re: Judge rules against opponents of removing Confederate memorials ...

You don't honestly believe in destroying it, do you?

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Except for the great Republic of Texas!

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No, you cannot. Despite your ideas to the contrary, you're bound by the same circumstances that apply to the rest of the post civil war states.

There's even a US Supreme Court ruling that specifically addresses Texas and the answer was a resounding NO.

Texas v. White

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i.e., what the South was to that seminal moment was based on slave labor.

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Only small parts of it. Slave-owning plantation owners were today's version of Wall Street 'fat cats'.

The fact remains that the vast, vast majority of Confederate soldiers and citizens were yeomen or sharecroppers themselves.

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You're right, but the bolded portion is of course what people are referring to by greenbastard's statement.

i.e., what the South was to that seminal moment was based on slave labor.

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I don't disagree, I just wanted to make the distinction that the south of 1861 (who's economy was indeed based on slavery) was destroyed almost as completely as Japan and Germany in WWII.

The much more diversified south that grew out of that destruction wasn't built in the same fashion as its predecessor.

Gotcha.

I just feel like the responsible thing to do here is to put them all in a museum. Why not give future generations the opportunity to study and learn from our past? An educated/informed population would contribute much more towards the future of our nation and her progression towards equality as a whole.

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I just feel like the responsible thing to do here is to put them all in a museum. Why not give future generations the opportunity to study and learn from our past? An educated/informed population would contribute much more towards the future of our nation and her progression towards equality as a whole.

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Museum? Sure. No one is advocating in going full German retard and deleting the Civil War era from our books just like Germany erased WW2 from theirs. What a lot of us are arguing is to bring down shrines which honor people who fought to keep an entire race enslaved.

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I believe in not glorifying traitors to the US who fought for a horrible, divisive cause.

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Honest question - do you feel it's possible (and/or proper) to recognize soldiers who fought with courage, skill, and honor even if they did so in the service of a dishonorable and immoral cause?

I do.

I'd have no problem at all with a Japanese monument to people like Isoroku Yamamoto, Hiroyoshi Nishizawa, and Saburo Sakai or German monuments to Erich Hartmann and Adolph Galland. If I were to visit those countries and those existed, I'd go to them even though I had relatives killed in WW2.

I a nutshell, that's how I view Confederate monuments. The cause was unjust and denying that fact is revisionist history at its worst, but that also doesn't change the fact that many of those wearing the uniform were serving what they felt was their true homeland. We're viewing it through centuries old glasses now, but there were Americans living in 1861 who had served in the Revolutionary war - and they were traitors to their country too. We've forgotten that, but people of that time understood it which is probably one reason why civil war veterans from both sides are legally recognized US veterans.

The confederate flag has no business on any official government property outside of a museum display or historically accurate building or site. I've got no problem when local elected bodies (presumably acting on the wishes of those that elected them) rename streets or places - particularity when they return them to what they were named during or before the civil war (which IIRC is what is happening in NOLA), and I've got no problem when those same bodies choose to relocate monuments and such to more appropriate places like museums or (in the case of Forrest's body) their original locations.

Where I draw the line is in destroying a monument to a soldier out of a sense that somehow recognizing their sacrifice, skill, and courage condones their cause.* When you do that, everything becomes vulnerable to the political winds of the moment and literally nothing is safe.

Here's a monument a very oppressed American minority likely finds offensive and the group it recognizes absolutely performed acts that were terrible and indefensible by today's standards.



Do we tear it down too?


*note that this doesn't apply to political leaders. IDGAF what you do with Jefferson Davis.

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do you feel it's possible (and/or proper) to recognize soldiers who fought with courage, skill, and honor even if they did so in the service of a dishonorable and immoral cause?

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Possible? Yes.

Proper? No.

Jmho, though. When it comes to this particular conflict.

He's probably off watching Fox News right now.