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Ole Miss students vote unanimously to remove Confederate statue from campus center

JasperL said:
I'll address just a few of these because I've address others in other posts. Since you ignored virtually all my post, I don't think you'll mind.
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Not in the least.

JasperL said:
The south certainly didn't believe slavery was doomed. They told us the opposite, seceded and fought a war over it. So what you assert about what was doomed is of no relevance to this discussion.
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I agree, the movers and shakers of the Southern economy did NOT think that slavery was DOOMED RIGHT NOW. However they could see the writing on the wall internationally.

JasperL said:
I don't know how you define "small percentage, but in the deep south it ranged from roughly 25-50% of families owned at least one slave.
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Just as with "income inequality" there was "slave inequality". On the other hand, since slaves were "expensive pieces of farm machinery" the people who owned a single slave tended to care for that slave with the same attention to detail as a small farmer would lavish on their single tractor.

JasperL said:
Those are two sides of the same coin - slavery or the economic and social system based on slavery. The difference is semantic only.
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While they may be two sides of the same coin, the difference is as "semantic" as whether the coin flip turns up heads or tails when you have bet the rent on it.

HOWEVER, you get a much more nuanced view of the actual situation if you approach it from the "economic and social system based on the use of slave labour" then you do if you ignore the economic and social aspects and concentrate solely on "slavery" to the isolation of all else.
 
NiceGuyEddie said:
The reason I called attention to your desperate repetitions is that it highlights the fact that you've put no thought into your decision, other than a knee-jerk reaction "slavery-bad, must eradicate everything Confederate".

You have no clue what happens next, you have no clue as to what you're ultimately endorsing.

After you've "cleansed" the South, what's next?

Mount Rushmore?

George Custer?

George Washington?

The name "Washington" itself?
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I don't care about any of those things. :shrug:

But why I describe your argument as hysteria is simple, no one cares enough about the murderers, rapists, and slave owners of the confederacy to fight to much for their statues and flags. Getting popular support to remove those is easy. There isn't popular support to get rid of Mount Rushmore or Gerorge Washington, whatever that means. So even if that's what I wanted the likely hood of it happening is pretty small. That being said if it did, I still wouldn't care. So what?
 
JasperL said:
I don't know why you're trying to draw false equivalencies here. Slavery in the south just was fundamentally different than the discrimination blacks faced in the north pre-war. And Jim Crow was different than the plight of blacks in the north. No one is arguing that the north was all goodness, and everyone of all races joined together at their wishing well and sang songs together in the north.
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Your position appears to be "You are not being discriminated against here, because you would be a whole lot more discriminated against there - so you should shut up.".

JasperL said:
But we know that blacks at that time believed there was a difference, because of the work of people like MLK, Jr. and thousands of others who marched and got beaten and attacked by dogs, water hoses, jailed, killed by bombs, shot, beaten, lynched, and more to secure the rights in the south that you're disregarding as unimportant.
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I'm not "disregarding as unimportant", but I recognize that it's a whole lot easier to "mobilize" against overt racism than it is against covert racism. The civil rights people were quite correct to START their campaign against the most obvious (and vulnerable) targets.

JasperL said:
It's BS, frankly, and historically ignorant.
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Well, since that isn't what I am doing, I don't see how that affects me at all.

You might want to address that to the people who maintain "The Union suppressed an illegal pro-slavery insurrection by the southern states in order to abolish slavery." or the people who maintain "The Confederacy existed solely to perpetuate slavery.".
 
TU Curmudgeon said:
It was reasonably obvious to the Southern States that the only way that they could maintain their economic system was if Mr. Lincoln had committed to vetoing any legislation which abolished slavery. Given the distribution of legislative seats, that simply wasn't going to happen.
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Lincoln supported the Corwin Amendment, which would have expressly protected slavery in a state in which it already existed. He didn't believe Congress had the authority to abolish slavery, and never expressed such a view. If you disagree, quote him, but I don't think you can.

The Republican platform of 1860 also recognized the authority of existing states to maintain slavery.

Indeed, that was what they believed. Mind you, that was merely an extension of the attitude towards "Blacks" and "Indians" that was prevalent in the entire country.
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Except for the majority that elected Lincoln, I guess....

Being a "voluntary organization of states who could come and go as they pleased" is NOT a bar to "being a country".
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It's fine (and I'm taking your word for it) that Canadian provinces can come and go as they please, but there is no provision in OUR Constitution for walking away.

And just at a practical level, I cannot declare my house the Country of Jasper and secede and therefore declare my independence from the city, state and national governments. Why not? If Tennessee can do it, why can't I claim my personal bit of property that I own free and clear to be 'independent' territory?

All good questions and all of which (other than the "right to secede" [which is an inherent right]) would have had to have been dealt with through negotiations.
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It's not an 'inherent' right because someone declares it so. Where is this 'inherent right' codified? When does a person or group of people acquire this inherent right to secede? See above. If not individually, then can I form a town of 12 people and secede?

What's kind of fantastic is the states' rights argument is for the 'inherent right' for white people to secede, so those white people could continue to deny blacks the, what seems FAR more obviously "inherent" right to me, not be born into slavery, and their kids born into slavery, with no human rights of any kind!

So no ****ing surprise, the principle is "inherent rights for white people, but NO RIGHTS FOR THEE, N*****S!"

Since there was no FEDERAL law banning slavery, then there was no "Constitutional" prohibition on slavery either. That means that any of the Northern states could repeal their State laws banning slavery whenever they felt like doing so. The fact that it was incredibly unlikely that they would do so is not relevant to the fact that they had legislative competence to do so.
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OK. :shrug:

The point (which I apologize for not making clear enough) is that the "Racism Issue" extended FAR beyond the boundaries of the "Slavery Issue" and the termination of slavery had next to no impact of racism.

The socioeconomic status of "The Negro" in the Southern states was not substantially improved simply because slavery was banned (and a case can be made that it was actually worsened). The socioeconomic status of "The Negro" in the Northern states was not substantially improved simply because slavery was banned (admittedly it doesn't appear to have been much worsened).
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I don't have patience with and won't engage with "slavery was good or neutral for slaves." PRISON would be a socioeconomic improvement for many poor, and all the homeless - food, lodging, AC and heat, bed, pillow, running water, TV, healthcare! We've made prisoners better off!! said no one seriously ever.
 
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TU Curmudgeon said:
Your position appears to be "You are not being discriminated against here, because you would be a whole lot more discriminated against there - so you should shut up."
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No, I'm simply not buying into your bogus BOTH SIDES!!! argument. Slavery is fundamentally different, and worse in fundamental ways, than discrimination. For starters, blacks in the free northern states didn't have their kids/wives/mothers/fathers seized from them and sold 1,000 miles away, Trying to handwave that away as merely a difference in degree is nonsense.

I'm not "disregarding as unimportant", but I recognize that it's a whole lot easier to "mobilize" against overt racism than it is against covert racism. The civil rights people were quite correct to START their campaign against the most obvious (and vulnerable) targets.
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This is more of the same. In the South it wasn't merely "racism" but a state-sanctioned and enforced at the barrel of government guns (literally) system of black disenfranchisement from basic civil rights that whites took for granted, such as the right to vote, and therefore to serve on a jury and/or run for office. Beyond that segregation and the "separate but equal" doctrine which meant separate and completely unequal in practice guaranteed white supremacy in the marketplace by denying blacks the opportunity to succeed economically, with inferior education, non-existent access to many jobs and more. All of this, again, enforced by guns wielded by the STATE.

Well, since that isn't what I am doing, I don't see how that affects me at all.

You might want to address that to the people who maintain "The Union suppressed an illegal pro-slavery insurrection by the southern states in order to abolish slavery."
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I'm not sure who's making that argument - it's not been me. The Union did suppress an illegal, pro-slavery insurrection by the southern states, who seceded over slavery. Lincoln's original goal wasn't to end slavery, of course, but no one historically literate at all makes that argument, so it's mostly a straw man to claim he did.

or the people who maintain "The Confederacy existed solely to perpetuate slavery.".
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That comment is more accurate than inaccurate, although the obvious straw man is "solely." Slavery certainly meets the "but for" test in that but for slavery, there would have been no secession, and therefore no CSA and no Civil War. But of course nothing in life like secession or war meets a test no one is imposing such as "solely."
 
3leftsdoo said:
Sorry - doesn't wash.

He literally dissects women's faces in his work.

Neither his motives or his paint-stained hands are clean.

It's got to go - all of it.
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You're confused. It's not about the artist, it's about the work. And Cubism is not "dissecting faces". You know nothing about art.
 
TU Curmudgeon said:
I agree, the movers and shakers of the Southern economy did NOT think that slavery was DOOMED RIGHT NOW. However they could see the writing on the wall internationally.
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They told us differently. Read the Corner Stone speech to see what they said at that time.

"Cornerstone" Speech - Teaching American History

Just as with "income inequality" there was "slave inequality". On the other hand, since slaves were "expensive pieces of farm machinery" the people who owned a single slave tended to care for that slave with the same attention to detail as a small farmer would lavish on their single tractor.
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Of course they did because the Lost Cause narrative assures me that slave owners were pretty good people who treated their slaves well, except for the slavery thing.

But of course the entire system was built around and sustained by what was a program of domestic terrorism that promised and delivered IMMENSE pain and suffering on slaves who stepped out of line.

And you moved the goal posts - fact is 25% in some states, and 50% in others, is not a "small percentage" of families who had a large economic interest in slavery. The entire southern economy was built on slavery, so even those families too poor to own their own slave existed in an economy that was prosperous because of slaves.

While they may be two sides of the same coin, the difference is as "semantic" as whether the coin flip turns up heads or tails when you have bet the rent on it.

HOWEVER, you get a much more nuanced view of the actual situation if you approach it from the "economic and social system based on the use of slave labour" then you do if you ignore the economic and social aspects and concentrate solely on "slavery" to the isolation of all else.
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But it simply wasn't just an economic issue, and we know that because after slavery ended, we got Jim Crow in the South. You can't disregard the fact that at the core of that economic system, through the Civil War and for a century following it, was an abiding belief in and immense effort to sustain white supremacy, and that held blacks were fundamentally inferior and were therefore CORRECTLY subjugated, properly treated by the state as inferior and undeserving of the rights afforded all whites.
 
3leftsdoo said:
Confederacy does not = Nazis

When people remove/destroy irreplaceable, shared public treasures?

That's flat out horrendous.
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OK, is the principle that once a statue or monument goes up, it must remain in that place of honor for all time? If not that, then what principle are you advancing?

It's not saying anything to call a statue to the white rebellion that overthrew the legitimate government of New Orleans and that bragged about that move protecting white supremacy in LA "irreplaceable" but it does say something indeed to keep that monument in place for all of time. I don't think removing it says anything "horrendous" at all. Just the opposite, in fact.

What "horrendous" message was sent when the U.S. military tore down that statue of Saddam Hussein. You've surely seen the video. Or how about the "horrendous" message of removing various Nazi monuments and statues post WWII? Can you tell me what was "horrendous" about that message?

Thanks!
 
3leftsdoo said:
Wildly irrelevant.
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not true people act like taking down pro confederate monuments mean we are not keeping track of history which is wildly stupid
 
3leftsdoo said:
Speaking of rewriting history, this popular current talking point is just that.
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OK, cite your alternative history.

But yeah: tear it ALL down.

Because unless art is (allegedly) created and displayed based on some arbitrary double-standard, it must not be tolerated.

Picasso?

Gotta go.

ANY image which it may be argued objectifies or demeans women, or anyone else?

Tear it down.

It's all got to go.
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No one is arguing "it" all has to go, just that it's OK for "it" to go if the community so decides. We're talking about monuments in public spaces, and decisions about what or who to honor in public spaces is the prerogative of the public, and the collective public in 2019 simply aren't bound by decisions made by white supremacists and others about who THEY wanted to honor in public spaces 50 or 100 years ago. If some space in Knoxville honors N.B. Forrest, the founder of the KKK, we have also decided to NOT-honor millions of other Tennesseans in that space. If the public in 2019 would rather honor Peyton Manning, greatest quarterback of all time, why not?
 
3leftsdoo said:
All images of the crucifixion must be destroyed or removed from public view.

We can just teach people about the atrocities the Romans committed as barbarous, ruthless slaveholders.

:)
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if they are pro roman monuments then i would not mind

if you want to put up monuments to the oppressed instead of the legionary go ahead
 
NiceGuyEddie said:
The statue in question is a memorial to fallen Confederate soldiers i.e. "the blood of their own people". The decision to relocate the statue to the cemetery where Confederate soldiers are buried seems to be a reasonable solution and an appropriate location. A fair compromise? Case closed?
Nah, that's not enough for the PC fetishists, they can't stop themselves... ever.
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yes the flan soldiers the idiot tratours who battled to preserve slavery ( unwittingly or not ) to harm themselves **** em
 
NiceGuyEddie said:
Until you "censorship-happy" folks can draw up some realistic limitations on your orchestrated plans for a mass-suppression ... you're going to find the opposition to these efforts rising exponentially.
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The limitation is very simple - the community has the prerogative to decide who to honor in public spaces, and the community is not bound by decisions made by another community 100 years ago. They can remove a monument and replace it for any reason the community decides.

What you also must ignore is that to honor Person A in that space is, using your term, "mass suppression" of the memory of every person living or dead NOT honored in that spot. So it's mass suppression of slaves, civil rights workers, Union soldiers who fought bravely, people who died in the civil rights struggles, perhaps great doctors or inventors, great statesmen dedicated to civil rights for all citizens. Why do you insist on the "mass suppression" of THEIR memories and THEIR histories?

You are all too eager to START eradicating the objects and symbols that you find objectionable, however, when your feet are held to the fire and you are asked where will it end ... you realize the error of your ways and bleat out a "Don't care" ... i.e. 'I surrender'.

Therein lies the catch ... you have no answer.

You're all good with the eradication of all things Confederate, tearing memorials down, banning flags, t-shirts and anything else that triggers your righteous indignation, but once you jump off that slippery slope where do you stop? Who's next? WHAT IS THE ULTIMATE GOAL?

These are questions of great consequence that should be answered PRIOR to picking up the pitchforks and torches.
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I agree in a way - who a community chooses to honor says a great deal about that community. But you're somehow insisting that decisions made about that decision of "great consequence" in one generation are binding on all future generations. There's no principled basis for that position. Knoxville recently erected a couple of nice statues for the women in the area who pushed voting rights for women, the 19th Amendment, across the finish line in the state capitol. That's awesome, and a great achievement, and the women deserve their place of honor. If that means a Confederate is NOT honored, why is that a bad thing? If we choose a dead confederate instead of those women, we've made a choice as a community about what we think is worth honoring. Why isn't that up to the community as it is in 2019?
 
TU Curmudgeon said:
The difference between the "White Supremacy" practised in the Southern states and the "White Supremacy" practised in the Northern states is the difference between "overt" and "covert".
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That's false, but already covered. Both sides! won't save your bad argument.
 
TU Curmudgeon said:
Because the movers and shakers of the Southern economy didn't see any other way of maintaining their economic position. Their mind-set was so firmly entrenched on "We MUST have SLAVES to work out land." that they couldn't even begin to consider other options (like "share cropping") that might have had an even better economic return.
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The economic return per slave was going UP as we neared the civil war, not down, and we know that because the price was rising.

figure2.jpg

Slavery works economically. And of course the whites in the South firmly embraced white supremacy, irrespective of the question of slavery.
 
blarg said:
yes the flan soldiers the idiot tratours who battled to preserve slavery ( unwittingly or not ) to harm themselves **** em
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Thanks for contributing.
 
JasperL said:
The limitation is very simple - the community has the prerogative to decide who to honor in public spaces, and the community is not bound by decisions made by another community 100 years ago. They can remove a monument and replace it for any reason the community decides.

What you also must ignore is that to honor Person A in that space is, using your term, "mass suppression" of the memory of every person living or dead NOT honored in that spot. So it's mass suppression of slaves, civil rights workers, Union soldiers who fought bravely, people who died in the civil rights struggles, perhaps great doctors or inventors, great statesmen dedicated to civil rights for all citizens. Why do you insist on the "mass suppression" of THEIR memories and THEIR histories?



I agree in a way - who a community chooses to honor says a great deal about that community. But you're somehow insisting that decisions made about that decision of "great consequence" in one generation are binding on all future generations. There's no principled basis for that position. Knoxville recently erected a couple of nice statues for the women in the area who pushed voting rights for women, the 19th Amendment, across the finish line in the state capitol. That's awesome, and a great achievement, and the women deserve their place of honor. If that means a Confederate is NOT honored, why is that a bad thing? If we choose a dead confederate instead of those women, we've made a choice as a community about what we think is worth honoring. Why isn't that up to the community as it is in 2019?
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".. not bound by decisions made by another community 100 years ago." -

Who ever claimed that they were? Obviously, some folks residing in the community TODAY wanted it preserved. Otherwise, there would be no controversy.

"What you also must ignore ... "

That entire paragraph is cringy pc nonsense.

"But you're somehow insisting that decisions made about that decision of "great consequence" in one generation are binding on all future generations."

You misunderstood my comment, the "great consequence" is what results from the sheeple who've been convinced to wilfully support and enable suppression and censorship ... for the Greater-Good. Where does this path lead? (consequence)

"If that means a Confederate is NOT honored, why is that a bad thing? If we choose a dead confederate instead of those women, we've made a choice as a community about what we think is worth honoring."

What are you talking about? Are they running out of fields?
 
TU Curmudgeon said:
From NBC News

Ole Miss students vote unanimously to remove Confederate statue from campus center
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The University of Mississippi student government voted unanimously to remove a statue of a Confederate soldier from the center of their campus Tuesday, fewer than two weeks after a pro-Confederate rally unfolded at the school.

The latest flashpoint in a nationwide examination of Confederate iconography, the 47-0 vote was met with a loud applause in the room.

Students at this university, which has endured the national gaze multiple times in recent years for troubling symbols and racist incidents, described the energy at the meeting as electric: some hugged, while others wiped away tears.

“I started crying when I knew we had the majority vote," said Leah Davis, a black junior psychology major from Tupelo, Mississippi, who helped write the resolution. "It was really powerful to me the fact that the senate voted unanimously.”

The resolution that passed was signed Tuesday night by student body president Elam Miller. It proposes that the statue be moved from its place at the center of the campus to a nearby cemetery on school grounds, where hundreds of Confederate soldiers are buried.

COMMENT:-

Moving the statue to the cemetery sounds like an eminently rational action to me.

On the other hand, maybe <sarc>the cemetery should be plowed up and the remains ground to powder then dumped in the ocean rather than remaining as a "monument to the defence of slavery"</sarc> (mind you, there are some people who would actually advance that position seriously).
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She started crying over this? She needs to get a life...
 
NiceGuyEddie said:
".. not bound by decisions made by another community 100 years ago." -

Who ever claimed that they were? Obviously, some folks residing in the community TODAY wanted it preserved. Otherwise, there would be no controversy.
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Well, you're not a child so you understand by now that YOU don't always get what YOU want. It's part of life, those little disappointments of other people sometimes getting their way.

"What you also must ignore ... "

That entire paragraph is cringy pc nonsense.
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It's not nonsense - it's just how that works. If you honor Person A, you're by definition NOT-honoring millions or billions of others. In the case of Civil War monuments, society isn't preserving "history" but telling the history of that era of white supremacists by white supremacists. There's no history of the slave markets, or people being tied to a pole and whipped into a bloody pulp, and their backs washed with brine, or of the lynchings or the rapes.

All it is are a bunch of white people upset that the world doesn't still revolve ENTIRELY around them and their white supremacist heroes. Boo hoo. If you need a blanket, someone will get you one I'm sure.

"But you're somehow insisting that decisions made about that decision of "great consequence" in one generation are binding on all future generations."

You misunderstood my comment, the "great consequence" is what results from the sheeple who've been convinced to wilfully support and enable suppression and censorship ... for the Greater-Good. Where does this path lead? (consequence)
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There is no suppression or censorship. Let's take Thomas Jefferson. He was a great man, and part of his life was he was a slaver, who raped a little girl starting around age 13, had babies with her and never freed her even at his death, even as he wrote soaring, inspiring prose about freedom, but only for whites. What the snowflakes don't like is THAT part of his history is also being told. That's not censorship, that's not suppression - that's 180 degrees wrong. Those stories tell the FULL history of that man who was great in many ways and a moral coward in others. He knew slavery was wrong and chose the benefits of being a wealthy, white slaver over his principles.

"If that means a Confederate is NOT honored, why is that a bad thing? If we choose a dead confederate instead of those women, we've made a choice as a community about what we think is worth honoring."

What are you talking about? Are they running out of fields?
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No they're not, and they're not running out of private property either. If you are upset about one of those statues coming down, how about get off your couch, raise some private funds, and you and your group can install those removed monuments in any field you want that will allow it. Build a whole museum for them if you want! Or you can whine about it.... :boohoo:
 
NiceGuyEddie said:
".. +snip+

You misunderstood my comment, the "great consequence" is what results from the sheeple who've been convinced to wilfully support and enable suppression and censorship ... for the Greater-Good. Where does this path lead? (consequence)
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Oddly enough the first thing I thought of, as to where does this path lead, were three movies: Orwell’s book and related movie: 1984, Fahrenheit 451 and THX 1138.
 
Sabre said:
Oddly enough the first thing I thought of, as to where does this path lead, were three movies: Orwell’s book and related movie: 1984, Fahrenheit 451 and THX 1138.
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That sums it up perfectly. And all the while the clueless, enabling sheep think their on a course to safe-space-utopia.
 
Sabre said:
Oddly enough the first thing I thought of, as to where does this path lead, were three movies: Orwell’s book and related movie: 1984, Fahrenheit 451 and THX 1138.
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I just don't understand the argument that taking down a monument is censorship. I don't see how anyone can see the issue that way.

In my state we've had a series of controversies about monuments to N.B. Forrest, a famous Tennesseean. Fact is he was the first Grand Wizard of the KKK and under his leadership in the elections of 1968, the KKK was a domestic terrorist organization, killing at least 1,000 blacks in acts of terror, assassinating in Georgia a prominent GOP organizer and otherwise beating and terrorizing anyone, black or white, who supported the GOP in the South.

Pointing that out as a reason to take down the N.B. Forrest statue in a black neighborhood in Memphis simply is NOT censorship. What was censorship was sweeping that part of his history under the rug and pretending it didn't exist or didn't matter. Maybe it doesn't matter to some - sure, he was the leader of a band of domestic terrorists responsible for over 1,000 murders, but otherwise was a swell guy! Let's put up a monument to him!! OK, but other people knowing that part of his history WILL disagree, and they are entitled to disagree, and that black neighborhood in Memphis disagreeing and taking down a monument to the first Grand Wizard of the KKK is by no rational measure censorship. It's them deciding NOT to honor a Klukker in their town square. Seems reasonable to me!
 
NiceGuyEddie said:
That sums it up perfectly. And all the while the clueless, enabling sheep think their on a course to safe-space-utopia.
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Nah, we're laughing at the snowflakes upset the monuments to white supremacy are coming down. Poor things.

"If we don't get to keep our monuments, and THEY put up THEIR monuments to different people, it's CENSORSHIP!!!!" :2rofll:
 
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