I have lived in the South my entire life. There is much about Southern culture that I have embraced and cherished over that time, but this fetish, especially when I see it adopted by non-Southerners, is something I really don’t understand.
![Screenshot_2020-07-01 Josh Wingrove on Twitter President Trump's acting DHS secretary announces he's creating a task force [...]](https://blutarsky.files.wordpress.com/2020/07/screenshot_2020-07-01-josh-wingrove-on-twitter-president-trumps-acting-dhs-secretary-announces-hes-creating-a-task-force-....png?w=500)
![Screenshot_2020-07-01 Donald J Trump on Twitter I will Veto the Defense Authorization Bill if the Elizabeth “Pocahontas” Wa[...]](https://blutarsky.files.wordpress.com/2020/07/screenshot_2020-07-01-donald-j-trump-on-twitter-i-will-veto-the-defense-authorization-bill-if-the-elizabeth-e2809cpocahontase2809d-wa....png?w=500)
I presume in Trump’s case it’s likely nothing more than cynical political pandering, but he’s pandering because he thinks it appeals to a lot of folks out there. Why should protecting the name of those who took up arms against this country matter enough to threaten people with 10-year jail terms and veto a defense spending bill?
And before you go all slippery slope and where will it all end on me here, there’s a pretty simple line I draw: if you took up arms against the United States of America, there is no valid reason for your memory to be celebrated by the United States of America. (Same thing for those of you in the “we risk forgetting our history” camp. Nobody’s saying we shouldn’t be taught the lessons of the Civil War, but remembering is not the same thing as honoring the memory of men like Lee.)
We shouldn’t have to wait for protestors to take action against things that display Braxton Bragg‘s, or any other Confederate general’s, name. As a nation, we should have enough of a sense of decency and shame to pull that down without being pushed. It’s not as if we regularly honor the names of enemy soldiers from other wars, so why are we having this particular fight in the first place? I honestly don’t get it.
Have at it in the comments.
Get The Picture 
I was born and raised and will die in the south. I have relatives that died fighting for the lost cause. That said, I see no reason for the monuments existence outside of thumbing one’s nose at the north. The south lost, why would we want statues commemorating a loss? It’s like putting up a statue of our dbs getting burned by Tua on 2nd and 26.
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too soon! Damn dude you know how to ruin a dude’s Wednesday morning with that last sentence.
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Same here, mwo. My family has been in the south forever. My relatives fought all through the Civil War and surrendered at Appomattox. But I’m over the monuments. Move them to parks or museums so they can still be pondered (something Russia did with many of their Soviet era monuments) but remove them from places of prominence.
I’m tired of the country being divided. If this helps bring people together, then I’m all for it.
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They weren’t put up to thumb their noses at the north. They were put up to make sure that the formerly enslaved Black people and their descendants knew “their place.”
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100% agree.. most don’t realize that the statues were created and displayed during the civil rights movement and not following the civil war.
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Most of the ones I have noticed lately were erected around 1900-1910. Not sure about all of them.
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That was one of the deadliest periods in American history for Black people. Modern Klan formed in 1915. Once the South understood the Nation post-reconstruction was going to take action, then the worst really began. That the statues were erected during that time is unsurprising.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlanta_Massacre_of_1906
https://www.npr.org/2016/09/15/494063372/the-racial-cleansing-that-drove-1-100-black-residents-out-of-forsyth-county-ga
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So if football is cancelled will the NCAA grant an extra year of eligibility and increasee scholarship totals? I think the answer to those questions is yes and if so does having an extra 25 elite blue chippers that Kirby has recruited give us an even larger advantage over our rivals or does that increase in number help our rivals to even the playing field with a very good 2 deep roster?
Just thinking out loud.
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Lol.
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I agree wholeheartedly, it’s never made sense to me either.
Side note, have you seen the HBO Documentary series on Wayne Williams? Part 5 really goes into the Klan connection which I found interesting (I never knew about the GBI investigation).
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If you have a Netflix subscription, you need to watch Season 2 of Mindhunter. It goes into some of the profiling and psychology used to find Williams as well as the Klan involvement. Very interesting watch.
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Great series. Seems like the wait on Season 3 is just short of forever…
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A-fucking-men, brother. STOP KEEPING US IN SUSPENSE!!!
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There probably won’t be a third season. Fincher hasn’t shown interest in continuing his involvement, and all the actors have been released from their contracts so that they can pursue other projects. https://www.thewrap.com/mindhunter-netflix-releases-cast-but-show-not-canceled/
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Sad but understandable. I was intrested to see how they face the fact that may be forensic psychology was more of a shot gun then a bullet
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I’m in a State of Georgia Club in the the Villages and one of our members was an agent in Atlanta during the investigation. He said that while Williams was guilty of the murders he was tried for, there was never a question that some of the other child murders were just a pile on and that’s why they didn’t indict him for them. He added that none of those were ever solved.
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Yeah, the HBO documentary does a good job of framing that up. It also hits at some big time cloak-and-dagger, high-level interference in the investigations and trials too.
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What’s the title?
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I have several ancestors who lived in Georgia and fought for the Confederate Army. All were poor farmers called to arms. I seriously doubt any wanted to go fight in that inhuman war, and would have rather stayed home, but they fought beside their neighbors all the same. I guess by your logic we should go plow over their tombstones since they are marked with their service regiments, etc. In fact, some already vandalized a cemetery in Burke County.
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dudemankind: I think the focus is on publicly placed and honored monuments, not personal honors such as tombstones
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For now.
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What people do privately to honor their memories is none of my business. But that’s not the case with something like Fort Bragg.
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I understand that your argument is focused on big picture controversies
like Fort Bragg, but many of these gravesites are parks and are maintained by the government..not private. It isn’t a stretch by any imagination to predict that their removal will be demanded.
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Actually, jumping from “traitors should not be venerated as heroes with statues in places of public prominence or have their names attached to our nation’s military bases or other places of honor” to “the grave of a Confederate soldier should be bulldozed” is a huge stretch and not something that anyone is actually considering! But thank you for your slippery slope argument.
Gay marriage has been the law of the land for four or five years now, by the way, I still haven’t seen folks marrying their dogs (just to revisit another popular slippery slope argument meant to stymie change).
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https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/woman-marries-her-dog-during-live-british-morning-television-program
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Well there you have it. I stand corrected.
Let’s bulldoze those Confederate cemeteries, then.
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Lol. Not that I disagree with gay marriage. I just found it funny that this popped up on google search.
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Have you been to Confederate memorial cemeteries? They’re filled with memorabilia and what not. I have no doubt they will be questioned too. In fact the one in Cobb County is already been
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It is a tremendous stretch to predict that tombstones would be removed by the government. If some individual decided to desecrate one of the tombstone of a fallen confederate soldier, or a veteran, there are already laws in place to punish those people.
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There are already laws in place to punish those that remove statues as well
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Right. Maybe some of them will be prosecuted. There’s still no government entity or protesters even remotely discussing coming for tombstones.
What’s your point? Your worry over tombstones doesn’t have a thing in the world to do with government funded and owned monuments in public places. And if one of those is located at a graveyard, it may go too. But still, there’s no reason in the world to worry about the government bulldozing tombstones.
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You may be right. Perhaps they will not demand that the graves of “traitors” be removed from a public space. But they are already pretty close. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2017/09/21/us/confederate-monuments-cemeteries.amp.html
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I think your definition of “no reason in the world” and my own differ.
My point is mob rule shouldn’t be tolerated even if you agree with their righteous cause.
I actually can get behind the Senator’s line in the sand as long as it is applied rationally
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There’s no line right now, and lots of states/cities aren’t willing to put one there, so there are mobs. Doesn’t make mobs OK but that’s the way it is. You take away that righteous cause, you get rid of the mobs. For now, it’s so bad that it would be political suicide for almost any prosecutor to go forward with prosecuting someone who tears down or defaces a confederate memorial. It certainly ain’t going to be a footnote in a history book that prosecutor’s ancestors will be proud of.
Right now, sitting back and pontificating about how that behavior should be punished, regardless of the reason, is silly. Most view that stance as cover for not being able to simply argue that the confederate monuments should stay, which would be political suicide right now, and to delay action with hopes this will all die down so the statues can stand. Which is 100% true. “I know the vast majority of people agree with the people taking down these statues, but I’m a law and order guy! So much so I can’t even be bothered to think about taking down statues until we do some law and order stuff about these people taking down statutes!” It’s bull shit. If a politician (or anyone else) wants the statues to stand, he should just say it. Don’t hide behind “law and order” and pretending you’re confused about where the line should be drawn.
Nobody believes that any one citizen can just pick and chose what statue is OK to tear down and then just go tear it down with impunity, as a general rule for society. But right now confederate memorials, particularly those built long after the war, are essentially fair game as long as governments are choosing to…. wait for it… sit back and pontificate about how that behavior should be punished regardless of the reason, instead of doing something about it themselves.
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As someone who agrees that all the Confederate statues should go, I disagree completely with your logic that a prosecutor should not prosecute someone who breaks the law. You are correct, is not the right of a single person to make a decision for the community, but that’s not a “general rule” that ought to permit exceptions. Governments can take as long as they want to make that decision, and if the citizens don’t like it they can vote them out.
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Not saying they shouldn’t prosecute anyone, just that they’d be dumb as hell to do it.
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He said not to go all slippery slope…
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By your logic we should have statues of King George in every major US city, and statues of Steve Spurrier and Peyton Manning outside of Sanford Stadium.
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If you want to debate, be sure to lay off the weed or liquor or whatever you use to make yourself look so dumb first.
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Let’s not make this personal, please.
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Sorry, I’ll put myself in time out.
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Lol. You remember getting burned in middle school but you couldn’t think of a comeback so you just accused the other kid of smoking crack? This is that.
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We need a statue of Adams on North Campus to remind and teach us! “Never Again”
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Forgo the statue and put up a dart board with his likeness
Or even better put his likeness on those plastic items used in urinals and make sure they are abundantly displayed in all UGA restrooms
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Isn’t Georgia named after King George?
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Yeah, but we didn’t name it that decades after the American Revolution. A few states had their names grandfathered in like Virginia and the Carolinas.
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I can only speak for myself, but the people who came to plow under my confederate ancestors’ graves were real estate developers, not activists, and they weren’t particularly concerned with our collective heritage when it stood in the way of making a buck.
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+1000
Yes this focuses on the City of Atlanta, but it could be extended to the entire state.
“We really are a tear down city,” says Boyd Coons, executive director of the Atlanta Preservation Center. “It’s not difficult for people to knock down a historic building in Atlanta. In fact, it’s quite easy.”
https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/oct/23/lost-city-of-atlanta-historic-building-parking-lot
https://www.wabe.org/gullah-geechee-residents-fight-sapelo-island-development/
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Mic drop.
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Agreed. I live in Maine and I see the occasional confederate flag and am instantly confused. As for statues, a lot of towns here have their own Civil War statues that look like the confederate ones down south, but they bear engravings about “The Great Rebellion.”
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As someone who lived in the northeast, seeing Confederate flags while in Maine was um, confusing…
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This is America. We’ve got racists anywhere you go. Always have.
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I too live in Maine and one day I asked a guy flying a confederate flag in the back of his pickup if he really knew any of the history of the Confederacy, the Civil War and the symbolism of the flag. Not surprisingly, he really had no clue, just used the “freedom of speech” as his reason for flying it.
By the way, where in Maine are you? There are only a few of us Bulldogs up here.
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Portland area.
Also saw the largest confederate battle flag I think I’ve ever seen flying in upstate New York near Lake Champlain.
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I live in Hampden, just on the edge of Bangor. Great state that I have loved for 35 years.
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The “noble cause” myth is very strong.
And, in my opinion, we have been refusing since 1865 to admit that we were wrong.
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What’s wrong about resisting more concentrated and centralized Power ?
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It’s racist!
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And I think that is a reasonable part of the argument. A lot of this use get mashed together and then racism and traitors is brought to the forefront. The Civil War was merely a major death toll in the road to major railroad expansion out West and going coast to coast. That was the plan followed by industrialisation
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if you’re truly wondering, I am pretty sure it’s the slavery part that we were wrong about. Opposition to centralized power that was pointedly in the northeast was in no small part because of the slavery part.
So again, it’s the slavery.
Signed,
Rock Ribbed Conservative – with ancestors who died at Chickamauga and Kennessaw Mountain fighting for the losing side.
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This view of history is grossly oversimplified. If the southern states simply wanted slavery, why not just ratify the Corwin Amendment, which Lincoln and the Republicans supported, to permanently protect slavery in southern states?
In reality, the war was about sectional power. It was never about social justice.
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And just to drive the point home — the original Route of the transcontinental railroad was to be through the Southern states. Until the Civil War happened that is.
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I liked your page a lot more when you talked about Georgia football. Now I find myself visiting less and less. Just being totally honest. There’s enough of this stuff on TV.
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Sorry to hear that. I started the Playpen so that people like you wouldn’t find posts about sports inundated with comment threads containing political discussion.
My advice, since you feel that way, is to skip reading the Playpen altogether.
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You should just copy and paste a disclaimer at the top of every playpen to save yourself the time.
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Eh, I try to be patient with these folks, but the reality is, they tend to come at me with “I read your blog less now because”. If you’ve been reading GTP for any time now, you know about the Playpen. It’s a fixture here.
It’s almost as if there’s an ulterior motive behind the complaint…
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I have said this to you privately Senator, (email) and I will repeat it here. Thank you for creating the playpen. It has made this blog a better place. I Never read the playpen but today I am genuinely interested in hearing how fellow Georgians feel about this specific issue. It is time to move on. BTW the civil war Monument in my hometown (Lincolnton Ga.) was quietly removed sometime in the late 70’s. I don’t recall any protests at the time.
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Best UGA read on the internet, AND ITS FREE!!! The honorable senator hasn’t asked for monthly subscriptions like all the other entertainment options in today’s capitalism do. And all that’s asked for all this great UGA blovation…is that we respect the platform rules. That’s a bargain imo. I think we should all also recognize that this is the senators platform, and he has the right to use it in whatever manner he chooses. And the fact that all these “controversial” posts are presented in very open and engaging manner seems to be missed on here. It’s not the senators posts that are the problem, it’s the fact that our engagement in these topics leaves a lot to be desired. This has gotten better as more rules have come down, but recognize that our behavior is causing this labor of love to be a lot more labor than love when he’s a full time comment policeman. Funny how we don’t have these problems on posts about NIL topics which aren’t inherently UGA focused, musical pallets, or any of the other things that crop up on here that aren’t based on depth charts or practice.
This division around politics we’re experiencing is exactly what the politicians want. Because if we the people can’t talk about these issues civilly then the politicians don’t have to either. It’s no surprise that the last piece of significant bipartisan legislation not associated with taxes or terrorists was the 1990 ADA. (Maybe CHIP in 1996 I don’t recall that vote breakdown) We don’t demand they work together so they don’t. Maybe we should start a new experiment around political civility in the playpen and show DC how it’s done.
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He deserves a lot of credit for providing the forum and respecting the market place of ideas. And I think most folks make a sincere effort.
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Well said
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To be fair, when I first started coming here I had no idea the “playpen” was a thing. I just noticed that every so often a post was about something very controversial and I remember thinking that it didn’t belong in a sports blog. Once I realized it was the designated space for the degenerates around here to poke each other with needles I lightened up. In short, I’m not surprised that people always lead off with — I’ve liked your blog until…” It isn’t self-evident to newcomers that the playpen is its own animal.
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You didn’t notice the posts all had the same header? I wasn’t exactly subtle about it. 😉
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Confederate names aside….99% of the troopers who went to those installations don’t have the remotest idea of who the guys were they were named for.
Many of them date from WWI. Literally hundreds of thousands of Soldiers passed through these bases and have a great affection (or in some cases miserable memory) of them. When a Soldier thinks about the 101st Airborne they think about Fort Campbell. When someone thinks about American Armor and Cavalry, they think about the many years they may have spent serving at Fort Hood. Quartermasters forever went to Fort Lee to learn their skills. 90% of the Infantrymen in the Army trained at Fort Benning. 99% of the airborne troops who jumped into Normandy and Arnhem and Sicily were trained at Fort Benning. Signalers from the beginning of time have trained at Fort Gordon. There is a huge amount of emotional tie to those places and names that is very easy for some non Soldier to buy as an “easy” issue.
So where is the line here? We already know that Black Lives Matter despises US Grant. What about Fort Lewis, Washington. Named after the famous Lewis of Lewis and Clark fame. Settled the American West. I am pretty sure that there were some bad things that came from that. Fort McCoy, Wisconsin is named for General Robert McCoy. He served in the Spanish American War, the Mexican insurrection and WWI. We know that if they are not making headlines now, they will. There is Colorado’s famous Fort Carson, home of the famous 4th Infantry Division. Kit did some tough things to the Navajo Nation in 1864. Philip Sheridan, the Civil War General lends his name to Fort Sheridan, Illinois. Ever heard the old saying that “The only good Indian is a dead Indian?” Yep, him.
We know that we can’t use Jefferson, Washington, Hamilton, Grant, Lincoln, Columbus (God Forbid). The mobs desecrated the memorial to the 54th Massachusetts Volunteers, made famous in Glory.
We should absolutely never have named US Military installations after Confederate heroes. Just should not have happened. But a lot of history has happened since them and most of it good. This is not nearly as easy as some people might suggest. The liberators of Dachau and Bergen Belsen were trained at Fort Benning and Fort Hood. The troops that fought with the Marines at Chosin Reservoir were trained at Fort Jackson. The troopers who provided the logistics support to millions of American Soldiers who served along the inner German border for 40 years trained at Fort Lee. Those folks have lasting memories of these places.
But I know that they will be changed, eventually if not now. When they are changed, the Army ones which comprise the majority, should be changed to the names of Army Medal of Honor Recipients. Fort Audie Murphy or Fort Alvin York or Fort Roy Benevidez sounds pretty good to me
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Thought I addressed that.
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I think this is a good line, although I think that there was a time that honor meant serving your flag or honoring your oaths, regardless of your personal opinions. I think that Ethos died at Nuremberg, but it was at one time a virtue. It’s a losing battle, I realize, but maybe Lee was dealt a Hobson’s Choice.
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This is where I have a problem. What we think of as loyalty to the United States of America today was based upon loyalty to the state of your birth in the 1800s. Lee wrote about his personal struggle when the Civil War broke out. He never wanted to take up arms against the US military that he had served, but could not bring himself to fight against his home state of Virginia. I think it is far too easy to brand him a “traitor” than it is to understand what was going on in the culture of the time. We just cannot view history singularly through the lens of today, but also through the eyes of the culture of the time period.
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The line isn’t at “bad things.” And the line isn’t where some insane hippie in Berkeley says it is. If you look hard enough you can find extremists who would justify the destruction of everything and anything anywhere.
These bases were named after Confederates as part of a campaign to justify and maintain white supremacy. But for lost cause ideology that falsely framed the war as an honorable dispute about states rights, and confederate generals as tragic heroes rather than traitors, those bases would not have Confederate names. If we’re done, as a nation, with the concept of white supremacy and lost cause theology we should rid ourselves of all legacies of it.
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True.
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muh righteous cause
Everyone who took middle school history knows that the northern states, who were populated exclusively by abolitionists, elected an abolitionist president, raised an abolitionist army, and waged righteous and holy jihad against the infidels to free the slaves and make the world safe for transgender bathrooms and stuff.
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Ultimately I think that’s my problem. This concept that the North was angelic in the South were Hitler clones, and it’s truly and clearly not like that at all. We were a nation at odds with our own philosophy of freedom that was on the verge of a major expansion and there was plenty of blame to go all around. 650000 people had to die, millions of people had to be up rooted and impoverished because we couldn’t have good discourse and debate and find a resolution. The North objective to completely mow down in obliterate the South made things terible over the next 100 years rather than finding a way to resolution.
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Anyone arguing that history is complex is a racist and a Nazi. All progressive (i.e. correct) historical interpretation can be shortened to a bumper sticker slogan that middle schoolers can remember.
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People as chattel was negotiable?
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Obviously not. All the other nations that ended slavery peacefully were wrong. The left demands sacrifice!
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Let me tell you something about America. We are really fucking good at war. Were so good at war and like war so much that when we are bored for no war with Europe we decided to kill ourselves. then 75 years later when we let our military become a decrepid piece of krapp foreign powers attacked us so we invented the greatest war machine ever known to man and invented the nuclear bomb. People like to say that we lost the Vietnam war but we killed millions millions of them to 68000. That’s quite insane. We completely controlled Afghanistan, But ultimately you can’t make poor sheep farmers and drug producers believe in the Constitution.
So yes there were most certainly ways to not blow up they nation in 1860. But that’s not necessarily our go to. And it’s reflective today with our extreme tribalism mob mentality weaponized media.
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I am not clicking on any of your stuff
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Having served at many of these places, I don’t associate my memories of past service for the name of the installation, but for those that I served with and the storied reputations of the units.
And fortunately since I’m going back to the 101st, I won’t have to worry about Fort Campbell being renamed. William Campbell was not a secessionist, even though he was a devout Tennessean, and served with the Union. This is the type of misinformation that isn’t helpful.
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Hmm.
One wonders about the name of the state and its universities.
King George didn’t seem to be much of an American patriot. To name a state after him just seems wrong.
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Before I get reading the comments after this one , I just wish there was reasonable discourse like this… you have put forth a reasonable argument that I’m sure certain people here about to yell and scream at
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I wouldn’t object to statues removed by political process. Mobs, nah.
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Legit..
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The boston tea party should have sent a letter to Parliament rather than throw all the King’s tea into the ocean.
Mobs? What can you do?
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Mobs are fine as long as they aren’t full of those other people.
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The Boston Tea Party wasn’t rioting or Looting.
https://www.bostonteapartyship.com/boston-tea-party-damage
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Other than one million dollars worth of destroyed tea no property was harmed. George Washington condemned it.
The Sons of Liberty were also called a “Mob.”
https://originalpeople.org/sons-of-liberty/
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It was not a mob that harmed private property or injured individuals
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If someone had tried to stop them they would have.
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The famous “if a frog had wings” school of historical interpretation!
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Schtick Dreck, that was a very fashionable comment. You must have read that in your Weekly Reader.
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Well, good! A mob isn’t going to have much luck changing the name of Fort Bragg! The overwhelming majority of Confederate statues are safe from “mobs” and instead are being debated by political processes.
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Use your political process to take them down if you want to be on the right side of history. Like right now. If you want to be on the wrong side, the mobs will do that for you. Either way, those things are coming down. Get over it.
If your ancestors had been enslaved for centuries, then some people fought to keep it that way and lost, would you be content with some oblique “my history/heritage” argument for keeping monuments to those men up? Would you be content with them hiding behind the political process to keep them up?
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I’m just curious here, so I’ll pose a hypothetical. What if a man had no slaves. But an invading army was marching through his state burning houses, killing men, raping women, and starving children. Should that man allow himself to be killed, his wife raped, his children starved, and his home destroyed in the hopes that, decades later, he would be lauded as a hero to the political left? Or should he attempt to save his family from harm? Is a man attempting to save his family from harm a Nazi savage unworthy of respect and praise?
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No. That’s not at all how it happened, but hypothetically, no.
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First, your answer is unclear. Should the man defend himself and his family or not? Second, do you really believe that all southerners wore Colonel Sanders suits and drank mint juleps while their slaves sand Zippity Doo Da? Because I can tell you that it’s not true. Less than 6% of the free population, and less than a third of free households, owned slaves.
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You are trying to claim the Civil War was all about a bunch of damn yankees invading the south just to rape and pillage. It wasn’t. Sherman’s March, while successful, was largely a blatant war crime. I’m not going to answer any of your preposterous rhetorical questions beyond that.
The real question you’re asking, and which you’re very hamfistedly trying to get me to disagree with you on, is whether the poor, uneducated, non-slave-owning southerners who fought for the South were as culpable as the wealthy/powerful southerners who caused and pushed the war by choosing to protect their barbaric slave driven economy over following the North’s lead and abolishing slavery, and figuring out a way to evolve their economy. The answer is that they are about are as culpable as the German citizens and soldiers were in WW2. Which is to say, very culpable, but far less so than their leaders.
But there are very few statues of those men. And the memorials that do exist to them generally speak of their honor and valor in fighting for such a great and noble cause, rather than what you descibe.
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Where we draw the line is a fair question…IMHO.
You know what they say about History.
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A serious part of the BLM movement is to teach history. Teach about slavery and the war. Teach about Jim Crow. Teach about the Civil Rights movement. Teach about the KKK, lynchings, the 1906 Atlanta Massacre (google it), the Tulsa Masacre, etc.
There’s a Significant difference between teaching about it and placing government sanctioned (and paid for) monuments to the leaders of the Confederacy in our public spaces.
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Incorrect – the BLM movement can’t even get the history of the last three years correct. Have you seen the signs reading “stop hunting black people”? Or all the “hands up” stuff? Their core claim is unsupported by statistics from the most liberal institutions in America. No, BLM trades in fictions, I don’t think I will learn my history from them.
btw – you may note that above I agreed we ought to take down all the Confederate statutes. But acknowledging that forms of racism still exist does not require us to accept a bizarre view of the past or the present, or unfairly vilify the entire policing profession over isolated incidents. Police, who are an extension of US. We conveniently forget we hired them to stand between us and the violence and difficult decisions we don’t want to make ourselves.
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The answer is… somewhere. Just because it’s difficult to decide where that line is doesn’t mean we should just do nothing.
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I’m born/raised in GA but no longer live in the south (unless you consider the D.C. metro area the south – I don’t.) And while I certainly miss GA, I feel my overall perspective has broadened considerably since moving up this way some 10 years ago, and for me personally it was a great decision to leave. With that said, I agree with SB completely here; tear them down as far as I’m concerned.
Ironically enough, especially in PA – where I spend quite a bit of time as well – I see more Confederate flags than I did in GA, and it’s ironic how states like PA are trending red while GA is trending blue. Bizarre.
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Cause of the damned Carpetbaggers…
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I spent a year at the Army War College at Carlisle Barracks, PA. We were about 45 minutes north of Gettysburg. I too saw more confederate flags in southern PA and western MD than I have ever seen in the deep South. That was 20 or so years ago so things have most likely changed for the better.
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I live in MD and, while I don’t see many if any flags around where I live, just west and north of me things change quite a bit quickly. Speaking of the local politics here, while MD is a solid blue state, almost everyone I know consider themselves to be more Libertarian in stance than anything else. If a 3rd party with similar tenants ever gained a foothold on a national scale, I’m almost certain it would really take off here.
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PA is Pittsburgh and Philly with Alabama in between.
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I suspect you are being sarcastic/funny, but if not, I completely disagree. Central PA is rural and all the rest…but it’s no Alabama.
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Fight with these folks:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pennsyltucky#History
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Argue with James Carville? No thanks.
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Saw this graphic on the twitters earlier this week. Funny. Especially to someone whose lineage sprouts up from the other side of the Ohio River – you know N West Virginia aka SE Ohio.
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Derek ain’t speaking with a forked tongue. I’ll vouch for it, repping Pittsburgh here. The entire Northern half of this state is more like rural Kentucky than any kind of enlightened agrarian utopia.
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Bama’s All In
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As a native Southerner and someone who grew up defending the Stars and Bars, i can’t understand the logic anymore either.
These people claim to love the Constitution. The Confederacy saw the writing on the wall that they were no longer going to be able to have slavery under the Constitution and decided to no longer be a part of that system. Even setting the unpardonable sin of slavery aside (which I can’t anymore), the South had representation in the system (which was actually designed to give the South more representation than its populace alone deserved). They just couldn’t convince other states to join their mortally flawed cause, then launched a terrorist insurrection just to have their way.
I love the South and always will. But the Confederacy is indefensible on all fronts.
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If you’re referring to the three fifths compromise, that actually decreased the representation of the southern states based on the populace.
Yes, the South recognized that sectional power was skewing to the North. And that was the main reason for the first wave of secession. The second wave was due to the North raising troops to subjugate the South.
Is the CSA indefensible on slavery? Sure. Just like the USA was indefensible on slavery up until the 13th amendment. Is the Confederacy indefensible on notions of consent of the governed and the compact theory of the Constitution? Not at all.
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If Biden wins I guess we will see a new commission look at all the names of towns and military bases and don’t forget states and monuments and parks and these enlightened academics and government bureaucrats will judge what can stay and whay will be erased from the public domain.
And don’t forget the books that mention or glorify these southern figures. They will have to go to. Please don’t give us the slippery slope argument.
Because who in their right mind should worry that the revisionists might want to take things a little too far. Regardless I am sure that after the expungement is complete then racism will no longer exist and the word trigger can be removed from our vernacular
But perhaps you could occasionally throw in some Orwell quotes in some future articles… just for history’s sake… but hurry.
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Who do you think named the buildings in the first place?
Also posts like these make me very sure that you don’t know what history is if you think it’s a monument in a town square or the name of a military base.
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History is the story of what happened… not how you feel about it.
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Since I know what’s coming I wanna get it over with right now. Because I wanna know what the next thing is. Because there will be a next thing. Change the names the bases remove the Confederate statues and then I will stand there and say OK what’s next. Because this is about weaponizing a political idea for control. It’s about control.
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As someone who was born and raised in Georgia and now having served 17+ years, I too don’t get the uproar other than for the reasons you lay out. I appreciate you using southern culture rather than heritage. A small nuance, but an important one nonetheless.
I find that people typically anchor their argument to states’ rights or southern “heritage.” I steer away from poking holes in this as it usually just turns emotional, so I just point out that most of the CSA generals were actually shitty leaders and most definitely losers.
And my dark humor/masochism calls for Fort Benning to be renamed Fort Sherman…
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All I know is that if Abraham Lincoln hadn’t gotten outworked and outhustled on the recruiting trail and the Union had signed its top recruit on the big board, Robert E Lee, the war would’ve been over in 6 months. Instead the Confederacy makes some bullshit appeal to stay home and the rest is history.
#recruitingmatters
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Post of the day!! Nice work there, Charlotte.
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I thought it was because his buyout was too big? Pretty sure Big Game Bob (Lee) is in the Civil War Coaching Hall of Fame.
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He was really good at home but he was 0-2 on the road. He lost to McClellan (who got fired) at Antietam and going for Pickett’s charge on fourth down at Gettysburg really backfired.
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Should’ve listened to his Defensive Coordinator, Longstreet, at Gettysburg.
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The craziest thing about this is how true it is.
Maybe that’s how we need to teach the Civil War.
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If only Lincoln had been more successful in getting Bobby Lee not to enter the Transfer Portal.
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Was Jeff Davis the original Portal Master?
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They beat up on some cupcakes early on from Virginia, had a lead in a game or two against the Big 10 but blew it, then other teams figured out their offense and steamrolled them especially in the heart of SEC play late in the year. Hell Lee didnt even make a bowlgame and they cancelled the program after the end of the year. Now all that happens is the old fans reminisce about that halftime lead they had one game and swear the program will come back stronger than ever.
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Classic! It’s Jimmies and Joes before Xs and Os! Lee and Jackson were the better gameday Generals. Then Grant and Sherman out-talented them. Same old story.
As someone still living in Georgia and working at these bases, most of these dead confederates were terrible generals. Rather than viewing this as giving in to cancel culture, I view this is an opportunity to live and demonstrate the values the Army professes. It’s a chance to honor worthy medal of honor winners from all backgrounds that can help instill more pride in the organization and keep the faith and trust of the nation we defend.
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I currently live two miles south of the Mason Dixon line in rural Maryland. I see as many confederate flags here (and in rural Delaware) as I ever saw growing up in central Mississippi. I too (like Rival above) am confused.
But it’s proof to me that the flag has come to represent (by and large) something wholly other than commemorating the sacrifice of brave men and women in defending their “rights” (or whatever the claim is).
I think the confederate flag has became a symbol of American-Redneck-ism. And self-proclaimed and proud rednecks are found EVERYWHERE, in every state of the union. So, in that sense, I can see why the confederate flag is found everywhere from Maine to Idaho to Montana.
This cannot be denied. I’ve worked with countless men who wore confederate flags or had stickers on their trucks, but when I asked them to name a confederate general other than Lee or Jackson they could not.
When it comes to removing confederate monuments I’m more than a little leary, though. Not because I venerate the soldiers and their families or the cause they stood for (which was states’ rights…. to OWN SLAVES), but because I think its actually good for cultures to be reminded — in real, tangible ways — of their sordid pasts, so they can own their mistakes and do better.
So, that means, in practical terms, I’m against having a statue of Robert E. Lee occupy a position of honor in a public square, or in front-and-center at a government building. But I’m also against destroying them or otherwise moving them to where no one can ever see them.
I can remember being in Kyiv, Ukraine and seeing all the statutes and busts of Lenin (all in non-“prominent” places, but tucked away in corners, in metro stops, government building hallways) and asking my Ukrainian friends why these had not been removed. And the answer was always the same: “We must never forget.”
In answer to your specific question about what Trump is doing or why, I refuse to give it any thought. I stopped taking note of anything he said or did about three months ago. It’s actually been quite relaxing.
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Mind if I ask where in MD you live? We may be practically neighbors (I live in Carroll Co.)
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I had no idea you were in Maryland! I’m on the Eastern Shore, though. As an aside (and as I mentioned the other day in a reply here) Maryland’s state flag is $$$$.
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Nice! And agree on flag. Yea we’ve been up this way for a while – love it here overall, though winters are a bit long for me. Overall it’s a great place to live and raise a family.
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Agreed. I moved here as a high-schooler with my family in 1999. I met my wife here and we’re raising four kids. She’s got two siblings (with families) in the area. I have two siblings (with families) in the area. My folks and her folks are both in town. I’m probably here for the long haul.
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“I think the confederate flag has became a symbol of American-Redneck-ism. And self-proclaimed and proud rednecks are found EVERYWHERE, in every state of the union.”
Spot on. For the last 7-8 years my youngest daughter has lived in rural PA, and when we go to visit I am astounded by the number of stars and bars that I see. I don’t see that much in Georgia. And these folks aren’t just putting a decal on the the rear window of their truck; they buy big flag poles buried in the ground and such. So far, I have resisted the temptation to stop and ask if they actually know any history. I also have to say that if I ever had any ‘fergit hell’ ethos they have removed it all together.
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Yeah….
And, to be clear, I don’t believe everyone who has a confederate flag shirt or sticker is a racist (even though some are). I think for many people the symbol is like putting “get ‘er done” or “ain’t skeered” on their windshield. Or whatever. For some they actually think the flag represents some vague notion of trying to resist what they perceive as oppression, or at least misunderstanding, by the national government, social elites, and maybe the world at large.
To that point, what they should consider is that the fact that their vague feeling of constant oppression, being at the short end of the stick constantly, looked down upon, made fun of, and feeling forgotten actually means they have a lot in common with a lot of people who happen to have different skin color.
And that maybe, just maybe, the confederate flag they love so much is actually a symbol of tyranny against the disadvantaged, not symbol of resistance to tyranny.
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“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.”
-Orwell, 1984
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“…you all remember, I suppose, that beautiful and inspired saying of Our Ford’s: History is bunk.”
Brave New World
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Assuming you are on the side of keeping Confederate monuments, I think this quote hurts you case more than helps it.
How long has exceptionalism been upheld while at the same time giving lip service to equality?
How long have records been falsified, narratives been twisted, and visuals white-washed so that America can speak of manifest destiny? Bringing civilization to savages? Gifting Christianity to slaves? Fighting for states rights? Separate but equal? God bless(ed) America (for Me)? Fighting for liberty around the world?
The truth is, there is a LONG “history” of taking facts and twisting narratives to absolve, rationalize, cope, and proclaim that which is not 100% complete.
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Rather than trying to erase history (tearing down monuments) why not use them as a teaching aid. Something like – see this monument – it represents a terrible time in out history and should be a reminder that we can never go down that road again.
Tearing stuff down doesn’t change anything. We (they) are missing a great opportunity to teach history so it doesn’t get repeated.
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Perhaps I’m just speaking for myself, but my history classes in school prior to college and my history classes in college all were taught in classrooms with books being assigned as reading to learn about what happened before and why.
I can’t remember a single class where an assignment included, “now go walk to the monument to Robert E. Lee because that’s going to teach you history.”
Monuments are meant to glorify the person/group represented on the monument. Other than, perhaps, a paragraph or two on a historical marker nearby, those monuments aren’t teaching history to anyone.
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Except, that’s not entirely true. I’m not arguing just to argue, but the Irish Potato Famine monument in lower Manhattan isn’t to glorify the victims, but to tell their story and the suffering they experienced. I will forever know that poor, famine starved Irish immigrants left their homes for a better land. History also tells us that the land they moved to was anything but welcoming.
That’s another story and maybe a monument is needed to tell that one.
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The Hungarians took a different option following the collapse of the Warsaw Pact. Instead of destroying the statues to thugs…Hungarian and Soviet, they moved them to a plot of land in the suburbs of Budapest and set them up there. Now, it is a place for folks to go see them while studying their communist past. It is almost like a joke to the people who live in the city.
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Those statues are part of history. But they do not belong on public squares. Put them in museums or on the grounds of museums. An attempt to remove because it offends, actually makes it easier to forget or marginalize.
I honestly believe that most southern whites could care less if those statues are removed. Oh there is always going to be a dedicated group that for whatever reason either has hate in their heart or simply believe that this part of their family history should be embraced. But that group gets smaller by the year, as these people frankly ‘die off’. I’m 62 – watching them die off. (Not wishing ill on anyone – it is just a fact).
Bases? Who cares if they rename bases. Just be smart and judicious about it. The PC Crowd in this country has always been over the top. Nothing is going to change that. They will find the smallest of offenses and decide a base somewhere has to have a name change. But Confederate Warriors – change the names, let’s move past that.
And make efforts to see all sides. The carving on the side of Stone Mountain should stay. But you know what should be put up either right beside it or maybe even above it? MLK Jr. and members of his inner-circle. There is no doubt that Jefferson, Lee and Davis had a huge impact and is a part of Georgia history. And you can make the argument that King Jr., Young, Abernathy, Lowery, Vivian & even Williams made a much larger impact on Georgia, the South and the country. And they did it without pulling the country into a civil war.
Bottom-line; these are actually easy fixes. The real challenge comes in changing the culture and having an honest conversation on all sides of what needs and can be done. We have lost a high % of at least two generation of black men. We can ill afford to lose another. It’s much bigger than how one is being treated by the police. That is a symptom to the over-all illness. Cure the illness, that pretty much kills the symptom.
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Public display of the swastika is outlawed in Germany, so Confederate flags proliferate at far-right rallies and gatherings. There is a reason for that.
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To begin, I was born and raised in New England, but my only ancestors in the US at the time fought for the South. I understand the argument that Confederates should not be memorialized/celebrated. However, it’s not a good one. They were all Americans. They were fighting for their homes. There is a reason Lincoln pardoned all/many after the war. Many served the country before and after.
But my biggest problem with all this is that it has nothing to do with “treason”. Zero. Nada. That’s why they’ve quickly moved on to Washington, Jefferson, Woodrow Wilson. Hell, they’re even going after John Wayne and Kennesaw Mountain Landis. And they’re so historically ignorant, that they’ve gone after abolitionists. They are taking historical figures out of their time and place and judging them by modern day standards. It’s the definition of absurdity. And if that’s what you’re doing, tear it all down.
Slavery was practiced by every race and creed for thousands of years. It is still happening. Sexual trafficking, and outright slavery in Africa and Asia. But these inconvenient facts are not relevant to the rioting masses. As are the inconvenient facts about violent crime/murder, and police use of force and police killings. Because this is all about November.
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What “they” want and what “they” do is relevant how?
“I was all for taking the hitler statue down and then I learned ISIS bombed Jesus.”
Doesn’t that sound really senseless?
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What sounds senseless is your Pennsylvania is just Pittsburgh and Philadelphia , with Alabama in between quote.
So, is Derek just Al Sharpton on one side, Jesse Jackson on the other with Louis Farrakhan in the middle?
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Most Alabamians are Fruit of Islam.
U smrt.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pennsyltucky#History
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Kenesaw Mountain Landis (yes, the guy’s parents didn’t spell it correctly and used only one “N”) was about as responsible as anyone for keeping baseball in the 1920s and 1930s free of African-American players.
John Wayne’s interview in 1972 about blacks in Hollywood would have been right at home in a David Duke speech.
Woodrow Wilson re-instituted segregation in federal government employment and glorified the movie “Birth of a Nation” by D.W. Griffith — a movie that reinvigorated the KKK and gave the KKK the idea to burn crosses to make their point.
Perhaps to you — as someone who is making a point that these white supremacists aren’t so bad because everyone was racist back then — this all seems like its about November. But to African Americans who were supposed to be made citizens in 1865 after the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments and the Civil War but, instead, ended up being subjugated as second-class citizens for over 100 years after that war ended who saw these racists in positions of power, authority, and glorification, it’s not about November. It’s about their lives and the lives of their children.
Just because slavery existed in this country up until 155 years ago, just because police have been killing people on the regular (since, after all, police forces in the south started to chase down runaway slaves and/or subjugate poor whites) for longer than that doesn’t mean that it’s right or that it should be okay for it to happen any more. It’s not okay if we can change things for the better.
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What you don’t realize is you’re advocating for tearing it all down. And it is about November, because these debates are always so timely.
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Yup, you’re 100% correct. I am entirely in favor of tearing down all the monuments to the traitors from the Confederacy.
These debates are “so timely” only if you’re not paying attention in other years, which by your comments I will assume you were not. For instance, do you recall the Charlottesville debacle in 2017 with all the tiki-torch white supremacists marching? They were marching because the city of Charlottesville indicated its plans to remove a statue of Robert E. Lee. Of course, I’m guessing you’d agree with Mr. Trump that there are good people on both sides of that protest.
In fact, here’s a New York Times article from 2017 talking about Confederate memorials coming down all over the country: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/08/16/us/confederate-monuments-removed.html
Like I said, it’s only about November to you because you don’t pay attention otherwise.
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Now do MLK and homosexuals.
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It’s 100% about weaponizing an idea to paint one side is racist and the current president is racist. Everything in an election year is about that election. It’s not about and open discourse of ideas and finding common ground.
If we had 4 or 5 clones working 247 of the best presidents of all time everything going on right now would still be to much. Our focus should be on the pandemic and the virus and opening business but we’re gonna throw this argument on top of it in a rushed fashion. And if the current president is so terrible why would you want him to rename bases anyway? Wait until the election is over.
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My only argument here would be with the term traitor. It’s a mistake to look at the US of 1861 through the eyes of 2020. The US of 1861 was a loose decentralized country more akin to the EU of today. When the states opted out of the US they did it by vote and said we’re out. Not much different than the UK leaving the EU. The people of 1861 held more allegiance to their state than they did country. That’s my understanding of it. If there are any history professors out there with greater understanding, please enlighten. Most of the generals from the south were pained to have to make the decision to leave the US army and go home. They just didn’t have a moral choice in their minds to fight against their state. Again, think through the mind of 1861. That being said, the army bases in question were named around WW2 and most of them weren’t even good generals. If it upsets enough people then change them and move along. Some successful generals from WW2 and beyond might be more appropriate anyway.
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The REAL traitors fought their King a century earlier, right?
South Carolinians were Americans at the time of the civil war. They took up arms against it.
You should take the time to read the documents of secession for each state. They are online. Each one.
None suggest there was no real tie to the central government. They wanted to break that tie over one singular issue: slavery.
They wrote it down, approved it and fought over. Hundreds of thousands died because of it. You could take 10 minutes to read what they thought.
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And while people are reading, they should go beyond middle school textbooks and read sources from the ratification debates of the Constitution and earlier talks of secession. Noted traitor Daniel Webster suggested that New England may be justified in seceding in 1812. When ratifying the Constitution, it was primarily recognized as a compact rather than a suicide pact. Famed Nazis like Jefferson and Madison argued that the states were primary to the general government.
Consent of the governed was just an eighteenth century nonsensical catchphrase. Like “synergy.” Governments are supreme. If you disagree, we will kill you and you will deserve it.
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As it relates to Robert E. Lee, specifically, look at the respect that was afforded him by his own enemies. There were powers at play for whom the economy’s dependence on the West African Slave Trade were primary. But for him the he chose to fight against his own class mates at West Point – including Grant – because, in essence, Momma called – “Virginia.”
I’m not saying he deserves a statue, and I completely understand why he is a real “baddie” among those seeking a full reckoning. But still, a man who can lead a war and maintain the respect of both sides – especially among those who are fighting and dying – has some kind of redeeming quality.
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Not sure how the story of Arlington National Cemetery is one about respect of REL.
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It was a harsh but petty move. Which ironically turned into something quite moving and beautiful in a dark way
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“They just didn’t have a moral choice in their minds to fight against their state.” My problem with that argument is General George Thomas of the Union Army and Admiral David Farragut, Union Navy, were both Virginians (Farragut was born in Tennessee but lived in Virginia).
There is always a choice.
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Not for some poor farmer in the middle of nowhere.
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It’s what nearly everyone always misses in the secession discussion: dissolving of the bonds of Union are expressed clearly in the Constitution.
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“It was a pleasure to burn. It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed. With the brass nozzle in his fists, with this great python spitting its venomous kerosene upon the world, the blood pounded in his head, and his hands were the hands of some amazing conductor playing all the symphonies of blazing and burning to bring down the tatters and charcoal ruins of history.”
Fahrenheit 451
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Sad day, amirite?
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You must not remember your Brave New World as this quote is given as an explanation to the savage on why we must be reprogrammed and made to forget the past (and really all things that are uncomfortable, because of course in the modern world comfort and conformity is the ultimate good).
I am not sure what I am for in this instance other than being against mob rule (I live in Birmingham where the mayor is a young progressive African American that is quite competent and could easily coordinate removing statues with a plurality of support).
If our citizenry wants these statues removed they should elect leaders to make it so.
I don’t like being told to not consider the slippery slope as most arguments that in any way go against a modern progressive non-liberal agenda are defeated with ad hominem rather than reason.
The slippery slope is happening: Lincoln, Washington, Jefferson.
Eventually the mob comes for you
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This comment posted under the incorrect thread, my apologies for that.
As to your point, mob rule is dangerous even mob rule that removes a dictator. Revolution may be necessary, but what comes after must be constrained and shaped else another strongman take the place of the last.
https://images.app.goo.gl/LC8Zw6CRzPcNtfDy8
This is the defiling of a Washington statue: a man that personified stoic philosophy and walked away from being king even while his citizenry asked him to take over.
Mob rule is dangerous. Again, if the citizenry or even a large portion wants statues removed, they should elect leaders to make it so.
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The mob has been and always will be part of the democratic process.
Suggesting that the populace must quietly accept any and every indignity simply invites more from the people in charge.
That’s just reality. Nobody relishes it, but whether its chopping off royal heads in Paris or throwing tea into harbors or burning down LA, the people in power need to know that they are ultimately at risk from the whims of the mob.
What irks me is that the response to these things seems not to be on the merit of the complaints but upon the appearance of those who are reacting to whatever it might be.
It especially irks me that it comes from “conservatives” who insist that we must be able to freely buy AK-47s as a means to violently overthrow the government, if needed, but they don’t believe “those people” have the same right to act.
If you don’t believe me look at the history of the Mulford Act. You want to see the NRA oppose guns? Show them in the hands of angry people of color.
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Bingo. Every single time someone sides with a mob they find themselves at the end of the mobs gun. Because when the mob runs out of them they come for you.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alabama_Memorial_Preservation_Act
I also live in Birmingham and when a plurality of the community wanted to remove a confederate monument a few years ago, the state responded by passing a law preventing the removal of the monument. The state overruled the will of the community. The monument was recently removed and I am unaware of a response by the state.
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Interesting article about naming and monuments of the Confederacy…big surge around the start of the 20th century and again during the civil rights movement.
https://www.npr.org/2017/08/20/544266880/confederate-statues-were-built-to-further-a-white-supremacist-future
While I feel the article definitely has a holistic slant – I’m not sure every statue/school naming/monument erected was intentionally to further white supremacy – the data and bumps are interesting. They didn’t happen in the immediate wake of the civil war, which would leave one to wonder why. There’s also some possibility a bump during the Civil Rights movement was around the 100 year anniversary of the Civil War’s end.
There may have been a bit of a fear of loss of culture through deletion – for better or for worse – from those who were passionate about family participation in the Civil War, family history in a region, etc., whenever a social movement takes place, so perhaps that would be why some of the activity took place when it did. I’m not sure. I would say that memories and mindsets will remain regardless of statues, and I doubt that some of these same folks who fought for new monuments ever visited them again or saw them routinely enough to warrant the “preservation of history” aspect that they may have felt warranted the building of these in the first place.
I don’t see the point in maintaining them if they don’t serve their purpose – remembering/honoring – for one group, but creates definite emotional and psychological response from another group of people that can rightfully call themselves Americans.
Trump certainly picks some odd hills to die on, and he’s definitely doing that lately. His lack of political prowess and diplomacy that won many over during the initial portion of his term is now becoming his death knell.
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I think the poor bastard is syphilitic.
“Wear your condoms kids! Don’t be a Donald!”
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In the late 1860s, the southern states had been reduced to third world conditions. Carpetbagger Republicans took over government and plundered what little resources were left. Much of the citizenry were simply focused on survival.
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If the North and not gone for total war in obliteration and had found some means to allow the working class to save face and have jobs the secondary racism that popped up would not have happened. Because it was about economics. It’s the 20 years after the war maybe 30 that are never discussed. Lots of people died of hunger poor health care. Rich northerners came to the South to take advantage of the economic situation. And for a 150 years southerners are still called deplorable say racist rednecks uneducated hillbillies in bread. So that’s why even today people feel more the part of the South then of America in A sense
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Many early 20th century ones were prompted by the aging and dying veterans (and their families) of their communities. People often erect statues of folks right before they or their peers all die off. Plus it takes time to get the ball rolling, commission the sculptor, determine the location etc etc. Why didn’t we do the Vince Dooley statue or Dooley field in 1989 ? Same reasons.
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I‘m in my mid 30s, I’ve lived in the south my entire life, and I had ancestors that fought for the Confederacy. When I was younger I agreed with the “heritage” aspect of it all… until I discovered that a great many of these statues were put up specifically to erase the history of reconstruction or, in case of the state flag as an example, as a response to the civil rights movement, and were in fact themselves examples of the same kind of historical revisionism that’s now often used as an argument for keeping them up. It’s a lot more like tearing down statues of Lenin than statues of the Czar. I agree with the senator; if you took up arms against the United States then you shouldn’t have a statue in a public space. Monuments to the dead are a different story because those men died to create America as we know it today, regardless of which flag they fought under, and because we need to be reminded of the cost.
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Beside the fact that the Civil War was the third national rebellion (Proprietors War, War of Independence) to be instigated by that place “too small to be a country, too large to be an insane asylum”, South Carolina, it was simply a bad idea. Any reasonable person would agree.
However, the mob that’s attempting to tear down monuments aren’t reasonable people. Far from it. This is still a nation of laws. Any changes need to come through legal means. Yeah they have a right to protest but they don’t have a right to destroy property. They need to be punished.
Gotdam hippies.
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And if the names of military posts need changing? Well fuckn change the names then. But change them legally and rationally. I suggest MOH awardees with ties to that post. Not some chicken shit politician.
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My “compound” in Korea was Camp Hartell named after Lt Lee Hartell. “One of the main roads at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, was renamed Hartell Boulevard in his honor.[3] The Connecticut Army National Guard has named its training installation in Windsor Locks Camp Hartell in his honor. Camp Hartell, at one time the location of the 1st Battalion, 79th Artillery (1960-1971),[4] 7th Infantry Division, Munsan-ni, Korea, was also named in his honor. He had been a resident of Danbury and Lee Hartell Drive in Danbury was posthumously named in his honor. The “Hartell House” is a general officers mess named in his honor which has proudly served the Commanding Generals of United Nations Command, ROK/US Combined Forces Command, United States Forces Korea, and Eighth U.S. Army. He is commemorated by a memorial on the front lawn of the Danbury War Memorial building at the corner of South Street and Memorial Drive.[5] Lee Hartell Chapter 25 of the Disabled American Veterans in Danbury is named for him.[6] He was laid to rest at St. Peter’s Cemetery in Danbury.
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That’s what I’m talking about.
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You know what pisses me off? The cemetery in Apalachicola has a replica of the “Three Soldiers” that is at the Wall. The plaque says “Dedicated this 12th day of July, 2008 in memory of those persons from the South who
valiantly served their country during the Vietnam War (1959 – 1975).” WTF? Does that mean if a trooper was from New York but Benning was his HOR that he counts but other yankees don’t? I wrote them an bitched but never got a reply.
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You should email them and demand a response.
Speaking of Home Of Record. I was told that a gentleman has his name in the paper only three times. Birth, marriage and death. Well I didn’t want all those assholes back home knowing what I was doing anyhow. So after graduation from various schools I always listed my HOR as New York, NY. I’ve often wondered if my name was printed in those lying yankee newspapers.
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I likey. . .
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So let’s say someone puts up a Confederate statue in, say, 1921. The money man behind it brags in a dedication speech about beating a Negro woman to near death after returning from Appomattox. About the Southern White Anglo-Saxon being the finest example of Mankind God DAs fit to create. The Daughters of the Confederacy, which donate the statue, are that year lobbying the state government to approve history textbooks praising the KKK as a key institution in preserving social order.
Is that an attempt to preserve history? Or is it something else?
Go to a Civil War battlefield. That’s history.
This other stuff came from a very different motivation.
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Heritage.
https://hgreen.people.ua.edu/transcription-carr-speech.html
The present generation, I am persuaded, scarcely takes note of what the Confederate soldier meant to the welfare of the Anglo Saxon race during the four years immediately succeeding the war, when the facts are, that their courage and steadfastness saved the very life of the Anglo Saxon race in the South – When “the bottom rail was on top” all over the Southern states, and to-day, as a consequence the purest strain of the Anglo Saxon is to be found in the 13 Southern States – Praise God.
I trust I may be pardoned for one allusion, howbeit it is rather personal. One hundred yards from where we stand, less than ninety days perhaps after my return from Appomattox, I horse-whipped a negro wench until her skirts hung in shreds, because upon the streets of this quiet village she had publicly insulted and maligned a Southern lady, and then rushed for protection to these University buildings where was stationed a garrison of 100 Federal soldiers. I performed the pleasing duty in the immediate presence of the entire garrison, and for thirty nights afterwards slept with a double-barrel shot gun under my head.
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I didn’t click on your link and was halfway through your post before I realized what was happening. 🙂
How about some quotation marks there, big guy….
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Haha – Fair enough. 😉
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You want to successfully get rid of the confederate flag? Have the LBGTQ+ community adopt it as one of their flags … the rednecks wouldn’t be able to burn them fast enough.
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Not sure how many people will make it this far down the comments, but…
Slippery slope is among the weakest of all arguments in rhetoric. If the only argument you’ve got against Step One is that it might one day lead to Step Two, then you don’t have an argument against Step One. Because if someday we begin to contemplate taking a possible Step Two, we’ll debate Step Two on its own merits and decide if it should be done. No, slippery slope is nothing more than a fear mongering tactic meant to make a reasonable measure look absurd – as I noted above, I haven’t seen people getting married to their dogs, which I was assured would be the next step after we allowed gay men and gay women to wed. Where’s the line, indeed?
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That’s not always true. When arguing that we should judge historical figures by modern standards, we should also recognize that those standards will change in the future.
Just as John C. Calhoun held 19th century values, Obama held 21st century values. Inevitably, one day Obama will be seen as backward and bigoted. That’s the slope.
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You were never assured that people would marry their dogs. You’re picking an insane vast huge small argument from a small amount of people that were stirring the pot, to then expand it to all other arguments.
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In regards to the “they are part of our history” and are an oportunity to learn about the tragedies of the past arguments: Yes, they are part of history, but in the sense that they tell us a lot about the times that they were erected in. These towns had lots of people that they could spend hard earned taxpayer money on for statues, and these are the men that they chose and how they chose to portray them. They represent the values of those people in those times.
We are talking about statues, and statues are built to glorify or honor the people they depict. The Vietnam Wall, the Holocaust Memorial, the 9-11 Memorial, those are somber memorials meant to remind us of the tragedies of the past, but statues of men on horseback with sabers drawn are for heroes. The same goes for putting names on buildings or forts.
No matter what side of the argument you are on, you have to admit that they are clearly offensive to blacks, and I don’t see anything that merits disregarding their feelings about them.
At the end of the day, though, it’s no skin off my back if they’re taken down. I have much more important things to worry about in life other than whether the Nathan Bedford Forrest statue at the courthouse square gets taken down.
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Couldn’t some organization just hire some Bulgarians to work on the Confederate monument problem?
“Public opinion on the monument has always been divided; while some want it removed, seeing it as a symbol of Soviet occupation during the closing days of World War II, others appreciate it as the location of the annual Victory Day celebration alongside Bulgarian veterans of the 1944-1945 campaigns against Nazi Germany.
For many others, it’s merely a public space for the after-work or university crowds to enjoy a beer, for concerts to be held, or for the annual Gay Pride after party.
But there’s another more secretive group of people who frequent the site – an anonymous array of artists and vandals who use the monument as a canvas for their politically motivated or socially conscious messages.
The most famous example came in 2011, when the monument’s Soviet soldiers were painted as super heroes or pop art icons; the paint-job became popularly known as the ‘Moving with the times’ edition, which was the slogan spray-painted on it alongside the characters.
In August 2013, the memorial was painted pink in reference to Czech artist David Cerny, who – along with his friends – famously painted a Second World War monument to tank crews pink.”
https://balkaninsight.com/2018/10/26/sofia-s-red-army-memorial-the-favorite-canvas-of-artists-and-vandals-10-25-2018/
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With $1 large sweet tea and $1 cheeseburgers, Ronald McDonald is a true super hero to me!
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(In my delicate but surprisingly husky administrative assistant voice)
“Mr. Russ, there’s a Morgan Spurlock on line two…”
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I too have a lot of history/ancestors in the south, one who died in the Civil War. I was taught to honor the courage and sacrifice of the soldiers in the south. In college I was taught by a professor who would only allow you to call the war “The War of Northern Aggression.” As a grown man I read Foote’s three volume history of the war and I was moved by it (it took me three years of reading time–kids and stuff got in the way).
I also understand now that the Civil War was not right. Those that pushed for it in the South had wrong-headed intentions. Many in the North were also acting with bad intentions.
I agreed when we changed the flag in Georgia, because it was changed in the 60s for the wrong reasons. I’m not sure where I stand on the bases, because they are military installations with names of field generals that 1000’s of servicemen now have strong associations. I’m not sure how they got the names.
I do not support the destruction of statues. They are meaningful to people for a variety of reasons. Some people think of the courage and pride of the Southern soldier. Some people think of them as art. I can’t help but to be proud of the South and how “we” fought in the war, even though it was flawed in its inception. I can’t help but root for sports teams from the South against teams from the North. When I think of the statues of soldiers I think of how they fought the Yankees, and while racism was no doubt a big part of the Civil War, that’s not what I think of–I think of South versus North. I’m pretty sure that’s what my great-great-great grandfather thought too when he fought. Maybe I’m wrong to feel this way, but it makes me sad to see the statues toppled and broken by mostly middle class white kids who obviously have no jobs and wouldn’t have any fight in them in a real battle.
I do agree that states and localities should consider removing them from public property when the proper political channels are followed. There are certainly people who pay taxes in the communities who are offended by their presence and they have a right to petition for their removal. Not everyone will be happy with the outcomes, either way, but that’s how it is in a democracy. No one can expect to go through life unoffended.
When they are removed, they should be given to museums, etc.
Finally, the idea that every statue or monument of every person with a flawed history has to be removed or destroyed is crazy to me. It will never end if we allow anything that is insulting to another to be removed. Deal with the issues not the symbols.
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3B I really like your style sir, well said!
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This is reasonable discourse. And not filled with tribalism. This is what’s needed
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Uday finally gets it right
https://twitter.com/npchilds/status/1275474310870659072
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What about Joseph Wheeler? He also fought for the US in the Spanish American War. I guess he doesn’t meet your standard. Girls names were chosen for two reasons- 1. The military is about fighting and they did it well (ask the union generals Lee got fired). 2. It was about reconciliation. It was a message to all those Scotch Irish in the South that they were part of the America tradition also. And Senator, you might want to read about some of Lincoln’s questionable decisions like suspending habeas corpus and trying to send troops into Va before they had even decided what to do. Slavery and secession were wrong but the other side was anything but perfect
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I am well aware of Lincoln’s actions during the CW.
As far as “did it well” goes, you might want to read about Braxton Bragg’s military career.
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Along that line, Shelby Foote’s three-volume Narrative of the Civil War cannot be beat. As I’ve said before, it’s a wonder either side won. There was so much incompetence that both sides should have lost.
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Hey senator, as a Jewish ma, did you support the tearing down of grant’s statue? Why or why not?
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I did not. Thought the reasoning to do so was stupid.
Why, “as a Jewish man”, though?
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This perhaps?
https://www.history.com/news/ulysses-grant-expulsion-jews-civil-war
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Ah, that’s right. Grant was a well-known anti-Semite. Doesn’t change my feelings about taking down the statue.
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Should we also rename military aircraft such as Blackhawk, Kiowa, Apache, etc. after Native American tribes because they picked up arms against the United States?
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I’ve wondered about that also and I fully expect it to be coming
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We’ve taken Aunt Jemima off the syrup bottles. You better believe that is just the beginning of this.
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And that product was considered a gold standard for marketing and products in the African American community.
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FYI it’s not just Confederates. Washington, Jefferson, even flipping Lincoln. It’s in all the news, but maybe not the “news” you monitor.
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I grew up in the South but currently reside in the San Francisco Bay Area. I agree with what most people are saying about the Confederate monuments and how they shouldn’t be displayed in prominent public areas. The biggest problem I have right now is the changing of the names of buildings of past presidents. They renamed two elementary schools in Berkeley, CA which were named after George Washington and Thomas Jefferson because they had ties to slavery. Princeton renamed a building named after Woodrow Wilson. I am sorry but that is ridiculous they were presidents of our country.
Also, on a side note my wife is an Oregon alum and they recently decided to stop calling the annual game between Oregon and Oregon State The Civil War because “it represents a connection to a war fought to perpetuate slavery,”. I was unaware of the deep ties Oregon had to the American Civil War.
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Very woke. Just curious- do you know what they renamed the schools?
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They haven’t decided yet.
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I’ve always thought calling that game the Civil War was stupid.
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Take heart, the rivalry re-naming won’t be any more successful than attempt to neuter The Cocktail Party was…
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https://twitter.com/JesseKellyDC/status/1274390134335647744
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I always thought that military bases were named after famous military members from nearby. If they were built before WWI then who else were they going to name them after? There were not that many famous military people from the south other than Confederates. What about Fort McPherson that used to be in Atlanta, wasn’t that named after a Union General? I know it is closed now, but not because of who it was named for.
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It is possible to believe 2 things at once. But nuances dead. They were imperfect and sometimes badd people that were also local leaders and to some heroes. And a big part of the communities.
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Just found out that this clown is my great-great uncle. Go ahead and rename Cheatham Hill in Kennesaw. Won’t bother me in the slightest. Seems like he was a real asshole. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_F._Cheatham?fbclid=IwAR22neY_TLHtqIIVMK7I5cPM21cVsknIh-BUG7vsPN2tGum3R96UKlzPnCc
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My ancestor was in the 11th Tennessee, Company B and was killed at the Battle of Atlanta. Company B was known as “The Cheatham Rifles” – Men from Davidson County. The battle at Cheatham Hill was at a place called “The Dead Angle” and it was the only frontal assault by Sherman in the entire “Atlanta Campaign”. Ironically there is a huge Illinois Monument at Cheatham Hill.
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Tennessee’s Forgotten Warriors: Frank Cheatham and His Confederate Division Paperback – December 1, 1989
by Christopher Losson Interesting look at him but the best work about the civil war is “Company Aycht by Sam Watkins of the 1st Tennessee. War sucks and don’t let anyone tell you differently.
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Doesn’t anybody know how to launder bounty op money anymore
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Don’t trust American intel. Trust Putin.
Vote MAGAt! (The t is for traitor.)
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He’s the most readingest reader that’s ever read anything. Ever.
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https://mobile.twitter.com/williamlegate/status/1193191196585152512
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Nothing new here. Cash bounties have been put on US combatants heads since Vietnam and also on most invading soldiers throughout history. I understand. Got to feed that TDS goblin. Feel the rush. The ol gray lady would never twist facts, right.
Gotdam hippies.
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and we’ve never done anything about it, have we?
The issue isn’t that the Russians did it, the issue is that we haven’t done anything about it.
The issue is that Trump takes sides with Russia by undercutting the credibility of the intel that the Russians undertook these actions.
He is supposed to take America’s side on it even if the intel is uncertain.
Not traitors get this.
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Didn’t President Obama tell the Russians that after the election he would have more flexibility to remove missile defense systems out of Europe?
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No.
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#NukeMoscow
#Merica
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What would be an appropriate “doing” something about it?
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TDS, oh yea. “By Wednesday, Trump was calling the words “black lives matter” a “symbol of hate” — a description he’s refused to use for Confederate emblems — that would spoil the “luxury avenue” he once called home.”
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That’s a bingo
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“Wherever the standard of freedom and Independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy.”
– Russian agent John Quincy Adams
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Oh JFC.
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I’m fine to change them but I’ve seen no limiting principal offered by the “year zero” crowd which is why we should expect the Washington Obelisk and Jefferson Memorial to come down over the next decade or so. I’d be happier if townsquares in the south honored Republican politicians and leaders that lost their lives from Democrat terrorists in the post war era or celebrated the martial glory of Union leaders like Sherman, Grant or Sheridan.
Setting that aside, the Civil War was mostly not, in fact, a civil war as much as a sectional war. At the end, the Union did not want to have to wage an ongoing civil war (something like Kansas & Missouri during the war). Politicians and leaders thought it best to afford some respect to the vanquished and even allow the losers to indulge in some myth making of the glorious cause. Was this wrong? Perhaps. But it was made in good faith at the time.
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Let’s be honest, most of us who grew up in GA developed our view of the Civil War from the Stone Mountain laser show.
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Cyclorama!!
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I’ve still got my confederate money from the gift shop.
Those field trips were always punctuated by lunch at The Varsity and all the kids wearing a paper hat so some good memories
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Agreed. Any day at the Varsity is a good day.
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Do you know the “hen Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh came to Atlanta for the premiere of the movie (no black actors allowed, of course), the celebrities visited Kurtz’s Cyclorama. Gable, according to legend, is said to have told Kurtz he loved everything about the big painting except one thing: “I am not in it.””
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/atlanta-famed-cyclorama-tell-truth-civil-war-once-again-180970715/
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I mean seeing the 3 leaders ride-off on their horses on the mountain was pretty darn cool.
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I really don’t understand why this is an issue at all. Whether some of these things are there to remind people of white supremacy or not I do not know as I have seen contradictory information about that. What I do know is that all of the people I personally have had contact with that were born and raised in the south simply see them as a part of history. Not just history of the distant past but since them being there is all we remember it is our own as well. If local people want them removed then so be it. But all other voices should remain silent except in their own towns and communities. I’ve never been a fan of people trying to force other pepople to conform to their ideals especially when they do not even live there.
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All the white people, right? What about the black ones? They like to view that part of their history venerated?
Most amazing linguistic trick in common parlance is how southern views or southern heritage or southern culture mean white and only white. And it’s uniformly accepted without any opposition!
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When you live in a county that has a black population of .04%
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LOL. So much irony in that statement
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I can tell you did not at all understand what I said or what I meant.
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Man, I get it. I’m not sure that you get that I meant was that it is highly ironic that the whites living in a completely segregated county don’t see a problem with statues venerating those who fought and died in protection of segregation and subjugation of blacks!
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If you believe 620,000, mostly white people, fought and died to protect segregation and subjugation or desegregate and un-subjugate, I would challenge you don’t really understand the why. Subjugation and segregation existed for many years in the entire US after the end of the Civil War.
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I have difficulty connecting the renaming equating to a change. If we change a name or pull down a statute, does it is change thought or behavior? If the Federal government tries to take my land and I take up arms against it, does that make me a traitor?
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Not only a traitor, you’re also a racist.
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Senator, I understand your point about not publicly honoring those who took up arms against the USA. But what about those who didn’t take up arms but who did espouse some of the racist mindsets of their day? For example…Strom Thurmond, Henry Grady, Herman Talmadge, etc. None of these men fought against the USA, but they were white supremacists. Should the schools, hospitals, bridges, and monuments named after them and/or erected in their honor be torn down and/or renamed? Curious to know your thoughts.
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I’ve got no problem at all renaming things honoring white supremacists.
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Do they have to be white supremacists. Can’t they just be corrupt career politicians.
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Honestly, I’ve never been that enamored of honoring politicians in the first place. If you want to take down every statue, street name and building name, it wouldn’t bother me.
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Agree 100%.
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Easy solution, move them to the various Confederate cemeteries.
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At least it’s an idea.
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There is a right and wrong side of history and 150 years is ample time to figure out which is which. We can lie to ourselves about these monuments being about honoring the dead but they were erected not only to thumb our nose at the north but to also remind black residents who was in still charge of the community. (See Jim Crow). What we memorialize on the public square says everything about who we are as a community. Is this still who we are? I hope not.
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Good summary.
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So … why the subterfuge? Certainly it would have been popular in the early twentieth century to put up a sign or a plaque in the public square that said, “White people are better than black people.” They already had signs up detailing segregation. The water fountains simply said “white” and “colored.” They didn’t say, “Confederate sympathizers” and “Union sympathizers.”
Why did the daughters of dead Confederate soldiers hide their messages in memorials to their fathers when there was no need?
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I will just remind the single minded among us that the root of the War between the States can be laid at the feet of the thing that has kept us in perpetual state of all major civil conflicts in this country since the signing of the Constitution. Washington was right about the rise of political parties. Even though Great Britain has had them then and now, there are multiple parties. In the whole history of the United States there has only been two parties. Both parties can be traced back to the key issue and while slavery was part of it the main problem was one party, never mine the names was always for the rights of the States and saw the Constitution as limiting the power of the Central (Federal) government. The other was all for a strong central government. It’s as easy as that. Now the war Between the States was called that because one party felt that was what it was. They felt that since they had voluntary joined the Federal government, then they should be able to withdraw. The Federalist saw it as a Civil War since they had always believed that a State once admitted to the Union could not withdraw. Actually according to history long before the War between the States, Massachusetts
first state to threaten to secede. Anyway the Federalist won and in so doing amended the Constitution in such a way that the original intent of the Founding Fathers was changed for ever.
As a historical aside it’s been several centuries since the Scottish fought the English and they still hate them, so don’t think the South is the only side that can carry a grudge. Time heals all wounds but wiping out history affects the future.
Had my say want be checking back so save your key strokes.
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“fought and died in protection of segregation and subjugation of blacks!”
That is the point. That is not at all what they mean to those I was talking about. We used to believe in liberty of thought in this country. It is a pity we no longer value that.
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We should have respected the fact that Robert E Lee said he preferred not to create Confederate monuments as it would harm the country’s ability to heal. As soon as he died, they started going up and now here we are.
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What’s more American than taking up arms against those you consider to be oppressors. It’s in our blood.
I think it’s silly to debate this but these guys were forgiven by the only contemporary that mattered: Lincoln.
“With malice toward none and charity to all..”
Right? Right?
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Forgiven is fine. Honoring isn’t.
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Well Jackson’s coming down in Virginia. Theyll all be down soon enough.
I can’t wait to see what’s next. Because there will be a next.
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I honestly wished trump woukd say let’s move the monuments to museums or xemeteries and rename the 10 bases. That has formed a committee to make this happen. I as president would snip that in the Bud and see what the reaction is. I wanna get it over with. Just like the Georgia flag I wanted to get it over with. See what’s next
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And risk losing the white power aka “good people” vote he needs to turn out for him?
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/trump-s-white-power-retweet-set-five-alarm-fire-white-n1232495
Don’t hold your breath.
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You’re still expecting competent leadership from Trump. Stupefying… :l
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Why do you people do this, you take a comment and throw your own biases in and lump me in with a group of people that you don’t like a… I’ve never expected a fucken thing. But I do expect to be taken in context and treated as my own individual self. I merely stated if I were president how I would handle this situation. Because I’m ready to move on from this conversation. Because I know how what’s going out turn out regardless.. I can’t stand people like you. I can’t stand your insane tribalism. Your lack of discourse debate and discussion. As much as you’re, you and your people, to use your language, can’t stand trump, I can’t stand your tribalism and lack of nuance way way more. What stupefying is your absolute lack of insight and your amazing willingness to drop generalizations on the strangers that you don’t know. But your tribe demands that. What stupefying is realizing that this type of thinking is why we have the problems today that we do.
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Who are you calling “you people?”
If only leftists could avoid divisive language like conservatives do:
Cant we have a calm discussion about false flags and crisis actors?
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Take it EASY, Francis…. My pronoun was in fact a personal one, as in “you” . I’m not lumping you personally in with any group, just stupefied how YOU personally, after everything we’ve seen for 3+ years, would expect anything constructive from The Divider. Now, Selah, fine sir.
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Little Marco knows how to follow orders
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Any good traitor should ask, should americans really decide our elections?
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Only the elites. Not the deplorables.
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Rick Wilson should be taken completely seriously. Not a bit of TDS.
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Who likes Domino’s and why won’t Rick stop irritating me
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As long as the RussiaGate hoax never dies!
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Never Forget!
Right now it’s a hoax. Tomorrow it will be Obama’s fault. The day after it will vanish just like the coronavirus. Then, another democratic hoax will be born on the Fourth of July.
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I personally see a difference in a statue in the town square and a military base name. I would propose the line should be drawn on things that poke at the mass of people in their everyday activities. The confederate flag has always made me stop for a second in my tracks or train of thought—it’s patently offensive to many and has been for some time. Nathan Bedford Forrest in a non-cemetery park in downtown ?….yes, that’s offensive.
Also, is there any room for discernment to judge different CSA figures differently, or like everything these days, must we be child-like and lump it all into buckets of good and bad ? I can simultaneously believe that Nathan Bedford Forrest deserved no place of honor on this soil but that it’s a tragedy if they remove Lee from W&L. Lee made the worst decision of his life over about a 3 day period of complete mental anguish over what to do. His choices were between serving his country and answering Lincoln’s call to lead the Union Army as the decorated veteran he was or literally killing his neighbors. That’s why I find it a disservice to history to compare the confederacy to a foreign enemy. I’m not saying I support the cause, but that the whole thing was OUR WAR…..inherent in conflicts called “civil” wars. It sealed the compact of our constitution made 78 years earlier that, up until that point, wasn’t a given would work out like it ultimately has.
Renaming bases that most Americans did not associate with the CSA until folks went looking for ways to be offended feels like an act of spite, and inconsiderate to the many 20th century veterans who associate their time in the military with a certain base that has a certain name. That 20th century association arguably holds more of the identity of a certain Fort, much in the inverse way that the CSA battle flag long ago became a symbol associated with hate groups than any southern heritage.
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Oh yea I get all teary when I think of Ft Cambell and the winter of 1966.
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Campbell
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Didn’t even know who it was named after (a union officer) until I googled it just now. Just that it was in Tennessee.
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I thought it was stupid when the highlight videos pregame in 2006 has JT3’s catch Against the Gators from the 2005 game. How is this different.
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For What it’s Worth:
The Civil War then Economics vs. The War of Political Economics 2020
The purpose of slave trade has and is cheap-nothing labor. The South’s main industrial power laid with large farms of which was about from all I can consume was within 15%-20% of the most lucrative state which were Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and South Carolina. These were the “King Cotton” states that gained the most wealth of any southern states before the Civil War began. Not only cotton but indigo and rice were the crops of the wealthy.
At the beginning of the war New York, Pennsylvania and surrounding areas made their goods from the cloth that was shipped to the North. New York was at a standstill in the beginning because of the loss of their valuable imports from the South. So much so they held out against joining Union forces till the bitter end.
Fast forward to the 1900’s and the Industrial Revolution where again cheap labor was the main driving forces behind the growth of steel mills, auto manufacturing, the advancement of electricity and mass production. Most of these workers were Irish,Scottish, German, Italian and many other foreign immigrants.
Cheap labor then became non existent and minimal industrial jobs came to the South. At a time after the Great Depression FDR came to the South with his New Deal the average Southerner had a in come of just over $300 a year but the southern farmer garnished about $183 a year mostly still from cotton and depleted the soil of void of growing any other crops. While at the same time farmers of the Mid West and West made 4x what southern farmers could make from the soil. Logging was about foreclosed and a whirlwind including some of my great great grandfathers moved to the rich logging country of the North West. On most logging crews it was reported that a usual crew of 25 men would see a least 3 of their fellow workers die within a months time.
FDR then chose to bring electricity to the most rural portions of the mountains and foothills by paying pennies on the dollar and land grab farmers land and produced large TVA lakes with dams where many of men still lay interred in the TVA concrete structure where they fell.
The uneducated people of the South land were still used as fodder for the corporate industrial giants of the North. Paper plants, textile mills, rubber plants where v belts, engine hoses, vacuum hoses and pillows, socks, shorts and mattresses were built. Farmers still farmed and made a decent living in tobacco and still held plant work as a main job. These people raised 7-8 kids as my grandfather did as much as to have a family but to also help work the farm. My mother will be 90 on October 8th. and she said they always got new shoes in the fall for school. They went barefoot in the summer and grandmom made her and her sisters dresses out of flour sacks she died and sewed.Milk production became a lively hood until the EPA decided that you could raise angus beef but milk cattle’s waste leeched into the streams and rivers. By then though Sealtest and Pet Daries had closed. Moved to larger cities.
Before then Jimmy Carter and NAFTA had long started sending textiles, rubber plants, paper plants overseas. Now all that’s left is a tourist industry and fast food restaurants with no meaningful wage jobs to raise a family. Our kids for pears look up to the McDonald and Walmart workers.
We have all paid a great price for all our wars. God bless them all who served OUR country. I feel the war we are raging against each other can not and will not be won. After all the winners most important issue besides family is that of your portfolio and the losers don’t get a 40 hour work week or insurance coverage since one begets the other.
It does not mater if your Red or Blue, Black or White, Yellow or Native American we all have been used and abused by our own political affiliation. The corporate entities control 93% of your news within in 6 …. Yes 6 outlets your newspapers, magazines, radio and TV tell you what you think……..
Advanced 1984….. only with more realism.
“Freedom is just another word when freedom is all you’ve got to lose.”
Janis Joplin/Kris Kristofferson/Fred Foster
“Teach your children well, your fathers goodbye is just another hell.”
Graham Nash/CSNY
I probably misquoted some words of those two songs. What’s a misquote or a quip among Americans.
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I’m with you, Senator! Most confederate statutes face north for a reason – defiance!
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