[Cog]

Given the current state of affairs, when the shooting of 9 black people occurs by a madman, this isn't really a surprise. This is what you progressives wanted. Just don't be surprised when your vision of a progressive, politically correct America comes around to bite you in the ass.

The Republic is dead. Congrats on that progressives. Enjoy your new masters.

http://radio.foxnews.com/toddstarnes/to ... neral.html

Memphis Mayor A.C. Wharton wants to dig up the bodies of Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest and his wife and remove them from a city park in the latest and perhaps most despicable example of the anti-Southern cleansing spreading across the nation.

“Which African-American wants to have a picnic in the shadow of Nathan Bedford Forrest?” Wharton said in a Thursday press briefing.

In addition to desecrating the graves, Wharton wants to tear down a massive statue honoring the Confederate general who was involved in organizing the Ku Klux Klan. The bodies of Forrest and his wife would be relocated to a cemetery.

“These relics, these messages of this despicable period of this great nation, it’s time for those to be moved,” the mayor said.

Memphis city officials have been waging a fierce and unrelenting war on southern heritage. In 2013, the city council changed the name of Forrest Park to Health Sciences Park. They also changed the names of Jefferson Davis Park and Confederate Park.

[Lore]

That sound you're hearing in your head Cog is the circling of black helicopters.

[dinopello]

Congrats on that progressives. Enjoy your new masters.

I don't understand what you are saying.

I thought you were saying that progressives will be the new masters.

If not, then who are the new masters that progressives should enjoy ?

[Outcast_Searcher]

Or just maybe, a spirit of compromise and reasonableness might be in order.

Given some of the debate I've heard on NPR recently, one example might be: "When you lose a war, one consequence is you no longer get to fly the flag." So the idea would be that the Confederate flag would no longer be an acceptable public symbol (for example at government buildings). The supporting example would be that the Nazi Swastika is considered an inappropriate hate symbol.

However, trying to pretend like the history of the Civil War never occurred, and we should just forget it and destroy all artifacts related to it is going WAY too far, IMO. For one thing, there are lessons future generations need to remember/learn from that (much like from the lessons of Hitler's regime).

Of course, I guess it's silly of me to hope for reasonableness or compromise in anything political in modern society.

[Outcast_Searcher]

That sound you're hearing in your head Cog is the circling of black helicopters.

So you claim he's making all this up?

In Richmond VA, the Jefferson Davis statue was recently defaced.

http://www.richmond.com/news/local/city ... ede87.html

Are you OK with that? Or should all such monuments be removed, as though the Civil War never occurred?

Society does need to decide where to draw the line on this.

[AgentR11]

I really, REALLY, dislike this trend of wanting to sanitize history.
We are who we are, both the good and the bad, because of those who went before us, who did both good, and bad.
Don't rip up old icons and monuments; instead, build new ones, right along side them.

OTOH, Cog, you're showing something different with those images. Islam, practiced "by the code" as it were, has a strict prohibition against making images, specifically of faces. Sometimes they interpret it more broadly and act against images of people in total; but the text is "face". Those guys aren't trying to get rid of history; they'll destroy a statuette of Bob the nameless, modern Imam just as readily.

A more appropriate example is what those idgits in Ukraine are doing to Stalin statues and other relics of the USSR. I say, don't tear down the statue of Stalin, put one right by his side, honoring and remembering those who died or suffered for his blunt, callous, misguided policies. His leadership did in fact beat the snot out of the German army... in the most costly, inefficient, blood-soaked way possible. He deserves both the credit for the victory, and the blame for the cost of that victory.

[Keith_McClary]

Renaming the Langevin Bridge is among the ideas Mayor Naheed Nenshi is considering, in consultation with local First Nations, as Calgary looks to act on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) report.

“There has been quite a bit of talk in the public – many, many citizens have approached us with the idea of making a more deeply symbolic gesture of reconciliation that could include something like the renaming of the Langevin Bridge,” the mayor said during Monday’s city council meeting. “I have been seeking different perspectives on this from First Nations people, from our advisory committee, from historians, and so on, on what that might look like.”

The bridge was named for Hector-Louis Langevin, who helped pave the way for Canada’s confederation and also was an early proponent of the residential-school system. He argued in favour of removing aboriginal children from their families, lest they “remain savages.”

http://metronews.ca/news/calgary/139721 ... in-bridge/

[Newfie]

Yea know, of all the problems we face Iin the world, tihis ain't any of them, except for the fact that we spend time and energy on this shit instead of something important. Which IS a major issue.

If you're don't want it to be an issue, ignore it.

[Lore]

That sound you're hearing in your head Cog is the circling of black helicopters.

So you claim he's making all this up?

In Richmond VA, the Jefferson Davis statue was recently defaced.

http://www.richmond.com/news/local/city ... ede87.html

Are you OK with that? Or should all such monuments be removed, as though the Civil War never occurred?

Society does need to decide where to draw the line on this.

No, just overstating the situation. There is a reason in Normandy that there are two memorial cemeteries. One for the winners and one for the losers. Remembering and honoring are two different things.

[Pops]

Given the current state of affairs, when the shooting of 9 black people occurs by a madman, this isn't really a surprise. This is what you progressives wanted.

So when a kid kills a bunch of black people because he imagines blacks are taking over, and his idea is to fix it by starting the long awaited race war, then that is progressives' fault?
For what, letting blacks off the chain?
Electing a half black POTUS?

Enjoy your new masters.

I'm gonna assume you mean those same blacks that the kid thought are taking over.

interesting

Enjoy your new masters.
http://radio.foxnews

LOL, now that part I get,




-

As for the tearing down part, it doesn't surprise me all that much that people would like to get rid of old icons of oppression. Lots of Americans, prolly lots of rebels, thought this was a great sight...

[Sixstrings]

I really, REALLY, dislike this trend of wanting to sanitize history.
We are who we are, both the good and the bad, because of those who went before us, who did both good, and bad.

I'm generally with you Agent, and Cog, on this issue.

But.

It's all the fault of the red states' instransigence and extreme stubbornness, on a wide range of issues. From rolling back civil rights era Voting Rights Act, and now actively restricting voting rights again, to all the Obamacare opposition, and then one day the final straw was that the governor of South Carolina could not so much as lower the rebel flag to half staff.

That's how revolutions work. People just finally have enough, at some point, and the guy in charelston was a madman terrorist -- but this other stuff is all peaceful. It's a "color revolution" "velvet revolution" type of thing, just a mass consensus forming and people take to the streets and tear down the old flag and statues.

I'm not saying I'm for this, at all, I'm saying it's all Republicans fault for letting it get so far and for not moving forward sooner.

If you allow your regional culture to become something that the majority culture cannot abide anymore, then yes, one day all of corporate america and the zeitgeist consensus culture will turn on it and shun it and take the statues down and push it all away, in disgust at it.

As for the OP --

I think that is reasonable, if it's a statue and burial of a particularly horrible racist that actually started the KKK?

Of course, there has to be a line somewhere. President Andrew Jackson was a horrible racist and against Indians too (still a complicated man though, his own adopted son was native american). So what are we gonna do, erase Andrew Jackson from history as well?

And, by today's standards, even Abraham Lincoln had racist views.

Barrack Obama and Hillary Clinton of today are not anti-gay equality, but wind the clock back 8 years and they both were. Wind the clock back 10 years before that, and Hillary sounded like "murrage is a man and a wohman" redneck.

So do we erase Obama and Clinton's record in history, shun them from politics, because they had some bigoted views in the past?

See how silly this gets? You can't view all of history through the prism of today. Our own great great grandkids will look back at us, and there will be issues that our descendents think that we right now are such horrible bigoted people about. They may want to move OUR graves. Who knows what that issue will be, perhaps they'll never forgive us for greenhouse pollution. Etc.

In my state, we have a lot of historical commemoration of the spanish conquistadors. The conquistadors were all really horrible bad guys, they were just mercenaries and conquerers and slavers, lookin' for gold, and were responsible for genocide of all the native peoples in the Americas.

Honestly, there shouldn't be any monuments to conquistadors. They aren't even Americans, for goodness sake.

The thing is, though -- ALL THE WORLD'S HISTORY has bad in it, what would a Britain do, just erase king henry and william the conqueror and most of their monarchs and most of their imperial history because half of it was really horrible?

I'd agree with taking the rebel flags down at all government public places.

I'd agree with some cases of removing statues and graves and monuments, IF it was just some 2nd tier outright racist bad guy.

We can't go as far though as taking down Robert E. Lee statues. And historical sites shouldn't be shut down either, the best way to handle it is to just present ALL of the history at these places. My town has a "plantation" historical site. It's like a living history museum, you just see how things were back in those days.

The right thing to do though would be to turn these places into educational centers for the history of slavery as well, and denial of civil rights, and black history too. That's the solution there, just present all the history and school kids visiting these things could learn about the bad and then the good things too about the shared culture.

The entire culture is not just all bad, remember Southern culture is black too. We all eat "hush puppies." We've all come to like soul food, and collard greens. We all like gospel music. There's a lot here that is both of our culture, black and white.

How a Southerner would feel on this stuff, is just like how a new englander would feel if someone wanted to erase all their culture and history just because the puritans burned witches and maybe because the northeast treated immigrants so badly, in the 1800s, and a lot of issues.

Heck, look at womens' rights -- ALL MEN were misogynists, until recent decades.

CNN had a 1960s documentary series recently, they played a lot of John Kennedy talking about women. Holy cow that guy was a real chauvinist. President of the US, saying marriage is like riding a horse. That only one can have the reins or the two can't get anywhere. So, the rider is the man with the reins and the horse is the woman.

So do we erase all of John Kennedy history, too?

And even Lyndon Johnson, he used the N word. He was honestly a bit of a bigot, even though he CHANGED a bit and actually enforced civil rights -- yet he still used that N word.

[Sixstrings]

But anyway, I do think it's going too far, I'll argue the other side on it.

It is sad to see this happening, just all Southern / confederate culture getting sullied by the TERRORIST and now it's all getting pushed out and shunned.

I'm no young guy at this point, but even when I was a kid I remember seeing a laser light show at a confederate memorial in Atlanta. It's like a little "mt. rushmore" and it's got Jefferson Davis on it, Robert E. Lee, etc.

So this was a very long time ago, but I still remember it, they actually did a great job with the presentation of the show, at modernizing it all and encorporating civil rights history and black history. And the theme was just the story of the South, white and black, and that here we are in this new place in the modern world and the South had moved forward.

SOME people flying a rebel flag are bigoted rednecks, sure.

But the vast majority of Southerners, that do care about their history and culture, honestly are not bigots and don't approve of the racism at all. Even 99.99% of rednecks flying a rebel flag, are actually very good people and wouldn't hurt anybody and are the type that would stop by you on the side of the road and help you change a tire. Christian type people.

So.. this is just sad.. the South had moved forward.. maybe it's these darn Republicans' fault and they are the ones that are causing us to lose all our culture now, by all these years of OBAMA ranting. And just fighting every last little bit of progress.. THEY have failed the South, by not moving the South forward and our history along with it.

But honestly, at these historical sites, from what I've ever seen they really do a good job of presenting all the history. Nobody going to these things is a bigot. This kid in charleston was a nut that got radicalized by one particular horrible fringe website, and he was an aberation.

This thing that's happening is sad to see, really, and I'm confused by it because actually historical sites and such have done a good job honoring the past but talking about civil rights too and black history too and slavery too.

The answer is not to tear Robert E. Lee down, or blow up that little mt. rushmore in Atlanta -- rather, put a statue of Frederick Douglas right next to it, honor black history as well, just tell all the story.

[Sixstrings]

Just got my local paper, it has a story about an obelisk we've had downtown since the 1920s. It's got a confederate flag etched into the stone.

So, the paper interviewed the local NAACP chairman, and the NAACP person actually has the same opinion (generally) that Cog does. About our particular monument, she says "it was tastefully done" and doesn't find anything offensive about it. She says the confederate flag is just etched in the stone, same color as the rest of the stone, and doesn't stand out.

It's a monument honoring war dead.

The NAACP chairman is also quoted as saying that "this is our history, you can't erase history" and that everyone just needs to move forward from here.

This particular obelisk really is classy and well done, people in the 1920s knew this was a sensitive issue. You can tell the monument is honoring the war dead, with general sensitivy -- it's not a statue of a general on a horse flying a flag, it's an obelisk, looks nice.

Now, what happened in the 1930s is that there was a surge of racism in the great depression and then in some places in the South you had confederate monuments going up. So those are NOT quite so sensitive and tasteful, and were really about the racism of THEIR TIME -- the 1930s -- not the time of the civil war.

And then, in the 1960s, is when a lot of southern states started flying rebel flags or incorporating them into their state flag. THAT was all about the racism and regionalism of THEIR time -- it was actually nothing to do with the historical confederacy.

The stars and bars battle flag, was never even the national flag of the confederacy.

The bottom line is that really, culture is fluid and how we choose to view history and how we write the history books really reflects on US more than the actual history or the culture of that distant past.

Anyhow -- generally -- I'm going to side with Cog for the most part, though this would be up to the democratic process in each town and city and county whether a majority wants to remove a monument or not, but otherwise just generally we shouldn't be removing historical monuments.

And I do find it a bit spooky how fast things change lately, in the US, culturally.

It's really bizarre how everyone can just wake up one day and suddenly decide all rebel flags have to go. And monuments taken down, etc., when these things have been around for all our lives and nobody had a problem with it before.

We can't have such massive changes over anecdotal things -- this ONE case, in Charleston. Rather than flag obsession, if people want an issue they ought to march for voting rights in the red states and to change all these voting restriction laws. THAT would be appropriate, and make sense. That's a real issue. Not taking down a confederate war dead monument that granddaughters put up for their grandfathers that fought and died in the war.

And I'm also concerned that it's just too extreme and polarized and mob mentality kind of thinking, that a switch can flip and suddenly an entire culture has to be shunned and wiped away. That's not rational, that's extremism, that's spooky.

Ebay banning all confederate antiques and symbols is also very wrong, given that ebay is a primary market for people to just trade their antiques and collectibles. Whether it's a confederate hat from the civil war or it's a Roman Empire denarius coin.

And American history is hardly perfect, either -- Southern history IS AMERICAN HISTORY, and American history in the West has a lot of blemishes too, so what are we gonna do next just ban the American flag as well and all American symbols?

[SeaGypsy]

Under the same logic Mosques should be torn down & outward display of Islamism banned.

Sent from my HUAWEI Y320-U151 using Tapatalk

[SeaGypsy]

Are you OK with local governments deciding to tear down mosques & ban hijabs & long beards 6?

Sent from my HUAWEI Y320-U151 using Tapatalk

[Sixstrings]

Are you OK with local governments deciding to tear down mosques & ban hijabs & long beards 6?

Good point, and no of course I'm not for that. And you raise an excellent point: terrorists can't define all of islam, and neither can terrorists be allowed to define Southern culture. To be fair, this one crazy person in charleston was an aberration, there really is no big racist violent terrorist problem going on in the South.

edit: having said that though SG, Americans and Christian southerners are good people, we don't want to go too far but there should be something passed about guns, finally. At least the background check bill -- that failed even after the sandyhook tragedy.

And the confederate should come down, at public government places, and if any states still have the rebel flag in the state flag then that should be taken out. Just don't shut down all the historical sites and start pulling up all the old monuments, that would be going too far, also ebay needs to reverse on what it did -- that's WAY too far, the civil war is our history and people collect antiques it's not about being racists.

Sent from my HUAWEI Y320-U151 using Tapatalk

I think I need to get one of these things, would help keep my posts to 140 characters.

[C8]

Does digging up dead people include Bernie Sanders?

[Loki]

I really, REALLY, dislike this trend of wanting to sanitize history.

You use the term "trend" as if it's a recent thing. The Confederate flag wavers have been doing this for 150 years. Can't tell you how many folks I've heard say the Civil War had nothing to do with slavery, it was all about that tyrannical federal government. Historical record be damned....

Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner- stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.

Alexander H. Stephens' "Cornerstone Speech"

Is it any wonder why some might not want to see the flag that symbolized this mindset flying over public property?

But Newfie is right, all of this is irrelevant nonsense, meant to distract us from what really matters.

[Sixstrings]

One last "lecture:"

I don't know guys.. any other Southerners on here? How do you feel about this?

Thinking about things some more, how did this just happen overnight, that Southern is suddenly "nazi" or something dirty.

Ebay has banned all confederate history and memorabilia and antiques.

I really don't like this, one terrorist crazy KID somehow defines our entire culture. It's not right. The South moved forward a very long time ago, back in the 1970s and before, good Southerners rejected racism and there's a New South but people are still proud of their culture and history -- and know the faults too.

It's the same as our imperfect American culture, and its faults. You don't throw it all out.

Red state people have defended this country and fought in every war the US has ever had, revolution on up, and won it, except the civil war. Right now, our entire US military is pretty much all red state people and Southerners, from the generals and admirals on down to the GI.

I just don't like this, this is our culture you can't just ban it all, I was watching some civil war stuff and now I feel like it's nazi or something and it's all banned and not acceptable.

Is this stuff just all banned now, is it all nazi now? The civil war buffs, the re-enactments, our music, the flag is banned, everything?

Now some are talking about banning the movie "Gone With the Wind."

I don't like the political correctness of now treating it like it's a nazi swastika.

Live performance by the 2nd South Carolina String Band at the 2010 re-enactment of Cedar Creek.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__kQX12S9YI

(now see these people are not racist bigots actually, but I feel bad even posting a video like this, like it's wrong now or something. I've known civil war buffs. They were not racists.)

I like civil war stuff, I'm not a racist. I liked that movie "Glory," too, and I like Abraham Lincoln too, and Frederick Douglas and Hariet Tubman and Martin Luther King jr.

This is our AMERICAN culture, and history, you can't come in and wipe it all away or ban half of it or try to define it by frickin' KKK 50 and 100 years ago or frickin' David Duke from the 90s, or this messed up millennial nut kid now in 2015, this is our American history and culture going back centuries and it is not a fad that can just be banned overnight.

The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down - The Band (1969)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NnyeqyCiLdo

President Obama said some good things in the eulogy he gave, about people respecting each others' culture. And it was also one of his best speeches and it was a beautiful service. (I like gospel music too)