I would dearly love to see that. It would be poetic justice. But John Muir should go somewhere too.
@lastroth
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This gets to the key conundrum in these debates. What is the statute of limitations on historical guilt?
For most of human history in most civilizations, slavery was a pervasive ethnic as well as racial system. Therefore, anyone who is able to go back far into antiquity is likely to find some troubling connections to it.
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Perhaps Capitol Historian McConnell would prefer a statuary Hall of Assassins and Traitors.
Booth, Oswald, Arnold etc. You know for historical accuracy.
Read the Bible. Slavery seems very āChristianā.
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Which is why itās a bad rabbit hole to go down in the first place. Certainly thereās something to be done when, for example, at Georgetown they were able to directly link its solvency and success today to the sale of a group of slaves.
The blanket statements that presume that all white people should have some personal guilt Iām not on board with at all.
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Could always send him to India, since he never managed to get there.
Agreed. It is a rabbit hole, and where is a line drawn? I support a standard of objective historical honesty, despite the inherent discomfort that goes with it. Letās put the facts out as best they can be known and learn from the past, in the spirit of the Obama teachable moment principle. I donāt see any good that can come from banishing the reality of history because it is ugly. I believe Orwell was very much right on that point.
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A challenge in and of itself. Even the people arguing on the same side have numerous different takes about just what and how to present things, especially given limited timeframes to present any given topic.
Had an experience around that a couple years ago, went to tour Patrick Henryās house with some family. As the place was almost dead, and we had a couple of real scholars along, there ended up being a lot of discussion with the guide (and the poor kid spent like 1 1/2 hours with us instead of the normal 45 minutes) on different topics including his slaves, and how the presentation did or didnāt focus on them. And a lot of good points made for both sides-- what do you include in 45 minutes where thereās all this nuance of what was a person who was one of the key people responsible for our freedom, but who also owned slaves.
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antes de Cabron.
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Statute for statues will be determined by cultural history. My stepfatherās tree is all northerners and heās the source of the most vile racism in my environment. He caught the virus from his father so the waves of this pandemic have been poisoning this continent for generations. Londoners threw down a statue of a slave trader.
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Yes, history is not easy at all. But better to face it than keep heads buried in the sand. Iām afraid that is all this banishment movement does. Itās a deceptively facile false solution to a very important problem for the future is society.
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If you mean the removal of statues, Iām totally fine with them being out of the public square and into museums. That part is not about banishing them, itās about not celebrating them by giving them positions of prominence.
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The Cherokee Nation owned slaves, for example.
I am ok with either putting them in museums with context, particularly if they are on public property so as not to suggest the history is state endorsed. Or if they are left on place, particularly if they are on private property, providing important context on the failures of history.
Itās the idea that they are fair game for protestors to go at with hammers that I have a big problem with.
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Iām doubly on the protestersā side to do thisā¦ Removing just one monument from public land took a 5-year court battle.
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In case anyone still doesnāt get it, the problem with Columbus wasnāt that he ādiscoveredā the Americas (accidentally). Itās what he did with this ādiscoveryā, and eagerly helped others do.
The discovery of nuclear fission wasnāt evil. The use it was put to by some was.
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You face it when you openly admit the sins and cease to glorify the sinners. Germany knew how to do this. We never did.
ā¦so much suffering, enslavement (and death) visited upon native āheathensā who needed to be saved in the name of Jaysus and the Holy Roman Catholic Church. Shame on my faith tradition.
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I think he just did.
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Right. Although my impression is that he was much more of an imperialist than a racist, if the two can be separated.
We donāt deal well with complex figures.
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