PC Gone Too Far

I said, "We." We as a society, we as a species judge our members by the bad that they do. The good may mitigate the bad but it doesn't eliminate it.If you robbed a bank, you caused the casualties. If you fought for the South, you tried to perpetuate slavery. It doesn't matter whether or not you robbed the rich to help the poor. It doesn't matter whether you fought for a flag or a piece of ground. It's the real consequences of your actions that count.

I don't think anybody is suggesting that every questionable monument should be taken down. The point is that if somebody decides to take down or move a monument, for whatever reason, that decision doesn't have to be seen as an affront to history.

That's a politically correct statement.

Bad analogy. We're talking about a monument to soldiers who died in support of slavery. Where are the monuments to those Egyptian and Indian soldiers?Analogous to the pyramids or the Taj Mahal - i.e. the work done by the slaves - would be cotton. Nobody is suggesting that we should destroy cotton.The pyramids and the Taj Mahal should be remembered as monuments to the slaves who built them as well as for whatever reason the slave-owners built them. If there were any monuments to the slave-drivers to commemorate their slave-driving services, nobody has seen fit to preserve them.Some things need to be remembered but not commemorated.

Huh? How did you get that from anything I said?Supporting slavery is bad, period. If you die while doing it, so much the better.

Show us how it follows. Because Louisville decided to remove it. I'm against the politically-correct "all history is equal" advocates in new York, California, etc. telling Louisville what they "should" do with their own monuments.

What distinction? The important fact is that they supported slavery. The monument happens to be to the ones who died. Read the thread. In Message 67 I said:

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Should we have an expectation that things we disapprove of are not memorialized or honored?

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No.

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Nor should people who put up memorials expect them to be sacrosanct.

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Exactly. The decay is part of the history.

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I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away."
-- Shelley

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Moving a monument or removing a monument is also history. You can't remember history by preserving every molecule exactly as it used to be.

The South clung to slavery long after it was economically viable. The industrialization of the North was largely what won the war.

Ownership of slaves is not relevant. Dying for the right to own slaves is. You're making my point. By Percy's logic, changing the name would be "losing history". If THEY choose to change the name or if THEY choose to move a monument, that's THEIR decision. I support their right to do it and loss of history be damned. I have never advocated dynamiting anything. Take your strawman elsewhere. MY point is that THEIR reason is none of YOUR business. Read the thread. I have made a distinction between individual monuments and collective monuments. If George wants to move great great granda's gravestone, I'm okay with that. And if the citizens of Louisville want to move a monument to all of the Confederate war dead, I'm okay with that too. It's all about who owns the monument.

The question is not whether or not slavery was profitable. It's whether or not the slavery supporters thought it was worthwhile. It wasn't just about cash. It was about Cavaliers, Gallantry, Knights and their Ladies Fair.

I'm just going by Message 11 where you said that renaming buildings is tantamount to pretending history didn't happen as it did.

As I said, profitability is not an issue. People cling to a lot of things that are not economically viable. It's ridiculous to pretend that it's impossible. You may disagree that it's true but at least try to understand that it's possible. We have a local joke: How do you run a successful small business in Saskatchewan? Start with a big one.It is possible to lose money. It may not be possible to keep losing money forever. When slavery was removed, the economy didn't collapse. There was certainly a downturn caused by the horrendous cost of the war and the predation of the carpetbaggers but not by the loss of slavery. That economy recovered and thrives today without slavery.

Your bare link conveys no information. The monument is to people who died for slavery. Ownership of slaves is not relevant. First, who cares about consistency?Second, the grounds for moving the monument don't matter. People have a right to move their own monuments. They can move it because it blocks their view of the moon if they want to.Third, you can move a monument to storage. You can't move a county. Of course not. What a silly thing to say. If I support moving something, how does that suggest, in the wildest ravings of your imagination, that I support dynamiting anything? The reasons for moving it are dependent on the owners. If it was owned by the Daughters of the Confederacy or the Ku Klux Klan we wouldn't be having this discussion. But it appears to be owned by the people of Louisville and they have decided to move it. The principles of democracy allow them to do that for whatever damn reason they please.

No, I've been defending the owners' right to have their own reasoning. And I've been saying that their reasoning is not necessarily "politically correct" at all. In fact, it is the objections to their reasoning that are politically correct. As I've said, I don't even know what their stated grounds for moving it are or if there is any "ideology" behind it. I'm simply pointing out that moving a monument is not necessarily "politically correct". Pretending that all history is equal is politically correct. Your assumption is wrong.As I've explained to you more than once, I make a distinction between people who died to promote slavery and people who "supported" slavery in less fatal ways. Since Jeff Davis didn't die for slavery, no comment that I have made in this thread applies to him.I have explained that I make a distinction between individual monuments and collective monuments. I have no objection to a stone on Hitler's grave but I do object to a monument to the SS. And even though I object, I do not presume to tell the owners of any such monument what to do with it. And even if I did tell them what I would like them to do with it, dynamite would never be involved in any way, shape or form. I have no objection to moving the pyramids or the Taj Mahal to storage. The money might be better spent elsewhere. "We've decided to move it," is the only valid reason they need.