Alien Overlord wrote:......That statues do not reflect the values of all members of a community just goes to show that that community is not democratic.
Reflection implies that a community should be concerned with the opinions of those outside the community.
No it doesn't. It's just a simple fact that the people a community chooses to honour says something about that community and their values and who has power there.
Fundamentally there will always be someone outside of the community who feels that a decision made inside the community is wrong. It is injudicious to consider the opinion of those outside of the community.
I very clearly said that decisions about who a community celebrates should be in the hands of that community.
If statues and memorials are erected purely for appearances and the latest political opinion then there would be no point to creating them in the first place, as opinions and even values are in constant flux nationwide. This is why it is so important to view memorials and statues as tributes rather than political statements where possible, as otherwise there would be no point in having statues at all. A statue's existence has no bearing on the democratic process of a community.
You are trying to argue a technicality that just does not make any sense. Calling a statue a tribute doesn't make any difference to anything I have said. It is a political statement to pay tribute to certain historical figures. Whether the community votes on to whom they pay tribute or whether these tributes are erected by the local elites does speak to how democratic that community is. Saying that a statue is a tribute doesn't mean that people will be happy to pay tribute to George Washington for all time. Opinions on who should be paid tribute will change over time the same as opinions on anything else.
What you are advocating is a whitewashing of history. Of ignoring the real man George Washington in favour of honouring the mythical figure George Washington. Because the real man did own slaves. Every statue of him is a statue of a slave-owner. Is he still worthy of celebration? I don't know. I would say that that decision should be left to the people of each community that has a statue of him. Perhaps people feel that in this particular moment in history they cannot, in good conscience, celebrate a man who participated in the chattel slavery of Africans. Perhaps people feel that Washington's achievements and the principles he fought for, even if he personally failed to live by them, are worthy of celebration despite his flaws and crimes.
What you're advocating for is a politicization of a non-issue, as well as applying modern standards to a historical figure. George Washington owned slaves but he was not unusual in any respect for the time.
Whether or not he was unusual in owning slaves is irrelevant. But since you bring it up I will mention that it obviously was unusual to own slaves, as only a minority of people could afford to own slaves, and I will also note that Washington was criticised during his lifetime for the rank hypocrisy of ostensibly fighting for freedom and liberty for all men while owning slaves. The concept of abolitionism was not unknown to him. How can it have been when there were abolitionist American politicians in that era? So no, I will not be accepting any argument that Washington's personal ownership of slaves and political support for the institution of slavery cannot be held against him on the grounds of slavery being accepted at the time.
Would you also advocate for the destruction of all surviving Roman and Greek statues? Both the Romans and Greeks were slave-owners as well. Most would find that destroying their statues because of that to be abhorrent. Primarily because it's wrong and ignorant to judge historical characters by modern day values.
I would not advocate for the destruction of historical artefacts that represents the last surviving remnants of a civilisation that no longer exists, and if it somehow happens that I am alive and the American civilisation is lost then I will apply that same standard to American artefacts.
Because George Washington is not unusual in that respect, you have to put aside that aspect of their life when examining the content of their character. George Washington is absolutely worthy of celebration and praise and the aspects of his personality that stand out compared to his peers are positive-good qualities that one should admire. George Washington committed no crimes in relation to slavery, since during his time it was relatively common, practiced and accepted throughout North America, South America, Africa, Oceania, the Middle East and Europe.
I do not have to do anything of the sort. I can judge George Washington according to any standard I see fit, and as I outlined above I will not be pretending that his participation in and political support of slavery did not happen.
That is, unavoidably, a political statement. King was a political activist. You cannot apolitically honour him, not unless he also won a tennis trophy or something and you celebrate that.
I have no idea why tennis is the first thing that came out of my head here.
I would argue that for many MLK was apolitically honored. When i see a statue of MLK i see a tribute to a good human being, not a political cause that he fought for. I may think back to some of his work, but i don't consider other actors or events outside of his life. The statue immortalizes his achievements as a person, not as a political statement.
How can you possibly celebrate King as a historical figure without celebrating his cause? That is absolutely absurd. Like, explain to me why you think that he was a good human being without reference to the political cause he fought for and the political actions he took in fighting for that cause. I don't see how you possibly could.
You and i would generally consider him to be a good person. But consider what i mentioned before. Imagine that in 100 or 200 years it it universally accepted that animals shouldn't be held as property. They look back on our time and see us as being just as amoral as we look back on the time of slavery as being amoral. Martin Luther King Jr had a dog. Would you agree they are doing the right thing in tearing down his statue because he had a pet, something almost universally accepted right now as normal? Imagine they tore down almost every statue that existed before 2050 or so because so many of us have owned a pet in our lifetime. Is that acceptable?
If people in the future do not want to celebrate King then that is their prerogative and I would not force them, if somehow I could, to adhere to my values and beliefs.
The reason i bring up a ridiculous scenario like that is because it's plausible that people in the future could look back on us owning living creatures in the same light as we see those in the past who owned slaves. Are you a horrible human being because you or your family owns a dog or a cat? Why is George Washington suddenly being condemned for an institution in place centuries before his birth, which he grew up understanding as being just as normal as you and i owning pet dogs or cats.
While that's no justification for slavery, it should demonstrate that it isn't fair to judge a historical figure by our modern standards. From birth we are raised to understand that slavery was abhorrent and wrong. George Washington probably grew up with exactly the opposite. Does that mean that everything good the man ever did is somehow washed away because of one aspect of his life, an aspect not even slightly unusual for the time. To degrade a man like that is ignorant and stupid. The things that Washington did that were unusual were good, they led us in a positive direction and created freedoms that we still enjoy today. We could have very easily ended up with an unstable democracy like those of South America. We didn't because George Washington set a standard for honesty and republicanism. That's not a myth, that's historical fact.
George Washington was raised in an era that normalised slavery, and as such he and many of his contemporaries saw nothing wrong with slavery. But others in those days did see the evils of slavery, not least the fucking slaves themselves, and you do those people a disservice when you make these excuses for Washington. Abolitionism was not invented by Abraham Lincoln. There were abolitionists when America was founded. Washington cannot possibly have been ignorant of abolitionism. He was the fucking president, it's not like we can pretend he wasn't interested in politics. He heard the arguments against slavery, he must have, and he was not moved. He kept his slaves, and he signed a fugitive slave law. If you refuse to incorporate these facts into your opinion about George Washington, then I can hardly make you do otherwise, but I am not going to join you in ignoring history to push a politically correct narrative.
