PC Gone Too Far

The american indians are still to this day virulently incensed over the obnoxious sculptures on their sacred Dakota lands. Given the genocide they were subjected to as symbolized by the sculptures, shouldn't Mount Rushmore be destroyed?

Inventing? Surely not.I specifically mentioned only Jefferson Davis, and I limited my remarks to him for a reason. If you want to expand my remarks to Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee then you are doing so on your own.But it is certainly the case that I don't care what a bunch of white supremacists think about themselves or who they consider their heroes. I don't give the idea that there were large numbers of such folk any consideration either. Further, whatever those post war guys thought about their heroes at the end of the civil war, those guys did not manage to finish the carving on Stone Mountain. In order to get the rest of the carvings completed, we needed a new modern set of what supremacists/segregationists from the 50s and 60s to carve those legends into the side of the mountain in a reaction to Brown vs. Board of education and gains in civil rights.In my mind, that carving never should have been started and even after those initial guys failed to finish it, there was an opportunity to leave the thing uncompleted. I am not personally inclined to have in removed or destroyed. But I don't believe that people who do feel that way have no legitimate beef or that they are merely claiming to find the carvings offensive. Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

Not exactly. The Klan started the project, but it was taken over by the state. The purpose was not to tar the project with the Klan, but to instead help trace the motivation for the project getting started and for its being continued.I suppose if I mention that the Nazi's had death camps you would insist that I am simply tarring the concept of death camps.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

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

But it isn't the offensive history that you're advocating for, it's the cover-up of the offensive bits. We don't lose history by moving a monument. We lose history by keeping a monument that doesn't tell the history accurately. If they added a plaque that read, "These men died to preserve the institution of slavery," that would be preserving history. But the people who put up the monument wouldn't want that, would they?

Sure it does. Putting up a monument to a group implies that they're worth remembering as a group. It isn't just that one monument is cheaper than a thousand. It isn't just a random group of people who pooled their money to put up a really nice monument. It's a "tribute" to the "Confederate" dead. It implies rather strongly that their deaths were worthwhile.

I point specifically to Jefferson Davis as the president of the confederacy, as a slave owner, and whose writings indicate his reasons for seceding and going to war. In my view, the cases of Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee are different.But suppose it were were correct that few of the Southern civil war heroes would meet my definition of those for whom a meaningful carving into Stone Mountain would be acceptable. So what? That makes my judgment severe, but not necessarily incorrect. By your description we are talking about racists, white supremacists and slavers.And of course if we want to define Southern in the way you do, namely as only the racists, white supremacist slavers, we are of course leaving out a huge number of people who actually lived in the South that wanted nothing to do with any of that stuff.What if it turned out that neither MS-13 nor the Russian mafia had heroes that I found worth celebrating. Would that suggest that my standards were flawed? Is my response to this question not something you can anticipate? Jefferson Davis, in particular, is worshiped for acts that are despicable and he was praised by the Klan for those reasons. In the 50s and 60s, some white supremacists and segregationists felt that having the state pick up the Klan's project was a mighty fine idea. Not guilt by association. Guilt based on their own choices and actions.I understand that a bunch of white supremacists from various ages including the present think that Davis was a great man. So what?Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

I suppose that explains quite a bit.

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

But they are grouped together under the label "South" or "Confederate", which definitely does imply motivation. You can disavow any knowledge of individual motivation in individual monuments but when a monument is erected to a group, you can't honestly ignore the group motivation. By all means, let's do that. But you're not doing that by just preserving monuments. We need to preserve our judgement of history too.

Are you high?

quote:

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"Hurrah! our sons/brothers/husbands/etc. died in the glorious cause of _______!"

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is the same thing as:

quote:

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Tribute to the Rank and File of the Armies of the South by the Kentucky Woman's Confederate Monument Association.

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Really? Where's the hurrah? Where's the glorious cause? Some of them had to have been. But really, the people who built the monument were upset by unmarked graves and wanted something for them, and they could want that even if the deaths weren't worthwhile.Too, just because a cause was Confederate doesn't mean that it wasn't worthwhile. There was more going on than just slavery. Oh, I see. You're incredibly ignorant.The rank and file of the armies of the South were not dying to preserve the institution of slavery.I don't know how anyone could be so stupid as to think that.

Ringo writes: Yes, the NAZI death camps are being preserved precisely for this reason.The mantra is, over & over, NEVER AGAIN! NEVER FORGET!

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.