Confederate statues

[RedSpawn]

And let us not forget the possibility of the invention of the Cotton Gin making the prelude to the Civil War even more inevitable. . . .

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotton_gin

 

Prior to the introduction of the mechanical cotton gin, cotton had required considerable labor to clean and separate the fibers from the seeds.[18] With Eli Whitney’s gin, cotton became a tremendously profitable business, creating many fortunes in the Antebellum South. Cities such as New Orleans, Louisiana; Mobile, Alabama; Charleston, South Carolina; and Galveston, Texas became major shipping ports, deriving substantial economic benefit from cotton raised throughout the South. Additionally, the greatly expanded supply of cotton created strong demand for textile machinery and improved machine designs that replaced wooden parts with metal. This led to the invention of many machine tools in the early 19th century.[2]

 

cotton gin at Jarrell Plantation

The invention of the cotton gin caused massive growth in the production of cotton in the United States, concentrated mostly in the South. Cotton production expanded from 750,000 bales in 1830 to 2.85 million bales in 1850. As a result, the region became even more dependent on plantations and slavery, with plantation agriculture becoming the largest sector of its economy.[19] While it took a single slave about ten hours to separate a single pound of fiber from the seeds, a team of two or three slaves using a cotton gin could produce around fifty pounds of cotton in just one day.[20] The number of slaves rose in concert with the increase in cotton production, increasing from around 700,000 in 1790 to around 3.2 million in 1850.[21] By 1860, black slave labor from the American South was providing two-thirds of the world’s supply of cotton, and up to 80% of the crucial British market.[22] The cotton gin thus “transformed cotton as a crop and the American South into the globe's first agricultural powerhouse, and – according to many historians – was the start of the Industrial Revolution".[23]

 

An 1896 advertisement for the Lummus cotton gin.

According to the Eli Whitney Museum website:

Whitney (who died in 1825) could not have foreseen the ways in which his invention would change society for the worse. The most significant of these was the growth of slavery. While it was true that the cotton gin reduced the labor of removing seeds, it did not reduce the need for slaves to grow and pick the cotton. In fact, the opposite occurred. Cotton growing became so profitable for the planters that it greatly increased their demand for both land and slave labor. In 1790 there were six slave states; in 1860 there were 15. From 1790 until Congress banned the importation of slaves from Africa in 1808, Southerners imported 80,000 Africans. By 1860 approximately one in three Southerners was a slave.[24]

Because of its inadvertent effect on American slavery, and on its ensuring that the South's economy developed in the direction of plantation-based agriculture (while encouraging the growth of the textile industry elsewhere, such as in the North), the invention of the cotton gin is frequently cited as one of the indirect causes of the American Civil War.[5][25][26]

(bold and underline mine)

 

One in 3 Southerners a slave by 1860!!! Just wow!

[RedSpawn]

What was the Socioeconomic Structure like in 1860 Right Before the Civil War?

 

This helps to explain the economic and political mindset around the time. . . and how politicians divide people for political gain.

 

The South prospered, but its wealth was very unequally distributed. Upward social mobility did not exist for the millions of slaves who produced a good portion of the nation’s wealth, while poor southern whites envisioned a day when they might rise enough in the world to own slaves of their own. Because of the cotton boom, there were more millionaires per capita in the Mississippi River Valley by 1860 than anywhere else in the United States. However, in that same year, only 3 percent of whites owned more than fifty slaves, and two-thirds of white households in the South did not own any slaves at all. Distribution of wealth in the South became less democratic over time; fewer whites owned slaves in 1860 than in 1840.

. . .

At the top of southern white society stood the planter elite, which comprised two groups. In the Upper South, an aristocratic gentry, generation upon generation of whom had grown up with slavery, held a privileged place. In the Deep South, an elite group of slaveholders gained new wealth from cotton. Some members of this group hailed from established families in the eastern states (Virginia and the Carolinas), while others came from humbler backgrounds. South Carolinian Nathaniel Heyward, a wealthy rice planter and member of the aristocratic gentry, came from an established family and sat atop the pyramid of southern slaveholders. He amassed an enormous estate; in 1850, he owned more than eighteen hundred slaves. When he died in 1851, he left an estate worth more than $2 million (approximately $63 million in 2014 dollars).

 

As cotton production increased, new wealth flowed to the cotton planters. These planters became the staunchest defenders of slavery, and as their wealth grew, they gained considerable political power.

 

One member of the planter elite was Edward Lloyd V, who came from an established and wealthy family of Talbot County, Maryland. Lloyd had inherited his position rather than rising to it through his own labors. His hundreds of slaves formed a crucial part of his wealth. Like many of the planter elite, Lloyd’s plantation was a masterpiece of elegant architecture and gardens.

 

Wealthy plantation owners like Lloyd came close to forming an American ruling class in the years before the Civil War. They helped shape foreign and domestic policy with one goal in view: to expand the power and reach of the cotton kingdom of the South. Socially, they cultivated a refined manner and believed whites, especially members of their class, should not perform manual labor. Rather, they created an identity for themselves based on a world of leisure in which horse racing and entertainment mattered greatly, and where the enslavement of others was the bedrock of civilization.

 

Below the wealthy planters were the yeoman farmers, or small landowners. Below yeomen were poor, landless whites, who made up the majority of whites in the South. These landless white men dreamed of owning land and slaves and served as slave overseers, drivers, and traders in the southern economy. In fact, owning land and slaves provided one of the only opportunities for upward social and economic mobility. In the South, living the American dream meant possessing slaves, producing cotton, and owning land.

(bold and underline mine).

 

Source: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/ushistory1os2xmaster/chapter/wealth-and-culture-in-the-south/

 

http://slideplayer.com/slide/9795185/31/images/3/Southern+socio-economic+system.jpg --> please excuse the author's venacular

[barmar]

And protesting to tear down a statue of Robert E. Lee will accomplish that goal? Somehow the logic escapes me.

Symbols matter (if not, why do we have statues and monuments in the first place?). Memorializing racists suggests that we still believe in the ideas they espoused. And racial biases come from those attitudes.

 

Basically, they're another aspect of a societal problem that impacts the African-American community. Taking down Confederate flags and statues of Confederate war heroes is a signal that these attitudes are no longer considered appropriate. More significantly, refusing to take them down implies that you think there's something great about what they represented.

 

Could you imagine Germany having monuments to Hitler and the Third Reich? There are ways to remember the past without glorifying it -- they've turned concentration camps into museums where people can learn about the atrocities committed there, with the hope that such things will never be repeated. We've done the same thing with Alcatraz, although I'm not suggesting that it's comparable to Auschwitz.

[RedSpawn]

My wife (of 57 years) grew up in Crawfordville, Georgia...the home of Alexander H. Stephens. His homeplace, Liberty Hall, is preserved there as a museum; there is also a Confederate museum next door; I have been through both many times; there is a state park there named for him...A. H. Stephens state park. At the end of the war between the states Stephens came back to Georgia and was elected Governor. He died in office shortly after his inauguration and was buried in Oakland cemetery in Atlanta. His remains were later exhumed and re-buried in the front yard of Liberty Hall and a statue erected there. Should this statue be taken down and the museum shuttered, would my wife's life be diminished? I doubt it. She will always have happy memories of growing up in a small town in middle Georgia where black folks worked for (and were well-paid) by her folks and were actually considered a part of the family. Should the statue be taken down and the museum shuttered, would the kooks who are fomenting all this hysteria lives be enriched? I doubt it unless there is some vicarious delight in knowing that you have stirred up a bunch of crap. If Antifa, BLM, Democratic Socialists of America, etc. etc. are actually concerned about the average American...either black or white...they need to offer solutions for better health insurance, lower taxes, more jobs, etc...things that actually matter to the average American. Re-fighting a war that ended over 152 years ago is both futile and foolish.

 

Ok Chas, here is a photo of the Georgia State Flag in 1941. Nothing special here.

 

So what exactly happened during the 1950's that the Georgia state government (and constituency) decided they needed to change the flag to this. . . this flag lasted from 1956-2001.

 

 

Did the masses all of a sudden get sentimental about the Antebellum South and Old Dixie in the 1950's? Remember, symbols have meaning, and the change of this flag had a meaning as well. . .

 

http://www.todayingeorgiahistory.org/content/georgia-flag-change

It was not a flag that all Georgians could rally around. On this date in 1956, Governor Marvin Griffin signed legislation to change the Georgia flag to one that included the Confederate battle emblem on two-thirds of the banner.

 

Democratic Party leader John Sammons Bell began the campaign a year earlier after two controversial Supreme Court decisions that ordered the desegregation of public schools. Georgia leaders denounced the rulings, and Gov. Griffin asked lawmakers a week earlier to pass his “massive resistance” legislative agenda and declare the court’s desegregation mandates null and void in Georgia.

 

State Senators Jefferson Lee Davis and Willis Harden sponsored the flag bill, which sailed through the legislature, with no public hearings or statewide referendum. Representative Denmark Groover proclaimed that the new flag “will show that we in Georgia intend to uphold what we stood for, will stand for and will fight for.”

 

It became a divisive symbol but remained Georgia’s official banner for 45 years after its adoption on February 13, 1956, Today in Georgia History.

 

And from the mouth of the Governor during the era of the flag change:

The 1956 Legislative Session: Preserving Segregation

There will be no mixing of the races in the public schools and college classrooms of Georgia anywhere or at any time as long as I am governor....All attempts to mix the races, whether they be in the classrooms, on the playgrounds, in public conveyances or in any other area of close personal contact on terms of equity, peril the mores of the South....the tragic decision of the United States Supreme Court on May 17, 1954, poses a threat to the unparalleled harmony and growth that we have attained here in the South for both races under the framework of established customs. Day by day, Georgia moves nearer a showdown with this Federal Supreme Court – a tyrannical court ruthlessly seeking to usurp control of state-created, state-developed, and state-financed schools and colleges....The next portent looming on the horizon is a further declaration that a State’s power to prohibit mixed marriages is unconstitutional.

 

Governor Marvin S. Griffin

State of the State Address

January 10, 1956

Fortunately, the mores and established customs of the South have evolved since the 1950's (with the help of the Supreme Court of the United States).

[Al_U_Card]

At an even deeper level, the genocide that decimated Amerindians was all part of the "expansion" of the (empire) nation. Keeping up with the killing left fewer resources for maintaining a structure of slavery and oppression of commoners by the rich elite. Resources, land and gold were the goals. The Southern states resisted the northern financial interests, especially their attempts to control and manipulate the cotton supplies and prices. Being the South's main source of revenue, this meant war. It is all about economy and money, after all. Killing and enslavement are just part of the process.

[RedSpawn]

At an even deeper level, the genocide that decimated Amerindians was all part of the "expansion" of the (empire) nation. Keeping up with the killing left fewer resources for maintaining a structure of slavery and oppression of commoners by the rich elite. Resources, land and gold were the goals. The Southern states resisted the northern financial interests, especially their attempts to control and manipulate the cotton supplies and prices. Being the South's main source of revenue, this meant war. It is all about economy and money, after all. Killing and enslavement are just part of the process.

Ah yes, a means to an end.

 

This has all of the makings of Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations.

 

And when you said,

The Southern states resisted the northern financial interests, especially their attempts to control and manipulate the cotton supplies and prices

, a light bulb went off. We are no longer under the "invisible hand" of the marketplace that guides market forces.

 

Alfred D. Chandler, Jr., author of The Visible Hand, uses eight propositions to show how and why the visible hand of management replaced what Adam Smith referred to as invisible hand of the market forces:

• 
   
  
• that the US modern multi-unit business replaced small traditional enterprise, when administrative coordination permitted better profits than the coordination by market mechanism;
  
• that a managerial hierarchy have been created for this multi-unit business enterprise;
  
• that multi-unit business enterprise appeared for the first time in history in a time when the volume of economic activities reached a level that made administrative coordination more efficient than market coordination;
  
• that once a managerial hierarchy has been created and had successfully carried out its functions of administrative coordination, the hierarchy itself became a source of power, permanence and continued growth;
  
• that the careers of the salaried managers became increasingly professional and technical;
  
• that the multi-unit business enterprise grew in size and diversity and as its managers became more professional, the management of the enterprise became separated from its ownership;
  
• that managers preferred policies that favored long term stability and growth of their enterprises to those that maximized current profits;
  
• that as the large enterprises grew and dominated major sectors of the economy they altered the basic structure of these sectors and of the economy as a whole.
  

And now management's hand in corporations (legal fictions) are so large that they have a material impact on the broader economy as a whole. . . .Alfred Chandler was right except for bullet #7---> Management is only concerned about short-term profits thanks to incentive plans such as employee stock option plans (ESOP) where management is given company stock warrants at market price (and they can sell for higher prices once they goose up quarterly profits and meet market analysts expectations).

[mike777]

You mention 8 propositions, then conclude 7 of them are correct. hmmmm we seem to be missing something in between. :)

 

I see there are 8 propositions to support an even bigger proposition...call it prop9

 

In any event to follow your logic...prop9 is unproven since prop7 is false.

[Chas_P]

Symbols matter (if not, why do we have statues and monuments in the first place?). Memorializing racists suggests that we still believe in the ideas they espoused. And racial biases come from those attitudes.

 

Basically, they're another aspect of a societal problem that impacts the African-American community. Taking down Confederate flags and statues of Confederate war heroes is a signal that these attitudes are no longer considered appropriate. More significantly, refusing to take them down implies that you think there's something great about what they represented.

 

Could you imagine Germany having monuments to Hitler and the Third Reich? There are ways to remember the past without glorifying it -- they've turned concentration camps into museums where people can learn about the atrocities committed there, with the hope that such things will never be repeated. We've done the same thing with Alcatraz, although I'm not suggesting that it's comparable to Auschwitz.

 

I understand all that. But my original question remains: How will the lives of black Americans be improved by tearing down Confederate monuments...or any other monument for that matter? I've read that The Reverend Al Sharpton considers the Jefferson Memorial "an insult to my family". If we take them all down will blacks instantaneously be free to stop murdering each other in Chicago? Will they be free to stop making babies they can't support? Will they be free to have households that include both a mother and a father? Will they be free to graduate from high school or trade school and find a decent job? Or will they just be free to start another hysterical "movement" and raise hell about that? And please note.......I am not condemning just blacks here. There are plenty of whites with the same shortcomings. I don't have much use for them either.

[Chas_P]

 

Ok Chas, here is a photo of the Georgia State Flag in 1941. Nothing special here.

 

So what exactly happened during the 1950's that the Georgia state government (and constituency) decided they needed to change the flag to this. . . this flag lasted from 1956-2001.

 

 

Did the masses all of a sudden get sentimental about the Antebellum South and Old Dixie in the 1950's? Remember, symbols have meaning, and the change of this flag had a meaning as well. . .

 

http://www.todayingeorgiahistory.org/content/georgia-flag-change

 

 

And from the mouth of the Governor during the era of the flag change:

The 1956 Legislative Session: Preserving Segregation

 

Fortunately, the mores and established customs of the South have evolved since the 1950's (with the help of the Supreme Court of the United States).

 

I am well aware of all that. I lived through it; I was born in 1938. Marvin Griffin was not my favorite governor. The Georgia flag was changed again in 2003.

[jjbrr]

It sort of rubs me the wrong way that someone born in 1938 can get away with passing judgment on large groups of people with the conclusion that you "don't have much use for them"

 

It's a good thing my generation doesn't consider decrepit old guys second-rate citizens as you do blacks.

 

Let us know how that makes you feel.

[blackshoe]

The Civil War ended the idea that secession was or is legal. There still is in the constitution a prohibition called treason for "making war against the United States". At the time of the Civil War, Lee was still an American citizen. Hence, treasonous. He lost his citizenship for making war against the U.S. and was never fully pardoned until Gerald Ford reinstated his citizenship.

Read Lee's writings. His loyalty was to his state, at a time when the federal government had not yet overridden the sovereignty of the states. Yes, Lincoln changed that. He did it by ignoring the Constitution.

 

"No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court."

 

When and where was Lee convicted of treason?

[Winstonm]

Read Lee's writings. His loyalty was to his state, at a time when the federal government had not yet overridden the sovereignty of the states. Yes, Lincoln changed that. He did it by ignoring the Constitution.

 

"No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court."

 

When and where was Lee convicted of treason?

 

The only reason he was not tried was due to the amnesty that he had to apply for in writing. That he has no "official" trial history does not make him less treasonous, does it? Had he been killed in combat rather than surviving the way, would he still not be treasonous due to his actions?

[Zelandakh]

That he has no "official" trial history does not make him less treasonous, does it? Had he been killed in combat rather than surviving the way, would he still not be treasonous due to his actions?

This quote could just as easily be applied to George Washington as to Robert E. Lee. The difference between a traitor or terrorist and a freedom fighter is often viewpoint and the end result.

 

I understand all that. But my original question remains: How will the lives of black Americans be improved by tearing down Confederate monuments...or any other monument for that matter?

Changing underlying cultural attitudes is often the key to success in cases like this, in much the same way as educating people about smoking being unhealthy has generally been less effective than making it less "cool". So yes, tearing down monuments that support a general attitude of racism in the population can provide a noticeable improvement to the lives of black Americans over time when combined with a wider campaign of intolerance being unacceptable and generally familiarising Americans to other cultures (since a lot of racism comes from mistrust of the unknown).

 

The tragedy of the current situation is that having a POTUS essentially take the view that racism is acceptable is likely to put back much of the good from such initiatives by at least a generation. Changing attitudes is a slow process and things that provide a veneer of acceptability, whether they be symbolic statues, influential speeches or just tweets that reach a wide audience, make the process even slower.

 

The rest of your post is so overtly racist that I thought initially it was some quote from the 19th century rather than your own words. It is precisely this kind of attitude - all blacks are murderers and school dropouts, without the level of humanity to hold a family together - that needs to be eradicated. That you posted this sh!te lowers my opinion of you greatly and I hope you will now distance yourself from the views. Writing that you are "not condeming just blacks" afterwards does not make your post any less offensive, nor you any less of a racist.

[RedSpawn]

I understand all that. But my original question remains: How will the lives of black Americans be improved by tearing down Confederate monuments...or any other monument for that matter? I've read that The Reverend Al Sharpton considers the Jefferson Memorial "an insult to my family". If we take them all down will blacks instantaneously be free to stop murdering each other in Chicago? Will they be free to stop making babies they can't support? Will they be free to have households that include both a mother and a father? Will they be free to graduate from high school or trade school and find a decent job? Or will they just be free to start another hysterical "movement" and raise hell about that? And please note.......I am not condemning just blacks here. There are plenty of whites with the same shortcomings. I don't have much use for them either.

Chas, you have to be very careful when you discount segments of the population in a wholesale fashion and characterize them as disposable containers who you "don't have much use for".

 

Recall just 5 years ago, Presidential candidate Mitt Romney iterated the exact same sentiments to a crowd of uber-rich aristocrats during a Presidential campaign fundraiser. He made the case he saw no use for 47% of the population of 300,000,000 Americans who are essentially freeloaders of government since they allegedly pay no income tax. [No need to prove his logic wrong here -- that has already been done]. This country would be a better place if we could just get rid of the much maligned welfare kings and welfare queens who pimp the system and drain it from deserving people who really need it, right?

 

But what I find very interesting is your disdain for the poor non-working whites and blacks, but not as much disdain for faceless multinational corporations that receive their own special brand of corporate welfare which robs the Treasury of HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS of dollars annually.

 

These multinational corporations get a special tax treatment though "deferred income tax" accounting in which they pay ABSOLUTELY NO income taxes or very very low income taxes by moving manufacturing sites overseas but running all their general and administrative overhead costs through their U.S. entities. So, the US entity has all of these operating costs and book losses and they get to defer taxes even though they made a $hitload of money overseas where the product was created and sold and they allegedly pay a tax in the country where the product was created/sold. Hmmmm. And now, these same NO and uber-low-paying tax paying entities can use their excess profits to buy politicians during election cycles by contributing unlimited sums of money (profits) to PACs and SUPER-PACs.

 

Unfortunately, the corporate tax revenues that should be in the U.S. Treasury to pay "bills" remain in corporate treasuries instead. Therefore, corporations are receiving obscene tax breaks at the expense of John Q. Public. This political engineering hampers our government's ability to uphold the social contract of protecting and preserving society, but fattens politicians' and big business' pockets. The corporations can use these delicious tax breaks to reconfigure our political and business institutions to suit their needs while jeopardizing our safety nets.

 

I am quite confident if we run the numbers for the corporate welfare (tax breaks) and graft and corruption in the military industrial complex (REMEMBER WE CAN'T EVEN GET RELIABLE AND TRUSTWORTHY DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE FINANCIAL STATEMENTS), we need to fear corporations and the military industrial complex far more than the alleged welfare kings and queens for whom we have no use.

 

Sources:

https://www.cbpp.org/research/six-tests-for-corporate-tax-reform

https://www.cbpp.org/research/the-decline-of-corporate-income-tax-revenues

 

http://c.fastcompany.net/multisite_files/fastcompany/slideshow/2014/01/3025433-slide-s-1-see-american-history-illustrated-in-the-works-of-legendary-political-cartoonist-herblock.jpg

 

 

 

Source: https://www.nationalpriorities.org/analysis/2011/taxday-2011/revenues/

[Chas_P]

The rest of your post is so overtly racist that I thought initially it was some quote from the 19th century rather than your own words.

 

LOL. I wondered how long it would take for someone to drag out the "r" word....the standard retort of leftists to those who don't share their worldview. I will retreat now, properly shamed, into my basket with all the other deplorables.

[hrothgar]

LOL. I wondered how long it would take for someone to drag out the "r" word....the standard retort of leftists to those who don't share their worldview. I will retreat now, properly shamed, into my basket with all the other deplorables.

 

Good. Do make arrangements to let us know when you die so we can hold an appropriate celebration.

[Zelandakh]

I will retreat now, properly shamed, into my basket with all the other deplorables.

If you are going to make racist statements here then it is probably best that you do so, yes. Let us be absolutely clear that racism, sexism and the like are not acceptable. You probably do not consider yourself a racist but your previous post is absolutely clear, demonstrating, to take an Oxford definition: "The belief that all members of each race possess characteristics, abilities, or qualities specific to that race, especially so as to distinguish it as inferior or superior to another race or races."

 

If you consider it left wing to call out racism when seen then I wish everyone were a "leftist" by your definition. It rather amuses me that you would consider me a left-winger; even my foster father, whose self-described political position was "somewhere to the right of Genghis Khan" did not consider me so. In the real world, there are plenty of non-racists to the right of centre and I would like to think that that number will increase. Of course noone can stop you from remaining racist if that is your choice, just do not bring it here, or if you do expect to be called out on it. No problem in discussing issues for which race is a factor in a civilised way but you are way across the line of acceptability and if those are really your beliefs then yes, you absolutely do qualify for Hillary's basket of deplorables.

[jjbrr]

"standard retort of leftists" lol

 

i think all we need at this point is a BUT HER EMAILS post and we'll have reached maximum absurdity. what an absolute dumpster fire

[RedSpawn]

LOL. I wondered how long it would take for someone to drag out the "r" word....the standard retort of leftists to those who don't share their worldview. I will retreat now, properly shamed, into my basket with all the other deplorables.

Chas, I didn't use the "r" word.

 

I want to know your political view on the corporate welfare behemoths versus the welfare kings and queens we have been complaining about since the Reagan years. Both are responsible for draining our U.S. Treasury of billions of $$$, yet corporate welfare has generally been characterized as "respectable" and "strategic" tax avoidance/evasion schemes while poor welfare recipients are outright "frauds" and "hustlers" of ill repute.

 

My opinion is that both are dangerous, but based on $ volume, corporations are a bigger threat to our federal debt.

[nige1]

It's a good thing my generation doesn't consider decrepit old guys second-rate citizens as you do blacks. Let us know how that makes you feel.

Good. Do make arrangements to let us know when you die so we can hold an appropriate celebration.

Again, I feel that resort to ad hominem attack vitiates rational argument :(

[barmar]

I understand all that. But my original question remains: How will the lives of black Americans be improved by tearing down Confederate monuments...or any other monument for that matter?

It won't have any immediate, direct impact on their lives. It's a symbolic act that indicates that we condemn the attitudes and policies that resulted in the monuments being erected in the first place. It represents a public commitment to civil rights.

 

And the protests against it (as well as your comments) indicate that many people still have a way to go.

[diana_eva]

Again, I feel that resort to ad hominem attack vitiates rational argument :(

 

There's nothing rational about stating that you don't have use for a whole category of people.

[nige1]

It won't have any immediate, direct impact on their lives. It's a symbolic act that indicates that we condemn the attitudes and policies that resulted in the monuments being erected in the first place. It represents a public commitment to civil rights. And the protests against it (as well as your comments) indicate that many people still have a way to go.

Many monuments have historical, cultural and artistic value. We can sympathise, however, with those who feel that monuments symbolise ideas that they hate. Few monuments are universally approved. It's easier to destroy than to create. Hence, were we to regard political disapproval as a valid excuse for removal, then almost nothing would be left. Especially as mores and morality mutate over time. Many of us are confident of the political correctness of our beliefs. We're reluctant to admit the possibility that we might be wrong. Our heritage suffers as a result. From the burning of the Alexandria Library to the modern desecration of cemeteries. It's ironic that we condemn Isis for the kind of vandalism that some of us now advocate.

Ozymandias

 

I met a traveller from an antique land,

Who said—"Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;

And on the pedestal, these words appear:

My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away."

[nige1]

There's nothing rational about stating that you don't have use for a whole category of people.

The water-cooler seems to regard most groups as fair game (Politicians, Bureaucrats, Plutocrats, Democrats, Republicans, Socialists, Russians, Religions, Confederates, Pro-lifers, and so on). I tend to agree, except where forbidden by law.

 

As a moderator, Diana_Eva, you judge that a contentious view justifies a personal attack? :)

[jjbrr]

"contentious view" lol. did you miss the part where the guy posted that he hates black people? go ahead and lead us in some discussion about the finer points of such a position.