the country itself existed is like a slap in the face to all American veterans who served their country


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## Trilby (Jun 12, 2017)

Coleman Francis said:


> Yup. And these people are known as fools.
> 
> 
> 
> Exactly! The United States is a nation that reveres the men and women who fought and died defending their country, their families, and their ideals. Removing monuments that have been standing nearly as long as the country itself existed is like a slap in the face to all American veterans who served their country


I want to think these people never did well in history class like I had.


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## TheImportantFart (Jun 13, 2017)




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## millais (Aug 17, 2017)

I know we have been shitting on polls since the US presidential election, but this is perhaps the most impartial way to gauge current breakdown of public opinion rather than just blindly assuming the loudest and angriest voices in the fray are the most popular.




http://maristpoll.marist.edu/wp-con... Sample and Tables_August 17, 2017.pdf#page=3

Most interesting figures to me: 44% of blacks and 65% of Latinos ok with keeping the statues around.


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## invalid (Aug 17, 2017)

While you guys were discussing this, the monuments were all removed and destroyed in the night, sorry!


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## Slightly Observant (Aug 17, 2017)

Recent events have convinced me that it's not appropriate to have Confederate memorials in prominent places. They are nothing but lightning rods for neo-Nazis and Antifas. By all means, move some of the more significant ones to museums where they can be seen in the proper context.

And don't disturb cemeteries or battlefields. Just let their souls rest in peace.


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## Trilby (Aug 17, 2017)

Slightly Observant said:


> Recent events have convinced me that it's not appropriate to have Confederate memorials in prominent places. They are nothing but lightning rods for neo-Nazis and Antifas. By all means, move some of the more significant ones to museums where they can be seen in the proper context.


As long as that proper context isn't soiled by people who can't shut up.



> And don't disturb cemeteries or battlefields. Just their souls rest in peace.


Again, people don't shut up.


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## The Sourdough Region (Aug 17, 2017)

I feel that the monuments should be kept in place, but with additions that add context to them.


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## Caesare (Aug 17, 2017)

Slightly Observant said:


> Recent events have convinced me that it's not appropriate to have Confederate memorials in prominent places. They are nothing but lightning rods for neo-Nazis and Antifas. By all means, move some of the more significant ones to museums where they can be seen in the proper context.
> 
> And don't disturb cemeteries or battlefields. Just let their souls rest in peace.



Bullshit, just arrest each and every individual who shows up and causes problems at these monuments. This is our history, if these rejects want to cause trouble around them, the answer is to remove the rejects, not the historical monuments.



invalid said:


> While you guys were discussing this, the monuments were all removed and destroyed in the night, sorry!



No, they were not. They are all in storage at this point.


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## Steve Mayers (Aug 17, 2017)

A major thing with these statues is that they do represent different things to different people. To some people these statues do represent heritage and history. However to some people especially to many black people these statues represent a system that didn't see black people as human beings.


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## Marsaudiac (Aug 17, 2017)

Having massive, expensive statues of people who represent the worst of such a dark point in American history without any sort of contextual supplemental material outlining the atrocities they committed only glorifies them in my opinion. I do agree that it is extremely important to preserve history. I just feel that commemorating these people in the fashion they currently are is extremely polarizing and irresponsible, especially when they're on public/government property.


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## Caesare (Aug 17, 2017)

Steve Mayers said:


> However to some people especially to many black people these statues represent a system that didn't see black people as human beings.



In New Orleans, black people couldn't care less about these statues. As a matter of fact, the grand statue of General Lee in Lee Circle was a popular spot for blacks to watch the parades during Carnival. I was at the demonstration when that failure Mitch Landrieu decided to remove them without putting it to vote (Because he knew the vote wouldn't pass because the blacks wouldn't care enough to even show up and vote on it).

You know who was at the demonstration besides those of us who want to preserve our nation's history? Young, white transplants who haven't even lived here for more than 2-5 years. Sure, there were a handful of blacks, mostly all with one group, organized by an America hating, card carrying communist, black radical professor who's previous handiwork included having the name of a George Washington elementary school changed, because God forbid we have a school named after our first President and the Father of the country!

The point is, these college aged transplants want to be part of something, so they show up to these things to be "heard" or whatever. They aren't from here and they aren't going to be here for very long either. They wanted to go to one of our lovely universities and spend some time "finding" themselves in a "hip" city. Meanwhile, those of us who have lived our entire lives here and will continue to live here and raise our families weren't given a chance to be heard at the polls.

It's a completely disgusting trend.



Marsaudiac said:


> Having massive, expensive statues of people who represent the worst of such a dark point in American history without any sort of contextual supplemental material outlining the atrocities they committed only glorifies them in my opinion. I do agree that it is extremely important to preserve history. I just feel that commemorating these people in the fashion they currently are is extremely polarizing and irresponsible, especially when they're on public/government property.



Why not bulldoze the Lincoln Memorial? He authorized war crimes on his former countrymen during the American Civil War.


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## Trilby (Aug 17, 2017)

Coleman Francis said:


> In New Orleans, black people couldn't care less about these statues. As a matter of fact, the grand statue of General Lee in Lee Circle was a popular spot for blacks to watch the parades during Carnival. I was at the demonstration when that failure Mitch Landrieu decided to remove them without putting it to vote (Because he knew the vote wouldn't pass because the blacks wouldn't care enough to even show up and vote on it).


I was just reading up on that, are they still calling it "Lee Circle", because now it just comes off rather pointless without the MAN there.  Wonder if that'll be up on some voting site soon?



> You know who was at the demonstration besides those of us who want to preserve our nation's history? Young, white transplants who haven't even lived here for more than 2-5 years. Sure, there were a handful of blacks, mostly all with one group, organized by an America hating, card carrying communist, black radical professor who's previous handiwork included having the name of a George Washington elementary school changed, because God forbid we have a school named after our first President and the Father of the country!


That was far from stupidity itself.



> The point is, these college aged transplants want to be part of something, so they show up to these things to be "heard" or whatever. They aren't from here and they aren't going to be here for very long either. They wanted to go to one of our lovely universities and spend some time "finding" themselves in a "hip" city. Meanwhile, those of us who have lived our entire lives here and will continue to live here and raise our families weren't given a chance to be heard at the polls.
> 
> It's a completely disgusting trend.


Certainly.  I would be pissed if something like that happened in my hometown and I have all the knowledge in the world to try stopping it but fail because I wasn't even counted.  Feels like you wasted you time learning all this firsthand only to be shot down by people who'll never come back.



> Why not bulldoze the Lincoln Memorial? He authorized war crimes on his former countrymen during the American Civil War.


See this is why I wish people didn't bother with this at all, it's way past its due date.


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## AnOminous (Aug 17, 2017)

I think all war monuments should be replaced with giant robots that shoot lasers out of their eyes at anything that gets near them.


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## Trilby (Aug 17, 2017)

AnOminous said:


> I think all war monuments should be replaced with giant robots that shoot lasers out of their eyes at anything that gets near them.


That'll shut 'em up!


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## Duke Nukem (Aug 18, 2017)

Aside from all the shitposting, just move all the Confederate statues to some weird theme park or museum like what the Baltic states did with their commie stuff

https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2011/may/01/lithuania-soviet-nostalgia-theme-parks

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


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## Johnny Bravo (Aug 18, 2017)

We could always just take down monuments that glorify the Confederacy and put up new ones that still acknowledge the history of the Civil War without condoning it. Or would that be too simple?


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## Duke Nukem (Aug 18, 2017)

Johnny Bravo said:


> We could always just take down monuments that glorify the Confederacy and put up new ones that still acknowledge the history of the Civil War without condoning it. Or would that be too simple?



They probably wouldn't go for that, any reminder of the American Civil War would be triggering to the idiots trying to destroy existing monuments. I'm more concerned that they will never be satisfied.


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## Johnny Bravo (Aug 18, 2017)

Duke Nukem said:


> They probably wouldn't go for that, any reminder of the American Civil War would be triggering to the idiots trying to destroy existing monuments. I'm more concerned that they will never be satisfied.



What about a monument to all the black families that were broken up because of the slave trade? Or a minimalist monument to massive loss of American life on both s ides? I don't think it would be too hard to reach a compromise.


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## Duke Nukem (Aug 18, 2017)

Johnny Bravo said:


> What about a monument to all the black families that were broken up because of the slave trade? Or a minimalist monument to massive loss of American life on both s ides? I don't think it would be too hard to reach a compromise.



They wouldn't ever agree to such a thing because in their minds such a monument would be promoting racist stereotypes or whatever.

Remember, to these people, destroying historical sites and monuments is a way of making things as if racism and slavery and other REALLY BAD STUFF never happened.

These people are really no better than Pol Pot, who wanted to destroy everything in Cambodian society and go back to Year Zero.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_Zero_(political_notion)

The parallels are uncanny.


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## Johnny Bravo (Aug 18, 2017)

Duke Nukem said:


> They wouldn't ever agree to such a thing because in their minds such a monument would be promoting racist stereotypes or whatever.
> 
> Remember, to these people, destroying historical sites and monuments is a way of making things as if racism and slavery and other REALLY BAD STUFF never happened.
> 
> ...



Perhaps I should clarify that I would never invite SJWs or race identitarians to these hypothetical discussions. Normies only.


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## Trilby (Aug 18, 2017)

Johnny Bravo said:


> Perhaps I should clarify that I would never invite SJWs or race identitarians to these hypothetical discussions. Normies only.


Whatever's left of the "Normies" these days.  It's like nobody wants to be creative anymore.


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## Duke Nukem (Aug 18, 2017)

Johnny Bravo said:


> Perhaps I should clarify that I would never invite SJWs or race identitarians to these hypothetical discussions. Normies only.



If you don't invite them, they'll invite themselves, and we'll have Charlottesville 2.0 on our hands. On a more serious matter, I like your proposals, I just don't see a whole lot of people getting behind them, whether out of fear of offending SJWs or just simple apathy about history in general.

Next thing you know, they'll be digging up graves of CSA soldiers and eating gallon bags of Taco Bell with their pants down next to them. This shit is really getting out of hand.


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## AnOminous (Aug 18, 2017)

Johnny Bravo said:


> What about a monument to all the black families that were broken up because of the slave trade? Or a minimalist monument to massive loss of American life on both s ides? I don't think it would be too hard to reach a compromise.



How about a monument of someone whipping a slave in every black neighborhood?  Just for fun.


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## Johnny Bravo (Aug 18, 2017)

AnOminous said:


> How about a monument of someone whipping a slave in every black neighborhood?  Just for fun.



Honestly, with a white guilt plaque I bet you could get away with at least one of those.


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## Duke Nukem (Aug 18, 2017)

Johnny Bravo said:


> Honestly, with a white guilt plaque I bet you could get away with at least one of those.



Yup, replace all Confederate monuments with statues of black criminals killed by evil racist white police officers and all American presidents before 1865 statues with monuments to white guilt that shame them for their privilege.

Sounds like a workable plan to me.


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## Caesare (Aug 18, 2017)

Trilby said:


> I was just reading up on that, are they still calling it "Lee Circle", because now it just comes off rather pointless without the MAN there. Wonder if that'll be up on some voting site soon?



Yeah, people will always call it Lee Circle. Just like people will always call the airport NO International instead of "Louis Armstrong" Airport. Nothing against Louis, I actually like him, but it was always N.O. International and I'm going to call it that since it was always called that in my lifetime, the Louis Armstrong thing only happened 12 years ago or so.

I'm gonna keep praying that we get a non faggot mayor that will return Robert E. Lee's statue to it's proper place, however. Preferably, with much fanfare and a slight militaristic theme to the whole event.


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## DoctorJimmyRay (Aug 24, 2017)

I don't really care what happens to the various statues that were shat all over the south in the early 1900s. But on artistic merit alone, it'd be a damn shame to see Stone Mountain defaced.


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## Caesare (Aug 25, 2017)

DoctorJimmyRay said:


> I don't really care what happens to the various statues that were shat all over the south in the early 1900s



I don't really know why, but they're all over the West too. You never hear about them. Just like you never hear about historical markers that actually are offensive.


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## Trilby (Aug 25, 2017)

Coleman Francis said:


> I don't really know why, but they're all over the West too. You never hear about them. Just like you never hear about historical markers that actually are offensive.


Funny when they do pop up out of nowhere because someone got triggered.


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## Antipathy (Aug 31, 2017)

I'd say remove them. It isn't historical revisionism, because these aren't figures of heroes, patriots or innovators. They're monuments to the failure of a system as the ex-Confederate states carefully create a cherry-picked view of their past. Statues to Lee aren't reminders of the grim failures of the past. They're there as a way of continuing the fight against the North. There's no heroism to celebrate. 

Destroy them the way the Germans did monuments to the Nazis, the Italians did to Mussolini, and the Russians did to Stalin.


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## Mysterious Capitalist (Aug 31, 2017)

Nay

History must be remembered: if not to commemorate it, at least to not repeat it.


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## Gym Leader Elesa (Aug 31, 2017)

Dr W said:


> They're there as a way of continuing the fight against the North



I mean my family and others are still trying to do that to be fair. Nothing against the North, but we deserve independence and monuments that celebrate it. Fighting for independence in any case, is heroic. They were patriots. Serving _their country. 



Mysterious Capitalist said:



			Nay

History must be remembered: if not to commemorate it, at least to not repeat it.
		
Click to expand...

_
I wouldn't mind repeating it if we won.


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## MG 192 (Aug 31, 2017)

No.

We should not remove monuments of the Confederacy barring association with the government. The fact is that history is complex and morally ambiguous as there are often at least two side to the discussion (and often more). The Civil War had no good side to it so much as the North disagreed with slavery while the South supported it (and that's not the whole story behind the secession of the South either, just one of several factors). Yes the Confederate committed atrocities but so did the Union and it would be ignorant to pretend that did not happen. Not even World War II was a good vs. evil battle as Allied did commit war crimes; it's just that the Axis Powers were the greater evil.

We have the right to study it and its impact on the nation. Revisionist history will bring today China.


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## Antipathy (Aug 31, 2017)

Super Smash Bros. Fan said:


> We have the right to study it and its impact on the nation. Revisionist history will bring today China.





Gym Leader Elesa said:


> I mean my family and others are still trying to do that to be fair. Nothing against the North, but we deserve independence and monuments that celebrate it. Fighting for independence in any case, is heroic. They were patriots. Serving _their country._



And here lies the arguments against removing the monuments. Now, allow me to state something. Removing monuments isn't revisionism. The Civil War will still be taught, (and not as "The War of Northern Aggression" as it is called in some ex-Confederate states), rather than glossed over and censored like the reign of Mao Zedong. The Confederate flag and Confederate monuments should be relegated to museums and history books, but not forgotten outright. Removing a monument isn't removing mention, it's removing the notion of respect.

It's not ignoring the past, it's saving taxpayer money by preventing the maintenance cost of _actual_ revisionism: IE, the southerners were patriots. This oft-trod argument is said again and again, and I thoroughly disagree. The southern generals and politicians weren't patriots. They held county over country. They went to war for their estates and finance.

They went to war not because the North was infringing upon their rights, but because they were afraid of the consequences of abolitionism. This isn't patriotism. This is being traitorous to the larger whole of the country. There is no patriotism to be had in betraying the United States, breaking off from them and firing upon U.S citizens and soil.

It's not even close to the colonial rebellion. There, they at least had the excuse of the Atlantic ocean separating them from their governance and an actual problem with representation and regulations. There, they at least had some excuse.

But not the South. It is revisionism and painfully obvious whitewashing to insist that their cause was a patriotic cause. The same revisionism and whitewashing you claim to oppose.

However, if it is maintained in museums or on private property, I cannot argue. If it is held on government owned property and maintained by government funds, I say remove them.


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## Gym Leader Elesa (Aug 31, 2017)

Dr W said:


> They went to war not because the North was infringing upon their rights, but because they were afraid of the consequences of abolitionism. This isn't patriotism. This is being traitorous to the larger whole of the country. There is no patriotism to be had in betraying the United States, breaking off from them and firing upon U.S citizens and soil.



Their country is Dixie, and so is mine. You can't betray your own country by serving it.

I didn't say anywhere in this thread anything about "revisionism." I don't care what the United States thinks of us. I only care that it leaves us alone. I don't support those monumemts because "they're historical." I'm a Southern Nationalist for God's sake. Those are symbols of a living, breathing, people- just not the American people. I have no interest in the Confederates being seen as American patriots, or American history, or even as Amereicans. Why would I call them patriots for a nation they fought against? What are you on about?

We should be independent and have nothing to do with America. America conquered us. Why would I insult their memory in such a way?


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## AnOminous (Aug 31, 2017)

Dr W said:


> I'd say remove them.



I don't think there should be a general rule.  If it's public art, it should be up to the public who has to look at it every day.  If they're okay with it, pretty much everyone else can fuck off.

I also think public art should generally be replaced with something if you're going to do it, so you don't just get to rip down that statue like a vandal.  If you want that statue replaced with a statue of Malcolm X or Paul Robeson or some shit, the voters should have the choice of whether they want to approve a rate increase or a bond issue or some shit to pay for that.

Put it on a ballot.  If people care enough they'll show up.


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## Y2K Baby (Aug 31, 2017)

AnOminous said:


> I don't think there should be a general rule.  If it's public art, it should be up to the public who has to look at it every day.  If they're okay with it, pretty much everyone else can fuck off.
> 
> I also think public art should generally be replaced with something if you're going to do it, so you don't just get to rip down that statue like a vandal.  If you want that statue replaced with a statue of Malcolm X or Paul Robeson or some shit, the voters should have the choice of whether they want to approve a rate increase or a bond issue or some shit to pay for that.
> 
> Put it on a ballot.  If people care enough they'll show up.


Replace it with a statue of Hitler.


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## ICametoLurk (Aug 31, 2017)

Earlier this month they removed the signs off of Pickett's bridge in the northern part of the Puget Sound in the city of Bellingham
http://www.bellinghamherald.com/news/local/article167992382.html

And they are saying that it's a sign of White Supremacy.
http://www.bellinghamherald.com/news/local/news-columns-blogs/dean-kahn/article32668383.html

This despite

1.) This was way before the Civil War in 1854 and Pickett was the first Military Governor of the area
2.) Pickett had the bridge constructed and it was the first bridge in the area. His house is the earliest building in the area.
3.) Built the first fort that made him a hero among the local tribes cause protected them from the Haida raids (they were like the Native version of Vikings).
4.) Married a local Native woman and had a son that was a big part of the Seattle community.
5.) Pickett is really only known to the public for his defeat while fighting against the United States of America. In other words he's thought of as a loser.
6.) This city has high homeless rates, I think like 1 out of 25 of all the kids in the schools of this city are homeless. But yeah, let's force on getting rid of a sign off of a historical bridge made by someone who it is named after instead cause years later he fought on the other side.


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## Trilby (Aug 31, 2017)

ICametoLurk said:


> Earlier this month they removed the signs off of Pickett's bridge in the northern part of the Puget Sound in the city of Bellingham
> http://www.bellinghamherald.com/news/local/article167992382.html
> 
> And they are saying that it's a sign of White Supremacy.
> ...


Because I guess they couldn't think of a better idea of what to do with taxpayer money.


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## Y2K Baby (Aug 31, 2017)

Trilby said:


> Because I guess they couldn't think of a better idea of what to do with taxpayer money.


Confetti.


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## MG 192 (Sep 1, 2017)

Dr W said:


> And here lies the arguments against removing the monuments. Now, allow me to state something. Removing monuments isn't revisionism. The Civil War will still be taught, (and not as "The War of Northern Aggression" as it is called in some ex-Confederate states), rather than glossed over and censored like the reign of Mao Zedong. The Confederate flag and Confederate monuments should be relegated to museums and history books, but not forgotten outright. Removing a monument isn't removing mention, it's removing the notion of respect.
> 
> It's not ignoring the past, it's saving taxpayer money by preventing the maintenance cost of _actual_ revisionism: IE, the southerners were patriots. This oft-trod argument is said again and again, and I thoroughly disagree. The southern generals and politicians weren't patriots. They held county over country. They went to war for their estates and finance.
> 
> ...


If it was just an issue of estates and finances, why bother separating in the first place? Obviously the North had more money than the South and splitting up cuts off that access of resource. Slavery would have been on its way out even if the Confederates had remained independent. Tariffs and states rights were just as important factors for the split.

The Confederates lasted as long as they did in the North because of patriotism. Up until the Battle of Gettysburg, they had an upper hand over the North in spite of their lack of resources. They believed that the government was too intrusive and they needed a new system much like when the United States split from the United Kingdom in the American Revolution.

It's not like the North were a bastion of liberalism either (at least not until the 1960s). Keep in mind that most whites were racist against blacks (and would continue to be for a century after the war). If blacks weren't enslaved, they were sharecroppers. If reluctantly made citizens, they were second class. Hell, Lincoln himself was a racist. Remember that the Civil War did not start out to free the slaves, that came in the middle of the war.

As for being traitorous, keep in mind that had the USA lost the American Revolution, the Founding Fathers like Washington, Franklin, and Jefferson would have been executed for treason. Instead of going to change the world, history would see the USA as a failed rebellion of traitors who illegally separated from Britain for a brief period of time. The history we hear about is mostly written by victors.

Beside, it is much more expensive to destroy (and even relocate) monuments than to preserve them over a long period of time. Most people who support the monument disapprove of the Confederacy and sees it as a failed system. They support the statues staying up because it is important that we remember why the Civil War happened and that both sides had blood on their hand.


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## c-no (Sep 1, 2017)

I'd say place them in a museum, say who they are and what they stood for. I will say I can't really give much care about the statues. I can see both sides being divided on it. On one hand, these are monuments to history that try to say who this guy is and what he fought for. On the other hand, this is a guy who fought for a side that wanted to retain its right in owning a certain people as a property.


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## Todesfurcht (Sep 2, 2017)

Nay. Removing history makes it doomed to repeat itself.


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## TheAmazingAxolotl (Sep 2, 2017)

Yes and no.

Certain monuments honour those that shouldn't be honoured and certain monuments honour both those that deserve it and those that do not. A statue of Nathan Bedford Forrest, for example, shouldn't stand in a state building. A statue commemorating the common soldier of the Confederacy, however, has more of a right.

It's a slippery slope. The vast majority of people who fought for the CSA weren't slave owners, but they all fought for their rights (i.e. the right to own slaves) against a government they believed to be tyrannical, which can be construed as something similar to the Revolution, the key difference being that the Revolution against Great Britain succeeded and the rebellion against the Union failed.

Ultimately, the decision to remove monuments defaults to the local and state governments who, the majority of the time, remove them as a result of an ultra-reactionary order in the wake of some racially or politically motivated tragedy. In my opinion, no government building in the 11 states that seceded should have a Confederate flag flying in front of it, nor should they have a monument to anyone greater than the common man who fought in the war. Individual citizens flying the CSA's flags - who gives a shit, it's their right. We shouldn't outright remove *everything* bad from our history, either. We live in a day and age where we should be able to look at the sins of our forefathers and know we have the ability to move past it as a country, but unfortunately, there are people who would like nothing more than to rewrite this chapter in history as "wypipo do bad blekpipo win".


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## 💗Freddie Freaker💗 (Oct 11, 2017)

Nay. It's historical revisionism, plain and simple. It reminds me of those fundamentalist muslims who wreck ancient monuments because they represent another era in which Islam wasn't as strict. Removing monuments won't rewrite history.

It also rustles my jimmies that most people who want the statues removed are just virtue signalling. Most normal people don't care about the statues.


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## Hollywood Hulk Hogan (Oct 11, 2017)

Remove them. They were traitors to the union.

That said, there's a lot more pressing concerns and no one gave a shit about it until Trump was in office.


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## Mimic (Oct 11, 2017)

Leave them where historically accurate, otherwise whatever.

That way history remains untouched, monuments with more modern relevance can replace the old, and we can go on with our lives.


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## Autopsy (Oct 11, 2017)

This is the information age, and the internet has taught us many things, but apparently we forgot the difference between savagery and civility. Modern objections should be handled by adding new monuments and fixtures as response pieces, not by a return to iconoclasm. You could even purpose spaces specifically to give multiple sides of an argument, leading to a menagerie of art representing each generation's views on any particular topic.

*Picture this:* A Confederate General memorial is met with a stunningly well depicted scene of a black Unionist pulling a white compatriot off to safety, one who was presumably injured in battle. That statue itself is combated by a dramatic representation of the Tariff of of Abominations, addressing the nature of the war, and that is met with a political cartoon engraved on a shiny plaque placed nearby. They all sit in the same garden or street-corner, a portal through time for every pedestrian or commuter who happens to pass by. You've got four chunks of history, each clearly contextualizing the others.

*Now think of our dismal reality:* Any and all relics of bygone eras must be destroyed because of the thought-crimes of their creators and thereby purged from the public memory. If you have monuments, you are automatically honoring the people depicted within (because I can read the mind of every present and future observer and know this to be true), so if those people are ones I don't like, the monuments must be destroyed. Context? What's a 'Context'?

It's depressing that anyone would consider the latter a valid option at all. Surely after what amounts to decades of forum banter people would finally realize that making fun of shit opinions is far more persuasive than just deleting them, _right_?
That's entirely on the grounds of morals and ideals, though. If you make a financial case, that communities shouldn't foot the bill for 'propaganda' of any kind, I have no real disagreement. I'd personally be happy to proffer up my pennies to live in a place where every town square looks like Skopje on steroids- especially considering how little return I see on the rest of my tax-money. Maybe that's just me.


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## Implacable Birch (Oct 11, 2017)

they are all tacky blocks of garbage erected by white supremacist failsons in the 60's who were butthurt about school desegregation. 

replace every single one of them with a statue of Flavor Flav.


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## Morose_Obesity (Oct 11, 2017)

Let us rednecks keep our shit.
If we become too unhappy , well....we’ve all been handling guns since kindergarten and it’s not gonna be too pleasant. Some of my dumber cousins are praying for civil war.
 We want the General Lee and Daisy Duke back on tv, too. Not that stupid cunt Jessica Simpson either, the real Daisy Duke.
 Just watch your tranny shit, we’ll be off being cishet scum as God intended.


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## Doug_Hitzel (Oct 11, 2017)

Let them keep their participation trophies. 
The South should be proud of being a silver medal winner of the Civil War. 
Second place ain’t that bad.


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## Clownfish (Nov 18, 2017)

The key to fighting spergs in the left is one upmanship. They want to edit history. The proper response is destroy all history. They want to limit free speech, the proper response is ban all speech.


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## Caesare (Dec 5, 2017)

Implacable Birch said:


> they are all tacky blocks of garbage erected by white supremacist failsons in the 60's who were butthurt about school desegregation.
> 
> replace every single one of them with a statue of Flavor Flav.



You should feel extremely bad for everything that you just said. Eat a bullet, scumbag.


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## Slamerella (Dec 29, 2017)

I've seen more white people call for the removal of them, and like, maybe two or three black people. Doesn't help they are in a state that was confederate. Part of the reason that they don't want to see it gone is because, and I quote, "It's there to tell me why I'm here and able to do things here."

The other reason is because it's their taxpayer dollars that funds this. Not even kidding.


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## Crunchy Leaf (Dec 29, 2017)

I am reminded of what a number of individuals, many of whom were from the South, said after the 2016 presidential election..."You lost, get over it".

Anyway, I don't see a big issue with infantryman statues with list of names of people that died, the same thing every small town in the North has. But statues put up well after the end of the war clearly meant to glorify a lost cause, well, maybe not. And Confederate memorials in non-former-Confederacy states are just dumb.


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## Caesare (Jan 9, 2018)

Crunchy Leaf said:


> But statues put up well after the end of the war clearly meant to glorify a lost cause, well, maybe not.



They weren't though. And in America we honor the dead, especially those who performed military service.


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## Save the Loli (Jan 9, 2018)

It's important to remember why many of the monuments are there in the first place. Around the turn of the 20th century, the Southern Democrats (Redeemers) were threatened by the Populist Party, the Republican Party, and other parties which were relatively progressive on workers' rights (Southern workers had far less success than Northern workers in gaining labor rights) and even civil rights were threatening their dominance in many states. Around this time, a bunch of Civil War monuments were built (the majority were built between 1895 and 1915) which was to remind the common white man about their Southern heritage in order to maintain control over the South. Remember, even if the white man is poor, he knows that at least he isn't a black man since he can take pride in that Southern heritage--that's how the South worked even while the white man suffered immensely in the horrifying conditions of sharecropping or the cotton mills that were the main part of the Southern economy after the Civil War.

Seriously, go read up on the "New South" concept and how the post-Civil War South relied on a distorted historiography of the Civil War to maintain control over both white man and black man alike and build itself. This isn't some political bullshit, this is simple historical truth according to the very words of the people involved. Monuments were just one part of the New South system.

Now, I don't think these statues should be smashed by Antifa vandals or shit. A lot are in rural towns and are just memorials to Civil War dead--which we should remember the average Confederate soldier was a poor man fighting a rich man's war (that's why poor people in Appalachia and elsewhere revolted against the Confederacy). If some city doesn't want a Confederacy memorial, then they should democratically remove the memorial and should probably replace it with a more honest Civil War memorial.

The best way of dealing with these memorials is to put them in their proper historical context (which is both the Civil War they celebrate _and_ the New South which commissioned them) and having better history education. Sadly, history education is far too politicized in this country and the South has a particularly poor education system. If people knew their history better (everything I quoted above is based on what I learned in college, and it wasn't taught by some dumb SJW soyboy commie professor either, the guy had a Southern accent and was an ex-Marine) maybe they'd have more understanding of why things are.


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## Organic Fapcup (Jan 9, 2018)

The act of destroying a perfectly good piece of art is nothing but an act of vandalism and people making up justifications for it are idiots for validating the angry tantrums of overly-emotional adult children. If you absolutely have to get rid of a statue, sell it to a private collector or shove it in a museum. For the Confederate example in particular, the Civil War's been over for a long time, and nobody who wants the statues to be removed wants it for any sort of sense of patriotism so much as because they want to stick it to le Drumpf and le ebil southerners.


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## UnclePhil (Jan 10, 2018)

Nay. Leave historical monuments alone. Bulldozing history isn't going to magically make it go away. Tearing down monuments is pissing on the memories and legacies of real people who spilled blood on American soil. You may not agree with why they were fighting or care about them because they're 150 years removed from The Current Year, but they were people. Many of them didn't have a choice about fighting.


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## Andrew Neiman (Jan 15, 2018)

I like the Memento Park approach.  The meaning of something like a statue depends on its context.  You can retain the physical artifact for study or artistic appreciation while recontextualizing it in a way that eliminates the negative message it might otherwise convey.


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## Pop-Tart (Jan 16, 2018)

If you decide to take down Confederate monuments then you better take down all Cherokee monuments. After all several tribes owned slaves (especially the Cherokee) and they also disproportionately fought for the Confederacy out of spite to the Union.




The last Confederate unit of major note to surrender was a Cherokee Calvary unit. I know they got some hard shit that happened to them with the trail of tears and all, but fuck it they are losers right? So no 2nd place monument for them.



I mean by this same logic Sherman should not have statues as he really did hate blacks to an insane degree, and did everything he could to stop them from serving under him. Heck Grant even order all the Jews out of the areas he occupied in the west in General order 11 (a decision that would haunt him later in the presidency).





Hey also since Abraham Lincoln did see service during the Black Foot Wars (he never saw combat thou), should we take down his shit? After all he did help genocide the natives. Or what about the Buffalo Soldiers? I mean they helped commit genocide against those loser native tribes? Should they still get statues n shit?

But hey knowing this would require people to understand a vast conflict. Its hard to do that when your entire understanding of that is vague recollections from middle school and news stories by the same media that thought Lee and Washington had nothing in common at all (despite being distant relatives, from Virginia, military commanders, etc.) Don't forget this shit never just stops at the stuff you don't like.

I have had no where else to fit this in, so here yah go some extra random trivia.

This is a war that was seen to a degree as a rich man's war (akin to how Vietnam was seen) and many a Irish immigrant did everything they could to prevent being sent to fight and die. Heck there is a reason why there was the nation's largest race riot in 1863 because the Irish didn't want to be drafted, and lynched a lot of blacks, before being shot down by federal troops. Heck if you want a decent representation of this go watch Gangs of New York.


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## Red Hood (Jan 17, 2018)

I feel like the more they try to force the issue, the more angry and hostile people are going to get about it. No one cared about this before the middle of last year. It would be more cost effective to add plaques explaining the historical context of the monuments. 

Of course, people will ignore those like they typically ignore the statues in their day to day lives.


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## Joan Nyan (Jan 17, 2018)

There aren't enough monuments to the heroes of the South who valiantly fought to protect their homeland from the Northern imperialist pigs.


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## SeaPancake (Feb 2, 2018)

Removing the statues isn't going to remove the people they represent from history. The South's history books will likely more than make up for it. The statues were created to intimidate black folk, plain and simple. If they truly wanted to honor history, they would add a sign or some such that'd give context to who the person was and what they did.

Preservation of history is very important to me. If the statues MUST remain intact, then they should be shipped off to a museum. I really don't know how people can say "oh it's just the left erasing history" when they're more than willing to replace the statues with figures of the era who triumphed in the face of adversity that they faced in that region of the country at the time. If you're worried about those generals and such being generalized as "evil meanies" then maybe do the intelligent thing and offer courses that contain a nuanced approach to history. Oh but I forgot, that's too hard. Higher critical thinking skills is only a superpower that autistic people possess.


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## Organic Fapcup (Feb 2, 2018)

SeaPancake said:


> Removing the statues isn't going to remove the people they represent from history. The South's history books will likely more than make up for it. The statues were created to intimidate black folk, plain and simple. If they truly wanted to honor history, they would add a sign or some such that'd give context to who the person was and what they did.
> 
> Preservation of history is very important to me. If the statues MUST remain intact, then they should be shipped off to a museum. I really don't know how people can say "oh it's just the left erasing history" when they're more than willing to replace the statues with figures of the era who triumphed in the face of adversity that they faced in that region of the country at the time. If you're worried about those generals and such being generalized as "evil meanies" then maybe do the intelligent thing and offer courses that contain a nuanced approach to history. Oh but I forgot, that's too hard. Higher critical thinking skills is only a superpower that autistic people possess.



"Intimidating black folk". Truly. Maybe they were just made by a local artisan, who didn't see a need to put a plaque. Maybe it's just a decoration piece to look nice and it doesn't need a plaque. But nah yeah let's jump straight to racism.

And no, it's not the left erasing history. It's a bunch of amped-up idiots committing vandalism because it was en vogue to do so, and here you are, giving some form of validation to their angry tantrums.


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## mindlessobserver (Feb 3, 2018)

So there needs to be an explanation here that people need to understand about the Confederacy and the history that surrounds these monuments. And I am not talking about the History that is being peddled by ethnic studies communists. The actual history.

Slavery WAS the causal drive of the American Civil War. This is indisputable. The arguments over States rights could be boiled down to the States Right to keep and hold slaves. The war was largely inevitable. Southern culture of the time was manifestly different from Northern culture, but the two were kept in Union via the US Constitution and increasingly tenuous compromises that broke down over the 1850's. What worked to keep the Union could not be sustained in the face of new States being added (and thus shifting the power dynamics in Congress) and the awful Dredd Scott decision that forced Northern States to be complicit in the Slave industry against their will. People forget that the South was just as bad at attempting to force its culture down the throat of the Northern States as the Northern States were at forcing it on the south. There was intense bad blood on both sides as the 1860 secession crisis approached.

The details are largely meaningless at that point. Suffice to say the Northern States won, and the South was destroyed. And I do mean that in the literal sense. The major Cities of the South, Savannah, Atlanta, Richmond were destroyed outright, while the economic engines New Orleans, Mobile and Newport News were likewise destroyed in the ensuing economic collapse. The plantation system was the lifeblood of the southern economy and its destruction, caused not just by the freeing of slaves, but also by the British and French Empires creating their own sources of Cotton and Tobacco essentially ruined the south.

You need to remember that as a matter of Industry and Population the North had more power, but the South was the WEALTHIEST (on a per capita basis, counting slaves as property) region in the US. By 1865 that wealth was totally destroyed. Along with all the infrastructure and an entire generation of males. Gone in 4 years. The apocalypse had literally rained down upon the heads of the Southern people and nothing but ruin remained. The Lincoln assassination helped nobody either, as it handed the reintegration process over to the Northern Republicans who were interested in revenge, not reconciliation. Remember, the Northern States were just as mad at the South as the Southern States were going into the mess and the sheer bloody murder of the war only made the resentment of the North worse.

The Northern Republicans treated Race as a weapon right out the gate. The forced Black Senators and Congressmen on the South. Not out of any Altruistic aim, but as punishment. The Reconstructionists were not interested in racial harmony. Putting freed slaves in the Congressional delegations was considered a deliberate insult that was not lost on the Southerners who were already in considerable economic and social misery. Rubbing salt in the wounds essentially. Nascent political unions between poor whites and freed slaves were swiftly ended because of this it should be noted.

After 20 years of this, the Republican Party fell into disarray and could no longer truly sustain the occupation, and the old Southern Democrats reasserted control passing the black codes. These were not only about restoring the old racial order. They were also political retaliation against the freed blacks who were used (unwittingly) as pawns for petty revenge by the Republicans. It was not their fault but the damage was done. As far as the Southerners were concerned the Africans were the stooges of the people who had destroyed their society and then attempted to profit off of its misery. Denying them political power was seen not just as "putting them in their place" as it was insuring this injustice would never happen again.At least, that was how it was sold and after 20 years of post-apocalypse it sold well. 

And that is when the first Confederate Statues went up. They were not symbols of racial animus. They were symbols of the South reasserting itself and rebuilding out of the ashes of the war. They went up at the same time as Jim Crow went into effect because Jim Crow, like the Statues, were part of a backlash against the reconstructionists. As time went on, they would become pointed reminders of a terrible war. Not racial  animus. The idea that they were monuments to white supremacy would only come in the 21st century. About 10 years ago. Pushed by people who do not understand the history of it, nor particularly care.


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## Jaimas (Feb 3, 2018)

No. Leave the fucking things where they are. We _need_ them.

They're important parts of history. 

They're a permanent reminder of where we came from - and just as importantly, where we could end up again if we fuck up hard enough.


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## Slap47 (Feb 5, 2018)

mindlessobserver said:


> After 20 years of this, the Republican Party fell into disarray and could no longer truly sustain the occupation, and the old Southern Democrats reasserted control passing the black codes. These were not only about restoring the old racial order. They were also political retaliation against the freed blacks who were used (unwittingly) as pawns for petty revenge by the Republicans. It was not their fault but the damage was done. As far as the Southerners were concerned the Africans were the stooges of the people who had destroyed their society and then attempted to profit off of its misery. Denying them political power was seen not just as "putting them in their place" as it was insuring this injustice would never happen again.At least, that was how it was sold and after 20 years of post-apocalypse it sold well.
> 
> And that is when the first Confederate Statues went up. They were not symbols of racial animus. They were symbols of the South reasserting itself and rebuilding out of the ashes of the war. They went up at the same time as Jim Crow went into effect because Jim Crow, like the Statues, were part of a backlash against the reconstructionists. As time went on, they would become pointed reminders of a terrible war. Not racial  animus. The idea that they were monuments to white supremacy would only come in the 21st century. About 10 years ago. Pushed by people who do not understand the history of it, nor particularly care.



The black codes were the restoration of slave codes and the installation of black leaders was basically just the allowing of actual democratic elections to take place. You only really saw alot of black people in government in states with majority black populations. The radicals were true believers in reintegrating the south as a region that treated black people fairly. It's not a coincidence that a few of the leading radical republicans were single men with black maids. 

The north only gave up on reconstruction after the rehabilitation of the Democratic party. People stopped seeing them as the traitor party and the Republicans opted to focus entirely on economics rather than on the chaos that was the south that was going nowhere due to resistance. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compromise_of_1877

The building of the monuments happened after reconstruction as part of Jim Crow and the Magnolia myth. I personally think they should stay as a reminder of that negative history.


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## Jaimas (Feb 5, 2018)

Apoth42 said:


> The black codes were the restoration of slave codes and the installation of black leaders was basically just the allowing of actual democratic elections to take place. You only really saw alot of black people in government in states with majority black populations. The radicals were true believers in reintegrating the south as a region that treated black people fairly. It's not a coincidence that a few of the leading radical republicans were single men with black maids.
> 
> The north only gave up on reconstruction after the rehabilitation of the Democratic party. People stopped seeing them as the traitor party and the Republicans opted to focus entirely on economics rather than on the chaos that was the south that was going nowhere due to resistance.
> 
> ...



This. It's to remind us of how we got where we are today. 
Not by some miracle or quirk of fate, but meter by bloody meter, and here we fucking are. Our ancestors fucked up so we didn't have to.

This said, I _am_ for appropriating symbols of bad things and trying to turn them into something better. There's this one old dude I read about some time ago, who decided, a-la Randall of _Clerks _fame with the term "Porch Monkey," he was gonna take back the Confed flag and use it as a symbol of how far we've come as a nation. Suffice to say, the guy got fucking lambasted by the mainstream press; every time the subject's come up, even otherwise-rational people go froth-at-the-mouth because the usual leftist groups (that have since gone _fucking insane_) have riled them up by saying OMG THE KKK SUCH RACISM MUH NEO NAZIS. You can't even fucking _find_ this poor guy's campaign on most search engines now, that's how many fucking thousands of websites are devoted to shrieking about the Confederate Flag.

But you know what? Props to the guy. He was right, and still is. The Confed flag isn't like the fucking Nazi flag, where there's basically nothing but negative connotations associated with it; it's a stark reminder of why the war happened in the first place and why the South kept it around. All the people trying to get rid of it accomplishes is encouraging whitewashing of history and simply glossing over the unpleasant (ironically, done by the same people who brought us insisting that white people owe all black people monetary reparations - strange how _that_ works). 

Doing something positive like what he suggested, though? Not only does it maintain it, but it completely takes the wind out of the sails of those who would use it for hate by using it for something better. That's kind of a cool idea, and there's some merit to it at the end of the day.


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## Slap47 (Feb 5, 2018)

Confederate soldiers fought to defend their countries in the same way that Wehrmacht soldiers fought to keep communism away from their precious Berlin. 

Germany however has symbols for its identity outside of the Swastika. What exactly does the south have other than the stars and bars? They've got distinct food and culture but no symbols that aren't also shared with the rest of the Union. Texas has its Lone Star but the Texan revolution was also entirely about slavery.


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## AlephOne2Many (Feb 6, 2018)

Jaimas said:


> No. Leave the fucking things where they are. We _need_ them.
> 
> They're important parts of history.
> 
> They're a permanent reminder of where we came from - and just as importantly, where we could end up again if we fuck up hard enough.



This x1000.

If history disturbs or intimidates you in any way, that's actually a good thing.

You want to remember what happened in Massachusetts, Texas, Philadelphia, etc. which made your current life even possible.

We are a very easily arrogant, complacent species. Mind the misanthropic tone, deep thoughts while sick isn't my strong suit.


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## Mungo (Feb 18, 2018)

I know this is kind of a dead/dormant issue, but I've been reading a lot about it recently, and what I've read has changed my perspective on the problem.

I initially approached this issue believing that the majority of the monuments were put up immediately following the Civil War as mementos of its leaders/the "lost cause," and were thus built with the intent of honoring people and concepts that were seen as heroic at the time. For that reason, I was, at first, opposed pretty wholeheartedly to the removal of the monuments, but, since then, I've found evidence to suggest that most of the monuments were constructed in the late 1800s-early 1900s during times of racial strife with the sole purpose of intimidating local black populations. I would be ok with the monuments remaining up where they were erected if I was convinced that they were built to commemorate the War rather than to intimidate a populace, but what I've read about the monuments doesn't really support that idea.

That being said, I do not want the monuments to be destroyed, either by the local government or, heaven forbid, a group of angry protesters, nor do I want the monuments dating back to the Civil War/Reconstruction eras to be taken down, as they _were_ built to honor the "cause" and those who fought for it, but now I wouldn't be opposed to local governments taking the Jim Crow era monuments from where they were built and putting them on public display in museums, preferably with additional information available to recontextualize the purpose of the monuments.


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## gumboman (Feb 20, 2018)

lol, karma kisses western socities, there was a time during early Christianity in Europe when Christian were relentlessly  tearing down very symbol of Indo Europeans religion of their ancestors & now their progenies doing the same .

abrahmic cannibalization


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## LazarusOwenhart (Feb 24, 2018)

Historical revisionism is never ok. By all means change the plaque on the statue to give some context to it and explain why a statue was erected to somebody whose behavior is now considered abhorrent, even move the statue to a different place if it's positioning is genuinely insensitive in a changing world but don't ever pretend that people didn't once revere the subject of the statue. Rewriting history is a method favored by dictators and all it does is erase the lessons of the past and help society to make the same mistakes again.


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## AnOminous (Feb 24, 2018)

If people who actually live somewhere overwhelmingly don't want some object there, I don't see why they should be forced to pay taxes to maintain it.   If it has historical significance, keep it and put it somewhere else.  I'd say put it up for a ballot initiative.  If they want to replace it with something else, have a bond issue in the ballot initiative to pay for it.

Now if some vandals and terrorists who don't even live in the place don't like it, fuck those people.


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## Takayuki Yagami (Feb 25, 2018)

AnOminous said:


> If people who actually live somewhere overwhelmingly don't want some object there, I don't see why they should be forced to pay taxes to maintain it.   If it has historical significance, keep it and put it somewhere else.  I'd say put it up for a ballot initiative.  If they want to replace it with something else, have a bond issue in the ballot initiative to pay for it.
> 
> Now if some vandals and terrorists who don't even live in the place don't like it, fuck those people.


My understanding of the shitshow in New Orleans is that the residents didn’t actually want the monuments gone, but the mayor decided to act unilaterally to make a name for himself among the Democrats.


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## AnOminous (Feb 25, 2018)

Corypheus said:


> My understanding of the shitshow in New Orleans is that the residents didn’t actually want the monuments gone, but the mayor decided to act unilaterally to make a name for himself among the Democrats.



That's what I was indirectly referencing, although the situation is the same in a lot of places where these antifa terrorists and vandals showed up.


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## Trilby (Feb 25, 2018)

AnOminous said:


> That's what I was indirectly referencing, although the situation is the same in a lot of places where these antifa terrorists and vandals showed up.


Typical BS, really.


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## RichardMongler (Jul 8, 2018)

Pardon me for necroing an old thread, but this video is very relevant to this thread:


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## DNA_JACKED (Jul 9, 2018)

The monuments should stay. Attempting to erase history because it is uncomfortable is a horrible idea. those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.


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## ADN_VIII (Jul 10, 2018)

Don't destroy the monuments. Put them in museums and exhibits to teach those who come after, but don't put them on pedestals as some ideal to be strived for.


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## Mr. 0 (Jul 10, 2018)

ADN_VIII said:


> Don't destroy the monuments. Put them in museums and exhibits to teach those who come after, but don't put them on pedestals as some ideal to be strived for.


...They _would_ be safer from smartass vandals who either seek positive validation for the least amount of effort or are so ignorant as to what they do that they can't be convinced that they may possibly be wrong. 

Ideally anyway. That would also put them at the mercy of whoever runs those museums and that same type of asshole that wants them destroyed could end up running the museum and getting their way if they want it bad enough.


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## JustStopDude (Jul 10, 2018)

I don't understand celebrating a failed political state that only lasted six years and achieved no goals. 

It is also very annoying when northerns flood area to have violent protests. They do not have to pay for clean up. It's always people from Great Lakes area coming down to have fights.


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## wellthathappened (Jul 10, 2018)

Most of the monuments in question were a direct shitlord response to the Civil Rights act. The narrative is that these statues and monuments have existed for generations. They haven't. I don't even care about political correctness and things of that nature, but trying to tie this to history is lame. I also don't really care if they stay or go.


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## mindlessobserver (Jul 10, 2018)

wellthathappened said:


> Most of the monuments in question were a direct shitlord response to the Civil Rights act. The narrative is that these statues and monuments have existed for generations. They haven't. I don't even care about political correctness and things of that nature, but trying to tie this to history is lame. I also don't really care if they stay or go.




Some of them are. There were two waves of monuments. Most of the soldiers memorials and the super famous ones in Richmond VA predate the civil rights mess by 50-60 years.


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## wellthathappened (Jul 10, 2018)

mindlessobserver said:


> Some of them are. There were two waves of monuments. Most of the soldiers memorials and the super famous ones in Richmond VA predate the civil rights mess by 50-60 years.



I'm fine with the preservation of actual historical monuments. Shitlord statues just not much sympathy for.


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## Commander Keen (Jul 12, 2018)

wellthathappened said:


> I'm fine with the preservation of actual historical monuments. Shitlord statues just not much sympathy for.



What makes someone a shitlord? They fought on the losing side? They had different beliefs than you?

I'm no socialist, but I can still relate to the IRA and INLA and their efforts to defeat a foreign government ruling them. The songs and markers dedicated to Irish nationalists should stand, even if they thought Marx had good ideas. 

And if you throw out the slavery argument then we have a lot more monuments to tear down and a shitload more crap to rename than what we are currently doing.


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## Toucan (Jul 30, 2018)

Sometimes I like to think of the fall of Baghdad and those people who tore down the statue of Saddam and then I like to think of Dave Rubin appearing in the crowd and saying "Hey look you guys you shouldn't tear down his statue just because you dont like the guy. If you want to register your protest you should unveil a plaque across the way that states how you politely disagree with him. That is how we do things in the free marketplace of ideas" Cue stoning.

I also think that if Americans were to erect a statue of someone like John Brown across the way from a confederate statue many of the people who support the maintaining of the confederate statue would go apeshit and demand the other be torn down.

Ultimately its just a symbol. If the symbol becomes representative of evil then it should be destroyed and/or replaced. But you should bare in mind that those statues didnt appear by themselves. People wanted them to be there because they believe in what they represent. If you destroy the statue you will not destroy the sentiment that put it there.


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## millais (Jul 31, 2018)

Toucan said:


> Sometimes I like to think of the fall of Baghdad and those people who tore down the statue of Saddam and then I like to think of Dave Rubin appearing in the crowd and saying "Hey look you guys you shouldn't tear down his statue just because you dont like the guy. If you want to register your protest you should unveil a plaque across the way that states how you politely disagree with him. That is how we do things in the free marketplace of ideas" Cue stoning.
> 
> I also think that if Americans were to erect a statue of someone like John Brown across the way from a confederate statue many of the people who support the maintaining of the confederate statue would go apeshit and demand the other be torn down.
> 
> Ultimately its just a symbol. If the symbol becomes representative of evil then it should be destroyed and/or replaced. But you should bare in mind that those statues didnt appear by themselves. People wanted them to be there because they believe in what they represent. If you destroy the statue you will not destroy the sentiment that put it there.


The destruction of the Saddam Hussein statue in Baghdad was not a spontaneous event. It was a calculated photo-op. The statue was pulled down by an American vehicle crew, and the large onlooking crowd was photoshopped in after the fact.


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## Boss Bass (Aug 1, 2018)

Pulling down monuments is a really great way to continue the narrative that the North had nothing to do with slavery. “Who me? Oh no, I was one step up the supply chain and profited richly. But I’m totally innocent!”


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## Pop-Tart (Aug 2, 2018)

Remember when this was the pressing issue that everyone was saying "We need to have a conversation about right here and now you Nazi fucks." , acting like these old statues the most important issue in current America? Where the only correct action was the predetermined answer to destroy or remove the statues?

When most people never even notice them or care about some random statue in the middle of town?

How easy the 24 hour news cycle makes everyone forget their righteous indigation.


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## This+ (Aug 6, 2018)

Ones that were made just to spite black people, to "put 'em back in their place," and to intimidate them, absolutely. If Britain won the Revolutionary War and constructed a statue of Benedict Arnold or other loyalists in Charlottesville just for the purpose of putting the colonists back in their place, I think many Americans would want those taken down. 

So really, it's just a matter of perspective. If you're white and you consider yourself a true Southerner while referring to the Civil War as "A War of Northern Aggression," you'd obviously want them to be left alone. If you're a black American and/or understand the implications of racial oppression in the United States, you'd likely want them gone. Obviously it won't be as black and white as I wrote it, but that's just how it goes. To me, the "we need to preserve historical monuments because we'll all forget about the past!" is just a meme. Germany did a rather extreme job of censoring Nazi symbols and what have you, but they all know how much devastation the Nazis brought on Europe. They don't need statues of Himmler, Rommel, and/or Manstein to remind themselves of their past during that time.


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## Save the Loli (Aug 6, 2018)

This+ said:


> Ones that were made just to spite black people, to "put 'em back in their place," and to intimidate them, absolutely. If Britain won the Revolutionary War and constructed a statue of Benedict Arnold or other loyalists in Charlottesville just for the purpose of putting the colonists back in their place, I think many Americans would want those taken down.



The majority of them were made to put poor white people back in their place and remind them that they should be voting Democrat and not for Republicans/Populists/Progressives, since heroes like Robert E. Lee, Jeff Davis, and the rest of them would totally have been down with the ideology of turn of the 20th century Southern Democrats.

Except for the ones they put up during the Civil Rights era of course, those were definitely made to tell black people to get back in line.


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## Krokodil Overdose (Aug 15, 2018)

This+ said:


> Ones that were made just to spite black people, to "put 'em back in their place," and to intimidate them, absolutely.



So what are you going to do, measure the statues' thetan levels? Dissect a chicken underneath them? Maybe cast their horoscopes? Because if you're trying to determine "intent" from a chunk of stone without resorting to divination, I have some bad news for you.



This+ said:


> So really, it's just a matter of perspective. If you're white and you consider yourself a true Southerner while referring to the Civil War as "A War of Northern Aggression," you'd obviously want them to be left alone. If you're a black American and/or understand the implications of racial oppression in the United States, you'd likely want them gone.



What if you're a white Northerner with a Union Army predigree who can't help but notice how his ancestors' sacrifices have been thrown down the memory hole in favor or racialized rent-seeking? If we're assuming that all this stuff is heritable, aren't we the ones who should be deciding, since we're the ones who actually fought and won that war?


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## This+ (Aug 15, 2018)

Krokodil Overdose said:


> So what are you going to do, measure the statues' thetan levels? Dissect a chicken underneath them? Maybe cast their horoscopes? Because if you're trying to determine "intent" from a chunk of stone without resorting to divination, I have some bad news for you.



Back to my example you failed to include in that quote, we should then keep that Benedict Arnold statue up in Richmond, as it's impossible to determine intent from a chunk of stone. 



Krokodil Overdose said:


> What if you're a white Northerner with a Union Army predigree who can't help but notice how his ancestors' sacrifices have been thrown down the memory hole in favor or racialized rent-seeking? If we're assuming that all this stuff is heritable, aren't we the ones who should be deciding, since we're the ones who actually fought and won that war?



I don't understand that portion of your post, I'm just saying what two of the many American demagogues might think about the removal of Confederate statues.


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## Joan Nyan (Aug 15, 2018)

This+ said:


> Back to my example you failed to include in that quote, we should then keep that Benedict Arnold statue up in Richmond, as it's impossible to determine intent from a chunk of stone.


Benedict Arnold was a hero and we should have statues to him though.


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## Pinup Paracelsus (Aug 19, 2018)

I think we should just move them into historical museums. We can teach future generations and not destroy the hard work of talented artists.


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## Syaoran Li (Aug 20, 2018)

As a self-described Civil War sperg, I thought I'd weigh in on the issue.

Despite the fact that my ancestors fought for the North during the Civil War, I respect the common soldiers who made sacrifices on both sides, as well as certain generals both Northern generals such as Ulysses S. Grant and Confederate generals such as Robert E. Lee, the only Confederate leader to actually believe in the concept of States' Rights and not just use it as a cover to justify slavery.

Now, specific statues erected during the 1950's and 1960's to spite the Civil Rights Movement? Okay, I can see maybe getting rid of those very specific statues, but even then I am conflicted.

However, the majority of Confederate monuments were built in the 1900's, 1910's, and 1920's as a means to guilt poor whites in the South to vote Democrat, as others in this thread have already mentioned.

Removing Confederate memorials and symbols from actual Civil War battlefield sites and cemeteries? That actually is erasing history and I am firmly opposed to that. The worst part is that a lot of leftists and SJW's are proposing just that (and in some cases, it has happened. You can no longer display Confederate imagery at Gettysburg nor buy Confederate-related souvenirs at their gift shop) and that angers me as a historian, particularly as a Civil War history enthusiast.

It also angers me that a lot of the SJW's and Antifa types who want to remove Confederate memorials and ban the Confederate Flag are usually support Communism, Anarcho-Communism, or idealize the Soviet Union in the same way that a lot of Southern conservatives idealize the Confederacy.

As bad as the Confederacy may have been in the Left's perspective, the Soviet Union was a whole lot worse in terms of overall human rights abuses. That's not even taking the atrocities of Maoist China, North Korea, Pol Pot, and other Communist states into account.

Yeah, slavery was bad. But so was the Gulag and the atrocities committed during the Bolshevik Revolution, to say nothing of other crimes committed by Lenin and Stalin.

Don't be hypocrites. If you are going to ban the Confederate Flag and vandalize Confederate monuments because of slavery, you should also ban the Hammer and Sickle along with the Red and Black Anarcho-Communist flag and other Soviet or Communist imagery for their crimes as well.

Of course, I think you shouldn't ban any symbols at all or vandalize historical monuments to push your political agenda. I believe in freedom of speech and freedom of expression, regardless of how asinine the stance may be.

I don't support banning Confederate imagery. I don't even support banning Nazi or Soviet imagery, and while I may have mixed opinions on the Confederacy, I utterly hate Nazis and Communists. Despite the groaning of SJW's and Antifa thugs, the First Amendment still exists in this country.

I don't want America to turn into a self-hating SJW shithole like Germany or Sweden.


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## jebsurge (Aug 22, 2018)

Confederates are technically considered American Veterans, so there's that.


> "(e) For the purpose of this section,
> and
> section 433, the term
> 'veteran' includes a
> ...


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## Replicant Sasquatch (Aug 22, 2018)

Commander Keen said:


> What makes someone a shitlord?



Erecting monuments to a war your side lost a hundred years ago because you're assmad about niggers getting to vote in your state is a good qualifier.

Personally, I say keep the TRUE and HONEST monuments. I'm indifferent to the 60s ones but taking those down feels like it's coming from the same kind of pettiness which put them up.  Historical revisionism is for chumps.

It may just be my Yankee blood but I find the people who lionize the Confederacy either forget or ignore the fact the South seceded because they wanted to preserve slavery.  This isn't librul propaganda, half those states outright fucking said so in their declarations of secession.  I can't find myself sympathizing with their fight for liberties when those "liberties" mostly involved owning other human beings.  This doesn't make them bad guys because the war itself was more complicated than that, but it makes this Rebel Spirit shit pretty suspect.


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## Dolphin Lundgren (Aug 22, 2018)

I think the ones at battle grounds should stay. This is different but still kind of the same but a school that I went to is named after a Confederate man and a  year back some teacher tried to get the name changed. The school kept the name.


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## The Telomerase Truth (Aug 22, 2018)

Nay because it's a waste of time and money. There are far more important things to worry about than some old monuments and some of those things actually involve racism happening today and not years ago.

Taking the monuments down isn't going to change the past. Hate what they represent? Fine. Instead of taking them down you should use them for your benefit. Use them to educate your children or grandchildren on racism. They are historical monuments so use them for history lessons. 

In my opinion, the only reason they should ever be removed is for preservation reasons.


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## Commander Keen (Aug 22, 2018)

Replicant Sasquatch said:


> Erecting monuments to a war your side lost a hundred years ago because you're assmad about niggers getting to vote in your state is a good qualifier.
> 
> Personally, I say keep the TRUE and HONEST monuments. I'm indifferent to the 60s ones but taking those down feels like it's coming from the same kind of pettiness which put them up.  Historical revisionism is for chumps.
> 
> It may just be my Yankee blood but I find the people who lionize the Confederacy either forget or ignore the fact the South seceded because they wanted to preserve slavery.  This isn't librul propaganda, half those states outright fucking said so in their declarations of secession.  I can't find myself sympathizing with their fight for liberties when those "liberties" mostly involved owning other human beings.  This doesn't make them bad guys because the war itself was more complicated than that, but it makes this Rebel Spirit shit pretty suspect.



Did you even read the rest of my post? The Provos assassinated people and were deemed a terrorist organization, but they still keep up the markers for their heroes. The IRA is outlawed in Ireland but you can't throw a stone without hitting a mural dedicated to some mick or another who died in a hunger strike or got shot down by the black and tans and their political arm, Sinn Fein, has seats in government.

So is "erecting monuments to a dude who was too stupid to eat food while in jail for gun crimes because you're assmad about your nation's capitol being London" ok?

But I do despise double standards and hypocrisy, so if we're tearing down monuments to great men because they fought on a losing side because slavery...we need to tear down a lot more and rename a lot more shit. Maybe we can start by getting some white-out and removing John Hancock off the Declaration of Independence.


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## JustStopDude (Aug 22, 2018)

This is local issue that should be decided by community.


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## Replicant Sasquatch (Aug 22, 2018)

Commander Keen said:


> Did you even read the rest of my post?



Did you even read mine?  You asked what counts as "shitlordery".  I pointed out a wave of dumb national pride in a war you lost because you're outraged at equal rights is a good metric.  There's a difference between respecting freedom fighters and glorifying a time when niggers were kept in their place.  The Confederates weren't the former, and their vocal descendants pretend otherwise as they might really only care about the latter.


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## Commander Keen (Aug 22, 2018)

Replicant Sasquatch said:


> Did you even read mine?  You asked what counts as "shitlordery".  I pointed out a wave of dumb national pride in a war you lost because you're outraged at equal rights is a good metric.  There's a difference between respecting freedom fighters and glorifying a time when niggers were kept in their place.  The Confederates weren't the former, and their vocal descendants pretend otherwise as they might really only care about the latter.



I’ve never lost a war because I’ve never fought a war, but I’m glad I now know who to turn to when I need clarification on what is just when it comes to means. I’ll inform parliament.


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## Mr. 0 (Aug 23, 2018)

JustStopDude said:


> This is local issue that should be decided by community.


The community might get drowned out by the easily offended, who tend to be the loudest and are indulged just to shut them up.


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## Corbin Dallas Multipass (Aug 23, 2018)

Replicant Sasquatch said:


> Did you even read mine?  You asked what counts as "shitlordery".  I pointed out a wave of dumb national pride in a war you lost because you're outraged at equal rights is a good metric.  There's a difference between respecting freedom fighters and glorifying a time when niggers were kept in their place.  The Confederates weren't the former, and their vocal descendants pretend otherwise as they might really only care about the latter.


So... you believe everyone in the confederate south owned slaves? Do you believe the black soldiers in the confederate army were fighting to have black people kept in their place?  Do you believe the south africans who want to kick out the white farmers are doing so because they want whitey to stay in his place, or do you think maybe there might be more to it?

Local pride is a thing. People defend their way of life.  Why is the american civil war the only time in history one side was right and one side was wrong?  Do you think all the southerners were just treated fairly after the war?

I'm not saying all this to say their reasoning was correct, but it's way more complicated than "Whitey>blackey" because you're fooling yourself if you don't think the north wanted that too.


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## Krokodil Overdose (Aug 23, 2018)

If we're going to talk about the symbolism of things, how about the symbolism implicit in the Maoist desecration of cultural artifacts for the purpose of publicly humiliating and stigmatizing disfavored groups?


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## Replicant Sasquatch (Aug 23, 2018)

Corbin Dallas Multipass said:


> So... you believe everyone in the confederate south owned slaves? Do you believe the black soldiers in the confederate army were fighting to have black people kept in their place?  Do you believe the south africans who want to kick out the white farmers are doing so because they want whitey to stay in his place, or do you think maybe there might be more to it?
> 
> Local pride is a thing. People defend their way of life.  Why is the american civil war the only time in history one side was right and one side was wrong?  Do you think all the southerners were just treated fairly after the war?
> 
> I'm not saying all this to say their reasoning was correct, but it's way more complicated than "Whitey>blackey" because you're fooling yourself if you don't think the north wanted that too.



No, not everyone owned slaves in the South.  But the people who did own slaves were responsible for the secession and the resulting attacks on Union army bases which started the war.  Eradicating slavery was not the end goal of the war but preserving it absolutely was the main reason for it.  I'm not going to extend sympathy for a wannabe nation which quite explicitly and without shame founded itself on the belief owning humans as chattel laborers was a God-given right.  And you're pretty foolish yourself if you think the majority of white Southerners had any interest or even indifference towards abolishing slavery.

I can respect the men who fought for the Confederacy while still acknowledging their chosen regime was built on preserving an immoral institution.  The Southern Freedom Fighter is a meme pushed by apologists and self-hating Yankee teenagers.


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## JustStopDude (Aug 23, 2018)

Mr. 0 said:


> The community might get drowned out by the easily offended, who tend to be the loudest and are indulged just to shut them up.



The people showing up for riots and shit are not locals.


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## Toucan (Aug 24, 2018)

I thought this was funny


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## Save the Loli (Aug 24, 2018)

Corbin Dallas Multipass said:


> So... you believe everyone in the confederate south owned slaves? Do you believe the black soldiers in the confederate army were fighting to have black people kept in their place?  Do you believe the south africans who want to kick out the white farmers are doing so because they want whitey to stay in his place, or do you think maybe there might be more to it?



You know West Virginia, which revolted from Virginia because they opposed secession? Or East Tennessee (which gave the US Andrew Johnson, probably our worst president ever), which tried to secede from the CSA but were violently occupied by the Union? The economy there was based on growing grains so they could feed the vast plantations of slaves in Virginia and the Carolinas so they could breed slaves.

Also, black soldiers in the Confederate Army were an underutilized thing. Brazil did it way better against Paraguay in the same timeframe (see the War of the Triple Alliance).

In the end, the Civil War was a rich man's war, and that's why many Southerners got fed up with it and revolted against the CSA. The rich Southerners understood it, so constructed the narrative of the "Lost Cause" and built the "New South" in response.



Toucan said:


> I thought this was funny



It's true, but consider that a bunch of Indian leaders get monuments and places named after them, so maybe it's all in the American tradition.


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## The Nothingness (Jul 12, 2020)

Resurrecting this dead thread because of recent events.

One question that I've pondered is do other countries that have had civil wars in their past acknowledge them in some degree either with a monument or historical spot that is part of the country's tour guide? When you look at this list there has been a fuckton throughout world history and I'm curious to what countries cover everything about themselves while others would ignore certain parts to paint a narrative.


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## Lemmingwise (Jul 12, 2020)

The Nothingness said:


> Resurrecting this dead thread because of recent events.
> 
> One question that I've pondered is do other countries that have had civil wars in their past acknowledge them in some degree either with a monument or historical spot that is part of the country's tour guide? When you look at this list there has been a fuckton throughout world history and I'm curious to what countries cover everything about themselves while others would ignore certain parts to paint a narrative.


Across Europe statues and monuments are being protested against by assortments of leftists. They generally have little knowledge of the history. Not unfrequently they want to remove statues from people that fought to liberate slaves. From their actions one can surmise that it just is a general attack on statues/history/traditionalism and that their restraint in not yet targetting every statue seems to be a slow frog building strategy, or salami technique.


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## Sicklick (Jul 28, 2020)

It's not just Confederate monuents they're removing, it's even monuments of random historical leaders as well. Here's what these anti-Confederate flag protesters have been up to recently. 














































And there's plenty more videos where that came from.


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## Johan Schmidt (Jul 29, 2020)

I would like to remove niggers.


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## Sicklick (Jul 30, 2020)

Trump supporters let this shit happen to them. They are weak.





But when they go against the fash, they get smashed.



Spoiler


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## The Bovinian Derivative (Jul 30, 2020)

Removing a piece of history is almost (there are always extreme cases) never a good thing. Even if you don't like it it's a reminder how things were and whether or not you'd wish things were like that again or thank god we live in a different world now.


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## 💗Freddie Freaker💗 (Jul 31, 2020)

Important historical figures were more often than not sociopaths responsible for the suffering of many. If we destroyed everything that honors people who have done hurtful things, we would have to destroy civilization itself. We must accept history for the shitshow that it is and move on.

Martin Luther King? He watched a rape happen and encouraged the rapist to keep going. Better remove every mention of him from public spaces! Kwanzaa? The creator was a rapist. Malcolm X? Racist antisemitic terrorist. The Black Panthers? Violent criminals. If it's okay to destroy confederate history, it should also be okay to destroy African American history. Both could be considered "problematic".



			
				The Black Panthers' minister of information Eldridge Cleaver said:
			
		

> When I considered myself ready enough, I crossed the tracks and sought out white prey. I did this consciously, deliberately, willfully, methodically – though looking back I see that I was in a frantic, wild and completely abandoned frame of mind. Rape was an insurrectionary act. It delighted me that I was defying and trampling upon the white man's law, upon his system of values, and that I was defiling his women...I felt I was getting revenge. From the site of the act of rape, consternation spread outwardly in concentric circles. I wanted to send waves of consternation throughout the white race.




If a community wants to replace a statue with something else, they should do it calmly and legally. Letting anarchists wreck them sends the wrong message and costs lives.


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## mindlessobserver (Aug 14, 2020)

Fangsofjeff said:


> Important historical figures were more often than not sociopaths responsible for the suffering of many. If we destroyed everything that honors people who have done hurtful things, we would have to destroy civilization itself. We must accept history for the shitshow that it is and move on.
> 
> Martin Luther King? He watched a rape happen and encouraged the rapist to keep going. Better remove every mention of him from public spaces! Kwanzaa? The creator was a rapist. Malcolm X? Racist antisemitic terrorist. The Black Panthers? Violent criminals. If it's okay to destroy confederate history, it should also be okay to destroy African American history. Both could be considered "problematic".
> 
> ...



This. Put it to a vote. If most people agree take them down. If they dont leave them up. That is how we handle things in a civilized republic.


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## Terrorist (Aug 16, 2020)

Erect more of them. Because fuck you, that's why!


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## DeadFish (Aug 16, 2020)

Time destroys all. It would be cheaper and easier just stop funding needed to maintain the statues and let nature destroy them. No one gets brained that way.


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## Mrs Paul (Aug 23, 2020)

The Bovinian Derivative said:


> Removing a piece of history is almost (there are always extreme cases) never a good thing. Even if you don't like it it's a reminder how things were and whether or not you'd wish things were like that again or thank god we live in a different world now.



Pullind down a statue down doesn't necessarily mean you're "removing a piece of history".  After the fall of communism in the East, we saw on the news all the footage of people pulling down statues of Stalin and Lenin and othe tyrants.  Should they have been left up?  Of course not.  Although if there are areas that do, people over here should keep their mouths shut about that, at least the ones who support leaving the CSA ones up.  

Monuments aren't necessarily "history".  And sometimes the reason for them is why they should be taken down.  A lot of these statues weren't put up to "celebrate local pride", but to push the movement of segregation:

-How the US Got So Many Confederate Monuments
-Confederate Statues Were Built To Further A 'White Supremacist Future'
-I've studied the history of Confederate memorials. Here's what to do about them.

And even then, why would you want your "local pride" to be based on such a disgusting event?  It's like the Japanese who continue to deny their war crimes from WWII.  

Do you really want to be associated with idiots like these?


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## Chad Nasty (Aug 23, 2020)

Remove them and replace them with two white men getting fisted while the contemptuous black male holds their leashes


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## 737 MAX Stan Account (Aug 23, 2020)

No, history is to be remembered and learned from,  regardless of how "uncomfortable" it makes you feel.


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## Mrs Paul (Aug 23, 2020)

737 MAX Stan Account said:


> No, history is to be remembered and learned from,  regardless of how "uncomfortable" it makes you feel.



That's what books and museums are for though -- monuments are generally not erected for teaching but for celebrating or honoring.  There's a difference.  

If they were talking about removing this from school curiculums, or a musuem exhibit, I'd be right behind you.  Some memorial to honor some asshat?  Fuck that.


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## 737 MAX Stan Account (Aug 23, 2020)

Mrs Paul said:


> That's what books and museums are for though -- monuments are generally not erected for teaching but for celebrating or honoring.  There's a difference.
> 
> If they were talking about removing this from school curiculums, or a musuem exhibit, I'd be right behind you.  Some memorial to honor some asshat?  Fuck that.


Just remember 


Spoiler


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## Jon Conroy (Aug 28, 2020)

Yay, but move them to a museum. When you start removing history from the public you remove the reasons the history was made. It's easier to deny if it simply didn't have any records.


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## DukeOfNimonia (Sep 1, 2020)

Absolutego said:


> According to this, he's bathed in a bunch of preservatives every other year, and part of his skin is plastic at this point. His eyelashes are also fake. By now he's the human equivalent of a formaldehyde pig crossed with a doll.



In other words, a Kardashian.  

I know, I know; I'm an asshole.


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## 💗Freddie Freaker💗 (Jan 31, 2021)

AnOminous said:


> I'd go to see it.  It would be pretty cool.  How many dead bodies are on display publicly?
> 
> It's kind of weird to do that, but I'd go gawk.


You might like European ossuaries.


Spoiler






Yes, those are real bones.

There's also a bunch of mummies around the world you can go visit.


			https://travel.earth/11-famous-mummies-you-can-still-see/
		









						A Guide on Where to See the Mummies of Yamagata
					

Worship the dead at these temples featuring Japan’s self-mummified monks.




					travel.gaijinpot.com
				






TheAmazingAxolotl said:


> Yes and no.
> 
> Certain monuments honour those that shouldn't be honoured and certain monuments honour both those that deserve it and those that do not. A statue of Nathan Bedford Forrest, for example, shouldn't stand in a state building. A statue commemorating the common soldier of the Confederacy, however, has more of a right.


That argument is so strange to me. Most people who have statues don't really deserve it-- things people consider heroic are rarely achieved without resorting to bad behavior. When has leading a nation ever been about justice, peace or honesty? When has war not involved shedding the blood of innocents? In my opinion the worth of a statue should be based on artistic merit, not who or what it's actually supposed to represent. There's plenty of gorgeous temples, tombs and statues built to honor tyrants out there.

Personally I'm fine with destroying some mass produced statues and moving controversial statues out of public spaces for the sake of keeping people calm, but actually destroying works of art is going overboard.


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## TFT-A9 (Jan 31, 2021)

Nay, for the same reason you don't fuck with a headstone on a grave.


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## Jazz never died! (Jan 31, 2021)

Nay but this does nothing for the destruction of american history for the vandals who want to rewrite it and are winning.


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## Daughter of Cernunnos (Jan 31, 2021)

Yah because statues of humans should not exist. That is fatal and disgusting hubris. Only statues of Gods, demigods and mythical creatures should exist.


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## DoctorJimmyRay (Jan 31, 2021)

Move them all to museums and replace them with statues of random Union soldiers who had to put their lives on hold because a bunch of assholes didn't want to give up their slaves. The glorification of traitors should never have been allowed to happen in the first place. Just one more thing America can thank that treacherous swine Johnson for.


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## Caddchef (Jan 31, 2021)

History should be contextualised not censored.


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## RMQualtrough (Jan 31, 2021)

Statues which exist for the purpose of idolizing, should go. Ones which exist for historical purpose must remain.


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## Jesus Goldstein (Jan 31, 2021)

Destroy them all - the plebs must never think that secession is a viable option. Globohomo uber alles.


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## ToroidalBoat (Jan 31, 2021)

Keep them up to preserve history and learn from it. Erasing history is pretty 1984-esque.


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## L50LasPak (Jan 31, 2021)

I made a joke suggestion in chat that if a community wants to knock down a Confederate statue that we should simply remove it and build a giant chessboard to put them all on in some public park. I was thinking about it afterwards and realized that would actually be pretty sweet and kind of wish there was some way to get this taken seriously as a real suggestion. Knowing this government though, I doubt that it would ever happen.

At least we'll always have that statue of RoboCop in Detroit.


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## The Nothingness (Dec 13, 2022)

Necroing this thread because what a previous post said has come true. They didn't just stop at the removing the statues.


> City Digs Up Remains Of Confederate General After Taking Down Statue
> By  Leif Le Mahieu
> •
> Dec 13, 2022   DailyWire.com
> ...


https://www.dailywire.com/news/city-digs-up-remains-of-confederate-general-after-taking-down-statue


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## Rome's rightful successor (Dec 14, 2022)

The Nothingness said:


> Necroing this thread because what a previous post said has come true. They didn't just stop at the removing the statues.
> 
> https://www.dailywire.com/news/city-digs-up-remains-of-confederate-general-after-taking-down-statue







__





						Loading…
					





					boards.4chan.org
				







__





						Loading…
					





					archive.ph
				



Info taken from a 4chan thread



The excavation was lead by a liberal activist douchebag named Patrick Lindsey.












This is his wife's Instagram https://www.instagram.com/p/CB4hX72Aifz/?hl=en
And this might be his house though I have no links to it.



and this is where he might work.


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## The Grognard (Dec 15, 2022)

That's the sort of shit that I expected to happen when I first heard about this shit beginning as a consequence of Trump's electoral success. This is the exact sort of shit that will end up resulting in real problems down the road as a response to this completely unnecessary reopening of old wounds and being smug about desecrating ancestral graves out of pure spite.


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## Naes (Dec 15, 2022)

Rome's rightful successor said:


> __
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Wonder if he caved like a little bitch in Prison?  He sure didn't do the full 27 months


			https://www.nbc12.com/2021/02/22/former-construction-management-executive-sentenced-prison-accounting-scheme/
		

A: https://archive.ph/C1hdl

All of his info is easy to find,   I just hate these smug assholes


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## Ughubughughughughughghlug (Dec 15, 2022)

My view on monuments is that it really has nothing to do with the Confederacy at all. It's an obvious push to bulldoze any old White American culture, as evidenced by the fact that they immediately moved on to attacking Founding Fathers, Unionists, and even abolitionists too. So I'm opposed to taking down the monuments on the grounds that it's a surrender to people that I hate and want exterminated.

And as far as the Civil War in general goes, few people actually give a shit about it on either side. People look at either side and see whatever they want to see in it. That's why people get so stirred up over this shit while at the same time having the most retarded takes on it. Libertarians look at the Confederacy and imagine some night watchman state utopia fighting over taxes and government spending. Alt-Right faggots look at it and imagine some White nationalist state (because nothing is more White nationalist than importing millions of foreign heathens to take the jobs of your own people). Progressive faggots look at the Union and see a progressive utopia, even though the Union was more proto-fascist than the Confederacy was. And normalfaggots just jerk off the Union because they were indoctrinated to.

When an ideologue looks at one of those statues, they see a statue to themselves.

I'd prefer it if instead of taking down monuments, they built more counter-monuments, particularly monuments to Southern Unionists and monuments depicting the suffering of war.


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## TheSockiestSock (Dec 15, 2022)

Rebel government
Lost
Destroy their memorials


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## TheSockiestSock (Dec 15, 2022)

AnOminous said:


> If this theory is correct, then shouldn't we also take down all monuments to Sherman?  His activities during the Civil War were arguably war crimes even if he was on the winning side.


Not a war crime if it is against animals.


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## Ughubughughughughughghlug (Dec 15, 2022)

Corbin Dallas Multipass said:


> So... you believe everyone in the confederate south owned slaves? Do you believe the black soldiers in the confederate army were fighting to have black people kept in their place?


Which Black soldiers in the Confederate Army? The slaves that were used for noncombatant roles? The one colored militia in Louisiana that flipped sides? The imaginary ones?


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## Kenya Jones (Dec 15, 2022)

Hot take but I think Confederate memorials should be moved to other places, there shouldn't be a half a million statues of Lee or Jackson or Davis in the U.S.. Have maybe one or two in the town they were born/grew up and let it be that. At the very least they should be redone so they are less prominent or they get plaques on how terrible they were, not hard, seeing as most were slave owners. 

Also something that gets looked over too much is street names. Most of these happen to be in inner cities with large black populations. Imagine how that is growing up, in the whitest neighborhood in the country, and you live near the corner of Malcolm X and Louis Farrakhan blvd., that's gonna fuck you up mentally at the very least slightly. 

And seeing that both the street names and the statues happened AFTER the civil war, it just doesn't seem as historical as some make them out to be.





That one Nathan Bedford Forrest statue can stay.


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## Ughubughughughughughghlug (Dec 15, 2022)

For the discussion of intention, the vast majority of monuments went up around 1900-1940, and mostly loaded up 1910-1930. The monuments people care about were mostly privately funded by Sons of Confederate Veterans and United Daughters of Confederacy and installed on courthouse grounds. A second small boom took place during Civil Rights, and then a small one in the 1990s.

You can give sensible benevolent and malicious explanations to each of those booms. In the first one, it took place around the same time that the Second Klan was at its height, Wilson was in office as the first Southern President since the War, and the progressive mindset of the Union generation was being replaced with a spirit of reapproachment, proto-fascist/actual fascist ideology, and romanticizing of the South (all of which go together) in the North (as seen in things like Gone With the Wind and Aunt Jemima).

However, that was also the time when the War generation was dying out and their children were entering middle age. People often make these idiotic arguments that the fact they went up so late instead of right after would make the monuments insincere, even though it's the children who feel the need to commemorate. (People don't, especially under occupation, go around building monuments to themselves.)

Similarly, the Civil Rights boom took place during Civil Rights, but also around the centennial of the War. I assume the 90s boom was due to culture war  (which would ironically make them the most political monuments), maybe also LA Riots specifically.


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## Wesley Willis (Dec 16, 2022)

After they get done removing all the Confederate statues, can they please cancel Columbus for the sake of historical accuracy? Even Spain has a viking day...




			https://www.businessinsider.com/every-year-modern-day-vikings-descend-on-spain-heres-what-it-looks-like-2015-8#though-horned-helmets-may-not-be-historically-accurate-viking-attire-is-required-to-participate-in-the-festival-3


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## Sargon's wife's son (Dec 16, 2022)

Anyone who attempts to remove a Confederate Monument should face a firing squad people who destroy historical monuments are no better than the people who destroyed Priceless works of art
I feel the same way people just destroying Soviet monuments move them into Museum this still works of art
n


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