Originally Posted by rhaikh

Originally Posted by Derid
Seems like an odd thing to focus on to be honest. Honestly, to me the whole dealio about statues looks to be coming from people who generally disdain, don't understand, and don't want to understand the people who live in areas and/or are of a contemporary culture that they dislike.


GTFO of here with this bullshit. How about some sympathy with people whose entire ancestry is caught up in the slave trade.


Originally Posted by Derid
an era where things were good for them.


Precisely why the war was fought.


Originally Posted by Sini
I fully agree with you.



This, of all things, is the reductionist attitude in this thread.


What does having sympathy for people have to do with anything? Don't tell me that's the primary motive in picking up the pitchforks and torches over some old statues, cause frankly that's laughable. The real furor over statues didn't start bubbling out until Trump won the election and rage at the "Trump people" reached a crescendo and you know it. If you have sympathy for people afflicted by generational poverty, it seems like common sense to attack policies that perpetuate that situation instead of statues of people long since dead and gone.

The question here is what attempting to remove the statues actually is going to accomplish. All I see stemming from it is more mutual hatred and greater divisions. Just like you responded with some emotion laden silliness to my observation about the nature of the attack on monuments, so will people who still identify with the South be likely to respond in a similar manner.

You saying that the civil war was fought because "things were good for Southerners" just belies a lack of understanding of the entire affair. The war was actually fought because Lincoln decided that he wouldn't take secession lying down, and the Emancipation Proclamation only made because it was thought that it would be a boon to the Union in terms of winning the war. As much as some people like to paint the war as some great moral crusade against slavery, the truth is nowhere close. It's true that the expansion of slavery was a major flash point of contention between the states, and that it was a major issue of the day - but if the Confederacy hadn't taken the initiative to secede and shell Fort Sumter, its very possible that the sordid institution would still exist today.


For who could be free when every other man's humour might domineer over him? - John Locke (2nd Treatise, sect 57)