Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is good.

The statue, unveiled in 1914, features a bronze woman, crowned with olive leaves, standing on a 32-foot pedestal, and was designed to represent the American South. According to Arlington, the woman holds a laurel wreath, a plow stock and a pruning hook, with a Biblical inscription at her feet that says: “They have beat their swords into plough-shares and their spears into pruning hooks.”

https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/confederate-memorial-removed-coming-days-arlington-national-cemetery-105718054

Is it really, though. Is the answer to just abolish anything that brings up that period in our history? You can’t simply remove and destroy. Well, I guess you can as evidenced here but it’s not the way. Learning from history, but still accepting this was a period in our county’s history, makes more sense. It’s like those people running around trying to shut down freedom of speech. Isn’t the the answer to have better speech- than to shut the other side down?

It would be easier for me to agree with you — if, over the last 150 years or so, this country— as a whole — grappled honestly with the painfully ignoble aspects of our country’s history, and made sure that everyone understood our history, resolved to grow beyond it. Instead, we got Jim Crow laws, legal racial segregation, a few years of complicated and modest progress, and, now, MAGA influencing everything from our “justice” system to books no longer available in school libraries.
So, I’d agree with you that there are better ways to handle this country’s history, but what many people have learned from this period in history is that white supremacy has its benefits. We had a century and a half to do better. Many, including those who erected such statues and those who venerate them, have deliberately chosen not to.

You’re bringing to light “some people” but certainly not all. I am average American citizen with roots in both the north and south (and by south I mean plantation owners). I teach my children history is to be learned from and not repeated. We “do better” than our ancestors and that’s a fact. I will agree with you there are area lot of missteps throughout history. You can’t “make” everyone understand or agree with history and the right/wrong of it. The statutes, the renaming of bases (Ft Bragg to Ft Liberty) would make sense to me if it really was a decision made as a country or we came together to discuss and learn/grow. But what is being learned by our children’s generation by doing this? And what are we learning as a country? Division. Just another, new, version of division and conflict.

That we will no longer put up statues honoring people who went to war on the side of a legal system that defined certain people as property rather than people.

thats the problem, your southern ancestors shouldn't feel equally American to the northern ones. They were traitors who were vanquished and conquered and your plantation dwelling ancestors are the same as goering/himmler- something to mention as a strange tidbit of which you are vaguely ashamed. you should feel that - the southerners should feel like their ancestors were a conquered people who are looked down upon and shameful to the vast majority of Americans. There should be no southern pride. southern pride is a betrayal of the abolitionist cause and actual Great Americans like Frederick Douglas. Im nt saying that ppl should feel personal shame but they should certainly feel like the Confederates are not a part of the History of this great nation called the United States. Like an immigrant feels, confederate ancestors arent a part of this nation, they are a separate people, a people who were put dow by the heroes of these United States, literally burned down by General Sherman.

No. No no no.

I hope you're trolling but your nonsense is offensive as well as wrong. No.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If the confederate monuments had gone up at the time of the war maybe I'd have some sympathy for them but most were put up post 1900 by apologist groups trying to rewrite history with some Lost Cause propaganda. And for PP above worried about these monuments to the losers of the Civil War, don't worry -- Youngkin & others are keeping these monuments, they just will no longer get prime real estate with our actual war heroes. Not sorry that insurrectionists are not being honored in Arlington anymore.

Except that's not what happened. In 1900 the South was slowly recovering from the effects of war, and people were still mourning and remembering their war dead. But with the advent of Spanish-American War, there was a greater need for the government to foster unity. Before this, families of confederate soldiers weren't allowed entry into Arlington to place flowers on the graves of their loved ones. There was a push to remove all the buried confederates to a Southern location, but the Confederate section and memorial were proposed as a compromise. This monument was integral to the reconciliation process, and in recognizing the humanity and losses faced by the "other" side.

The statue was dedicated in 1914, 49 years after the end of the Civil War, and 16 years after the Spanish-American War.

You can go admire it somewhere else.

The south literally had no money after the war. Many regions did not start recovering until the 1940s and WWII.

The memorial is pro-slavery. I assume the people who are "for" it are ignorant or bots.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is good.

The statue, unveiled in 1914, features a bronze woman, crowned with olive leaves, standing on a 32-foot pedestal, and was designed to represent the American South. According to Arlington, the woman holds a laurel wreath, a plow stock and a pruning hook, with a Biblical inscription at her feet that says: “They have beat their swords into plough-shares and their spears into pruning hooks.”

https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/confederate-memorial-removed-coming-days-arlington-national-cemetery-105718054

Is it really, though. Is the answer to just abolish anything that brings up that period in our history? You can’t simply remove and destroy. Well, I guess you can as evidenced here but it’s not the way. Learning from history, but still accepting this was a period in our county’s history, makes more sense. It’s like those people running around trying to shut down freedom of speech. Isn’t the the answer to have better speech- than to shut the other side down?

It would be easier for me to agree with you — if, over the last 150 years or so, this country— as a whole — grappled honestly with the painfully ignoble aspects of our country’s history, and made sure that everyone understood our history, resolved to grow beyond it. Instead, we got Jim Crow laws, legal racial segregation, a few years of complicated and modest progress, and, now, MAGA influencing everything from our “justice” system to books no longer available in school libraries.
So, I’d agree with you that there are better ways to handle this country’s history, but what many people have learned from this period in history is that white supremacy has its benefits. We had a century and a half to do better. Many, including those who erected such statues and those who venerate them, have deliberately chosen not to.

You’re bringing to light “some people” but certainly not all. I am average American citizen with roots in both the north and south (and by south I mean plantation owners). I teach my children history is to be learned from and not repeated. We “do better” than our ancestors and that’s a fact. I will agree with you there are area lot of missteps throughout history. You can’t “make” everyone understand or agree with history and the right/wrong of it. The statutes, the renaming of bases (Ft Bragg to Ft Liberty) would make sense to me if it really was a decision made as a country or we came together to discuss and learn/grow. But what is being learned by our children’s generation by doing this? And what are we learning as a country? Division. Just another, new, version of division and conflict.

That we will no longer put up statues honoring people who went to war on the side of a legal system that defined certain people as property rather than people.

thats the problem, your southern ancestors shouldn't feel equally American to the northern ones. They were traitors who were vanquished and conquered and your plantation dwelling ancestors are the same as goering/himmler- something to mention as a strange tidbit of which you are vaguely ashamed. you should feel that - the southerners should feel like their ancestors were a conquered people who are looked down upon and shameful to the vast majority of Americans. There should be no southern pride. southern pride is a betrayal of the abolitionist cause and actual Great Americans like Frederick Douglas. Im nt saying that ppl should feel personal shame but they should certainly feel like the Confederates are not a part of the History of this great nation called the United States. Like an immigrant feels, confederate ancestors arent a part of this nation, they are a separate people, a people who were put dow by the heroes of these United States, literally burned down by General Sherman.

Get a life.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is good.

The statue, unveiled in 1914, features a bronze woman, crowned with olive leaves, standing on a 32-foot pedestal, and was designed to represent the American South. According to Arlington, the woman holds a laurel wreath, a plow stock and a pruning hook, with a Biblical inscription at her feet that says: “They have beat their swords into plough-shares and their spears into pruning hooks.”

https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/confederate-memorial-removed-coming-days-arlington-national-cemetery-105718054

Is it really, though. Is the answer to just abolish anything that brings up that period in our history? You can’t simply remove and destroy. Well, I guess you can as evidenced here but it’s not the way. Learning from history, but still accepting this was a period in our county’s history, makes more sense. It’s like those people running around trying to shut down freedom of speech. Isn’t the the answer to have better speech- than to shut the other side down?

It would be easier for me to agree with you — if, over the last 150 years or so, this country— as a whole — grappled honestly with the painfully ignoble aspects of our country’s history, and made sure that everyone understood our history, resolved to grow beyond it. Instead, we got Jim Crow laws, legal racial segregation, a few years of complicated and modest progress, and, now, MAGA influencing everything from our “justice” system to books no longer available in school libraries.
So, I’d agree with you that there are better ways to handle this country’s history, but what many people have learned from this period in history is that white supremacy has its benefits. We had a century and a half to do better. Many, including those who erected such statues and those who venerate them, have deliberately chosen not to.

You’re bringing to light “some people” but certainly not all. I am average American citizen with roots in both the north and south (and by south I mean plantation owners). I teach my children history is to be learned from and not repeated. We “do better” than our ancestors and that’s a fact. I will agree with you there are area lot of missteps throughout history. You can’t “make” everyone understand or agree with history and the right/wrong of it. The statutes, the renaming of bases (Ft Bragg to Ft Liberty) would make sense to me if it really was a decision made as a country or we came together to discuss and learn/grow. But what is being learned by our children’s generation by doing this? And what are we learning as a country? Division. Just another, new, version of division and conflict.

That we will no longer put up statues honoring people who went to war on the side of a legal system that defined certain people as property rather than people.

thats the problem, your southern ancestors shouldn't feel equally American to the northern ones. They were traitors who were vanquished and conquered and your plantation dwelling ancestors are the same as goering/himmler- something to mention as a strange tidbit of which you are vaguely ashamed. you should feel that - the southerners should feel like their ancestors were a conquered people who are looked down upon and shameful to the vast majority of Americans. There should be no southern pride. southern pride is a betrayal of the abolitionist cause and actual Great Americans like Frederick Douglas. Im nt saying that ppl should feel personal shame but they should certainly feel like the Confederates are not a part of the History of this great nation called the United States. Like an immigrant feels, confederate ancestors arent a part of this nation, they are a separate people, a people who were put dow by the heroes of these United States, literally burned down by General Sherman.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is good.

The statue, unveiled in 1914, features a bronze woman, crowned with olive leaves, standing on a 32-foot pedestal, and was designed to represent the American South. According to Arlington, the woman holds a laurel wreath, a plow stock and a pruning hook, with a Biblical inscription at her feet that says: “They have beat their swords into plough-shares and their spears into pruning hooks.”

https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/confederate-memorial-removed-coming-days-arlington-national-cemetery-105718054

Is it really, though. Is the answer to just abolish anything that brings up that period in our history? You can’t simply remove and destroy. Well, I guess you can as evidenced here but it’s not the way. Learning from history, but still accepting this was a period in our county’s history, makes more sense. It’s like those people running around trying to shut down freedom of speech. Isn’t the the answer to have better speech- than to shut the other side down?

It would be easier for me to agree with you — if, over the last 150 years or so, this country— as a whole — grappled honestly with the painfully ignoble aspects of our country’s history, and made sure that everyone understood our history, resolved to grow beyond it. Instead, we got Jim Crow laws, legal racial segregation, a few years of complicated and modest progress, and, now, MAGA influencing everything from our “justice” system to books no longer available in school libraries.
So, I’d agree with you that there are better ways to handle this country’s history, but what many people have learned from this period in history is that white supremacy has its benefits. We had a century and a half to do better. Many, including those who erected such statues and those who venerate them, have deliberately chosen not to.

You’re bringing to light “some people” but certainly not all. I am average American citizen with roots in both the north and south (and by south I mean plantation owners). I teach my children history is to be learned from and not repeated. We “do better” than our ancestors and that’s a fact. I will agree with you there are area lot of missteps throughout history. You can’t “make” everyone understand or agree with history and the right/wrong of it. The statutes, the renaming of bases (Ft Bragg to Ft Liberty) would make sense to me if it really was a decision made as a country or we came together to discuss and learn/grow. But what is being learned by our children’s generation by doing this? And what are we learning as a country? Division. Just another, new, version of division and conflict.

I disagree- the country was divided along ideological lines during Reconstruction and Andrew Johnson and the closing down of the Freedman's bureau and the reneging of promises of 5 acres and a mule and the acquiescence of the northern whites to Jim Crow laws was another division- along the color line. This has always been a nation divided- it used to be that all the white people were on one side and it is now going back to being divided along ideological lines. The color line is still there but it is less important than the ideology one holds but the divisions were always there and the monuments were a compromise that the United States made to the descendants of the vanquished side, we still materially support the old Confederate States, since they are almost all financially dependent on the Northern and western states. The Union has just decided to cease honoring the confederate war dead, it's time and we still give them welfare and material support which is the most important thing. If New York, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania all refused to Gove federal funding to Missouri, Mississippi Louisiana, etc then they could get angry. Supporters of a strong federal government are feeling threatened and so they are using this means to assert themselves over the Staes right folks- to remind them that they lost and that the monuments were there as magnanimous gesture of good will by the the powerful federal government and they can remove that magninimity whenever they choose, the Union is supreme, states are 2nd class powers was settled by that war and it is open to being relitigated even though conservative with Roe plus teh elector shenanigans are trying to relitigate this.

Good!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is good.

The statue, unveiled in 1914, features a bronze woman, crowned with olive leaves, standing on a 32-foot pedestal, and was designed to represent the American South. According to Arlington, the woman holds a laurel wreath, a plow stock and a pruning hook, with a Biblical inscription at her feet that says: “They have beat their swords into plough-shares and their spears into pruning hooks.”

https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/confederate-memorial-removed-coming-days-arlington-national-cemetery-105718054

Is it really, though. Is the answer to just abolish anything that brings up that period in our history? You can’t simply remove and destroy. Well, I guess you can as evidenced here but it’s not the way. Learning from history, but still accepting this was a period in our county’s history, makes more sense. It’s like those people running around trying to shut down freedom of speech. Isn’t the the answer to have better speech- than to shut the other side down?

It would be easier for me to agree with you — if, over the last 150 years or so, this country— as a whole — grappled honestly with the painfully ignoble aspects of our country’s history, and made sure that everyone understood our history, resolved to grow beyond it. Instead, we got Jim Crow laws, legal racial segregation, a few years of complicated and modest progress, and, now, MAGA influencing everything from our “justice” system to books no longer available in school libraries.
So, I’d agree with you that there are better ways to handle this country’s history, but what many people have learned from this period in history is that white supremacy has its benefits. We had a century and a half to do better. Many, including those who erected such statues and those who venerate them, have deliberately chosen not to.

Thank you. Well said.

Anonymous wrote:I don’t feel strongly either way, but for the progressives who spend so much of their time worrying about memorials and names on schools, how about rolling your sleeves up and addressing real systemic racism - Exhibit A would be the DC Public School system.

Same. I don't object to the these changes but I no longer vote for politicians who point to these things as significant accomplishments.
These things are 0.001% of what they should be spending their time and energy on.

Anonymous wrote:A restraining order was filed yesterday, so it’ll stay put for now: https://apnews.com/article/confederate-memorial-arlington-cemetery-restraining-order-65a00f0e3b49b22547059ee021ec3e82

Looks like they wanted to slow things down and make sure nothing was damaged from a hasty removal.

There's nothing hasty about it. It's been planned for 3 years.

"Defend Arlington" claims gravesites will be disturbed. The judge who issued the order temporarily stopping the removal warned "Defend Arlington" of sanctions if this claim is untrue or exaggerated.

A restraining order was filed yesterday, so it’ll stay put for now: https://apnews.com/article/confederate-memorial-arlington-cemetery-restraining-order-65a00f0e3b49b22547059ee021ec3e82

Looks like they wanted to slow things down and make sure nothing was damaged from a hasty removal.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is good.

The statue, unveiled in 1914, features a bronze woman, crowned with olive leaves, standing on a 32-foot pedestal, and was designed to represent the American South. According to Arlington, the woman holds a laurel wreath, a plow stock and a pruning hook, with a Biblical inscription at her feet that says: “They have beat their swords into plough-shares and their spears into pruning hooks.”

https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/confederate-memorial-removed-coming-days-arlington-national-cemetery-105718054

Is it really, though. Is the answer to just abolish anything that brings up that period in our history? You can’t simply remove and destroy. Well, I guess you can as evidenced here but it’s not the way. Learning from history, but still accepting this was a period in our county’s history, makes more sense. It’s like those people running around trying to shut down freedom of speech. Isn’t the the answer to have better speech- than to shut the other side down?

It would be easier for me to agree with you — if, over the last 150 years or so, this country— as a whole — grappled honestly with the painfully ignoble aspects of our country’s history, and made sure that everyone understood our history, resolved to grow beyond it. Instead, we got Jim Crow laws, legal racial segregation, a few years of complicated and modest progress, and, now, MAGA influencing everything from our “justice” system to books no longer available in school libraries.
So, I’d agree with you that there are better ways to handle this country’s history, but what many people have learned from this period in history is that white supremacy has its benefits. We had a century and a half to do better. Many, including those who erected such statues and those who venerate them, have deliberately chosen not to.

You’re bringing to light “some people” but certainly not all. I am average American citizen with roots in both the north and south (and by south I mean plantation owners). I teach my children history is to be learned from and not repeated. We “do better” than our ancestors and that’s a fact. I will agree with you there are area lot of missteps throughout history. You can’t “make” everyone understand or agree with history and the right/wrong of it. The statutes, the renaming of bases (Ft Bragg to Ft Liberty) would make sense to me if it really was a decision made as a country or we came together to discuss and learn/grow. But what is being learned by our children’s generation by doing this? And what are we learning as a country? Division. Just another, new, version of division and conflict.

Yep! Just a monument to peace that tells the important story of our history.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/12/18/confederate-memorial-removal-halted-arlington-cemetery/

The memorial, atop a 32-foot pedestal that towers over surrounding graves, features the bronze figure of a woman representing the American South, surrounded by a frieze of figures such as a Black man following his enslaver into war and a Black woman holding the infant of a Confederate officer.

Yep! Just an acknowledgement of the injustice of the war and a commitment to peace, not glorification of the south or slavery at all.

Not to mention, this memorial will go on the slag heap, throwing out all of our history never to be seen again.

Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) opposes the removal, but he has secured a plan for the Virginia Military Institute to take ownership of the statue and place it at the Virginia Museum of the Civil War at New Market Battlefield State Historical Park, in the Shenandoah Valley about 80 miles north of the VMI campus.

Anonymous wrote:It's good to get rid of a monument about the two sides coming back together and living in peace?

Good to get rid of a celebration of slavery.

"Some of the figures also on the statue include a Black woman depicted as “Mammy” holding what is said to be the child of a white officer, and an enslaved man following his owner to war."

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If the confederate monuments had gone up at the time of the war maybe I'd have some sympathy for them but most were put up post 1900 by apologist groups trying to rewrite history with some Lost Cause propaganda. And for PP above worried about these monuments to the losers of the Civil War, don't worry -- Youngkin & others are keeping these monuments, they just will no longer get prime real estate with our actual war heroes. Not sorry that insurrectionists are not being honored in Arlington anymore.

When half the states leave a voluntary union, that’s not an insurrection.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's good to get rid of a monument about the two sides coming back together and living in peace?

This was the original "both sides" mistake. We never should have allowed the south to "come back".

Then we'd have an even bigger border crisis as the poor continental south desperately fled north in search of peace and prosperity.