PC Gone Too Far

Agreed. If there are objective reasons for degrading the historical record then I'd love to hear them, but what I'm hearing instead is a lot of emotion, never a good basis for making decisions.--Percy

If anything you're proposing we do would alter the historical record, how is that not harming it as a record of the period? Correcting voices from the past by mingling or replacing them with our own voice cannot but do harm and will handicap the ability of future generations to accurately study the past. That you're offended is obvious, but using feelings of offense as political leverage is at the core of PC. Such efforts must always be resisted whether for causes we believe in or not, particularly when it comes to preserving our historical heritage.--Percy

What I'm actually saying is that I object to the politics of claiming offense, no matter the cause. I definitely am not in favor of going around offending people, which it felt like your restatement of my views left an open possibility.But there is no right to not being offended. With so many people in this country there must be few things not offensive to someone somewhere. Resisting such pressures, no matter the cause, is an important principle. It is similar in principle to the most heinous criminal deserving a lawyer and a proper defense.James Joyce's Ulysses was once banned for being offensive in both the UK and the US. Near naked people in New York City (mostly Times Square, I believe) is legal and apparently offends a great many. That someone somewhere is offended is never a good reason for doing anything. What I actually said was, "Particularly when it comes to preserving our historical heritage." That's because any interaction with historical objects risks irreparably altering them. Banning Ulysses from US shores put the book itself in no danger, even censoring the US edition wouldn't have put the original in any danger, but many historical artifacts are a "one of". Any change, no matter how minor, irrevocably loses history.Frequently the loss of history cannot be helped. Progress marches on in the form of subways and urban expansion and new roads and malls and so forth, and we don't need additional threats to history in the form of people who claim offense.--Percy

Historical sites and artifacts are part of reality and can't be at odds with it. What are you thinking of that is at odds with reality? Altering historical sites and artifacts can only handicap their study. "Official government bigotry" sounds terrible, but I don't know what you're referring to. Harking back to Santayana again, arguably the offensive parts of history teach the most important lessons.--Percy

I'm not following you. The politics of claiming offense applies far more generally than that. While I agree that government sponsoring offense sounds like a bad thing, I don't really know what your talking about. Yes, your prickly lordship. Forgive me for finding any ambiguity in your holy writ. The similarity was about resisting emotional pressures, whether they be to remove a monument or "hang 'em high." The novel Ulysses is relevant because actions were taken as a result of the politics of claiming offense, not because it was banned.--Percy

I think your points have to carry the day through evidence and argument, not declarations that you won't brook other opinions.Let's get some facts into the discussion. The monument in the OP contains few words. On one side it says, "Our Confederate Dead, 1861-1865", and on the other "Tribute to the Rank and File of the Armies of the South by the Kentucky Woman's Confederate Monument Association. 1895." It looks like this: The Confederate monument in Louisville doesn't fit this description, but what monuments say or represent is not what's important to this discussion. What's important is maintaining our record of history, lest it be forgotten. Santayana again. To the extent that you're correct that Confederate monuments are expressions of support for slavery, racism and bigotry, you don't want that to ever be forgotten. Removing these monuments will allow us to forget that public expressions of such sentiments existed.Of course I don't agree that that's what Confederate monuments by and large are saying, but if they do then you're advocating actions that would in part destroy the history that provided the evidence behind your opinion, causing fewer people to share your view in the future. How can you agree while advocating the alteration of history? How will anyone learn lessons of history that have been modified or erased? Nobody's being "purposefully offensive" that I'm aware of. What's actually happening is that people are claiming offense in order to forward their own political ends. If they succeed then history loses and we lose part of our heritage, a part that made us the nation we are today. The Civil War was pivotal in changing us from a collection of individual states into one nation (the "states' rights" issue). The effects of that conflict live on today in many other ways, including the bigotry and racism you keep mentioning, and the better we understand the Civil War and what followed the better a people we'll be.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Typo.

My argument is for the preservation of history, especially history we find offensive. I think that's a wonderful idea, providing a modern context while preserving the history. One never knows what message future generations will take away, or what future historians will find important to study, but we do know that modifying or destroying history makes its study more difficult or impossible. Some people may see such displays as racist, and perhaps some will go deeper to ponder what social and economic forces drive people to racist views. One thing we know for sure, such displays will drive no thoughts in peoples' heads if the displays are no longer there.Touching on several things you said, the Confederate flag issue doesn't seem related to this one. Taking down Confederate flags or symbols doesn't destroy history, I don't think. Now if someone was advocating destroying all Confederate flags, I'd find that very objectionable.About Stone Mountain, I'd never heard of it, but the Wikipedia image looks impressive and I'd love to see it. The Klan involvement doesn't bother me. If a Klansman had painted the Mona Lisa that wouldn't make it racist. If Klansmen venerated George Washington as much as I do, that wouldn't make me think less of George Washington.About the park you claim honored the perpetrators of the Wilmington massacre, I'd never heard of this event. Reading the Wikipedia article I see that the park land was donated by one of the conspirators, the park is named for him, and there's "a plaque in his honor that does not mention his role in the 1898 insurrection." Far from "honoring the white supremacists," anyone visiting the park would have to be a real student of history to know the park had any connection to one of the conspirators, or even to have heard of the Wilmington massacre. Very sad if true. Uh, you're still not getting the point. What precisely happened (in this case banning of Ulysses) is not at all relevant to this discussion. The point is that the politics of offense can result in bad things happening, like the banning of great literary works or the destruction of history. There's a reason Auschwitz-Birkenau still exists, and it isn't to celebrate the Nazis.--Percy

Aren't monuments a part of history? However you see it, in the recent portion of the discussion I've been making a case for the importance of preserving history, even those parts we find offensive. Wouldn't it be more accurate to say that history includes, among many other things, lists of war dead? I didn't label it a monument, and I don't think the particular label is relevant to the recent discussion. Its relevance is as an example of preservation of a part of history most people find offensive.--Percy

A monument *is* a part of history. As I commented to NoNukes, there are no rules for when something can be said to pass out of the present and into history, but certainly anything 120 years old is a part of history. Say, a 120-year old hotel? I don't know if quantifying amounts of history is practical or even meaningful, but certainly if an old hotel is part of history then so is an old monument.By the way, if you're referring to the monument of the OP, it was being removed to storage, not moved to a new location. The University claimed that a new location would be chosen someday, but as they say, "Would you like to buy a bridge?" I'm not sure if you're stating your own opinion or parodying mine, so just to be clear, my argument isn't that only offensive history is worth preserving. My argument is that offensive history is *especially* worth preserving.Also, I wasn't trying to find an example of equal offensiveness, just an obvious and extreme one. If the importance of preservation is so great that it can overcome even the offensiveness of Auschwitz-Birkenau, then surely it can overcome the questionable offensiveness of a simple monument.--Percy

I agree that it's history, and that it once flew is history. What I said was that I don't think taking down a flag destroys history. Likely it was raised and lowered daily anyway.But I do agree that inclusions of the Confederate flag in various state symbols are examples of "government sponsoring offense," though they might be more accurately characterized as acts of defiance and intimidation. I agree that monuments are not a part of the historical event they serve to remember. But they are a part of history, and they also serve as a record of the historical event. I noted all this in an earlier message when I said that the monument in question serves as a record of Southern thought, referring to Southerns 30 years after the war. A monument to Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. Didn't most people back then believe whites superior to blacks? And weren't most southerners slavery supporters? You're inventing reasons for disqualifying every southerner as a Southern hero.And you're using the "guilt by association" fallacy, in effect, "The Klan supported this and was directly involved, so it's bad." The thought hadn't occurred to me. How does it show that? Yes, I know, Jefferson Davis, the infamous white supremacist and slave owner, just like most others in the South. He's a Southern hero, why shouldn't there be a monument honoring him (along with a couple others you don't seem to want to mention but who were also white supremacists and slave owners)? Because it offends Northerners? "Significant part of civil war history"? Not sure why you're calling it that. The year that it happened, 1898, is right there in my Wikipedia quote, and you quoted it yourself. I can sort of see your point that the government that over a century ago accepted the money for the park from a conspirator and gave it his name was "government sponsoring offense." I see the possibility of renaming the park was in the news down your way not so long ago. I didn't say it had no significance, just that I'd never heard of it. High School was a long time ago. I recall studying the Spanish-American War, also in 1898, but I doubt the Wilmington massacre was in our history books, and if it was then it's no longer in my data banks. I did just check a random American History high school textbook over at Google Books, no Wilmington massacre. Anyway, you were trying to explain what you meant by "government sponsoring offense," and I think I get your meaning now, that it refers to things government might do that offends some people, in some cases large groups of people. But offending people is unavoidable, and we should resist accepting "We're offended" as a reason for doing anything.--Percy

If we're to single out Jefferson Davis then unique reasons applying only to him must be identified. The reasons enumerated so far include the majority of Southerners of the period. By these criteria almost no Southerners qualify for a monument. This is more guilt by association. Why should there not be monuments to Southern war heroes, especially those most prominent ones? Your next Message 123 addresses the "guilt by association" point: To me it doesn't make much difference who started the project, but in case it makes a difference to you the Wikipedia article says the United Daughters of the Confederacy started the project, and the Klan insinuated itself later.Concerning the view that for some of the project participants the motivational foundation included inappropriate attitudes concerning slavery and white supremacy and the sending of a defiant message to blacks and the rest of the nation, that does not negate the participation of the many with more uplifting motivations, which I expect were to honor Southern war heroes. Arguing that because the Nazis were bad, and because the death camps were Nazi death camps, therefore the death camps were also bad, has the argument backwards. The correct argument is that death camps are bad for inherent and obvious reasons, and that they were Nazi death camps is just yet another reason the Nazis were bad.Back to Message 122: My point has never been that there can be no legitimate reasons for removing a memorial, nor that people who claim offense are posing (though government must be careful when it encourages any behavior, because it often encourages posers). My point is simply that claiming offense is not often a legitimate reason for doing anything.--Percy

The brief amount of information about the Stalin Monument in Prague at Wikipedia tells me little, but I do think what's left of the building of this monument, its destruction, and its subsequent rebirth as a park is a record of history. I don't know enough (or anything) about politics in the Soviet-era umbrella bloc of nations to comment on whether there was political pressure brought claiming offense. My guess is not, that both the construction of the monument and its destruction were decisions made within the Communist party - in other words, there wasn't a lot of public input.But I do think this a good example of the argument against continually updating the record of the past to be consistent with contemporary sentiments. Clumsy Communist party maneuvers like these brought more contempt and veiled ridicule upon them than anything else, and was parodied excellently well in the book 1984, whose government would revise all the history books every time alliances shifted.That's quite a story about that monument. It took 5-½ years to build, the sculptor committed suicide the day before the unveiling, and it stood only 7 years.--Percy

I've been arguing against giving in to political pressures based upon feelings of offense, so if you're asking if I think Mount Rushmore should be destroyed in response to feelings of offense, then no, of course not.That's an interesting position you allude to, that Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Roosevelt were perpetrators of genocide, since it parallels other arguments in this thread about white supremacists and slave holders. If we were to declare that monuments be constructed only to people who were without sin in anyone's eyes anywhere, there would be no monuments. We have to acknowledge that the people to whom we build monuments were real and imperfect people as are all people, and were products of their time and place in history. There are no perfect people.About the taking of Indian land, my general feeling on land issues like this is that nobody anywhere in the world lives on land that wasn't at some point in time taken from someone else. I'm all for righting wrongs and for taking back what is yours, but after the passage of a great deal of time, in this case 140 years, get over it.My specific feeling about Indian land is that when the first Europeans arrived they found that many Indian tribes were often at war with one another, that the boundaries of territories were fluid according to the outcomes of their military adventures. Looking up the History of South Dakota, the Dakotas were not the first people to live in that region. Do they get a free pass and sole title to the land in perpetuity because they successfully wiped out or displaced or absorbed all descendants of predecessor peoples? My view is that when it comes to illegitimate land takings it's just a case of how far back in time you're willing to go.--Percy

However you want to phrase it, but even cover-ups are part of history and should be preserved. Monuments are a record of the original event, and they're a record of thought at the time. First, we do lose history by moving a monument. Moving any large object without changing it isn't possible, and you also lose the context of the original location. Granted the changes are probably small, but they're not non-existent. That being said, I don't see moving a monument as much of a problem.But second, if the monument of this thread had been planned for only a move it likely would not have gotten much attention. The fact is that the plan is for *removal* into storage, with no definite plans for a new location. Well now you're harking back to conversations earlier in the thread. As I said a couple times, some fought for glory, some fought for a paycheck, some fought for honor, some fought for country, some were drafted, some fought for a girlfriend, some fought for slavery, etc. The monument that started this thread said it was for "the Rank and File of the Armies of the South." How would anyone know who were fighting for what? Grouping them all under a single motivational label could not possibly be accurate.--Percy

By your stated criteria, which is all I can go on, they are not different. Nothing I said implied such a definition. I don't know how many a "huge number" is to you, so I can't know if I agree with this or not, but of course no large group of people is all of one mind, so of course I understand that anti-slavery and anti-racist attitudes existed in the South. Uh, okay. My impression has always been that he was the ineffectual president of the Confederacy and didn't commit any acts of real consequence. What despicable acts are you thinking of? Your keep referencing things unmentioned in the Wikipedia article about Stone Mountain, and that in some cases conflict with it, such as calling it the Klan's project when it was actually the United Daughters of the Confederacy's project with the Klan insinuating itself later. An online search didn't reveal any other sources that seemed balanced and neutral. Do you have a link to where your information is coming from? I so far have nothing factual to back up your unspecific claims that Jefferson David committed despicable acts and that it was white supremacists and segregationists who urged the state to purchase the site. In the absence of facts this is just name calling and more evidence of an emotional foundation to the criticisms.Just found a beautiful image of the Stone Mountain Memorial: --PercyEdited by Percy, : Fix link.