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Should all former slave owner statues or monuments be removed?

Should all former slave owner statues or monuments be removed?

  • Yes -- remove them all

    Votes: 2 5.0%

  • Remove only Confederate statues

    Votes: 14 35.0%

  • No statues or monuments should be removed

    Votes: 14 35.0%

  • Something else/other/I don't know/I don't care/Maybe/Perhaps/Other

    Votes: 10 25.0%
  • Total voters
    40
Utility Man said:
:thinking

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If your continent of origin profited from selling your ancestors, would you still hyphenate your American identity? Or would you embrace the country which affords you every freedom and right as any other citizen, allowing you to pursue your dreams and ambitions?
 
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Except for Lincoln in his big chair, when I see a statue in front of a courthouse, or in a public square, I usually have no clue who it is, nor am I interested enough to read the plaque.

I wouldn't miss any of them.
 
Napoleon said:
So too did the founders. The Constitution as written by the founders, many of them slave owners themselves, established and protected slavery as a legal institution in this country. It had to be amended by future generations to eliminate slavery. Why should they be exempt from this nihilism?
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Re-read the first two sentences again.
 
jimbo said:
And who gets to decide who is and who isn't a white supremacist?
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Sentence three. The Confederates built their Constitution on slavery. When they were defeated and slavery abolished white southerners then adopted white supremacy and erected those statues as a reminder, most of which were erected in the late 1800's and early 1900's.

The statues are symbols of white supremacy. That is common knowledge.
 
Misclicked--I meant just the Confederate statues. Traitors do not deserve participation trophies.
 
Parrish said:
Re-read the first two sentences again.
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I read it and it doesn’t wash. The Constitution as written by the founders protected the institution of slavery. There would have been no Union without that protection. So I ask again, why are they exempt?
 
eman623 said:
If a majority of the people who live near a statue no longer feel it represents them, then remove it. If not, then keep it.

And if you must remove a status, don't go all Taliban-ey and destroy it first. It's just a statue.
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Well - no. If even one person who sees the statue thinks honoring traitors is not what we should be about, and it makes them uncomfortable, then what the majority of the people feel about it shouldn't matter. We can't promote treason and racism by plebiscite.
 
Napoleon said:
I read it and it doesn’t wash. The Constitution as written by the founders protected the institution of slavery. There would have been no Union without that protection. So I ask again, why are they exempt?
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They're not exempt from being slave holders - they're exempt from being traitors. Take a moment. It's not a difficult concept.
 
MamboDervish said:
Well - no. If even one person who sees the statue thinks honoring traitors is not what we should be about, and it makes them uncomfortable, then what the majority of the people feel about it shouldn't matter. We can't promote treason and racism by plebiscite.
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I'm unsure if you are being satirical or are just that self-entitled.
 
noonereal said:
none that I know
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Well, that's just very odd. It's part of every conversation about removing Confederate statues that I've ever heard. Why wouldn't it be?



I don't hear any mention of taking them down because of being traitors. Lots of mention of slavery, oppression and racism, though.
 
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Josie said:
We're removing Confederate statues because their ties to slavery. Should we remove all former slave owner statues or monuments? Why or why not?
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The issue of removing all former slave owner statues is a discussion this nation definitely needs in order to [perhaps] get a handle on precisely where, if at all, to draw a line.

The Confederate statues/base-names are another matter entirely. CSA officers engaged in warfare against the United States. This is treason regardless of whether or not they owned slaves.
 
MamboDervish said:
Well - no. If even one person who sees the statue thinks honoring traitors is not what we should be about, and it makes them uncomfortable, then what the majority of the people feel about it shouldn't matter. We can't promote treason and racism by plebiscite.
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So if im uncomfortable with statues or memorials to racists like FDR or to war criminals like Truman, JFK or LBJ, then what the rest of the country thinks doesnt matter and their names and likenesses should be removed from view, right?
 
Fletch said:
So if im uncomfortable with statues or memorials to racists like FDR or to war criminals like Truman, JFK or LBJ, then what the rest of the country thinks doesnt matter and their names and likenesses should be removed from view, right?
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No. You are a group of one.


Easily ignored. Lol
 
Rogue Valley said:
The issue of removing all former slave owner statues is a discussion this nation definitely needs in order to [perhaps] get a handle on precisely where, if at all, to draw a line.

The Confederate statues/base-names are another matter entirely. CSA officers engaged in warfare against the United States. This is treason regardless of whether or not they owned slaves.
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They are not being removed because unhinged liberals suddenly discovered they engaged in warfare against the US.
 
SouthernDemocrat said:
Jefferson and Washington are primarily known for things other than being slave owners. This is in sharp contrast to those that fought for the confederacy in their attempt to preserve the vile and evil institution of slavery.

For example, do you think of Mao more as a poet or as the founder of the Chinese Communist Party and a dictator that oversaw the deaths of tens of millions of Chinese? Do you think of Hitler as a dog lover that was kind to his secretary, or as a genocidal dictator whose actions lead to the death of millions?

These are not hard concepts. I have to think that at this point only racists are having difficulty with them. Washington is primarily known for being the first president of the United States and a general in the Revolutionary War. In contrast, Jefferson Davis is primarily known for being the president of the Confederacy, and man that believed in the supremacy of whites, and the inhumanity of blacks to such an extent, that he was willing to go to war with the United States to preserve the states rights to the evil institution of slavery.
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Thank you!

And Robert E. Lee to his credit told his men to stop wearing their old Confederate nonsense and get busy being Americans again and his widow stated that she would not allow a bunch of Confederate uniforms and other memorabilia at his funeral.

Yeah, old white crackers put up those white supremacist statues in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, so spare me the tears and anguish.
They're going to come down and if anyone puts them back up they're coming down again, and again.

"Take the hint, Sparky"...it's not "cool" to be a Confederate, and if you insist on being one in public you will be treated as an enemy soldier.
That's the uniform you're wearing, that's the flag you're carrying, and those are the statues you treasure so much, so it's time for some reality, and the reality is, Americans shot at Confederate soldiers because they were not Americans, they were specifically an enemy nation that declared war on America...because they were determined to keep slavery going.

ConfederateBURN.jpg
 
Confederate only.

I know that many on both sides of the issue try to use the Founders as a "gotcha" point, but historically it doesn't really pan out. The reason being that history shows us through letters, diaries and little-known speeches and articles of quite a few of the Founders who were slave owners were very conflicted over fighting for freedom and creating a government that still kept slavery as an institution.

The southern colonies that became states were called the Southern Block. And according to the Constitutional Convention notes, they made it very clear that if slavery were abolished as slave owners like Washington and Jefferson wanted..then the Southern Block would walk away and form their own nation. At the time, the US Army was not strong enough to hold the Southern Block in by force, so Washington conceded to not even discuss the issue anymore. But men like Washington often manumitted their salves upon death. They wrote about the plight of slaves and often railed at their own failures to not find a better way to free them.

Over time, more and more people in the northern states became abolitionists, or at least anti-slavery and voted accordingly.To the point that anti-slavery laws were passed that the Southern Block hated. The nation was on its way to abolish slavery (still not equal mind you, but definitely ending slavery). Soon, you had a number of states that supported slavery and those that did not. Then the 1850 Compromise came into being and arguably made things worse.

Finally, Lincoln was elected and crap boiled over. There were multiple reasons for the Civil War, certainly, but of the big reasons, slavery was one of them. The states that made up the original Southern Block would be the states that made up the Confederacy as well as the new states that came in as slave states under the 1850 Compromise. They never wanted to get rid of the slaves to begin with...and as part of the reason to secede, they tried to make a new nation whose Constitution enshrined slaver and demanded its protection. Then they created armies, went to war and killed their fellow Americans over that and other issues.

Washington, Jefferson and others who held slaves actively tried to find ways to get rid of slaves in a peaceful and legal fashion...they just failed. But they tried. The CSA came from states that never wanted to and even threatened war when making the Constitution over it. And then they did use war to keep it.

That's why.
 
Jason Warfield said:
Confederate only.

I know that many on both sides of the issue try to use the Founders as a "gotcha" point, but historically it doesn't really pan out. The reason being that history shows us through letters, diaries and little-known speeches and articles of quite a few of the Founders who were slave owners were very conflicted over fighting for freedom and creating a government that still kept slavery as an institution.

The southern colonies that became states were called the Southern Block. And according to the Constitutional Convention notes, they made it very clear that if slavery were abolished as slave owners like Washington and Jefferson wanted..then the Southern Block would walk away and form their own nation. At the time, the US Army was not strong enough to hold the Southern Block in by force, so Washington conceded to not even discuss the issue anymore. But men like Washington often manumitted their salves upon death. They wrote about the plight of slaves and often railed at their own failures to not find a better way to free them.

Over time, more and more people in the northern states became abolitionists, or at least anti-slavery and voted accordingly.To the point that anti-slavery laws were passed that the Southern Block hated. The nation was on its way to abolish slavery (still not equal mind you, but definitely ending slavery). Soon, you had a number of states that supported slavery and those that did not. Then the 1850 Compromise came into being and arguably made things worse.

Finally, Lincoln was elected and crap boiled over. There were multiple reasons for the Civil War, certainly, but of the big reasons, slavery was one of them. The states that made up the original Southern Block would be the states that made up the Confederacy as well as the new states that came in as slave states under the 1850 Compromise. They never wanted to get rid of the slaves to begin with...and as part of the reason to secede, they tried to make a new nation whose Constitution enshrined slaver and demanded its protection. Then they created armies, went to war and killed their fellow Americans over that and other issues.

Washington, Jefferson and others who held slaves actively tried to find ways to get rid of slaves in a peaceful and legal fashion...they just failed. But they tried. The CSA came from states that never wanted to and even threatened war when making the Constitution over it. And then they did use war to keep it.

That's why.
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A slaveholder who 'tries' to get rid of his slaves but fails is still a slaveholder. Sorry, they gotta go.
 
Fletch said:
So if im uncomfortable with statues or memorials to racists like FDR or to war criminals like Truman, JFK or LBJ, then what the rest of the country thinks doesnt matter and their names and likenesses should be removed from view, right?
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?? Huh ?? FDR, HST, JFK and LBJ were not traitors. None of them attempted to sever the United States. What are you talking about? This shouldn't be a difficult concept to understand.

Your reach appears to be exceeding your grasp.
 
MamboDervish said:
?? Huh ?? FDR, HST, JFK and LBJ were not traitors. None of them attempted to sever the United States. What are you talking about? This shouldn't be a difficult concept to understand.

Your reach appears to be exceeding your grasp.
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I didnt say they were traitors. The idea that the statues of Confederate soldiers are coming down because they were traitors is a lie and you are spreading it for some reason.
 
Fletch said:
I didnt say they were traitors. The idea that the statues of Confederate soldiers are coming down because they were traitors is a lie and you are spreading it for some reason.
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No its not a lie
 
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