PC Gone Too Far

Whilst there may, somewhere in England, be a memorial to soldiers in the American War of Imdependence, I can't think of any, nor find any in the UK War Memorials Database. Not really something to memorialise.We do have memorials to failed 'traitors', though. While trying to find some memorials from the American revolution, I stumbled across the Glenfinnan monument, via the rather laconic description 'Bad cause, great monument.' Erected in honour of those who died trying to reimpose royalist absolutism on Britain, it's a protected monument now, so you'd have difficulty getting rid of it.Edited by caffeine, : No reason given.Edited by caffeine, : No reason given.

Some of them never came down...

I've posted this as a general reply since I can't figure out whether it's Percy or NoNukes I's arguing with.When we have a cultural group who idenitifies with historical character X, and so that they can feel comfortable with doing so they have whitewashed their version of X, is it really in the best interests of society to disabuse them of their whitewashed version of history?We might think that doing so would cause them to abandon their support of such an ethically dubious character, but I'm not sure this works on a practical level. Their attachement to their idea of person X may be a much deeper and more visceral part of their identity than can be nudged by rational argument. If we insist on bringing their mind X's moral failings, it could be a much simpler task to rationalise these failings away than to abandon their emotional attachment.I haven't thought this through deeply yet, but I fear that forcing people to acknowledge that their heroes were slave owners and racists may be more likely to encourage them to justify and accomodate slavery and racism in their world-view, then to cause them to reject their heroes.

I'm quite sympathetic towards your position, but can't help but feel your reasoning is taking you a but far here. You may recognise this chap: This is currently under construction here in Prague. It's not a permanent fixture - it's being built for a period film set in the 1950s (there's been a few complaints, but the film-makers explained that building an enormous polystyrene replica in situ is apparently much cheaper than CG). This was a real statue, blown up not long after being completed during the period of de-Stalinisation.Below you can see it in original. There are many clearer photos, but this is the only one I can find that gives a good impression of context from the point of view of walking around the city centre Now, the argument that we should leave up monuments to bigotry and racism as a reminder that people raised monuments to bigotry and racism seems, to me, to lead to the implication that this statue should still be there. This is undoubtedly a historical monument, it has great symbolic significance for the history of Cold War Europe (that is, after all, why it was built). And, what better reminder of the dangers of authoritarian dictatorship than if here, in the capital of the country that considers itself the most Western of the former Eastern bloc, the largest statue of Stalin ever erected still loomed over us threateningly every day.And yet it somehow doesn't seem like it should still be there to me.

The park was there since the 19th century; it's not something opened as memorial to the Stalin moument or anything. It was, of course, both erected and blown up by the Communist Party; but I'm not really sure I see your point here. It's okay to blow up a monument provided you're not doing so in response to public offense? But this wasn't just something done by Communists. They pulled down the Stalin statues in the 50s and 60s, but the Lenins and Gottwalds stayed. They were almost all removed en masse in less than a year from 1989-1990 in celebration of the downfall of the Communists. Half the streets, squares and public transport stations around the country were renamed*. 'October Revolution Square' in Prague became 'Victory Square', and the Lenin statue which used to stand there was replaced by a monument to the army. 'Square of the Paris Commune' became 'Square of the Synek Brothers'. 'Rosenbergs St' (named after the spies) became 'World's St.'This is all an intentional effort to erase the publicly visible records of the past, and it was indeed done because these monuments to dictators and to the heroes of a hated occupying power offended people. This seems to me exactly what you're arguing against, and yet it also seems absurd to suggest that the country should have retained all the external symbols of Communist rule.*though there was a silly 'also in the news' story a few years ago that someone had noticed one property in Bohumin was still listed as being on 'Lenin street' in the national property register, since someone had presumably forgotten to update that page.

Although, of course, when we find a monument contemporaneous with the pyramids on which is written 'I, the Great King Somethingorother, Blessed of the Holy Mother Goddess, crushed the evil Foreignians underfoot, raped their women and took their children into slavery'; we consider it a priceless historical monument.I've been thinking a bit over the last few days about the idea of preserving historical monuments, and I think it's complicated. As pointed out further upthread, we can't expect people to overthrow a dictator and then preserve his monuments where they were for historical context; and if anything this is somehow trying to make an arbitrary line around what it historical. The removal of the monument is itself a reflection of contemporary history.The idea of preservationism in general is somewhat difficult. There are two recent examples where people have proposed 'restoring' historical monuments that have been angrily shot down - the Colloseum and the Pyramids. In both cases those in favour of restoration argued that we are not preserving the past by keeping these monuments as they are. We are preserving how they look as ruins, and this distorts our image of the past. The counter argument is that putting a new facing and cap on the Great Pyramid, or rebuilding the Colosseum, could only be done by destroying the historical evidence which still survive, but then don't we destroy much of that anyway by the restoration work undergone to prevent these monuments from deteriorating further? All we're doing is preserving things to look like they did at the time period we start deciding it was important to preserve them.As a slightly less famous and dramatic example we have Stirling Castle, up in Scotland. The Great Hall of Stirling Castle was restored in the 1990s, and painted bright yellow. Many were aghast at this moderinst abuse of history - how could they deface such a solemn historical monument by painting it in a garish colour. As Historic Scotland (a government agency) pointed out, however, they chose yellow as it appears that this is what colour the Great Hall was when originally built in the 17th century.I've no idea if yellow was an idiosyncratic decision of the original designers of the great hall at Stirling, or if most 17th century castles were brightly coloured, but it does make the point quite well that preserving things as they are can possibly be distorting our view of history. People were angry at the restoration because we know that castles were grey. Just as we know that classical architecture and statuary are white, even though we've actually known the latter were garishly coloured for well over a century.Not something I have any firm conclusions on, but it's a complicated question.

This seems, at best, an oversimplification. I may be going off topic a bit here, but I think it all ties in to the whole idea of the lessons we draw from history.It seems to me that slavery dominates the American understanding of history too much; in that many things are explained as being the result of slavery, while ignoring the fact that the same or similar things happen(ed) in places without the legacy of slavery.When looking at the right to bear arms, for example, we can see that this was a fairly common demand of liberal constitutionalists in 18th and 19th century Europe, where clearly the threat of slave rebellions was not present. That the quntessential example of 18th centiury liberal constitutionalism (ie. the USA) included this in its constitution is not too surprising.When we further take into account that the drafters of the consitution had, in their immediate history, just been in a situation where the state had attempted to restrict the flow of arms to citizens to prevent a rebellion, the idea that the successful rebels would want to prevent such a thing from happening again doesn't seem unusual; without needing any fear of slave rebellion.

I actually agree with a lot of what you wrote for once. However: By the time of the US civil war, slavery was banned throughout Europe (except the Ottoman Empire), in every independent American country except Brazil and the US, and in large portions of the European empires, so it was already on the way out. Slavery is now illegal everywhere. It still exists, certainly, but it still exists in the West, as well. Thankfully it is today rare almost everywhere; it is clearly not universal.

Slavery may well have destroyed cultures in Africa. Some slave-trading states in west Africa, like Benin and Dahomey, became quite wealthy and powerful off the slave trade (or the slave-trading aristocracy did, at least). The enormously increased demand for slaves due to the Atlantic trade incentivised continued wars of conquest of neighbouring peoples, and it seems quite plausible that many cultures which lacked centralised states and the ability to defend themselves could have been wiped out in the process.