Confederate Statues, Liberalism, Moral Relativism and White Supremacists

[Heathen Hammer]

What kind of strawman is that? What I said wasn't even close to that. I specifically called out your revisionism, nothing about statues. See, even if a statue is taken down (from public land) that doesn't necessarily change anything in our collective knowledge. We still have access to the information (which is what history is) we had before and can all upon it for knowledge and guidance. If you are try to rewrite history to something you find more preferable and then try to disseminate that information, that is much closer to destroying history as you are trying to bend it the narrative you prefer, not the narrative we are most confident in. You are trying to change the information that is history.

No, I am not. Pointing out historic realities (i.e. Lincoln being a white supremacist who explicitly stated that abolitionism to him is merely a mean to an end and Confederate statues being built to commemorate fallen soldiers, rather then out of some kind of Southern conspiracy to intimidate minorities) isn't revisionism. That would be something those that oppose removal of statues do.

If you were actually concerned about history, you would be making more historic arguments about why removing a statue of Robert E. Lee counts as revisionism. Like, if you wanted to discuss his actions or reputation, that is one thing. He is, indeed, a complex and interesting character in history. But I have a feeling you don't really care and just see this a culture battle to fight.

Well no, that is just one of the many arguments that serves as nail in the coffin for the arguments of those that support removal of statues and other historic artifacts.

[alhoon]

Please avoid repeated one-liner responds of "You failed to counter my arguments!" "I countered them" "No you didn't, you just refuse to accept you're wrong".
One or two instances to draw attention of the other party that you don't consider their arguments conclusive or correct is fine. But long chains that have to do solely with whether a poster or side countered the argument effectively or not, make the discussion harder to follow and are considered disruptive.

[NorseThing]

I think HH is stoking the coals with garbage from Lerone Bennett Jr. such as his ditty in Ebony Magazine, February 1968. PBS seems best to debunk this.



https://www.pbslearningmedia.org/res.../#.Wevcgh1e5LM

[IronBrig4]

Bad idea. PBS is just one of the "globalist" groups that is trying to make traditional white Americans out to be villains, and its end goal is to allow swarthy-skinned foreigners in to dilute our bloodlines and destroy the Nordic race.

[NorseThing]

HH -- your Horace Greeley letter does not support any position that Lincoln was a white supremacist nor racist. It was simply to state that he wanted to save the union and would do so no matter how it affected the slavery issue.

[IronBrig4]

Sure, Lincoln said that... in 1858. The only way the Republicans could win in 1860 was by putting forward a moderate candidate. Even then, Lincoln won mostly because the Democratic party split their ballot.

The historians of the Abraham Lincoln Association show that Lincoln held onto views that were common at the time, but gradually evolved throughout the Civil War. https://quod.lib.umich.edu/j/jala/26...;view=fulltext

[IronBrig4]

If you're talking about settlers in the Great Plains, a lot of them were far from innocent. They're the ones who squatted on Indian land, killed off most of the bison, and murdered Indians in internecine squabbles. But that might be a topic more fit for the VV.

Again, I don't ignore the violence committed but I recognize it as standard for Victorian Era warfare between indigenous peoples and imperialist powers. That warfare was based on absolute destruction and similar conflicts flared up in Algeria, German South-west Africa, South Africa, French Indochina, the Philippines, and the Sudan. Statues to Indian chiefs are just historical artifacts and are not necessarily a symbol of approval. Statues to Confederate leaders are part of a deliberate attempt by Lost Causers to whitewash the Civil War, and that attempt is ongoing. You must realize that when these statues were coming up, white Southerners had killed Reconstruction and were gleefully "redeeming" the South by disenfranchising local blacks, kicking black and Republican legislators out of office, and engaging in wholesale terror against black populations. Even my college town had a few lynchings during this time period. The odd white person who spoke out against it was likely to face a lynch mob as well. The monuments were a reflection of all of this pathological obsession with the Antebellum social order, and the second spike in monument construction happened when white Southerners (the usual suspects) resisted desegregation and engaged in more terrorism.

I can back up my statement with the AHA. I even gave you a book title that you can data mine for primary sources since you clearly don't respect the work that historians do. No, I'm not going to do it for you because you're the one who thinks he knows better than trained, qualified historians.

Edit: Okay, I'll throw you a bone. http://hgreen.people.ua.edu/transcri...rr-speech.html

And that's just one example. You can probably find many more if you do some digging.

[Heathen Hammer]

That would make sense when discussing somewhat more of a complex issue.
When we have a politician from 1800s, whose opinions and speeches were very well recorded, you don't need a degree in history to learn what he believed in from his own words. Then again, people on this forum who argue that Lincoln was some kind of freedom-fightin' SJW tend to have a rather limited understanding of history.

[Love Mountain]

Only a White Supremacist would want to preserve the racist Union, instead of giving Blacks their own country. I'm just fishing here, because I have no idea either.

[Gaidin]

They've only pulled one down, and that particular one illegally. People were charged. Any others were moved to alternate locations in legal fashion. See the difference?

[NorseThing]

Note the hunters are hunting not just statues, but even plaques on pews in some churches. Where will this mania about the salve holding past end?

Leaders at the church that George Washington attended decided that a plaque honoring the first president of the United States must be removed.
Christ Church in Alexandria, Virginia will take down a memorial marking the pew where Washington sat with his family, saying it is not acceptable to all worshipers.
“The plaques in our sanctuary make some in our presence feel unsafe or unwelcome," leaders said, a reference to the fact that Washington was a slaveholder.
"Some visitors and guests who worship with us choose not to return because they receive an unintended message from the prominent presence of the plaques.”

http://insider.foxnews.com/2017/10/2...must-come-down

Yes the church has the right to do this. I do not doubt there are some who honestly are feeling unsafe due to the plaque. I wonder though why people feel unsafe to sit in a pew in this church because a plaques commemorates that George Washington sat there?

[The spartan]

Yes the church has the right to do this. I do not doubt there are some who honestly are feeling unsafe due to the plaque. I wonder though why people feel unsafe to sit in a pew in this church because a plaques commemorates that George Washington sat there?

Sounds like a false fear to me. Do churches really feel threatened about having a plaque to George Washington, or is this specific one just trying to make a political point? Have we seen violence in churches over such issues?

[IronBrig4]

From speeches made in 1858. I backed up my statement with academic sources, stating that his views evolved over time. In any case, the views expressed in 1858 weren't at all unusual compared to what most white Americans believed regarding race.

Just where did you go to school?

[swabian]

From speeches made in 1858. I backed up my statement with academic sources

Where again?

[IronBrig4]

Post 242.

[chilon]

full episode is worth watching

[IronBrig4]

And this piece by Eric Foner also sheds light on the South's selective amnesia. Foner is one of the experts on the subject.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/20/o...n-history.html

As all historians know, forgetting is as essential to public understandings of history as remembering. Confederate statues do not simply commemorate “our” history, as the president declared. They honor one part of our past. Where are the statues in the former slave states honoring the very large part of the Southern population (beginning with the four million slaves) that sided with the Union rather than the Confederacy? Where are the monuments to the victims of slavery or to the hundreds of black lawmakers who during Reconstruction served in positions ranging from United States senator to justice of the peace to school board official? Excluding blacks from historical recognition has been the other side of the coin of glorifying the Confederacy.

[Elfdude]

If someone can't understand that a bunch of statues created at the height of the KKK power and as a middle finger to the civil rights movement by institutions directly advocating for the Lost Cause mythos surrounding the civil war are racist they they clearly have issues with their mental capacity.

[Frostwulf]

If you're talking about settlers in the Great Plains, a lot of them were far from innocent. They're the ones who squatted on Indian land, killed off most of the bison, and murdered Indians in internecine squabbles. But that might be a topic more fit for the VV.


Again, I don't ignore the violence committed but I recognize it as standard for Victorian Era warfare between indigenous peoples and imperialist powers. That warfare was based on absolute destruction and similar conflicts flared up in Algeria, German South-west Africa, South Africa, French Indochina, the Philippines, and the Sudan.

Ahh so that makes it ok to murder, rape, mutilate etc.(many of them innocent) and of course to idolize people like that with statues. Why do you make excuses for their bad behavior? I'll tell you what, Ill do the same thing on the 2 next quotes below.

Statues to Indian chiefs are just historical artifacts and are not necessarily a symbol of approval.

Of course, they are merely chunks of stone that doesn’t have any meaning, just like the confederate statues, you know just historical.

Statues to Confederate leaders are part of a deliberate attempt by Lost Causers to whitewash the Civil War, and that attempt is ongoing.

And to honor their heritage and those that tried to protect the states of their residence or birth.

You must realize that when these statues were coming up, white Southerners had killed Reconstruction and were gleefully "redeeming" the South by disenfranchising local blacks, kicking black and Republican legislators out of office, and engaging in wholesale terror against black populations. Even my college town had a few lynchings during this time period. The odd white person who spoke out against it was likely to face a lynch mob as well. The monuments were a reflection of all of this pathological obsession with the Antebellum social order, and the second spike in monument construction happened when white Southerners (the usual suspects) resisted desegregation and engaged in more terrorism.

And once again you have Taney, Calhoun, Richard Stockton, James Stephen Hogg, and etc which shows that what your writing has nothing to do with it. This is about honoring men (statues) that today’s values don’t support. Such things as slavery, and I would put also murder, rape, mutilation etc.

I can back up my statement with the AHA. I even gave you a book title that you can data mine for primary sources since you clearly don't respect the work that historians do. No, I'm not going to do it for you because you're the one who thinks he knows better than trained, qualified historians.

I didn’t say that I don’t respect their work, nor did I say I disagreed with it(try not to put words in my mouth, it would be easy for me to do the same to you). My problem is that I’m not an ostrich and stick my head in the ground and say “gee they said so, so it must be true”. I to have studied history and prefer not to take the word of someone but to see the research, I would like to think all people would consider such things.

Edit: Okay, I'll throw you a bone. http://hgreen.people.ua.edu/transcri...rr-speech.html

Thank you for putting down a source like this:

Let us be grateful that our struggle, keeping alive the grand principle of local self-government and State sovereignty has thus far held the American people from that consolidated despotism whose name, whether Republic or Empire, is of but little importance as compared with its rule.

This does in my opinion leads me to believe that this is part of the “lost cause” belief. But the rest of it is of little significance, because the lost cause is not the reason for the removal, it is as I explained above-all about slavery not confederacy. This speech was venerating these men for the Southern honor and the way they looked at things. Even though this guy(despicable as far as I'm concerned) talked of his own vile behavior it had nothing to do with what the statues were about: " I trust I may be pardoned for one allusion, howbeit it is rather personal.". The statues were for this reason: "The duty due to our dear Southland, and the conspicuous service rendered, did not end at Appomatox[sic]. The four years immediately following the four years of bloody carnage, brought their responsibilities hardly of less consequence than those for which the South laid upon the altar of her country 74,524 of her brave and loyal sons dead from disease, a grand total of 133,821.". This is about the people who fought/died for the South and yes the "lost cause". This speech was to honor the dead of the South as simple as that. The statues may have the "lost cause" but so what, people believe all kinds of "myths". The statues were not built to "gleefully "redeeming" the South by disenfranchising local blacks, kicking black and Republican legislators out of office, and engaging in wholesale terror against black populations." These statues were built to honor the Southern people who died or defended the South not at all what your going on about.

Conclusion: This is not about the "lost cause" or people who look to it. This is simply about eliminating statues which honors men who don't hold to today's moral standard. This is why Calhoun, Stockton, Taney, etc. were removed, they have nothing to do with the "lost cause" or the confederacy. You continually look for excuses for the Native Americans for their unacceptable behavior and condemn the Southerners, seems hypocritical to me. I condemn both! I have no problem with the removal of statues of these men (including Calhoun, Hogg, etc.) but it must be done across the board. If we are cleansing then get rid of the statues that honor men who had/supported slavery then get rid of those statues that honor men that murdered, raped, tortured, etc. innocent or even the non/semi-innocent. Statues of men like Tecumseh, Crazy Horse, Red Cloud, etc. need to go.

[Frostwulf]

If someone can't understand that a bunch of statues created at the height of the KKK power and as a middle finger to the civil rights movement by institutions directly advocating for the Lost Cause mythos surrounding the civil war are racist they they clearly have issues with their mental capacity.

The "lost cause" is to lessen the stigma of the slavery issue, to make what the south did more palatable to people, including themselves. But the statues were made to honor the Southern dead, those that did fight against he U.S. The reason for their removal is not due to the "lost cause" mythos it's due to slavery and the racism that comes with it. To prove this point it's not just confederate statues but those of Taney, Calhoun, Richard Stockton, James Stephen Hogg etc. whom had nothing to do with the confederacy nor of the "lost cause". They either had slaves or were proponents of slavery and that is why they had been removed. And as another reminder some of the statues were created right after the civil war.