A statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee.

[sr71plt]

A point I made in a nearby thread: The rebels won in the long run.

And which I debunked in the other thread. Three and a half (GW Bush looks like a Texan, but he's from Connecticut) of the last twenty-two presidents were from the south, not a majority of them.

 

[JackLuis]

No, Nazis are not Democrats nor Socialists

They are targets!​

Democrats and democratic socialists were incorrectly linked by some to Nazism following the harrowing protests in Charlottesville, Virginia, over the weekend that led to one woman’s death. The allegations were a huge misrepresentation of what each of the terms means and a poor, surface-only reading of what German leader Adolf Hitler’s party and government stood for.

The assertions or accusations listed above appear to stem from the official name of the party that Hitler led to take over Germany in the early 1930s. It was called the National Socialist German Workers’ Party—later shortened to Nazi party—and gained power by promising voters to alleviate a German economy mired in depression while also restoring “German cultural values, reverse the provisions of the Treaty of Versailles, turn back the perceived threat of a Communist uprising, put the German people back to work, and restore Germany to its 'rightful position' as a world power," according to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

The party represented an extreme side of German’s right wing, and the key word in its title was not necessarily "socialism," but rather "national." During Hitler’s ascension, nationalism was preached and took hold, and excluded anyone who wasn’t fully German or considered superior.

 

[jaF0]

and gained power by promising voters to alleviate a German economy mired in depression while also restoring “German cultural values, reverse the provisions of the Treaty of Versailles, turn back the perceived threat of a Communist uprising, put the German people back to work, and restore Germany to its 'rightful position' as a world power,"

Sounds like a 'Rump campaign.

 

[mdbigdee]

West Point has two portraits of Lee hanging on the walls. It also has Lee Road,Lee Housing and Lee Gate. The U.S.War College has two portraits of Lee and one of Confederate General "Stonewall"Jackson and Confederate memorabilia. There are 10 Army posts named after CSA officers..Forts Lee,Bragg,Hood,Benning,Gordon and five others. Last week the Army issued a statement saying that it would not be renaming "General Lee Avenue"and "Stonewall Jackson Drive"at Fort Hamilton NY Brooklyn NY after Rep. Yvette Carter and two other representatives wrote a letter asking for the change. Both Lee and Jackson served at Fort Hamilton before the Civil War. Army spokesperson Diane Randon stated "The Army is aware of the issue but renaming the streets would be contrary to the original intent naming them in the spirit of reconciliation.
The mythology of the South in the Civil War is buried deep in the Army and has been for decades. Many recruits come from the South and make it a career. As leaders they pass it on. Black soldiers have no idea that they are stationed at Fort Gordon,named after the alledged founder of the Ku Klux Klan in Georgia.

 

[sr71plt]

West Point has two portraits of Lee hanging on the walls. It also has Lee Road,Lee Housing and Lee Gate. The U.S.War College has two portraits of Lee and one of Confederate General "Stonewall"Jackson and Confederate memorabilia. There are 10 Army posts named after CSA officers..Forts Lee,Bragg,Hood,Benning,Gordon and five others. Last week the Army issued a statement saying that it would not be renaming "General Lee Avenue"and "Stonewall Jackson Drive"at Fort Hamilton NY Brooklyn NY after Rep. Yvette Carter and two other representatives wrote a letter asking for the change. Both Lee and Jackson served at Fort Hamilton before the Civil War. Army spokesperson Diane Randon stated "The Army is aware of the issue but renaming the streets would be contrary to the original intent naming them in the spirit of reconciliation.
The mythology of the South in the Civil War is buried deep in the Army and has been for decades. Many recruits come from the South and make it a career. As leaders they pass it on. Black soldiers have no idea that they are stationed at Fort Gordon,named after the alledged founder of the Ku Klux Klan in Georgia.

I do think anyone who had ties to the KKK at the time shouldn't be accorded a name on a military installation. If so, perhaps Donald Trump's grandfather would never classify as he was arrested at a KKK rally in 1927. (Apples and distance from trees?)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...a-klan-riot-in-queens/?utm_term=.1f2edae82976

 

[oggbashan]

I think the idea is that these statues, in their usual contexts, serve to glorify treason, insurrection, slavery, race hate, and likely bad versifying. Whatever. A victorious North should probably have hanged the traitors and outlawed all celebration of the failed secession. It was almost a Pyrrhic victory -- win the war, lose the aftermath. But remember that the Confederate leadership WERE traitors, oath-breakers, slavers, irredeemable scum. Lee too.

From the British point of view those who signed the US Declaration of Independence were also traitors, oath-breakers, [], irredeemable scum. who allied themselves with Britain's worst enemy, France.

But the British government accepted that the leaders of the United States were legitimate representatives of an independent country in 1783:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Paris_(1783)

Yet some in the United States cannot forgive Confederate leaders after all this time? That says a lot about US politics.

 

[sharingfantasies]

From the British point of view those who signed the US Declaration of Independence were also traitors, oath-breakers, [], irredeemable scum. who allied themselves with Britain's worst enemy, France.

But the British government accepted that the leaders of the United States were legitimate representatives of an independent country in 1783:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Paris_(1783)

Yet some in the United States cannot forgive Confederate leaders after all this time? That says a lot about US politics.

That is what I was going to mention. This country began with a bunch of criminals breaking the law and revolting against the government. The Civil War was partially about slavery, but much more about economics, differences in lifestyles and beliefs between the North and South. Texas was its own country for a very short period of time. We are a country that revels in individual choice and belief. We are one of the largest countries in the world. The founding fathers couldn't decide between states and federal rights, so they purposely set themselves up so that the debate between states and the federal government will always be in contention.

Unfortunately, one of the side effects of this country's beliefs is that you have people with beliefs that most people disagree with entirely.

 

[phrodeau]

"Thomas Jefferson was a major slave owner!"

 

[JackLuis]

 

[Carnal_Flower]

This difference being we won the Revolutionary War.

The South LOST and thereby, never had any right to be recognized as an independent country.

Every monument to the Confederacy should be torn down. Lincoln was nice enough not to shoot the whole lot of them as traitors, but that should have been enough. The Confederacy so-called has never been anything but a legacy of pure racism, esp. since the 1960s, when most of these so-called "Monuments" went up.

They went up during the Civil Rights Era, so the racists in the South could console themselves with memories of the bygone era when blacks would always be slaves.

From the British point of view those who signed the US Declaration of Independence were also traitors, oath-breakers, [], irredeemable scum. who allied themselves with Britain's worst enemy, France.

But the British government accepted that the leaders of the United States were legitimate representatives of an independent country in 1783:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Paris_(1783)

Yet some in the United States cannot forgive Confederate leaders after all this time? That says a lot about US politics.

 

[Wrong Element]

From the British point of view those who signed the US Declaration of Independence were also traitors, oath-breakers, [], irredeemable scum. who allied themselves with Britain's worst enemy, France.

But the British government accepted that the leaders of the United States were legitimate representatives of an independent country in 1783:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Paris_(1783)

Yet some in the United States cannot forgive Confederate leaders after all this time? That says a lot about US politics.

"Forgiveness" is one thing, though keep in mind that the defeated South was able, after a period of 10-12 years, to go on pretty much the way it always had, other than the technicality that slavery per se was now forbidden. As much as they've historically whined about the cruelty visited upon them after their defeat, they truly did get off easy.

What we're talking about is whether the Southern military and political leaders of that era should continue to be honored. It's bizarre on its face that American military bases are named after men who took up arms against the United States, or that there are Southern states today that will only grudgingly celebrate Martin Luther King's birthday if the holiday is paired with the birthday of Lee.

 

[nowisthetime]

These folks and their idolization of their treasonous Confederate Generals.

Lee did not give a damn about anyone but himself. It was all about using slaves to make money for him because he was too lazy to pick his own cotton.

He could care less about the lower class white peasants.

THIS is who they wish to idolize?


It's time to treat the adulation of the old Confederacy as Germans have treated their Nazi past---with shame and disgust. Black folk have been too kind for too long at these BLATANT symbols of disrespect.

The cold admiration of the barbarity of slavery-- the rapes, the breaking of families, the abuse, etc, should NOT be tolerated.

If they want to celebrate their little heritage, why not show the same gleeful regard for the Revolutionary war heroes? Or celebrating their European ancestors escape from their homelands?

They know what they are doing. It's NOT about heritage.

 

[sr71plt]

Every monument to the Confederacy should be torn down. Lincoln was nice enough not to shoot the whole lot of them as traitors,

That would have been a bit of a chore. Lincoln was dead before the war ended.

Ironically, the president at the end of the war was a southerner, Andrew Johnson, from Tennessee, who had owned slaves and didn't free them until seven months after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed.

 

[sr71plt]

Lee did not give a damn about anyone but himself. It was all about using slaves to make money for him because he was too lazy to pick his own cotton.

He could care less about the lower class white peasants.

You didn't research that, did you? Although Lee certainly had a key responsibility in prolonging the institution of slavery in the United States, you've overdone it on him, apparently by just making unresearched assumptions.

There were up to 200 slaves at Arlington House at one time (too far north to raise cotton, though. They raised corn and wheat, which weren't as hard on the laborers as cotton was--or even that tobacco was). But Lee himself didn't own any of them. His wife inherited them (at a time when it was difficult legally in Virginia to free them, although both his wife and her father had been slowly freeing them and resettling them in jobs when they had training to take care of themselves--also was educating them, which was against the law in Virginia at the time). Lee never bought or sold a slave. When his father-in-law (who owned the slaves) died in 1857, he stipulated all of the slaves were to be freed as soon as the estate could handle it and they could be freed in the condition to live on their own. Lee got all of the slaves freed by 1862, before the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863.

An interesting comparison, as I noted higher on the thread, the man who was president of the United States at the end of the Civil War, Andrew Johnson, owned slaves and didn't free them until seven months after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed.

Lee on slavery in 1856 (in a letter to President Franklin Pierce):

There are few, I believe, in this enlightened age, who will not acknowledge that slavery as an institution is a moral and political evil.

 

[Ramone45]

From the British point of view those who signed the US Declaration of Independence were also traitors, oath-breakers, [], irredeemable scum. who allied themselves with Britain's worst enemy, France.

But the British government accepted that the leaders of the United States were legitimate representatives of an independent country in 1783:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Paris_(1783)

Yet some in the United States cannot forgive Confederate leaders after all this time? That says a lot about US politics.

Bingo!

 

[phrodeau]

From the British point of view those who signed the US Declaration of Independence were also traitors, oath-breakers, [], irredeemable scum. who allied themselves with Britain's worst enemy, France.

But the British government accepted that the leaders of the United States were legitimate representatives of an independent country in 1783:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Paris_(1783)

Yet some in the United States cannot forgive Confederate leaders after all this time? That says a lot about US politics.

How many memorials to the American founding fathers can be found in Great Britain?

 

[JackLuis]

Charlottesville cops refused to protect synagogue

The Jewish community in Charlottesville hired armed security to protect its synagogue for the first time after local police declined to provide a guard for the site despite hundreds of white supremacists congregating on the town over the weekend for a rally that resulted in the murder of counter-protester Heather Heyer.

The police department promised to provide “an observer” near the building but Zimmerman says it “was not kept” by the force leaving the congregation vulnerable to assault as they worshipped.

“For half an hour, three men dressed in fatigues and armed with semi-automatic rifles stood across the street from the temple,” he wrote. “Had they tried to enter, I don’t know what I could have done to stop them, but I couldn’t take my eyes off them, either.”

Not only did armed protesters stand across from the synagogue, but neo-Nazis paraded past the building, shouting anti-Semitic slogans, a horrible reminder of Nazi Germany’s persecution and mass slaughter of European Jews.

“Several times, parades of Nazis passed our building, shouting, 'There's the synagogue!' followed by chants of 'Seig Heil' and other anti-Semitic language. Some carried flags with swastikas and other Nazi symbols,” Zimmerman wrote.

 

[JackLuis]

A professor of German history explains the true horror of Trump’s response to Charlottesville

Wave a Nazi Flag, attract ballistic condemnation!

 

[jaF0]

Charlottesville cops refused to protect synagogue

I wouldn't be surprised if half the cops weren't in the crowd wearing hoods and carrying torches.

 

[JackLuis]

 

[sr71plt]

I wouldn't be surprised if half the cops weren't in the crowd wearing hoods and carrying torches.

Not true in Charlottesville. It's a very progressive town; they are continually on high alert for this. Any such cops wouldn't last long on the force here.

Stereotyping is part of the problem, not of the solution.

 

[SimonDoom]

From the British point of view those who signed the US Declaration of Independence were also traitors, oath-breakers, [], irredeemable scum. who allied themselves with Britain's worst enemy, France.

But the British government accepted that the leaders of the United States were legitimate representatives of an independent country in 1783:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Paris_(1783)

Yet some in the United States cannot forgive Confederate leaders after all this time? That says a lot about US politics.

The issue isn't one of forgiveness. This is an apples and oranges comparison.

I can't speak for the British, but I doubt that modern Brits think of the signers of the Declaration of Independence as irredeemable scum. That would be a hard case to make. I don't think of the Filipinos as scum for having rebelled 100 years ago against American imperialist occupation of their country. On the contrary, I salute their willingness to stand up for their right to independence and self-governance.

The south lost, and it lost an effort to win independence so it could preserve slavery, a wrongful cause, and one not worth romanticizing or celebrating. The centrality of slavery to the southern cause is clearly stated in the written declarations by the southern states explaining why they chose to secede from the United States.

You can forgive people like Robert E. Lee for their mistakes, but forgiveness doesn't require that you celebrate them with statues.

 

[Hypoxia]

Will the Dodge Challenger become the alt.right's new icon?

 

[phrodeau]

Will the Dodge Challenger become the alt.right's new icon?

 

[oggbashan]

How many memorials to the American founding fathers can be found in Great Britain?

There's Washington in London:

https://www.guidelondon.org.uk/blog/around-london/statues-6-american-presidents-london/

There are other memorials:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/12/travel/12journey.html