godisawesome
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I got thinking about this tanks to John Oliver’s use of the “you draw the line *somewhere*” rebuttal to the slippery slope argument about removing monuments and statues because of historical context and political propaganda. I’m thinking about this primarily from an American perspective, but if anyone can bring in perspectives from elsewhere, that would be welcome.
Sooo... what kind of standards would you apply, or think are justified in discussing what memorials to the past should be torn down or left intact?
For myself, Confederate statues that aren’t located at battle sites are basically all imminently removable; the vast bulk, if not all, of such statues and memorials are ahistorical propaganda pieces tied to racism and a corrupt revisionism of history.
And unlike other statues and memorials which *could* also be tied to such distasteful elements in debate... the Confederacy was a treasonous movement against the US, and in a time and place where you could argue that, if we include some kind of “cultural relativity” to judge historical participants more “understandingly,” the Civil War marks a point-of-no-return and crucible for picking the right side of history that removes that “cultural relativity” defense from those Generals and politicians who chose that side at that moment.
In other words, while Washington and Jefferson owned slaves like Lee and Davis, because the former two founded the country and because they did not go to war expressly to preserve slavery, and because the latter two also existed at the same time that men like George Thomas and Robert Anderson chose the right side of the war, Washington and Jefferson get some protection and understanding that Lee and Davis don’t.
Now...
I do have one area where I’d like to run this idea by some fo you guys - I’m less convinced that statues and memorials on battlefields, like Gettysburg and Vicksburg, should be removed with the same standards. Statues there are a lot more likely to have some actual historical significance for education, because they’re matched by Union memorials and statues and featured on an actual battlefield.
Some things, like grave markers akin to the upside-down-cannon markers for fallen generals placed at Antietam where they fell, feel like they serve clearly educational purposes and should be preserved. Other memorials, like the state-provided ones at Vicksburg where each state has something for their troops present at the battle where some were stationed, mix honoring the dead with memorializing and education. And some stuff, like the different statues of Lee and Longstreet at Gettysburg, might have potential to be used to educate about the historiography of the war and it’s handling of inconvenient facts (Lee not wanting statues, Longstreet getting a smaller and hidden one because he became a post-War Unionist.)
Thought?
Sooo... what kind of standards would you apply, or think are justified in discussing what memorials to the past should be torn down or left intact?
For myself, Confederate statues that aren’t located at battle sites are basically all imminently removable; the vast bulk, if not all, of such statues and memorials are ahistorical propaganda pieces tied to racism and a corrupt revisionism of history.
And unlike other statues and memorials which *could* also be tied to such distasteful elements in debate... the Confederacy was a treasonous movement against the US, and in a time and place where you could argue that, if we include some kind of “cultural relativity” to judge historical participants more “understandingly,” the Civil War marks a point-of-no-return and crucible for picking the right side of history that removes that “cultural relativity” defense from those Generals and politicians who chose that side at that moment.
In other words, while Washington and Jefferson owned slaves like Lee and Davis, because the former two founded the country and because they did not go to war expressly to preserve slavery, and because the latter two also existed at the same time that men like George Thomas and Robert Anderson chose the right side of the war, Washington and Jefferson get some protection and understanding that Lee and Davis don’t.
Now...
I do have one area where I’d like to run this idea by some fo you guys - I’m less convinced that statues and memorials on battlefields, like Gettysburg and Vicksburg, should be removed with the same standards. Statues there are a lot more likely to have some actual historical significance for education, because they’re matched by Union memorials and statues and featured on an actual battlefield.
Some things, like grave markers akin to the upside-down-cannon markers for fallen generals placed at Antietam where they fell, feel like they serve clearly educational purposes and should be preserved. Other memorials, like the state-provided ones at Vicksburg where each state has something for their troops present at the battle where some were stationed, mix honoring the dead with memorializing and education. And some stuff, like the different statues of Lee and Longstreet at Gettysburg, might have potential to be used to educate about the historiography of the war and it’s handling of inconvenient facts (Lee not wanting statues, Longstreet getting a smaller and hidden one because he became a post-War Unionist.)
Thought?
