Get real, please. Confederate monuments are neither art nor history. They’re propaganda.
Oh, the irony, etc
Now you’re getting somewhere. Thing is, none of them are “art.” Their whole point is to whine about losing the Civil War and the supposed disenfranchisement of The White Man, not to mention, to intimidate black people and remind them of their “proper place.” They were all erected in the service of white supremacist ideology. That’s propaganda, not “art.”
I would enjoy vandalism more than destruction myself, but that wasn’t what I ever posted about. While there are some very strong arguments made above for how the history of the Confederacy has been rewritten to attempt to reverse the then current permanent and lasting changes being made in those time periods, the statues have zero historical or cultural significance given their cheap fabrication, and that a majority support for these kinds of things are exactly the problem being fought against tooth an nail - I came in and spoke against the continued effort to create a direct 1:1 comparison between the groups whose member drove a car through protesters and with the ones the car plowed in to.
For you to turn around and make the statement that it is unfair to challenge an assertion that has been maintained with little to no support across many thread for a very long time with a moral high horse is madness. Your tut-tutting in the name of preventing an echo chamber is not actually the moral high ground when there is a thoughtful discussion with members that disagree with many things.
At no point was a call for silencing made, only a cry for reason - the sole voice calling for people to not be so noisy came from you. I don’t see how that can’t be considered hypocrisy.
Masochism must be a helluva drug.
Oh dear. How upsetting.
There fixed that for you.
How appropriate too!
I get the feeling the fascists have woken up something they would have rather not have woken.
I’m keeping a copy of that. I have commented about the Paradox of Tolerance before and I expect to again.
Beat me to it.
He also failed to mention that the statue was spray painted black last month so it looks even worse after the fire.
…So long as we live in a nation that glorifies Confederate generals, it will be tempting for (white) patriots to believe that those men fought for something more noble than the Southern elite’s right to enslave dark-skinned human beings; and that subsequent generations built memorials to those generals to celebrate a cause more noble than white supremacy; and that the ongoing presence of such statues in our cities and parks reflects something more noble about our society than its ongoing failure to accept the full humanity of African-Americans.
Unless, of course, such “patriots” march with tiki torches while chanting “blood and soil.”
Which is to say: We can either accept that monuments to Robert E. Lee are an affront to our nation’s highest values or that those neo-Nazis in Charlottesville were right about what those values truly are.
Or else we can keep changing our history to suit the needs of reactionary, rich white fools — and leave that statue of a traitor in Emancipation Park, and that plaque honoring the brave soldiers who drowned in the River of Blood, a few hundred feet from hole 15, at the Trump National Club.
Wait, don’t tell me you’re…politicizing old statuary?? 
I’ve removed a bunch of posts in this topic. I’ll be taking actions elsewhere as well as a result of this discussion. Whether or not the statues should be removed, what should be kept and where, etc., are valid points of conversation.
I am not an American, however, AFAICT suggesting that there is an “ulterior motive” in tearing down these statues, however, flies in the face of what the push to remove these statues has been about, and in my mind is indirect victim blaming. Regardless of the intent of many of these (which, frankly, reading the evidence in this topic makes pretty clear), even this non-USian can understand that they are now a symbol of bigotry.
The same thing has been happening as folks learn more about the voyages of Columbus. No one wants to erase the facts, but heck, in school I sang in a play glorifying a whitewashed version of events during his voyages, and only in the last decade learned otherwise. I would gladly support the removal of statues of Columbus while also supporting museums that continue to tell his story so that future generations continue to learn the truth.
Oh FFS. Slavery is as American as genocide and Elmer Gantry.
He can’t hear you.
A walk-on part in a war, but really a lead role in a cage?
