PC Gone Too Far

Perhaps we should start a thread on whether or not the Washington Monument should be taken down and stored in a museum with a huge 500' long shed. Washington did own a lot of slaves for a long time.

Even if the monument builders had been, I'd still argue for leaving it where it is.You don't have to agree with the ideology of the people represented in monuments or the ideology of those who erected them in order to protect the monuments themselves.In this country, we have plenty of protected monuments to people who'd probably be locked up in secure institutions if they were around today and tried to behave in accordance with their own times rather than ours!

Would you want to remove all 19th century statues of Jefferson Davis?Edited by Admin, : Correct spelling: "Davies" => "Davis"

Why do you state that you don't want the carving removed while seeming to suggest that the idea of removing it could be legitimate?Edited by bluegenes, : gramer

Is that the point? Do you think that we would be having this discussion if the Louisville monument was being moved for practical reasons?I think that the reasoning behind the campaign to remove the monument is central to the discussion.Because the Pyramids and the Taj Mahal were built (by slaves) to glorify slave owners who would have had an ideology supporting slavery, should we take them down or just consider them as history?Should Americans, with their anti-monarchist ideology, change the names of all their towns which (like the slave owner founded Louisville) were named after monarchs?

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

It follows from your comment on my analogies. So, if you see the fact that a monument is erected to a person or people known to have supported slavery as a reason for removing it, why not apply that to all monuments world wide? Why is this one in Louisville (a town named after a slavery supporting King) getting the special attention?

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.Why did you? Ah! Now it's nothing to do with people dying for a cause.Why shouldn't people outside Louisville have opinions on the doings of Louisvillians?

I understand what you're talking about in this post, but it isn't really how we preserve things that's the issue. What I find strange is the idea that, when considering something constructed in the past by people who are long dead, we should make ideological decisions about it.If we go into a medieval church in England, and observe the memorial of a feudal Lord astride a horse on a tomb, are we supposed to say "We disapprove of feudalism, this should be destroyed"?

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.

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.

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? 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?

Message 226Slave owners support slavery. I'm not making your point. Mine was that it would be inconsistent to move the monument on ideological grounds without also changing the name of the county. I didn't say you had, did I? But surely consistency demands that you would be just as supportive of the idea of dynamiting the Jefferson Davis obelisk as you are being of the idea of moving the Louisville monument? You seem to have made it your business to try to defend their reasoning, not just their right to action. The thread isn't about who owns the monument, it's about the reasons given for moving it. Had they been moving it because it was unstable and a danger to passing traffic, we wouldn't be having this discussion.

An interesting line of thought for you might be that if J. Davis and the confederate armies hadn't been what they were and done what they did, you wouldn't exist. If it was new, and they'd put it up, I can certainly understand that. That's why the flying of confederate flags by living people is a very different issue from the actions of the long dead.

As it was a link to one of your posts, I'm tempted to agree. The post contained this: "They" being those commemerated by the Louisville monument.Which led to this: Supporting slavery is the important fact for you, and I was merely pointing out the obvious. That's something that slave owners do. You've been defending the reasoning given for removing the monument, and you cannot defend reasoning without caring about consistency. So, the answer should include you. You've been defending the ideological grounds given for moving it. And anyone would be free to discuss that reason. That, however, isn't their reason, and this thread has been discussing the actual reason given. Controlled explosion is a way of moving a 350' concrete obelisk. I'm assuming you'd support the removal of all monuments to Jefferson Davis because of the views you've expressed on the importance of support for slavery.I could be wrong, of course, because you didn't seem to think much of the idea of taking down the Pyramids and the Taj Mahal.I was kindly assuming that there might be some consistency in your reasoning. The thread isn't about who owns the monument or about the principles of democracy, it's about the validity of the reasons given for moving the statue.