PC Gone Too Far

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. 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.

It’s Time to Separate the South From the Confederacy – Mother Jones

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Not to be mistaken for the garish Forrest statue in Nashville, this one is a tarnished bronze likeness of the Confederate general, slave trader, and first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. The statue tops a concrete burial vault that houses the remains of Forrest and his wife. The memorial has stood in Health Sciences Park (formerly Forrest Park) since 1905, when, 28 years after Forrest's death, a group of wealthy, white Memphians dug up the general and his wife and entombed them in a vault beneath this statue in downtown Memphis. Astride his horse, Forrest faces north, positioned so he doesn't seem to be retreating.

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So this Forrest was dug up in 1905 and placed here. Isn't that some kind of messing around with history?

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In the aftermath of the Charleston massacre and a renewed push to take down Confederate flags and other symbols of the Confederacy, the Memphis City Council voted to remove the statue and return the remains to Elmwood Cemetery, where Forrest was originally buried in accordance with his will.

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Nice...

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DiMeo says that despite Forrest's alleged regret at the end of his life for his actions, he's no American role model. He imagines adding a plaque to the Forrest statue and others like it. "Maybe [the plaque] should just say, maybe they should all say, that the men who fought and died for the CSA, whatever their personal reasons, whatever was in their hearts, did so on behalf of a government, formed for the express purpose that men and women and children could be bought and sold and destroyed at will," DiMeo says. I tend to agree.

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Not going to happen, of course.

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.

Thanks for bearing with me. Obviously, I don't hold the most extreme position on monuments etc. Primarily what I am insisting on is that people who do make requests to move a monument may have a legitimate beef; one that is at least as legitimate as are complaints of those who oppose moving a particular monument.As far as what they call North Carolina, I personally could not care less what they call this state or any other. That may be partially based on the fact that I am a transplant to the south and then to NC. But I think the more important issue is that I have far more of a commitment and my country that I do to any state, and much more of a commitment to my city than to North Carolina. I suppose I'd need a new Driver's Licence? No feelings whatsoever about that. On the other hand, one might ask how did I feel when the Atlanta Braves (I identify more with Atlanta than my current residence) decided to dispense with Chief Knock-a-homa. I was pretty happy about that. I don't feel any such need. The actual feeling I get from looking at a statue of Davis is more along the lines of disgust. It would make me wonder about the feelings and opinions of the folks around me if a statute of Davis were prominently displayed in the city square. But I've never asked anyone to move any statue or to deface any carving. But I do understand the feelings of people who react differently.

Yes, you have made that argument. However you are also on record as having complained about the renaming of buildings in message 11 of this thread.

It is an amusing line of thought, I suppose. I might also consider that if the Nazi's were not what they were, Israel might not exist today. Where does such an argument lead? Not an unreasonable opinion, I think, but I think complaints about these statutes are quite common and in many cases there have been modern requests to move these things for reasons similar to the ones discussed here. As an example the Mississippi state flag includes a confederate flag despite a referendum to remove it, because the folks in the state voted overwhelmingly to keep it. A similar referendum also failed in Georgia, but eventually the flag was redesigned. I would expect that if a statute of Jefferson Davis was sitting in the middle of town, that folk want it there.My reasoning may not apply to huge objects like that 350 foot monument to Davis you brought up or to the carving on Stone Mountain. But I think it does apply to 'eye sore' type statutes in the middle of town. Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

We might indeed. However remembering that history need not require placing monuments to your oppressors in your town square by folk who thought what those guys did was just peachy.

I didn't really understand what you meant by calling history 'sacred' before, but I suspect that black folks would rather that their ancestors not have been treated as no class citizens even after the civil war, that Jews would just as soon that their ancestors not have been walked into ovens and gas chamber showers, and that folks might have desired for their Irish great grandparents a better reception when they immigrated. My guess is that they might wish to change some of that if they had the power to do so.

So you believe, for example, that a person for whom the majority of his family died in a concentration type would value his own life over that of even countless ancestors? Perhaps such a person might be grateful to his ancestors, but I don't see any reason for that gratitude to extend back to any particular feelings of gratitude or well wishing for the folks controlling the execution means or doing the enslaving, lynching, etc.I'm not particularly worried about the possibility of someone getting a hold of a time machine. I also don't see the relevance to a whether or not Georgia should or should not have carved a statute of Jefferson Davis into a mountain. I didn't say it was weird. I described those practices as despicable and not worthy of celebration. If that is an indictment on many past societies, so be it. I might even suggest that slavery as practiced in the South ranks well below the methods in which it was practiced in some past cultures.

Really? The only worthwhile discussion is an apologists view of slavery?So somehow understanding that no one is despicable is more objective? Substituting the opinions of the slave holders on slavery for our own is more accurate, and beneficial in some way? I don't buy that.I'm not saying that such a view point is not worthwhile, but surely it is not the only worthwhile discussion. Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

Are you glad that 6 million Jewish folks were murdered during the holocaust? I'm not. If you prefer that the slave trade did happen, why don't you express that here? For the record, I would prefer that it not have happened.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

Sure. I did mangle the sentence. But in essence I am suggesting that a person might well care more about how his ancestors suffered that about his own particular existence.

We are not politicians who might be seeking a vote or three. Isn't this speech the very definition of politically correct?

Except that I don't have super powers? And if I did, I might be able to come up with something better than what I erased. Perhaps a world with a few less murdered Jews, and few less folks who arrived in America chained into the bottom of a boat. Maybe manifest destiny plays out a bit differently too.There are no such things as time machines. Your argument about willing myself from existence is from science fiction, but only from those butterfly effect type stories where nothing good ever happens from tiny amounts of human meddling.I just don't see the relevance to the current discussion. Jefferson Davis is an essential element of our current history, as ar Benedict Arnold and Al Capone. So let's carve statues of all of those folk and put them into the town square because they are someone's heroes? No, not buying that. Of course! Couldn't agree more with the sentiments expressed above.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

What you call emotionalism, I call objectivity. There is nothing particular objective about pretending that slavery was not evil, or that the judgment of folks from the time period about slavers is not relevant, or that our own judgments are similarly wrong. That's not the key question. It is a question, and one on whose answer I doubt any of us would find much reason to debate. The difficulty is your insistence that those reasons do not reflect badly on the South or that they would of necessity moderate an objective opinion about either the institution, or Jefferson Davis. I don't believe that to be the case.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.