I like it when you talk sense! Keep going!
If we can recontextualize them, the US will no longer be some kind of white supremacist tourist destination. Because that was apparently on the original list of goals - and that was a mistake.
We sort of had a war to get that goal off the list.
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Those statues are part of a campaign of whitewashing designed to make us remember traitors as heroes. Or, as Gen Thomas put it
“The controlling cause of the unsettled condition of affairs in the Department is that the greatest efforts made by the defeated insurgents since the close of the war have been to promulgate the idea that the cause of liberty, justice, humanity, equality, and all the calendar of virtues of freedmen, suffered violence and wrong when the effort for Southern independence failed. This is of course intended as a species of political cant, whereby the crime of treason might be covered with a counterfeit varnish of patriotism, so that the precipitators of rebellion might go down in history hand in hand with the defenders of the Government, thus wiping out with their own hands their own stains.” - General George Henry Thomas
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I was thinking about the hundreds of years before that. The dozens of wars under Feudalism.
can’t you just melt down the General Lee statues and re-forge them and General Lee Car statues?
You can have it play the horn to mark the hour!
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Agreed. So in an important sense the Confederate deaths weren’t “useless,” they were a necessity in what what ultimately a war over whether America should continue one of the greatest evils in the history of mankind.
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Very well put. Or as a TV commentator said recently “imagine being a Jewish kid in Germany who had to attend Adolf Hitler High School.”
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Britain is complicated.
Northern Ireland especially so.
Depending on which period you look at there were quite a few armed Irishmen in England.
English kings liked to hire Irish mercenaries. Especially to put down any revolts or annoying barons, etc.
That’s why Cromwell was there. That’s why William of Orange was there.
As has been pointed out, we do. Not just in Northern Ireland. Or indeed EIRE.
Apart from in Northern Ireland, it tends to be more in a joshing “Ha, Ha, did you know it’s still legal to shoot a Welshman from the walls of Carlisle” way (it isn’t, just in case that needed saying).
Of course, that’s mostly from the English and doesn’t at all annoy the hell out of the other nations. /s
We have many of the same issues about statues but I think because most of our armed conflicts are longer ago, they don’t get the same heat. Our controversies are more about colonialism - Cecil Rhodes, anyone?
No one seriously complains about a statue of William Wallace for example (apart from it being a terrible statue).
We have a statue of Cromwell outside Parliament. We also had his head on a spike until it fell off, so…
My personal take on war memorials for what it’s worth is - memorials which simply state they are erected in memory of so-and-so who died in such-and-such a war, fine. Erect as many as you can get funding for.
Anything beyond that is a political statement and fair game for removal, replacement or relocation depending on political changes.
I can see that gets trickier since you then have the issue of what do you call the war? That’s a political statement in itself but you can generally find a reasonably neutral term if you try hard enough.
If you don’t try, then you’re probably trying to send a message…
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“The Slavers’ Revolt”
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The memorials which note an event, a battle where people died, a site of something whether good or bad which people did that should not be forgotten, leave in place.
The monuments which lionize as heroes those who strove to subjugate others, should be placed in a museum.
A dank, moldy, poorly lit museum.
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The master of false equivalency strikes again.
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Well that seems like a bit of a stretch, unless you count the Norman castles in England, or the Edwardian castles in Wales. Anything smaller than that would have fallen down a long time ago. As L0ki mentioned, the equivalent period in Britain would be the Empire, and we have plenty of dubious statues commemorating that, and not nearly enough discussion about taking them down. Which is a long winded way of saying, I agree with you.
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It’s not a statue of Wallace, it’s a (poorly carved) statue of Mel fucking Gibson, of course the Scots fucking hate it.
As for other statues, once your country is more than a few hundred years old, you’ll find yourselves running out of room for statues, so you start getting rid of some of the ones that commemorate people you’re a bit embarrassed about, or the ones where people just plain don’t care any more.
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Are they copper?
Moscow mule mugs.
Wouldn’t the Ulster-men marching be technically Scots-Irish? I’ve never heard them referred to as “the English”.
call it a rounding error on my part. Maybe British is a better term? Open to suggestions!
Um, I think if you have another look at my post, you’ll find it’s pretty clear that I’m from the UK.
Which granted only dates from 1707 so I suppose is still only a few hundred years old. Marginally older than the US though.
And I state that it’s a fucking awful statue. It is meant to be Wallace. Hence, why it was at the Wallace Memorial. It has the face of Mel Gibson who played Wallace in a historically wildly dodgy film. Hence, why most people hated it.
Note, even Trump didn’t want it. I think that when your tacky statue is too tacky for Trump, it’s saying something.
I don’t think we’re likely to run out of space for statues any time soon though. 
After all we found room for this:
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Looks like that photo was taken before they installed the dangling baby in his hands?
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if you want to make a statue of yourself and display it on your front lawn, go for it.
But a bronze in the public square is a cultural marker in the US.
History goes to the victors. If there were statues of these same men humbly handing their swords over to the US Army in defeat at the end of the war, I’d be okay with those statues. I suspect a large portion of the country would have a problem with a private group organizing to put those statues out around the country.
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Thank you. I’ll say I had your permission when the Council pop round to tell me to take it down.
Like everywhere. I agree statues that commemorate the glorious military men or political leaders of the defeated are fair game everywhere.
Equally, if you as the victor want to stamp your bootheel firmly on the losers, then yes, put up lots of statues of their ritual humiliation. It’s got good classical roots.
In this case, there’s plenty of reason to say that everyone should agree that commemorating these men as heroes is just not appropriate.
Does that mean that every memorial to the dead on the wrong side of a war should be torn down or the memory of every person who fought on the losing side should be damned for ever?
I don’t think so. I had family on both sides of the Second World War (presumably therefore also on both sides of the First but my knowledge of family history doesn’t go back that far).
Were the people on the Axis side ravening Nazis?
Some were, yes, as in I had fairly close relatives who were actual members of the Nazi party and who joined pretty early on so you can’t even say they just joined because it was the only way to get anywhere.
Some were just poor schmucks unfortunate enough to be caught up in things far beyond their power to do anything about. Do they deserve to be vilified forever? Are their loved ones not entitled even to a plaque or obelisk listing their name and date of death?
I can’t believe that. After all, the people who want to keep the Civil War statues obviously like the period and like statues. They like ‘Freedom’. Why wouldn’t they support more statues? /s
