Should citizen statue topplers be prosecuted?

Most of those statues were erected under the Jim Crow era...way after the civil war and are justifiably intertwined with the feelings and emotions of that period.

When Trump sympathizers talk about "preserving history", they conveniently ignore the uncomfortable parts either out of their own shame or in order to obfuscate their twisted privilege.

There's absolutely no doubt in what they represent, and it's only after such a long period of southern acceptance that it's history is being more visibly challenged...because The Blacks are more Uppity now.

 

The vast majority of the monuments were built around 1900-1912, which is when the economic conditions in the South had improved somewhat and were often financed by children of Civil War veterans and veteran groups.

 

I pin the Jim Crow era around 1896-1965, with state legislatures propping them up and even sending them to DC. Gotta love state sponsored oppression.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...-other-confederates-got-into-the-u-s-capitol/
In a solidarity march on Sunday to protest the deadly violence in Charlottesville over the weekend, Washington-area protesters gathered at the District’s single monument to a Confederate leader. Albert Pike was a brigadier general in the Civil War, but his statue at Judiciary Square is dressed in plain clothes.

Just a few blocks away, however, in the U.S. Capitol building, a statue of Gen. Robert E. Lee shows him in a Confederate uniform. When the statue was placed there in 1909, it was a scandal. Today, it stands with a dozen other statues of Confederates — meaning that this single building, the flagship of the Union, commemorates the Southern states’ rebellion more than nearly every city in the South.

...
But then, in the early 20th century, arose the Lost Cause of the Confederacy, a revisionist-history narrative that depicts the South’s secession and defeat as heroic and even patriotic. As the Southern Poverty Law Center has catalogued, from 1900 and into the 1930s, Confederate monuments sprang up in the South at a record pace. Statues of Lee — the Confederate commander and a cruel slave owner who had been recast as a gentle, reluctant warrior — were particularly popular.

Amid all this, the Virginia General Assembly took up the selection of who would represent the Old Dominion in the Capitol’s National Statuary Hall. A law passed in 1864 invited each state to send two statues of notable citizens to occupy the old House chamber in a “national Valhalla.” Virginia was understandably occupied with other matters at the time, and so, like many states, didn’t get around to sending the statues until decades after the invitation was sent.
...
The Lee statue was quietly installed without fanfare in August 1909, but a dam had broken in the Lost Cause. Over the next 20 years:

• North Carolina sent a statue of Confederate governor Zebulon Vance;
• Florida sent a statue of Edmund Kirby Smith, the last Confederate general to surrender;
• Alabama sent a statue of Confederate cavalryman Joseph Wheeler. The Architect of the Capitol, which oversees the care of the collection, describes Wheeler on its website as an “outstanding Confederate cavalry” leader who “saw action in many campaigns.” It does not mention that Wheeler oversaw the massacre of hundreds of freed slaves at Ebenezer Creek in 1864.
• South Carolina sent a statue of Wade Hampton, a Confederate brigadier general who fought at Gettysburg;
• Georgia sent a statue of Confederate vice president Alexander Stephens.

And in 1931, when Mississippi chose both Confederate president Jefferson Davis and Confederate colonel James Z. George to represent the state, there was a crowded ceremony at the Capitol to install them. The U.S. Marine Band played, the House and Senate chaplains both gave invocations. According to the New York Times, “it was an emotional audience, full of sentiment for the lost cause.”

 

Not sure if you're a Nazi (though that's what people are saying... ), but I agree that they should be taken down properly rather than with random acts of mob violence. Neither extreme is winning hearts and minds right now.

Too bad there isn't a strong leader who can use the pulpit to unite rather than divide.

 

You can pin the era whenever you want........ but the timing of the monuments isn't as simple as you seem to think. Most of the monuments were put up by the children of the confederate soldiers. It isn't that surprising. Ultimately most the monuments will be taken down, and that is fine. However this neat black and white narrative of the time line makes for good press and reading, but isn't as clean cut as many seem to think.

 

There isn't a leader alive that would unite people on this issue.

Only generational change and time.

 

Reported.

 

I wouldn't care about private investors and funding as much as I would with state governments endorsing those statues on public grounds.

Aren't they the representation of enfranchised people for that era?

 

Probably.

Who knows whether this gasoline pouring is what we need. Living through it is a PITA though.

 

It's funny, most extremists think that there is "no doubt" about their version of reality no matter how twisted it is.

I'm perfectly fine with you thinking that all statues and memorials related to the Civil War in the south represent oppression or whatever you might want to believe....I mean, it won't make it true, but you've got the right to have the thoughts.

Also, I'm not against removing some of the statues or monuments if that's what the people who live there want. That said, if there are people who don't want them torn down, it doesn't mean that they are white supremacists or nazis.....though I'm sure white supremacists and nazis would be among the group of people against tearing them down.

 

Such selective parsing...triggered much?

I don't have any skin on this game, but I suspect the reaction would be different if we had colored overlords propping up statues of militant minority rebels on public grounds.

Oh such treasonous incitement of open rebelion!

 

I keep misreading this thread as Star Citizen.

 

No, not triggered at all, just saying things as they are. As I've said before, the Confederacy means nothing to me, my people weren't even in this country at the time and I consider myself a Texan, not a southerner. That said, as something of a history buff, I despise those who would destroy statues and monuments simply because they don't like events or people from history. Also, let's be real, the knuckle draggers aren't going to stop with random statues out in the sticks, before you know it they'll say that other statues and monuments trigger them too and be looking to tear down more.

 

and after Brown vs board of education, all kinds of different confederate named schools and confederate monuments on school grounds started popping up in the South.

The large increase in confederate monuments during the Jim Crow era is not a coincidence. Just take a look at what the key note speaker said during the dedication ceremony for the Tampa courthouse "confederate patriots" monument.
"The South stands ready to welcome all good citizens who seek to make their homes within her borders. But the South detests and despises all, it matters not from whence they came, who, in any manner, encourages social equality with an ignorant and inferior race."

 

Can't wait for OP to create a new thread entitled,"Should citizens that obstruct justice be prosecuted"

 

Unless you believe my comment that those "protestors" deserve Greenpeace medals, I haven't endorsed the tearing down of those statues. Just because I don't like them, doesn't mean I'll accept results by any means necessary.

Interesting debate dynamic going on across America where the lack of denouncing of one tragedy makes people assume it's an implicit endorsement for the perpetrators.

Then there's a guy like Trump who cuts the cheeky ambiguity while not even appearing masculine or charismatic at all. Quite a feat.

 

I wonder what were the need or aspiration for putting these up at that time?

Seems a fair compromise is using government fund to move / give away these to historic museums, even those financed by the public.

 

I actually care what he thinks. So, instead of making an idiotic comment that adds no value to the discussion, how about you put a modicum of thought into your post? Thank you.

 

You are by far the quickest person to earn the title of Worst Poster here. I mean, the level of worthlessness you stoop to is truly mind-boggling. I vehemently disagree with many of the conservative posters, but in your case, I and many on here think you are actually a bad person. Shameful.