historic-antiques
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So what ya think about em'? What do you think they represent? Think they should be removed from sight? Hate the Confederate flag? How does affect you and why? Seems there have not been many worthwhile subjects here recently, so here's one. Anyone have forefathers that served in the Confederate Army? Yankee army?
Hi OsiaBoyce: As I mentioned in this thread to another poster,
I think we are talking about two different situations that emerge nowadays. On one hand we have your mundane white supremacists, KKK-types, largely uneducated and misinformed, who rally around monuments and use them to somehow glorify slavery, racism, and hate from the past, and to justify them today. They attempt to use a great person or event to make them feel better and bolster their social and moral values in the eyes of the public. They use monuments and symbols entirely and fraudulently wrong.
On the other hand, we have people who genuinely admire the courage and brilliance of Confederate leaders and their soldiers (and of Union leaders/soldiers for that matter), regardless of their views of racism and slavery. They do not use monuments and other symbols to justify and legitimize their social/political and moral values, much less to popularize them
I fall in the latter camp. The problem is usually there is very little or no educational value attached to these monuments and symbols. Included on their plaques should be what the noted person or place meant to Africans who were torn from their homes, thousands of miles away, and forced into deadly slavery; what slavery meant to our nation, socially, culturally and politically - then and now. I feel monuments are OK, so long as they include this type of educational component.
Otherwise as we know, uneducated, misinformed citizens are the greatest threat to democracy, and to our Founding Father ideals of "...all men are created equal..." and due process/asylum eligibility, and to the values symbolized by our Statue of Liberty.
On the other hand, we have people who genuinely admire the courage and brilliance of Confederate leaders and their soldiers (and of Union leaders/soldiers for that matter), regardless of their views of racism and slavery. They do not use monuments and other symbols to justify and legitimize their social/political and moral values, much less to popularize them
I fall in the latter camp. The problem is usually there is very little or no educational value attached to these monuments and symbols. Included on their plaques should be what the noted person or place meant to Africans who were torn from their homes, thousands of miles away, and forced into deadly slavery; what slavery meant to our nation, socially, culturally and politically - then and now. I feel monuments are OK, so long as they include this type of educational component.
Otherwise as we know, uneducated, misinformed citizens are the greatest threat to democracy, and to our Founding Father ideals of "...all men are created equal..." and due process/asylum eligibility, and to the values symbolized by our Statue of Liberty.