PC Gone Too Far

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.

So it's to the ones who risked dying as well as the unlucky ones who actually died.

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.

The only "position" is that it's reasonable to support moving the Louisville monument without also demanding that the Washington Monument be moved. 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.

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. 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? I agree with the guy in the OP. You need to explain why you don't.

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. 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 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. An individual monument doesn't connote slavery while a collective monument does.

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. Actually, they're very similar.

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. 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. 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. Monuments are not the only history there is. We can preserve history just fine without preserving respect for the villains of history. 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?

Perhaps you should give it some thought.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.

I said similar. Feel free to make a substantive argument to the contrary. Got it in one, Sherlock. When I said I don't advocate moving monuments, I meant that I don't advocate moving monuments.

How about "rebels"? That's what they were and it doesn't pretend that they were a country equivalent to the Union. I've asked repeatedly: if we don't judge history, what's the point of remembering it? What's your answer?

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. I think slavery is clearly evil - and that pretending it isn't is just you being politicall correct.

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. What has been proposed is looking at history uncritically. That's the opposite of objectivity. Preserving history, or "remembering history", is necessarily selective. 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.

Evil is as evil does. Do evil and you're evil.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. As I keep saying, there's no point in looking at history at all unless you pick a side.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. 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.