PC Gone Too Far

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.

We don't have oppressors until we're born - only creators. But regarding our history as sacred wouldn't stop us from removing monuments. It would just make us clear in our minds that we don't really want the actuality of our pre-birth history to have been any different.

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.

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.

Do you mean that supporting slavery without dying for it is much better in your mind than supporting slavery and dying for it?

The problem with changing things that happened before we were born is that we wipe ourselves out, which is what I meant by history being sacred. So, you should hope that none of those folk you describe get hold of a time machine.We all have ancestors who were treated as "no-class citizens", and wherever in the world your ancestors came from, you certainly had ancestors who were slaves.925 years ago, about 10% of my ancestors were slaves (the Normans' Domesday Book records that). More recently, some would have been villeins, bound to a Lord and effectively slaves.I wouldn't have it any other way, and, as I would've had many ancestors at the time, some would have been slave owners as well, although that's always a smaller group (because some own many slaves).The nineteenth century was an unprecedented period of abolition world wide. Before that, slavery was standard practice on all continents in agricultural societies. That's why you find it assumed in ancient tracts like the Bible and the Koran. The same further east in ancient Chinese and Indian writing.The old South of your country wasn't weird, it's our modern non-slave culture that's exceptional.We can't change the history of our "no class" ancestors, although we can try to end the ongoing chattel slavery which, although illegal everywhere, still exists.

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.

"Type" presumably means "camp", but I'm still not clear what you mean by that sentence. Would you prefer it if the slave trade from Africa to the Americas hadn't happened?

About that last part, you're stating the obvious. Everyone agrees that slavery isn't worthy of celebration. That wasn't Bluegene's point in talking about his ancestry.And about "despicable," you're again putting blunt subjective values on something that is worthy of being placed in perspective and understood in the context of history. We get it, you hate slavery and find it despicable. We acknowledge and understand your personal feelings on matters of "enslavings" and "lynchings" and so forth, because we all feel the same way, but to have a worthwhile discussion we must all avoid looking at the past through an emotional lens. We need to put our analytical and objective hats on and get some facts on the table.So why did the South support slavery so vehemently?--Percy

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.

The monument in question is to dying in support of slavery. If there were monuments to writing a letter to the editor in support of slavery, your question would have some relevance.

You are not responding to a suggestion anyone made. The actual suggestion was that you set your emotionalism aside. If you were being objective you wouldn't be ranting. No one cares whether you buy that because no one is suggesting that. You haven't described a viewpoint anyone is pushing. The only rebuttals you can seem to muster is against arguments you make up yourself.The key question is why the South embraced and defended slavery so vehemently. An objective approach should be able to do a little bit better than something like, "Slavery is despicable and Southerners were evil."--Percy

If the monument in question is still the one from the OP, the one at the University of Louisville, then it's also to all those who served in the Confederate armies. On one side it says, "Our Confederate Dead, 1861-1865," and on the other, "Tribute to the Rank and File of the Armies of the South."--Percy