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Author | Topic: PC Gone Too Far | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
ringo Member (Idle past 412 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
bluegenes writes:
What distinction? The important fact is that they supported slavery. The monument happens to be to the ones who died.
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. bluegenes writes:
Read the thread. In Message 67 I said:
Why shouldn't people outside Louisville have opinions on the doings of Louisvillians?quote:quote:No.
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ringo Member (Idle past 412 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined:
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caffeine writes:
Exactly. The decay is part of the history.
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....quote: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.
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ringo Member (Idle past 412 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
Percy writes:
The South clung to slavery long after it was economically viable. The industrialization of the North was largely what won the war.
Slavery was wrong, but it was a lynchpin of the Southern economy whose removal would cause its collapse.
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bluegenes Member (Idle past 2477 days) Posts: 3119 From: U.K. Joined: |
ringo writes: What distinction? The important fact is that they supported slavery. The monument happens to be to the ones who died. And most of them wouldn't actually have owned slaves, which brings us back to the sub-thread title. Washington did. And Louisville is in Jefferson county, named after Thomas who was perhaps the best known slave owning hypocrite of all time! It's easy to change a name, so why don't they? There are many monuments to the confederacy in Kentucky, and many places named after slave owners. One thing that could easily be dynamited is the huge 350' obelisk to Jefferson Davies at his birthplace. It seems to be easier to remove a monument to the masses of common soldiery than it is to go for the big wigs for whom slavery was personally profitable, and who drove the ideology. My point is that disagreeing with the ideology of people who are commemorated in some way isn't a reason to take down monuments or change names. I certainly wouldn't want Americans to take down the Washington monument and rename their capital city and a state + hundreds of other things because he, by both action and inaction, supported slavery. We have a monument to him in London, and Ben Franklin's nearby house is a museum, which goes to show that even traitors can be commemorated. We also have monuments to Charles 1st and Cromwell amongst the many things that commemorate our own bloody civil war, and it would be easy to point to beliefs and actions of both of them which would offend modern sensibilities, to put it mildly.
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NoNukes Inactive Member |
Just to be clear, I am not in favor of dynamiting any of the monuments we've discussed. I would be against building the thing in the first place. On the other hand preserving some of smaller stuff in a musueum rather than on a college campus totally unrelated to Davis sounds like a reasonable idea to me, particularly if folks on campus don't want it there.
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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Percy Member Posts: 22393 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.2 |
1.61803 writes: Percy writes:
***Blink*** 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. I assume you're questioning the first sentence, not the second. Did you see the comments in prior posts on the same issue that lend this context? It's all part of trying to keep in the forefront the question of why did the South have slavery and support it so vehemently. Similar questions can be asked of many things in history. Why did the US drop atomic bombs on Japan? Why did a US army company murder innocent civilians at My Lai? Why did the Nazis try to wipe out the Jews? Why did the German people tolerate the Nazis? Why did the Soviets murder Polish army officers at Katyn? You can even include questions like why the tobacco industry supported tobacco, or why whistleblowers so frequently get screwed. I'm arguing that "They were evil" is not often an answer. It is rarely a case of, "There are evil people in our midst, and when too many evil people happen to in some way come together then evil things happen." The true explanation is usually just this: it's just people being people. People in the South of the 1840's and 1850's found themselves in circumstances that they were born into and that were not of their making, and they dealt with them the way people anywhere and anytime would deal with similar circumstances. Preservation of oneself and family is the top priority, and so on down the hierarchy of needs. The key question involves why people behave in certain ways when faced with certain situations. Regarding my comment about the North's blame for the Civil War, as I said, there were comments in prior posts that lend this context, so for now I'll just pose the rhetorical question, could the North reasonably expect the South to abandon slavery when it would mean economic and social ruin? I think many people answer this question the same way: They should have realized that slavery was wrong, behaved honorably, and got on with the business of abandoning it. But history says people rarely if ever behave in ways that are contrary to their own best interests, so why do we so often go against the lessons of history? The answer is that we don't know or remember history very well, which goes back to my original argument of the importance of preserving history. There was a fascinating editorial about history in the New York Times a few days ago, I wonder if I can dig it out...yes, here it is: No, He’s Not Hitler. And Yet .... He talks about a lot of different ways of viewing history and never mentions Santayana, whose position I've been championing. But for those who reject Santayana there are other views described in the editorial:
quote: I was going to quote more but I see I've already got a long quote, so I'll stop. I found the editorial fascinating, I recommend it to everyone. So what is history? Is it really just one thing after another, or does it contain lessons? If the latter then the Civil War teaches important lessons, and some of them are about the behavior of average, everyday people. --Percy
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Percy Member Posts: 22393 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.2 |
ringo writes: The South clung to slavery long after it was economically viable. The industrialization of the North was largely what won the war. Yes to the second, the first doesn't seem possible. One would expect economically unviable approaches to be quickly outcompeted and to disappear on their own. There's a discussion about the economics of American slavery over at Wikipedia. It wanders across a lot of different opinions but could be summarized as discussing two divergent trends driven by slavery, one the expansion of agriculture (particularly cotton), the other the drag on long term economic development caused by the emphasis on agriculture.
Did slavery make economic sense? in The Economist also describes somewhat the same views and declares no firm conclusions. The most unusual view held that slavery wasn't intended to be profitable but was just a way for Southerners to flaunt their slaves and plantations. How they did that without profits isn't mentioned. I didn't find anything explaining how an unviable slave economy could long persist. --Percy
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1.61803 Member (Idle past 1504 days) Posts: 2928 From: Lone Star State USA Joined:
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Hi Ringo.
While this is probably true later in the years leading up to the war, I think it is more a factor of differences between the agrarian south vs the industrial north, the south being more suited to slave labor.But I think your point is right the South was clinging to a non changing model compared to the dynamic North and burgeoning industrial age. According to Ken Burns's Documentary "The Civil War" the North in the worst years of the war was maintaining its all but most trivial traditions at various universities such as Harvard and Yale where in the South it was all but completely decimated by the war. It was sheer folly and complete mismanagement that allowed the war to continue for as long as it did according to some historians. "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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bluegenes Member (Idle past 2477 days) Posts: 3119 From: U.K. Joined:
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NoNukes writes: Just to be clear, I am not in favor of dynamiting any of the monuments we've discussed. I would be against building the thing in the first place. On the other hand preserving some of smaller stuff in a musueum rather than on a college campus totally unrelated to Davis sounds like a reasonable idea to me, particularly if folks on campus don't want it there. Actually, both the college (originally the Jefferson Seminary) and Mr. Davis started their respective lives in Kentucky by being named after that old slave owning reprobate Thomas. And the college, like any old Kentucky institution, has a history deeply entwined with the ideology that Davis could be seen to represent. Having been founded in 1798, it wasn't until 1930 that it had black students, and that was because it took over a black college which continued to be run on strictly segregationist lines in accordance with the Jim Crow laws of the time. It wasn't until 1951 that black Kentuckians were allowed into the mainstream college and the process of integration began. I mention this because, although it's true that more Kentuckians fought for the union than for the confederacy, it's a mistake to think that the statue and other memorials only represented a determined minority. The ease with which many Jim Crow laws were passed, and the general ethos of the state is more typically southern than northern. Black and white Kentuckians were not allowed to marry each other until the supreme court ruling of the 1960s. I first went there in 1969. As a foreigner, it was weird. It was like meeting two sort of separate but sort of interacting populations. They didn't mix well socially, and the habits of segregation were deep rooted. All of which may help to explain why people are getting worked up over a 120 yr old statue, but treating symptoms of the past won't solve any ongoing problems.
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Rrhain Member Posts: 6351 From: San Diego, CA, USA Joined:
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I realize that this is a bit of a "bare link" post, but I think it may be relevant and I'm not sure if anybody mentioned it before now.
NPR's On the Media had a recent (5/20/2016) episode regarding how e deal with historical memory, including segments on Hiroshima, "Keep Calm and Carry On," Kitty Genovese, Volodymyr Viatrovych of the Ukraine, and the value of forgetting
On the Media: Ghosts I find the sections on Hiroshima and Viatrovych relevant. With regard to Hiroshima, the Japanese take on the dropping of the bomb is different from the American take. The conservative response to the very idea of Obama merely visiting Hiroshima seems to be related to what we have regarding the Civil War: The inability to accept any negative association with "our side." And when we see someone like Viatrovych who is literally erasing history, engaging in fraud and making it illegal to say things, the idea that "PC" has anything to do with what we're seeing with regard to the original post shows a severe lack of understanding about political correctness, let alone what "PC gone wild" means.Rrhain Thank you for your submission to Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time. Minds are like parachutes. Just because you've lost yours doesn't mean you can use mine. |
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NoNukes Inactive Member |
I mention this because, although it's true that more Kentuckians fought for the union than for the confederacy, it's a mistake to think that the statue and other memorials only represented a determined minority. I'm trying to understand your point here, so please be patient with my question. What is it that you are thinking that both union and non-union folks would have come together on that is related to the monument we are discussing? What is the tie to Davis?
The ease with which many Jim Crow laws were passed, and the general ethos of the state is more typically southern than northern. Black and white Kentuckians were not allowed to marry each other until the supreme court ruling of the 1960s. True and shameful. I'm not sure how these facts would change my mind about anything. I am already suspicious about the rationale for maintaining Jefferson Davis, in particular, as a hero. Davis was born in Kentucky, and served as president in Richmond, which might give these two places some apparently innocent tie to Davis. But a statue in Texas and the enormous carving in Georgia don't get the same kind of cover, to my mind. Your explanation only reinforces my opinion that some of these things do not commemorate a battle over states rights, but instead intended to be a celebration of the racist antebellum period. Also, according to Wikipedia, Jefferson Seminary closed in 1829. The article notes that the Seminary is the direct ancestor to the University of Louisville. Not sure what the connection is, but given that the monument does not feature Davis, I'm not sure what the connection is to the current folk on campus. 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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NoNukes Inactive Member |
I think many people answer this question the same way: They should have realized that slavery was wrong, behaved honorably, and got on with the business of abandoning it. But history says people rarely if ever behave in ways that are contrary to their own best interests, so why do we so often go against the lessons of history? If folks ignore facts, wouldn't the preserved history would be just one more fact that folks can ignore? After all, there were plenty of facts, lessons, and examples available to folk in 1861. Most of the western countries had already reached the conclusion to abandon slavery at the time the South seceded in an effort to preserve it. You are suggesting that one more historical lesson, one that cannot be preserved in a museum, might have been helpful. Is that really a viable premise? Perhaps not. What actually convinced the South to drop slavery was getting the crap kicked out of it and having their slaves taken away, and then having the Republicans shove some constitutional amendments down their collective throats outlawing the practice, and then imposing reconstruction as a way of preventing them from backsliding and continuing to mistreat the fellow brown citizens, a fear that was quickly realized as reality and not just imagination. Even after all the butt kicking, freeing of slaves, and reconstruction (most of which was not intended as punishment despite a characterization of it as such I've read in these forums) several Southern states introduced 'Black Codes' to closely simulate slavery at least with respect to the economic aspects. Black citizens were required by some of these codes to call their owners 'master' and to contract themselves out to plantation owners (on a yearly basis) at whatever fee the market would command. Failure to do so would result in being forced to work unpaid or criminal punishment. In addition, even minor criminal offenses were excuses to re-enslave blacks despite their citizenship. Note that using slavery as a criminal punishment is completely allowable under the 13th amendment. Yeah, we need to preserve history. But I'm not even sure that a depiction of Davis on horseback serves any kind of helpful reminder. At least not without some depiction of what kind of dude it was that those folks meant to worship. I am more certain that "facts don't have a power to convince" doesn't provide any kind of justification for these monuments.
I'm arguing that "They were evil" is not often an answer. It is rarely a case of, "There are evil people in our midst, and when too many evil people happen to in some way come together then evil things happen." Nobody is making any such claim. Instead people are calling people who do evil, by that name, evil. Of course those folks had their 'reasons', but people generally are able to justify even evil actions at least to themselves. 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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NoNukes Inactive Member |
It’s Time to Separate the South From the Confederacy – Mother Jones
quote: So this Forrest was dug up in 1905 and placed here. Isn't that some kind of messing around with history?
quote: Nice...
quote: Not going to happen, of course. 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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NoNukes Inactive Member |
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. No, not because they lost. Who suggests that as a reason other than you? But as you acknowledge and I agree, their cause actually was unjust. So the the opinion has some force because it is correct regardless of who lost. Or at least, in my opinion, it should have weight for that reason. Seriously, one might well hold the same opinion about someone on the winning side. 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 2477 days) Posts: 3119 From: U.K. Joined: |
NoNukes writes: I'm trying to understand your point here, so please be patient with my question. What is it that you are thinking that both union and non-union folks would have come together on that is related to the monument we are discussing? What is the tie to Davis? I was just making the point that Kentucky had a very southern culture even though it didn't leave the Union. I don't understand your attitude towards history at all. You're in North Carolina. It's named after Charles I. He was a monarch and an imperialist. Amongst many other things, he ruled over a growing empire with a growing slave trade. It was legal. He sold the African slave trading rights to a group of London merchants around 1632. Do you want to change the name of your state? Raleigh N.C. is named after an English imperialist, and Charlotte is named after George IIIs wife. Name changes?
NoNukes writes: But a statue in Texas and the enormous carving in Georgia don't get the same kind of cover, to my mind. Your explanation only reinforces my opinion that some of these things do not commemorate a battle over states rights, but instead intended to be a celebration of the racist antebellum period. Why, when you look at an old statue, do you feel the need to agree with the ideology of those it represents or of those who erected it?
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