Confederate statue pulled down by crowd in NC.

Post Reply New Topic

If you come from Europe, your ancestors were at least Roman serfs, then someone else's serfs, probably. The idea that anyone can just up and walk away from the town where they were born is a modern depravity that didn't exist for most people throughout most of European history.

There have been people born as slaves who became both Roman and Byzantine Emperor.

How many times do we have to go over this? Washington was a progressive. He supported democracy in an age of authoritarianism. He openly admired liberal intellectuals. He was a product of the 18th century European Enlightenment.

The confederates were regressives who were trying to hold onto slavery while the rest of the America was against it.

To everybody: I dislike the South and the Confederacy very much, but what about, say, a statue of George Washington (slave owner) or Andrew Jackson (despised by Native Americans). Of course white Southerners view Robert E Lee differently than I do (I am a white Northerner) and I'd be pretty upset if they wanted to pull down the statues of Abraham Lincoln and US Grant here in Chicago. I think its pretty heavy handed to compare Lee to Hitler as well. Lee isn't in the same league as Hitler.

I never compared Lee to Hitler.

Obviously, there's no comparison.

I was talking in general terms----about the statue of an oppressor in your own country.

Washington was also a white supremacist by any definition of the term. IMO, the American Revolution was fought by poor people so the rich (Washington was immensely wealthy) wouldn't have to pay their taxes.

Lee is definitely a war criminal by modern standards, and Jackson too.

It does seem that way, doesn't it.

Poor people have also died fighting other "rich peoples'" wars. That's been going on since the beginning of time.

Jackson did the Native Americans dirty, to say the least. I can understand a Native American wanting to raze a statue of Jackson, frankly.

Robert E. Lee was a different sort of character, though. He was only "Confederate" because of his allegiance to Virginia. There's no comparison between Lee and Jackson.

How would Lee be a war criminal? Sherman certainly but not Lee.

I have a book of letters sent by Civil War soldiers to their families. Most were written by low on the totem pole Union officers boasting over how much gold and property they had taken from Southern civilians. One was written by a Confederate private serving in Pennsylvania a few days before the battle of Gettysburg. From what he writes, he lacked proper food and clothing, but tells his family that their generals will not allow them to steal anything belonging to Yankee civilians.

To be honest, I don't think that Andrew Jackson deserves a statue either. The guy was a regressive piece of garbage. He was the Donald Trump of his day.

Fortunately, nuclear weapons didn't exist back then. Global warming wasn't a threat either. Old Hickory would have destroyed the world if he had been given nukes. He was a jackass.

We all see these men through a particular lens. I don't think its right to simply destroy these statues like this. Although I wholeheartedly disagree with the Confederate cause in the American Civil war.

Trump could never have been elected in the 1820s. Overbreeding of low IQ people and underbreeding of high IQ people has been pushing public IQ down a point a decade since Victorian times.

I firmly believe in the rule of law. And so do most people.

I'm really talking about the "passions" which are evoked. One can't, in a civilized society, always give in one's "passions."

I don't believe Native Americans should go around razing statues, say, of Andrew Jackson. But I understand the "passions" which are evoked.

Spare me your eugenicist drivel.

The world is far more progressive nowadays. We have computers. We have the internet. How could we be getting dumber?

We are. Its been proven. Victorians were far smarter than modern people on average. Look at a work written in that era and compare it with something modern.

It demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of the IQ test. The test keeps getting harder, btw. They do this to maintain the average at 100. And, it suggests that we can stay tuned for more scientific racism from that poster.