PC Gone Too Far

Does that apply to the "soldiers" of ISIS?

Which is why we should be careful about generalizing. The claim that all war dead are worthy of respect is clearly out the window. So why preserve monuments to general war dead? A monument to those who died defending the Third Reich does implicitly include the SS. Defense of the Confederacy does imply defense of slavery.

No.Nor should people who put up memorials expect them to be sacrosanct.

I have mixed feelings about the Vietnam War. I'm the same age as Vietnam veterans so I can identify with them but at a visceral level I have more respect for the war resisters than the warriors. I definitely DO NOT think a memorial to those warriors is appropriate.

Don't confuse monuments with history. History would be a list of the war dead. Individual monuments say, "We're sad that our son/brother/husband/etc. died, no matter how he died." Collective monuments say, "Hurrah! our sons/brothers/husbands/etc. died in the glorious cause of _______!" Auschwitz-Birkenau is not a monument.

I didn't say anything was offensive.

Maybe if you tell us what you think the real point is....

Not really. A monument is a record of history. We don't "lose history" by (re)moving a monument any more than we lose history or literature by removing a worn-out book from the library.And we lose more history when an old hotel burns down than we would if we (re)moved a monument. The equivalent in the Civil War would be the preservation of a slave ship. If you want to preserve the history that people find offensive, it's the offensive bits that you need to preserve.

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.

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.

We don't judge criminals by how much they give to charity. We judge them by their crimes. The delusion that they thought they were fighting for is irrelevant. The actual result of their actions, if they had been successful, was to perpetuate slavery. If you fire your shotgun out the window knowing full well that some innocent person may suffer, it doesn't matter how lofty your intentions are. It's the crime that counts.

I propose not putting up memorials to groups with questionable motivation. If you don't have something good to say about them, don't say anything at all.

Creationists use social, moral, etc. justifications for creationism. Let's put up a memorial to Henry Morris, Duane Gish and Ken Ham.

That's a pretty weak rebuttal.