New Orleans Begins Process of "Removing History"

[The Batorys]

...which would suggest the majority of the country by population.

But that's not how we decide stuff, is it? Otherwise the belief of the majority of Rwandans that the minority should all be violently killed was wonderful.

Are you really comparing freeing people from slavery with genocide?

Fucking seriously?

What is wrong with you?

[The Batorys]

I can think of two Union Civil War monuments in Boston that the city could remove without offending me.

Well then, if it's tit-for-tat I guess they should be gotten rid of. However, I think people who died for the south have just the same rights as those who died for the north.

Dead people have no rights. Only the living have rights.

And the duly elected government of New Orleans, a majority black city, has decided to remove a monument celebrating a mob of white supremacists who murdered black police officers.

That's how representative democracy works.

[The Batorys]

Democracy is all well and good when it serves the interests of the whole country, rather than being used against one geographic region. It's the same logic behind quite a lot of scots wanting to leave the UK.

While you ignore that the south had done precisely that before, that they had an incredible amount of influence over the government previously, all three branches of it. While you ignore the fact that elections have consequences.

And that the rest of the country had grown tired of southern domination of the government.

[The Batorys]

Being memorialized after one's death is not a right. Access to clean food and water is a right. The ability to share one's views without government suppression is a right. The ability to practise the religion of one's choice, or none at all, is a right. Having a statue built to celebrate you is not a right.

So I guess you think that all civil war monuments on both sides should fall?

Ridiculous strawman.

[The Batorys]

The abolition of slavery was not an attack on a geographic region. It was an attack on an evil institution. The fact that it was concentrated geographically is irrelevant.

Evil according to whom? Northern voters? Yes, but I'm sure that a lot of people in the south would disagree quite strongly with you back then.

Evil according to all decent people.

[The Batorys]

Being memorialized after one's death is not a right. Access to clean food and water is a right. The ability to share one's views without government suppression is a right. The ability to practise the religion of one's choice, or none at all, is a right. Having a statue built to celebrate you is not a right.

So I guess you think that all civil war monuments on both sides should fall?

We're allowed to have things that aren't necessarily rights.

I don't think your computer is a right. But I'm not saying that your computer should be taken away from you.

Yet.

[The Batorys]

And they would be wrong.

I'm not arguing that slavery is a good thing, I'm arguing that those who fought to defend it deserve to be memorialised as much as unionists do.

Which is a ridiculous proposition.

[Ifreann]

Have you considered not responding to every post in the thread?

[The Batorys]

And I'm saying they don't, because they were fighting to defend an evil thing.

They were fighting to defend the south, which is not in itself evil.

In a war that the South started literally over slavery.

Please stop pretending you know about my country. It's incredibly obvious that you don't.

[The Batorys]

Well that's bad. Admittedly, if someone chooses to live in the middle of bumfuck nowhere the government can hardly be expected to set up a hospital just for them, so there's some grey area there.

lol not that rural. Towns of like 20000.

That's bumfuck nowhere.

[The Batorys]

That and as I said earlier they are memorialized in a way that does not celebrate what they fought for, namely at Arlington cemetery. There is no reason to memorialize traitors to the United States.

The cemetery that is built on land stolen from Robert E. Lee? Hardly a fitting tribute.

It wasn't stolen.

We won that land by beating the south in combat.

You don't get to throw a tantrum, start a war with the country you were formerly a part of, and then complain when they seize some land from you during the war that you started.

[The Batorys]

Eh, as a not-particularly-patriotic person, it's the fact that they were fighting to defend slavery more than the secession from the country that pisses me off.

I'd say that most of them were fighting to defend the south actually. Sure, a few of their leaders like Jeff Davis were fighting to defend slavery, but didn't even Robert E. Lee say that he was only fighting for Virginia?

Sure, but he knew Virginia was fighting because of slavery.

He could have declined to take part in the war and sat it out on his nice estate, which he'd then still own.

[Purpelia]

So why does every article of secession talk about the importance of preserving slavery then?

It talks about the importance of preserving their source of wealth and income that just happened to be slavery. That's the key point. The southern elites did not secede because they wanted to keep slavery. They did so because they wanted to remain rich. And slavery just happened to be the thing that made and kept them rich. Really, that it the true tragedy of the conflict.

Of course. The point is that the values expressed are opposite. And since the first is of America, i.e. American, the second can only be anti-American.

The point is that they are not. Not unless you deliberately misinterpret the original intent of the document by reading it through a decidedly modern viewpoint. It's like looking at the Magna Carta and thinking it to be a document on civil rights as opposed to what it was, ei. a document to protect the rich nobles from being wantonly oppressed by the king. You have to realize that words need to be read in the context of the times they were written in.

I fail to see how it is hypocritical at all. A nation will do what it thinks is in it's best interests (please note I do not say that I support this necessarily). If that interest involves fomenting rebellion abroad that is what it will do. What is not in a nations best interest is to have rebellion at home or to celebrate those who rebel. Oh and removing these statues does not erase this from history, particularly since they are being moved to museums. Finally, since when did I say I support rebellions abroad? You seem to think I hold positions I do not hold and have not said I hold.

The "you" in that post was the rhetorical "you" as opposed to you as in the individual.

And the hypocritical part is not that nations behave like sociopaths self serving entities. That's perfectly fine and well. It is how they should act. The hypocritical part is that these same nations are using made up appeals to morality and justice to justify these actions. And if you (again, the rhetorical) are going to do that, if you are going to say you are in the moral right than you can't well flat out erase history that proves you wrong by example. Instead you need to work bloody hard to prove it is in fact proving you right.

---

Fundamentally the bottom line here is that the right to rebel is a right. It is called the right to self determination. And you can chose to either allow it or not. But what you can not do is only chose to allow it when and if it suits your interests. If you do so, if you restrict your self to only permitting a right when you like the way it is used, than you are evil. It's as simple as that.

[The Batorys]

When I find a Union Civil War memorial that I haven't seen before, I usually take a minute or three to admire it, read the inscriptions, and remember how awesome it is that they kicked the Confederacy's ass. I would be disappointed if a good one got taken down, and when I lived in Chelsea, I always thought it was sad that they had one that was falling apart and nobody was taking care of it.

OTOH, if it is honoring an individual who doesn't deserve it or if it's a shitty design with unfortunate racial implications, I don't mind seeing those moved to a more private location. Those problems are more common with Confederate memorials, but there are also a couple of bad Union ones.

I think, however, Robert E. Lee does deserve a memorial. As for Boregard, it was his home state and he wasn't the worst general in the world.

Your endorsement is hardly convincing when you can't even be bothered to learn to spell his fucking name.

[The Batorys]

Oh yeah, that's right. The first military action of the Civil War was the Confederacy attacking a fort that Lincoln specifically told them was not being resupplied with ammunition because he didn't want a fight. I forgot that. Good point.

maybe if he'd just evacuated it...

So that they could steal it? Fuck that.

Also the Confederates fired whenever American ships got close, so they made sure evacuation would be impossible. They wanted a fight.

[The Batorys]

And I'm sure the Holocaust Museum pisses off antisemites and neo-nazis.

Was the holocaust museum built for that purpose? Arlington, however, certainly was built because some nutjob thought 'Hey! We've got this land which belongs to Robert E. Lee. Let's plant our war dead here, that'll piss him off lol.'

It no longer belonged to Lee at that point.

If you consider the CSA to have been a legitimate nation (a dubious position, but okay), then that was land that the USA conquered from an aggressive foreign power that had started a war with us.

[Ifreann]

Of course. The point is that the values expressed are opposite. And since the first is of America, i.e. American, the second can only be anti-American.

The point is that they are not. Not unless you deliberately misinterpret the original intent of the document by reading it through a decidedly modern viewpoint. It's like looking at the Magna Carta and thinking it to be a document on civil rights as opposed to what it was, ei. a document to protect the rich nobles from being wantonly oppressed by the king. You have to realize that words need to be read in the context of the times they were written in.

You're telling me that two sets of values, one described by those espousing it as being the opposite of the other, can only be considered to be opposites if one incorrectly reads them through a modern viewpoint.

So, what, was Alexander Stephens a time traveller from the 21st century?

Oh gods, am I Alexander Stephens? Is it my destiny to go back in time and give that speech so that I can win this argument?

[The Batorys]

So you think the appropriate response to the secession of the South was for the Union to just let them get away with it? Are you sure you're not a Georgian?

Well, I think they've got reason not to want a big naval fort from another country sitting in their harbour.

Too fucking bad. It was property of the United States government.

Hong Kong was under a century lease from China to the British. Despite numerous changes in government in China, including the very anti-western early PRC, which obviously wanted Hong Kong back, China did not start shelling Hong Kong. Not even during the Korean War when the PRC was at war with the UK (and the rest of the UN).

Do you know why? Because unlike the CSA, they weren't juvenile dipshits.

The US government operates a naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The agreement was originally with the US puppet government there. The communist government of Cuba would very much like that land back. But they don't start shooting at it because, unlike the Confederates, they aren't impulsive morons.

In China's case, a willingness to be patient and work things out peacefully has resulted in them now having jurisdiction over Hong Kong.

Cuba may eventually get Gitmo back. Maybe not. Who can say? But unlike the idiotic Confederates, they're not dumb enough to start a war with the USA over it.

[The Batorys]

Better than betraying your species.

Calling the many men who fought for the south traitors to humanity is somewhat disrespectful to them, don't you think? The fact remains that the vast majority were not slaveowners and did not fight to defend slavery.

They fought to keep other humans in chains.

If that isn't treason to the human species, I don't know what is.

[The Batorys]

Except that they did fight to defend slavery because that's why the war happened and what what it was about. I don't think it's disrespectful at all to call people who fought and killed to defend their ability to own other human beings as property traitors to humanity.

How many times? Most of them did not own slaves. In fact big slaveowners were excluded from the draft. They weren't fighting so they could own slaves, which they didn't do. That's like saying that British forces in WWII were fighting so that they could own Poland.

The war was about slavery.

They fought on the pro-slavery side.

Also your analogy is fucking terrible.

[The Batorys]

By deciding to be a different nation they caused that fort to belong to a nation other than theirs. So if they didn't want that to be the case, they shouldn't've rebelled.

So what would you suggest? They should have rolled over and let most of their capital be taken away by a tyranny by majority?

Stop referring to human beings as "capital."

[Roikstead]

Why the not just remove the statue of people who owned slaves and were pro slavery and keep people who were just fighting for the south freedom and the right to be free? Let's compromise,not just go for all one or the other

[The Batorys]

Which doesn't matter one little bit. He destroyed peoples crops and deliberately starved confederate cevillians. He also played a good part in setting the south far further back.

It's a little more complicated than that. The South was lagging behind the North economically and technologically even before the war started, and Sherman argued against treating the South harshly during Reconstruction.

Sherman had lived in Georgia and Louisiana before the war and was a great admirer of Southern culture. After the war, his attitude toward the South was very conflicted. Sometimes he'd rage against them for seceding and go on about how they deserved everything they got and then some. Other times he'd say how great they were and how much he enjoyed the culture. He had deep respect for certain individual Southerners, including Johnston, who had led the Confederate forces against him.

One thing to remember is that Sherman had some wild mood swings and may have been mentally ill. You have to be careful not to make judgements based on cherry-picked quotes because it can be very misleading. If you only look at what Sherman said when he was pissed off, he sounds like an absolute monster with a borderline-psychopathic disregard for Southern lives. If you only look at what he said when he was calm, he sounds like an upstanding gentleman. Nice-guy Sherman is probably closer to who he wanted to be, but he didn't always have the self-control to pull it off.

I've heard that he suffered from being bi-polar.

[Roikstead]

It's a little more complicated than that. The South was lagging behind the North economically and technologically even before the war started, and Sherman argued against treating the South harshly during Reconstruction.

Sherman had lived in Georgia and Louisiana before the war and was a great admirer of Southern culture. After the war, his attitude toward the South was very conflicted. Sometimes he'd rage against them for seceding and go on about how they deserved everything they got and then some. Other times he'd say how great they were and how much he enjoyed the culture. He had deep respect for certain individual Southerners, including Johnston, who had led the Confederate forces against him.

One thing to remember is that Sherman had some wild mood swings and may have been mentally ill. You have to be careful not to make judgements based on cherry-picked quotes because it can be very misleading. If you only look at what Sherman said when he was pissed off, he sounds like an absolute monster with a borderline-psychopathic disregard for Southern lives. If you only look at what he said when he was calm, he sounds like an upstanding gentleman. Nice-guy Sherman is probably closer to who he wanted to be, but he didn't always have the self-control to pull it off.

I've heard that he suffered from being bi-polar.

He was also a bit of a drunk if I remember

[The Batorys]

I don't think that capitalism's tendency as a system to concentrate wealth and screw over the poor is all that similar to individual people buying and selling other humans and forcing them to work for no compensation of any sort. Also not sure why you put communism in there, you're gonna have to explain your reasoning there to me.

And yet wage slavery is akin to that, if not even worst. As for Communism, let's say it ended up causing worst exploitation of humans than slavery did.
I'm not particularly defending slavery but saying that it never had compensation of any sort is also wrong, slaves were clothed and housed and in some case paid a peculium. It wasn't a good situation, but it wasn't a "betrayal of humanity" neither. You should leave that term for actions that actually warrant to be called as so like Genocide.

As a wage slave, I think you're really disrespecting all the people who suffered under actual slavery when you compare working for a wage to being literally owned by someone else.

You know it was legal for slaveowners to beat the shit out of and even kill their slaves, right? And to rape the women? Also to separate families, etc.

The only form of communism that even compares is the North Korean variety where you can be born in a prison camp and spend your whole life there for something your grandparent may have said that the authorities didn't like.