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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]We need a standard for memorialization.  It can’t be perfection (unless it’s a statue of Jesus/Allah/etc.)—maybe the standard is being on the right side of history?[/quote]
Who determines what the right side of history is? Hitler believed he was on the right side of history until the day he died.[/quote]

Society does. The point of getting a statue isn't that a person was Good Enough according to some objective standard. The point of the society decides, collectively, that this person and their contributions are the kind we want to hold up as positive and worthy of emulation. The problem we have now is a combination of changing standards for a large portion of the population and the fact that the original decision to put up the statues was made without the input of people impacted by the people being commemorated. Indeed, in the case of Confederate statues they were put up by regimes that were violently oppressive of a major segment of society with the purpose of commemirating that oppression. You don't need to establish an objective standard of "progress" to justify removing those.[/quote]
Oh but you do. Many of those statues were paid for by public funds. To simply tear them down without a vote because a small segment of the population “doesn’t like them” disenfranchises the voters who do. Put it to a vote and let the community decide. But don’t arbitrarily tear them down because they were confederates, or owned slaves.[/quote]
Was a vote taken when they decided to put them up?

And do you know what “disenfranchised” even means? Here’s a little hint: Native Americans couldn’t vote in every state until 1962 (and they weren’t considered full US citizens until 1924!). https://www.history.com/news/native-american-voting-rights-citizenship[/quote]

The difficulty with the legal aspects of Native Americans is simple:  If Native American tribes have their own sovereignty, then Native Americans are not US citizens but are citizens of their own tribes.  In theory, Native Americans have their own legal basis based on blood lines, which, of course, runs contrary to our notions of individual rights and equal treatment, not that we always uphold those latter ideas.

[/quote]

We have dual citizenship, dumbass. [/quote]

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