Idiots Pull Down The Confederate Soldiers Monument In Front of The Old Durham Courthouse
I'm torn (to say the least) about what to do about Confederate memorials. But these people are f*cking idiots.
The statue they destroyed was the Confederate Soldiers Monument in front of the Old Durham Courthouse. The vandalism was accompanied by standard-issue moronic chants and ill-informed speechifying, as I suppose goes without saying.
I reckon Silent Sam is more-or-less next on the list. (I actually remember being kinda shocked when I first arrived on campus and saw Silent Sam. I was like please be Revolution please be Revolution...oh... damn...Civil War...)
Then we can get started on the slave owners--who are at least as deserving of disapprobation as your average Confederate soldier. Might as well start with Mr. Jefferson. Don't forget Washington and Madison...a whole lot of 'em, in fact, including Grant.
Then comes the issue of our treatment of American Indians--theft of land for one thing, genocide for another. That's at least as bad as slavery. And, sadly, it can't really be hung on the Confederacy, I'm afraid...which is bad news for Old Glory. Also a lot of other U.S. presidents. But it's a small price to pay to...uh...do...whatever it is we're doing...
And, whatever it is, there's a whole lot of it left to be done.
[Which, again, doesn't mean that I think I know what to do about the monuments. But destroying them is not on my list of options. At the very least they belong in a museum.
Jeez, I shudder to think about questions about Lee's statue in Lee Chapel. They've already moved the Confederate flags--not an unreasonable course of action...but, again, it's hard to articulate the general principles at work, and, so, among other things, hard to see where this all ends.]
The statue they destroyed was the Confederate Soldiers Monument in front of the Old Durham Courthouse. The vandalism was accompanied by standard-issue moronic chants and ill-informed speechifying, as I suppose goes without saying.
I reckon Silent Sam is more-or-less next on the list. (I actually remember being kinda shocked when I first arrived on campus and saw Silent Sam. I was like please be Revolution please be Revolution...oh... damn...Civil War...)
Then we can get started on the slave owners--who are at least as deserving of disapprobation as your average Confederate soldier. Might as well start with Mr. Jefferson. Don't forget Washington and Madison...a whole lot of 'em, in fact, including Grant.
Then comes the issue of our treatment of American Indians--theft of land for one thing, genocide for another. That's at least as bad as slavery. And, sadly, it can't really be hung on the Confederacy, I'm afraid...which is bad news for Old Glory. Also a lot of other U.S. presidents. But it's a small price to pay to...uh...do...whatever it is we're doing...
And, whatever it is, there's a whole lot of it left to be done.
[Which, again, doesn't mean that I think I know what to do about the monuments. But destroying them is not on my list of options. At the very least they belong in a museum.
Jeez, I shudder to think about questions about Lee's statue in Lee Chapel. They've already moved the Confederate flags--not an unreasonable course of action...but, again, it's hard to articulate the general principles at work, and, so, among other things, hard to see where this all ends.]
posted by Winston Smith at
6:40 AM
5 Comments:
"If you took up arms against this country in defense of slavery, you don't deserve a statue in our public spaces."
How's that for a principle?
Not unreasonable, obviously.
Though I wonder about those two different grounds coming apart. And I'm not convinced that's the principle that's actually at work.
Though the questions 'Should we do A about x?' and 'Why does group G want to do A about x?' are, obviously, different.
I predict that statues of Washington and Jefferson will become similarly controversial in the next spasm of all this (by which I mean: in 10-20-ish years.) If they do, I think that'll be evidence that your proposed principle probably isn't the operative one.
For the record, I don't share the belief that statues of Washington, Jefferson, etc. should go because the men owned slaves...but I certainly understand it, and am, perhaps, persuadable about the point.
I don't share that belief either, while I'm sure some on "my side" do. Happy to switch to the "statues should stay!" side in ~10-20 years if/when your prediction comes true. Until then, I'd like to see us get down as many of these 700+ participation trophies for literal traitors as we can.
If our elected officials want to get them taken down, or move them into private museums, I'll support that. Given their historical reluctance to do so, I'll continue cheering for those doing it the old-fashioned way.
When confronting a statue, shouldn't the question be less did they do or say horrible things, and more did they do anything else? In the case of Lee, Alexander Stevens, and the rest of the Confederates, the answer really is no. Lee didn't get statues in Charlottesville for his walk on part in the Mexican American War; treason in support of slavery is near all that is notable about him. I would think this is the principal to apply with respect to Washington, Jefferson, and the others with the better virtue of hypocrites.
It's funny, while discussing this with my wife last night, I mentioned in passing that Beauregard and Longstreet would be two Confederate generals I would be unequivocally opposed to removing, since both embraced reconstruction and went on to contribute positively. (Longstreet commanded multi-racial federal troops in the battle of Liberty Place.) Then I realized that I had never seen a statue of either, almost certainly for that very reason. The Lost Causers have never been about embracing history in its complexity when matters go the other way. Remember the protests at putting up the (small) stature of Lincoln in Richmond?
That's a really good point, cb.
On a tangentially-related note, I sometimes reflect on the fact that the very sort of people who want to defend the statues are, I expect the kind who made them need defense. If reconstruction had been done right, the wounds of slavery might not still be so raw. The Civil War might be something we could all view as a tragedy rather than a crime.
Though I'll also say:
I suspect that an association with slavery is being seen as a kind of moral taint that can't be counterbalanced by any good someone has done. If so, then Washington and Jefferson et al. aren't safe. Given the bizarre moral perfectionism of the PCs/SJs, I'll be really surprised if there's no effort to Lee them.
In all honesty, I'm not even thoroughly convinced such a view is wrong.
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