Fuck off. The only place they belong is at a museum or battlefield site. Other than that, they rightly belong in ash heap of history.
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Terry McAuliffe is another DINO - he’s a white Republican at heart. Farther to the right than even Clinton.
Do the Germans maintain statues and photos of Hitler?
Do the Iraqis maintain and honor the statues of Saddam Hussein?
Do the Russians maintain the statues of Stalin? - heck, they even renamed a city to send the right message to the people.
The Confederate flag needs to go. The statues of the Confederate leaders that lead the uprising (treason) against the Union need to go as well - those statues are of men who were fighting to keep slaves and to break up the United States. Terry - you are wrong!
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My guess is many Native Americans view the “Stars and Stripes” as something akin to a Swastika. They and their culture were basically wiped off the face of the earth. What’s the word I’m looking for…oh, Genocide. The survivors were then herded into Ghettos and Concentration camps, I mean reservations.
And Sherman definitely committed atrocities against the civilian population. The Nazi’s called it “Total War”. I recently read a description that said that they were an Army “foraging” off the countryside.
It reminds me of watching an old episode of “The World at War” that was describing that only 3,000 of the 100,000 German soldiers of the Third Army captured at Stalingrad survived until the end of the war. Because they “Died of exposure and malnutrition.” Not starved and left to die out in the brutal winters of Siberia.
I think it falls under the heading “The victors write the history”. It doesn’t make you any less right though.
I’m no southerner, and have no connection to the South, and to be honest, at the risk of offending you, I view it as a rather backward part of the country. But I agree with you on this one.
That’s fine; but how about putting up memorials to the victims of 400 years of white supremacy alongside all those pigeon roosts? If commemorating a white-led rebellion against democratic rule is okay, isn’t it time for a state-sanctioned tribute to the Nat Turners and Denmark Vesey’s of the South?
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Or, since we’re celebrating losers, why not some memorials to the Redcoats who died?
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Just as the German should be grateful to Patton, so the South should be grateful to Sherman — by destroying the capacity of the Evil Empire of slavery to wage war, he shortened the conflict by perhaps as much as a year. As a New Yorker, I am proud that his statue is here. In any event, the worst that white Southerners experienced under Sherman was a holiday compared to what black people suffered at the hand of white Suutherners.
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No, Sherman did not commit atrocities against civilians – he destroyed property and the industrial base that maintained an empire of slavery. Only a contemptibly ignorant asshole compares that to Nazism.
In the way that all those former communist countries tore down the statues of Lenin and Stalin, in the way that the Allies tore down all the edifices and stone symbols of the Nazi empire, so should we tear down the statues and monuments to those who fought a war for the continued enslavement of men.
It should be nothing short of an embarrassment to all Americans to have to listen to politicians who talk endlessly about “America, home of the free” and then defend as “heritage” those who led a bloody revolt to protect the so-called “right” to keep people from being free.
Tear down every statue, every flag, every edifice. The time is long past when we should have done so.
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Dude, we won. We get to write history not you.
Don’t forget this one.
Richmond has long been called the “City of Monuments”. There is an entire avenue dedicated to statue, Monument Avenue. So to a certain degree, it IS a museum.
I always knew there was something about this guy I never liked…Now I remember what it is.
In other news Virginia is also asking Sons of Nazi Germany to remove the swastika from the “proud of our Nazi Forefathers” license plate also. We understand how proud these guys are of their ancestors accomplishments like panzer tanks, the first jet aircraft, high efficiency gas chambers and fighting for the right to put certain people groups into said chambers, but we don’t want to listen to some folks bitch and moan over some symbol they claim is offensive.
Goddamn…the war flag is offensive but the statues honoring the folks that perpetrated that war are just honoring them for standing up for their “rights”…goddamn…
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Your opinion. From Wikipedia.
"Like Grant, Sherman was convinced that the Confederacy’s strategic, economic, and psychological ability to wage further war needed to be definitively crushed if the fighting were to end. Therefore, he believed that the North had to conduct its campaign as a war of conquest and employ scorched earth tactics to break the backbone of the rebellion. He called this strategy “hard war.”
Sherman’s advance through Georgia and South Carolina was characterized by widespread destruction of civilian supplies and infrastructure. Although looting was officially forbidden, historians disagree on how well this regulation was enforced.[96] Union soldiers who foraged from Southern homes became known as bummers."
In any event, you should read the rules about personal attacks and name calling. I have flagged your comment.
Besides, I am not comparing what Sherman did to Nazism, I compared the Nazi concept of “Total War” with Sherman’s concept of “Hard War”. I fail to see the difference.
One week ago, who thought that government-sanctioned display of the Rebel flag might soon be over nearly everywhere? While many of us Americans are joyfully astounded by this precipitous change, there are also many Americans stunned with outrage. To forestall pushback about removing that flag from a legal specialty license plate, Governor McAuliffe wisely offers the probably outraged Sons of the Confederacy an opportunity to “own” their redesign. If the Confederate Sons balk at the chance, they probably have enough support in the Virginia legislature to thwart McAuliffe’s intentions.
The range of successful change is shorter for Governor McAuliffe than it is for we keyboard reformers. And successfully removing the Rebel flag from Virginia’s license plate is more important than gratuitously bruising feelings.
If so, he just lost it.
One of the most amazing things I saw was on some other web sites article about removing the stars and bars from government places was people comparing the civil war to the US war for independence from Britain. Saying the confederate rebellion against the US was no different than the colonist rebellion against Britain. And we ought to demand the US flag quit being flown since it was a war against the government of this land at the time. With no seeming knowledge or acknowledgement that Britain was ruled by a king and the US was ruled by majority elected population. Goddamn there are some willfully ignorant people out there. Almost made me want to start a facebook account so I could make a comment…but then I reminded myself what a waste of time that would be to try and reason with folks like that.
While I agree with much of your sentiments, and am reluctant to wade into this further based on at least one angry, profane reply, I received, it isn’t exactly true. Great Britain at that time was a Parliamentary Democratic Monarchy. Even though less than 3% of the population was allowed to vote at the time of the Revolution. At the same time, I don’t think you can represent that the US was a majority elected population, since women, who made up at least 50% of the population couldn’t vote until the early 20th century. I believe there may have been land owning requirements to vote as well.
Just to be clear, I am elated that the Confederate Flag is coming down, and have no dog in the fight about the monuments.
My only point is, I see a lot of self righteousness, as well as unwillingness to look unflinchingly at the this country’s record on race, and other civil rights, outside of the Confederacy and the Civil War. Or at American History as a hegemon power. Native Americans and Mexicans have a very different view of our role in shaping modern North America.
Just one example, while I agree with you comparing our relationship and Britain in the context of the Revolutionary War versus the Confederacy and the Civil War is a bad comparison for a whole lot of other reasons than what you stated, how do you think Native Americans should view the Stars and Stripes?
It seems like as long you aren’t from a former slave owning state, your good. I’ve seen plenty of Racism from Italians in South Philly, Jews on Staten Island and Irish in South Boston against Blacks in the extensive time I’ve spent in the Northeast.
Speaking as a white Southerner, the celebration is about Confederate symbols being removed from public property and from “government speech”. I think we can take a modest step like this. It is long overdue. Will this eliminate all racism–including in the other parts of the country–of course not.
But I will note to you that these Confederate symbols are government sanctioned celebrations of traitors to this country. And these symbols bring great pain to a significant portion of our population. We can, and certainly should, acknowledge this and do something about it. Racists should not be allowed comfort in celebrating the “honor and integrity” of their traitorous ancestors on government property.
Further note that there have been active protests–and vandalism of these symbols–for some years now. It is not a new issue and the victory will be modest. It is also not the only battle to be fought as you have noted. Try not to let that diminish this moment.
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There’s nothing in what you wrote that I disagree with, Like I said, I was and am elated to see the shocking speed it is disappearing from public view. However, we’ve already seen overreactions, such as Amazon taking down a video game about the Civil War. Or books about the Civil War that had an image of the Confederate Flag on the jacket. They eventually corrected this, but it shows what a frenzy it had become.
I also hear talk of renaming streets, lakes, rivers, and other public places. How do you feel about that?
Just to be clear, I live in Los Angeles, so I really don’t care. I just don’t want more strife, more division, and unending culture wars.
This is the part I most take to heart. You’re absolutely right, I should just sit back and relish the moment. It is a historical moment.
Let’s see where it takes us.