Conderate Statues honor terrorists&traitors who committed treason against The U.S.

There will always be those, no matter how vile the actions or topics discussed are, who will step forward, and try to ignore, dilute, distract, confuse, belittle, or misdirect conversations on important topics-an indication of the venom they have within themselves when they are unable to cope with exposing the racism that they quietly (and not so quietly) approve of.

To be clear, The Confederates were not just guilty of sedition-advocating the violent overthrow of the United States, they were terrorists, who committed acts of terrorism, killed men, women, and children, and who engaged in treason and actually tried to violently overthrow the United States-sparking a civil war(which is the goal of the White Supremacists today). They were traitors, they lost the war, and a mass amnesty had to be given to most rank and files confederate soldiers, on condition, that they renounce their actions, swear allegiance to the U.S. Constitution, etc. Then there was another class of the leadership who were actually tried in military courts-the leaders-some of the same ones to whom the statues and public buildings, schools and honors are dedicated to-and imprisoned for treason for leading the effort and terrorism that actually cost hundreds of thousands of Americans their lives. That is who is being celebrated. Some of these leaders were later freed or applied for amnesty for prosecution and incarceration/death-some of them never even had their citizenship rights restored.(and all oaths of amnesty required renouncement of their treason) These are people whose agenda was White Supremacy and Slavery-and the expansion of such, that is what they fought for, and mixing in the fact that they were fighting over land or other things doesn't change that.

Let us take under examination, the comparison of the history of the confederate statues and the claim that somehow removing them destroys history. There were statues to Adolph Hitler throughout Europe, and he was certainly leader of Germany and a historical figure. Was it wrong to remove his statues from the public, was such not a destruction of history? But right thinking people realized his history was to vile and evil to be celebrated in public squares. Throughout Eastern Europe, when various regimes fell, which had built statues to the heroes of those regimes, the statues were taken down. But see, the response was different, then what we are seeing in the United States.

Now, importantly, as an American, who has lived all over the U.S.(as well as abroad), not all the statues, are in the South, that must be mentioned. Moreover, there is a history to these statues. They did not just pop up on the grid, they came about, some of them, in direct response (as was the case in 1961 when the Confederate Flag, only in response to The Civil Rights Movement and the desire of White Supremacist to keep the apartheid/racist status quo going, that in rebellion to court rulings and The Movement-the Confederate flag began to be flown) to the Civil Rights Movement, but a great many were built in the 1890's, after the Civil War, but ONLY after The Great Compromise of 1877, where Rutherford B. Hayes, ended Reconstruction (to summarize-the process of not only re-admittance of the traitor states in rebellion to the Union that is the United States, but the rebuilding of those places, some (very little)modicum of protection for the rights of the freed slaves, etc.)-as a condition to getting elected to the U.S. Presidency, after he failed to secure victory(and actually, lost the popular vote).

Mr. Hayes-had to accede to the demands of Southern Congressman to withdraw federal troops from The South, let it go back over to the White Supremacist ideals for which it stood for (no slavery-but other mechanisms, from Jim Crow, "Contracts for workers", and other racially discriminatory mechanisms, terrorism, repression and violence to keep as a permanent underclass, all non-Whites, which of course lead up over the next nearly 100 years, into the modern area of Civil Rights, legislation, enforcement, failures, new bills in the 1990's, etc.)

The South was then free to rebuild in the image it saw fight-gone was Reconstruction bans against celebrating traitors and terrorists, and the people who were of that mindset began to push forward into public view, talk about the good old days, of what could have been, and then, essentially as history has written, did what they did to try to perpetuate White Supremacy all over the South. The North and other places were not much better, there were sympathizers from the North and those who went there from The South-and pretty soon, these monuments began to come up. I should not think that Timothy McVeigh or other terrorists would get a monument built to them for their violent attempts to impose their thinking -through terrorism, upon others.

Moreover, there are those, like stupid donald chump, who would attempt to conflate, obscure and delude people into thinking a false equivalency..."well, many American Founding Fathers and then later Presidents" were owned slaves were racists, should we take down their statues? And as chump put it "where does it end." George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were indeed slaveholders, in their writings you do indeed find racism and justifications for White Supremacy. However, they did start the U.S. Government and the sovereign Nation(though one does not have to agree with the "How" they did, because I do not). They did NOT advocate sedition, then actually become traitors and engage in acts of terrorism and escalation to a civil war that killed 100's of thousands of Americans and nearly destroyed the country-see this false comparison between George Washington and Thomas Jefferson-and terrorist and traitors who were Confederates who fought to destroy what those men helped start-there is no comparison. The issue of whether Washington , Jefferson and the rest of their ilk deserved to be honored for their contributions to creating, establishing, and building the United States, is not in the same conversation or criteria as those who were terrorists against the United States and who through acts of treason started a Civil War to destroy it!

Reply 1

luq_ali

Here is an example of the type of people "honored" Dr. J. Marion Sims.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/18/nyregion/j-marion-sims-statue-removal.html?rref=collection%2Fspotlightcollection%2FRace/Related

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/03/nyregion/sculpture-of-paradox-doctor-as-hero-and-villain.html

Reply 2

Good bloke

Original post by luq_ali

They did NOT advocate sedition, then actually become traitors and engage in acts of terrorism and escalation to a civil war that killed 100's of thousands of Americans and nearly destroyed the country

How, then, did the American War of Independence start? Were the likes of Washington not traitors to the British government and king? Was the plot to commit the Boston Tea Party not an act of sedition? Was the burning of the Gaspee not an act of revolution? Was it not followed by numerous acts of terrorism?

Reply 3

username471863

Original post by Good bloke

They were "traitors", yes but in the end its irrelevant because they won (unlike the Confederacy). Can you really compare fighting for independence to fighting for the right to own othet human beings? In this situation you can't even use the "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter" quote because they were fighting for the exact opposite of freedom.

(edited 6 years ago)

Reply 4

Good bloke

Original post by Eunomia

Hmm. You seem to forget that they were fighting for independence, just like the Confederates, and they were slave owners, just like the Confederates.

Reply 5

username471863

Original post by Good bloke

Hmm. You seem to forget that they were fighting for independence, just like the Confederates, and they were slave owners, just like the Confederates.

I don't glorify them; I abhor the fact that they owned slaves. However, the massive difference between them and the Confederates is that their revolution was not heavily influenced by the desire to keep slaves, and at the end of the day they accomplished so much more than that. Those who fought against the Confederates were not perfect either, but they symbolise a huge progress in human rights history; the emancipation of slaves.

Reply 6

Good bloke

Original post by Eunomia

I'm glad that you agree with me that the revolutionaries did all the things that the OP said they didn't do. Your eulogising of the civil war victory sounds a bit hollow: the civilised world emancipated its slaves a long time before that.

Reply 7

username471863

Original post by Good bloke

I meant the emancipation of slaves in America. As for your last sentence, that was not exactly the case; they still existed in the Caribbean and other colonies only a few decades before the US abololished slavery. And my point is that its not about what they did as much as its about what they symbolise. The founding fathers symbolise the birth of America. The Union symbolises the emancipation of slaves in the US. The Confederates symbolise a fight to keep an abhorrent and inhumane practice. This is the exact reason why one would question the motives of people who glorify the Confederates.

Reply 8

Good bloke

Original post by Eunomia

Those that praise the founding fathers are looking at them with their eyes closed then. They themselves owned slaves at the time they created the union. Slavery did not exist in Great Britain at the time the union was created (though it continued within the empire until 1833). The moment a slave was landed in Britain it became a free man.

The founding fathers fought to create an independent country in which they could hold slaves, when the country they sought independence from allowed no such thing. The situation is identical to that of the Confederates.

They fought for freedom, you will claim, but, hypocritically, they only fought for their own freedom, not freedom for all. So for people like you to eulogise them is deeply ironic.