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Author | Topic: PC Gone Too Far | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
bluegenes Member (Idle past 2505 days) Posts: 3119 From: U.K. Joined: |
NoNukes writes: I don't want to remove the carving from Stone Mountain. I am suggesting that people who do want them moved (and not just removed) may have a legitimate complaint worth considering. Why do you state that you don't want the carving removed while seeming to suggest that the idea of removing it could be legitimate? Edited by bluegenes, : gramer
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bluegenes Member (Idle past 2505 days) Posts: 3119 From: U.K. Joined: |
ringo writes: 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. Is that the point? Do you think that we would be having this discussion if the Louisville monument was being moved for practical reasons? I think that the reasoning behind the campaign to remove the monument is central to the discussion. Because the Pyramids and the Taj Mahal were built (by slaves) to glorify slave owners who would have had an ideology supporting slavery, should we take them down or just consider them as history? Should Americans, with their anti-monarchist ideology, change the names of all their towns which (like the slave owner founded Louisville) were named after monarchs?
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Percy Member Posts: 22502 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 4.9 |
NoNukes writes: I am referring to well documented history that folks somewhat familiar with Civil war history mostly already know. You were referring cryptically to well documented history. You may as well have been writing clues for a crossword puzzle. Straightforwardly make your point. I'm not here to decode your ciphers while you berate me.
I don't believe a documentation that Davis did a bunch of things I judge to be bad gets to the point of our disagreement. This isn't an issue of documentation, not usually, anyway. Everyone here is capable of fact checking, but they have to know what to look up. You think Davis a worse scumbag (to suggest another technical term for you to use) than other Southerners - why? Just describe why. Maybe sometimes that will require a link, excerpt or quote, maybe not, but describe why. In the 1920's there was obviously an exploration of paths toward reconciliation between North and South. The Stone Mountain memorial was one of those paths, albeit a dead end at the time. One doesn't have to research further than the news or an electoral map or explore further south than Richmond to realize that reconciliation is still decidedly incomplete. Lording it over the South that they lost, their cause was unjust, and therefore we get to say who their heroes were is remarkably insensitive, ineffective and counterproductive. Wasn't Reconstruction enough of a punishment? The South embraced slavery not because they were evil but because of economics. Slavery withered away in the North because it wasn't profitable, but the invention of the Cotton gin made slavery in the South not only profitable, but wildly so. Then the banning of the international slave trade forced the South to rely upon itself to provide slaves, turning it into a self-contained bastion of slavery. If the South was remarkably intractable concerning slavery in the years leading up to the Civil War, so was the North in the sense of not perceiving or comprehending the wholesale economic and social devastation that an end to slavery would bring in the South. In expressing little willingness to work with the South toward providing a viable path away from slavery (an institution that many in the South realized would one day, somehow, have to end) while sharing in the economic costs they boxed the South into a corner. --Percy
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ringo Member (Idle past 440 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
bluegenes writes:
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? Because the Pyramids and the Taj Mahal were built (by slaves) to glorify slave owners who would have had an ideology supporting slavery, should we take them down or just consider them as history? 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.
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bluegenes Member (Idle past 2505 days) Posts: 3119 From: U.K. Joined: |
ringo writes: Bad analogy. We're talking about a monument to soldiers who died in support of slavery. Do you mean that supporting slavery without dying for it is much better in your mind than supporting slavery and dying for it? Why?
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ringo Member (Idle past 440 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
bluegenes writes:
Huh? How did you get that from anything I said? Do you mean that supporting slavery without dying for it is much better in your mind than supporting slavery and dying for it? Supporting slavery is bad, period. If you die while doing it, so much the better.
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bluegenes Member (Idle past 2505 days) Posts: 3119 From: U.K. Joined: |
ringo writes: Huh? How did you get that from anything I said? It follows from your comment on my analogies.
ringo writes: Supporting slavery is bad, period. If you die while doing it, so much the better. So, if you see the fact that a monument is erected to a person or people known to have supported slavery as a reason for removing it, why not apply that to all monuments world wide? Why is this one in Louisville (a town named after a slavery supporting King) getting the special attention?
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ringo Member (Idle past 440 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
bluegenes writes:
Show us how it follows.
It follows from your comment on my analogies. bluegenes writes:
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.
Why is this one in Louisville (a town named after a slavery supporting King) getting the special attention?
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bluegenes Member (Idle past 2505 days) Posts: 3119 From: U.K. Joined: |
ringo writes: Show us how it follows. You emphasised the fact that the monument was to soldiers who died for slavery, rather than merely being to people who supported slavery without dying for it. You made the distinction, so I asked you why you had made it. Why did you?
ringo writes: 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. Ah! Now it's nothing to do with people dying for a cause. Why shouldn't people outside Louisville have opinions on the doings of Louisvillians?
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caffeine Member (Idle past 1052 days) Posts: 1800 From: Prague, Czech Republic Joined:
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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 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.
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NoNukes Inactive Member |
Lording it over the South that they lost, their cause was unjust, and therefore we get to say who their heroes were is remarkably insensitive, ineffective and counterproductive. And yet, saying that their cause was unjust appears to me to be incredibly accurate. That's reason enough for me to say that now. I certainly understand the politics of the time, and the pragmatism of pursuing reconciliation between the two halves of the country. But all of those folks from that era are dead now, and the folks who current live in the South bear no responsibility for any of the ills of the past. So yeah, we ought to be able to tell the truth now without being called insensitive. As you say, nobody has any right to not be offended. Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given. Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given. Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846) History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people. Martin Luther King If there are no stupid questions, then what kind of questions do stupid people ask? Do they get smart just in time to ask questions? Scott Adams
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bluegenes Member (Idle past 2505 days) Posts: 3119 From: U.K. Joined: |
caffeine writes: The idea of preservationism in general is somewhat difficult. I understand what you're talking about in this post, but it isn't really how we preserve things that's the issue. What I find strange is the idea that, when considering something constructed in the past by people who are long dead, we should make ideological decisions about it. If we go into a medieval church in England, and observe the memorial of a feudal Lord astride a horse on a tomb, are we supposed to say "We disapprove of feudalism, this should be destroyed"?
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MrHambre Member (Idle past 1421 days) Posts: 1495 From: Framingham, MA, USA Joined:
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I've been thinking a bit over the last few days about the idea of preserving historical monuments, and I think it's complicated.
That's an understatement! The whole matter has so much ideological baggage that, when you get the behemoth of commodification sitting on top of it, it gets to be a real mess. I've been to Stirling Castle, and you're right: when a location becomes a tourist destination, we do whatever we can to downplay issues of authenticity and politics in favor of making it an inoffensive, family-friendly spectacle. The castles and manors of Europe, therefore, aren't ostensibly monuments to Eurocentrism, colonial plunder, or hereditary succession, but we realize that that's what they represent. I think the Louisville monument is more problematic because it's not exactly a tourist attraction, and its ideological meaning is a lot harder to obscure since we're still fighting the Civil War. The discussion has already touched on the long and ignoble legacy of Northern triumphalism that periodically scourges the Southern States; cynics like me say it probably stalled the Civil Rights movement for decades, and now it's desperately trying to simulate progress for a minority that deserves more than cosmetic change. My wife's family came from Hungary, where they still have statues of Attila the Hun. But they're also used to having successive waves of political overlords alter their civic landscape to one degree or another to fit the prevailing ideology. Whether you think it's a good thing or a bad thing depends on our vantage point, and what lens we're using to see the tourist attraction.
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Percy Member Posts: 22502 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 4.9 |
NoNukes writes: Lording it over the South that they lost, their cause was unjust, and therefore we get to say who their heroes were is remarkably insensitive, ineffective and counterproductive.
And yet, saying that their cause was unjust appears to me to be incredibly accurate. That's reason enough for me to say that now. We should not reason that because the South's cause was unjust that therefore their heroes deserve no memorials, and that because they lost such opinions should have some force. The North was not without fault by boxing the South into a corner. Slavery was wrong, but it was a lynchpin of the Southern economy whose removal would cause its collapse. Some amazing compromises were worked out in the decade or two before the war, but though both sides recognized that the future of slavery depended upon how it was allowed to expand into the territories, neither side addressed the key question of how the South would transition away from a slave economy without severe and widespread social and economic dislocation. It is rare in the history of warfare that the losing country is absorbed into the winning, but such is the case here, and so we have to find ways to live together. We don't want to shy away from the truth, but neither do we want to inflame antagonisms.
I certainly understand the politics of the time, and the pragmatism of pursuing reconciliation between the two halves of the country. But all of those folks from that era are dead now, and the folks who current live in the South bear no responsibility for any of the ills of the past. So yeah, we ought to be able to tell the truth now without being called insensitive. As you say, nobody has any right to not be offended. We don't want to censor one truth in favor of another. No one's prevented from "telling the truth" that they see. Historians (and us, though our opinions don't matter much) can write whatever they like. But reconciliation between North and South is still an ongoing process. Many in the South considered Davis, Lee and Jackson and the Southern armies heroes and still do today, so efforts against their memorials work against reconciliation. We should not lord it over the South because they lost - it's counterproductive. And historical principles urge that we should not update or remove representations of the past to make them better accord with contemporary opinion. --Percy
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1.61803 Member (Idle past 1532 days) Posts: 2928 From: Lone Star State USA Joined: |
Percy writes: The North was not without fault by boxing the South into a corner. Slavery was wrong, but it was a lynchpin of the Southern economy whose removal would cause its collapse. ***Blink*** ~in the style of Rrhain"You were not there for the beginning. You will not be there for the end. Your knowledge of what is going on can only be superficial and relative" William S. Burroughs
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