Leftists Purging History or Al Queda in America

[CapnAwesome]

Slavery would never have survived the Industrial Revolution, it was far too inefficient a system to linger.  I'm always amused by northern industrialists who railed against the evils of slavery while treating the workers in their fire-trap factories as expendable and infinitely replaceable Irish scum.  Being poor in 1860 pretty much sucked.  Slave or free.

True, but there is still a world of difference. The irish worker didn't worry about his wife and children being sold off. But yeah, slavery would not have survived in the long term, regardless of the civil war.

[brewer]

Can the metal ones be melted down and turned into weapons? Now that would be the American way!

[Catholic_Lady]

Well it didn't take very long for someone to set their sites on Mount Rushmore, HERE

But then again, its not like we couldn't see that coming. Someone please tell me Vice is a parody site.

Why don't you go throw your body in front of it and stay there until a buffalo sticks a horn up your ass.

That's really violent to say that to someone...

[Pizza]

Argumentum ad Hitlerum wasn't bad enough? Now we have argumentum ad Al Qaedaum. What a world.

[Minimalist]

Why don't you go throw your body in front of it and stay there until a buffalo sticks a horn up your ass.

That's really violent to say that to someone...  

I really don't like that sanctimonious sonofabitch.... in case you hadn't noticed.

[Amarok]

Clearly Wooter just read the twitch feed and didn't read the vice article related to post

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/9kkkb...t-rushmore
It was discussing an panicky right wing circle jerk by the daily caller repeating Trumps idiotic gas passing about getting rid of other monuments.And how they might be right about doing so. As statues to historic figures turn them into cult personalities and make then seem morally untouchable. I point out the article also points out how MLK has become such a figure .

With the president of the United States basically justifying neo-Nazism, it seems unthinkable that we will ever see a day when there is a serious push to blow up Rushmore and other monuments like it. But if that moment ever arrives, I suspect I'd be onboard. Demystifying the historical figures of the past, pulling them off the great mountain top back down to Earth where they shat, farted, spit, pissed, fucked, raped, murdered, died, and rotted seems like important business for this country. As long as we allow those men to be cults of personality who exist beyond reproach, we're never going to be able to see them for all of their good and all of their evil.

Plus they have already clarified

Editor's note: The headline and URL of this story have been updated. We do not condone violence in any shape or form, and the use of "blow up" in the original headline as a rhetorical device was misguided and insensitive. We apologize for the error

[Rev. Rye]

Okay, so I guess I was wrong about these newer statues. I guess I must not have taken into account the younger statues (particularly since the one people were using as an excuse to brawl in Charlottesville was unveiled in 1924.) More recent statues do complicate matters. And, bearing in mind that I live in a city that has a monument to a literal fascist, and there's no hurry to remove that, I'm not particularly inclined to pulling a 180.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balbo_Monument

At any rate, I still think it's at least a decent compromise, provided it's done for the less abhorrent figures of history; any statues of (for one example) Jefferson Davis can rot in Hell for all I care. I can't find much in the way of context worth celebrating him for.

I drive on Balbo almost every day. I had no idea! Thanks.

Sheeit, another Chicagoan. Well, the Balbo monument is basically an old Roman column on top of a pedestal with writings comparing Ancient Rome with Fascist Italy positively carved into its base, at Balbo park, across the road from Soldier Field and the photo on its Wikipedia page shows the Field Museum within eyeshot. And now that I think about it, the Field may actually be a better place for the Roman column than in the park.

Honestly, until recently, I assumed that Balbo was just some Chicagoan mangling of Bilbao, the Basque city, like the way we decided to name a street after Goethe but pronounce it Go-EETH, but after looking at a film that's otherwise unrelated except for being shot in the same park as the Balbo monument, I learned the truth.

[Ravenshire]

The sentiment is of a similar kind even if not to the same degree.

With that logic, someone saying "I hope Trump is impeached" is just a lower degree of someone actually trying to assassinate him.

What in the world is going on in your head, dude?

(emphasis is mine)

Poor quality pharmaceuticals?

[Amarok]

I always find this ironic

“I think it wiser not to keep open the sores of war but to follow the examples of those nations who endeavored to obliterate the marks of civil strife, to commit to oblivion the feelings engendered"

Robert E Lee (the retired military leader wrote about a proposed Gettysburg memorial in 1869)

[Thumpalumpacus]

It's about context. MLK was not campaigning for adultery. R.E. Lee was leading armies defending chatteldom; that was the notable achievement of his life. Not every context, and not every personage, is equally good. Germany has exactly zero statues of Hitler, but somehow they manage to remember their own history. How's that work?

You want historical significance? Put these statues in a museum ... and provide context for those who are otherwise deaf to it. Why are conservatives so afraid of museums?

I understand what you are saying and it makes sense. Honestly, I personally don't have a strong opinion on these statues either way. I guess the fairest thing to do would be to let the people of the city itself decide. My response was only to say that Neo's opinion on this particular issue with historical statues doesn't make him a supremacist sympathizer, even if it is the same opinion as the supremacist themselves.

I sure agree that the decisions should be local. But I also think that if I share an opinion with another person or persons, that makes me sympathetic to them, by definition.

When you lay down with dogs you're bound to get fleas.

---

At any rate, I still think it's at least a decent compromise, provided it's done for the less abhorrent figures of history; any statues of (for one example) Jefferson Davis can rot in Hell for all I care. I can't find much in the way of context worth celebrating him for.

Yesterday, I drove into north Austin to pick up a replacement tube for my guitar amplifier. During my long-ass traffic-ridden misery, I passed a street: Jeff Davis St read the sign.

It didn't hurt me ... but then again, I don't have any slaves in my genealogy. The only thing it made me think was, "hey, they named a street after that prick here, too."