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Author | Topic: PC Gone Too Far | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
ringo Member (Idle past 443 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
bluegenes writes:
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.
Do you mean that supporting slavery without dying for it is much better in your mind than supporting slavery and dying for it?
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ringo Member (Idle past 443 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
Percy writes:
So it's to the ones who risked dying as well as the unlucky ones who actually died.
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."
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ringo Member (Idle past 443 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
bluegenes writes:
I don't know what point you're trying to make. I'm just pointing out the difference between the Washington Monument and the monument in the OP.
Surely you're not going to exempt the southern ruling class from responsibility while blaming the masses?
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ringo Member (Idle past 443 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
Percy writes:
The only "position" is that it's reasonable to support moving the Louisville monument without also demanding that the Washington Monument be moved.
I understand the distinction but don't see how it fits into your position. Percy writes:
An individual tombstone that says, "Here lies George, 1845-1863," doesn't say much about why George died. A collective monument commemorates - or at least connotes - an event. The motivation behind a collective monument is much clearer.
You were also saying that you draw a distinction between monuments to individual people and those to entire groups of people, but there are so many examples of both for both the North and the South that I can't tell where you're going with this.
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ringo Member (Idle past 443 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined:
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bluegenes writes:
I think I've already asked in this thread, "What's the point of remembering history if we don't judge it?" We remember the Holocaust so we can hopefully prevent it from happening again, not just so we can build concentration camps without having to reinvent the wheel. We judge it as a bad thing.
If we start judging monuments built in the past by modern ideology, we could end up behaving a bit like iconoclastic religious fanatics. bluegenes writes:
So what's the point of preserving history? Is history just a theme park to you where you can see a different world populated by Mickey and Goofy?
The past is like a foreign country. People did things differently there, and we can't actually change what they did. bluegenes writes:
I agree with the guy in the OP. You need to explain why you don't.
People waving confederate flags and putting them on government buildings right now is a different question. The guy mentioned in the O.P. who is campaigning for the removal of the 1895 monument thinks they are the same.
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ringo Member (Idle past 443 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
bluegenes writes:
Where have I ever advocated for removing any monuments? My argument is that removing monuments is not necessarily "politically correct" and that, on the contrary, preserving monuments can be politically correct.
I'll appreciate your attempt at consistency if you want to argue for the removal of such monuments. bluegenes writes:
But the monument doesn't just "speak of their slave history". It celebrates the guys who were on the wrong side. It's like putting up a monument to the SS on the grounds of Auschwitz. If they want to "speak of their slave history", they should put up a monument to the slaves, not the slavers.
I think that future generations of Kentuckians having large visible edifices around them that speak of their state's slave history is a very good idea.
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ringo Member (Idle past 443 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
Percy writes:
I have said that I have no objection to moving the Washington Monument. But the difference is that the Washington Monument doesn't automatically connote slavery while the Louisville monument does.
... how is it that that reasoning includes the Louisville monument but not the Washington Memorial? Percy writes:
An individual monument doesn't connote slavery while a collective monument does.
So I still don't understand the distinction you're trying to draw between individual and collective monuments.
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ringo Member (Idle past 443 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
bluegenes writes:
I think his reasons for wanting to move the monument are valid and not politically correct. Whether or not the monument is moved is of little interest to me. I advocate neither moving it nor painting it red nor leaving it alone.
ringo writes:
I thought you agreed with the guy mentioned in the O.P. Where have I ever advocated for removing any monuments? bluegenes writes:
Actually, they're very similar.
Even if you can make the case that the confederate soldiers were primarily fighting for an ideology of slavery, slavery and genocide are far from being the same things.
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ringo Member (Idle past 443 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
Percy writes:
I think it would be difficult to mention the Confederacy without connoting slavery, just as it would be difficult to mention Nazi Germany without connoting genocide.
If the vanilla Louisville monument "connotes slavery" then can there be any Confederate monuments/memorials that don't? Percy writes:
Isn't the point of a monument to evoke certain thoughts and emotions in people? Unfortunately for the whitewashers of history, those thoughts and emotions change over time, which is why monuments don't always "say" what they were intended to say. "I am Ozymandias, King of Kings. Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair." We don't despair any more.
And doesn't your phrase "automatically connotes slavery" actually describe just a sense of how many people think "slavery" when they see a monument? Percy writes:
Sure it is. A monument is built to show respect. You can't divorce respect for the soldiers from endorsement of the cause they died for. That's why you're not in favour of monuments to the SS or ISIS.
And what is wrong with "connoting slavery." It's not endorsing slavery. Percy writes:
Monuments are not the only history there is. We can preserve history just fine without preserving respect for the villains of history.
We can't limit ourselves to monuments/memorials that only bring to mind the parts of our history that make us feel good. Percy writes:
Seriously? You're claiming that because there are some exceptions, no distinction exists? Because there's bluish-green and greenish-blue there's no distinction between blue and green?
But you said the distinction was that individual monuments don't speak of causes and motivations while collective monuments do. I showed that for both cases, some do and some don't. The distinction you claim doesn't seem to exist.
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ringo Member (Idle past 443 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined:
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bluegenes writes:
Perhaps you should give it some thought. bluegenes writes:
.....slavery and genocide are far from being the same things.ringo writes:
Perhaps you ought to find out what they both actually are before discussing them in public. Actually, they're very similar. Slavery is much like death. Having no control over one's life is much like death. Watching one's children being sold down the river is possibly worse than death. So I stand by my statement.
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ringo Member (Idle past 443 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
bluegenes writes:
I said similar. Feel free to make a substantive argument to the contrary.
Enslavement and murder are not the same things, and slavery and genocide are far from being the same things. bluegenes writes:
Got it in one, Sherlock. When I said I don't advocate moving monuments, I meant that I don't advocate moving monuments.
... it seems as though you don't perceive the ideology or actions of people being commemorated as a reason for you yourself to advocate the removal of any monuments.
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ringo Member (Idle past 443 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
Percy writes:
How about "rebels"? That's what they were and it doesn't pretend that they were a country equivalent to the Union.
Is your argument that monuments/memorials shouldn't mention the word "Confederacy" because it connotes slavery? If so, how should the Confederacy be referred to? Whatever word you choose it will refer to the same people, place and period and will still connote slavery. Percy writes:
I've asked repeatedly: if we don't judge history, what's the point of remembering it? What's your answer?
In our analysis of history we must not become so self-enamored that we stop analyzing and begin sitting in judgment.
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ringo Member (Idle past 443 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
Percy writes:
There's no change. My position has always been that the rebels shoud be remembered for what they were - slavers and traitors - not whitewashed into heroes.
Your issue was originally that the term shouldn't "connote slavery," but now you're changing it to, "Well, okay, it can connote slavery as long as it adheres to these other unreasonable conditions." Percy writes:
I think slavery is clearly evil - and that pretending it isn't is just you being politicall correct.
I think subjective judgments like "evil" have no historical value.
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ringo Member (Idle past 443 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined:
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Percy writes:
In Message 41 you said that, "all soldiers are basically the same." You're absolving them of personal responsibility for their actions. Making all the hats white is whitewashing.
No one in this thread is proposing whitewashing anyone into heroes. Percy writes:
What has been proposed is looking at history uncritically. That's the opposite of objectivity. Preserving history, or "remembering history", is necessarily selective.
What has been proposed is preserving history, which requires understanding the principles of history and the importance of at least attempting objective analysis. Percy writes:
On the contrary, the only value in remembering history is to figure out - from our perspective - what is right and wrong, good and evil, etc. If we don't recognize the evils of slavery, we will be condemned to relive them in one form or another. If we don't recognize the evils of homophobia, we will be condemned to relive them in one form or another. In fact, we do keep reliving the evils of inequality over and over again with each new group because people like you want to cleanse history of all evil.
The term "evil" as an historical assessment of anything, be it practices or peoples, slavery or the antebellum South, has no value.
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ringo Member (Idle past 443 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
percy writes:
Evil is as evil does. Do evil and you're evil. If it's that Southern soldiers were evil then you are making subjective judgments that have no historical value. And as I keep saying, history itself has no value unless we judge it by our own subjective standards. We can only improve our own behaviour by avoiding what we perceive as bad behaviour in the past.
Percy writes:
As I keep saying, there's no point in looking at history at all unless you pick a side. Saying that Northerners believed slavery evil and that it was crucial that it not spread is to look at history critically. The southerners were wrong. Slavery made them dependent on exporting agricultural products and importing manufactured goods. From our modern viewpoint, we can see that it was unworkable on a long-term basis. Clinging to slavery not only caused the war, it also lost them the war.
Percy writes:
Exactly. We don't need to look at history to tell us that slavery is evil. A little empathy will do that. We need to look at history to see what further evils the evil of slavery can cause.
The lesson of the Civil War is not, "Slavery is evil." We don't need the Civil War....
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