(08-15-2017, 09:25 PM)Bullseye Wrote:

(08-15-2017, 01:56 PM)Dakota Wrote: Here is a question for minorities, and all people who want these artifacts removed, and I ask this in earnest. What do you hope to accomplish by having these things taken down? What problems in minority communities will be fixed by doing this? Will the crime go away? Will the rampant drug problems suddenly disappear? To me, that is the real issue here. Slavery is a thing of the past, save the underground illegal operations.  Furthermore, a large percentage of minorities who live in poverty in this country still have it better than they do back where they came from. Now that's real poverty. Living in mud huts or shanties. No electricity or any of the modern things that we as Americans take for granted on a daily basis. So, what will removing these things accomplish?

I really want to know.

PS: for the record,  I  don't care either way whether they stay or go. I do know this though. Removing those things will cost money. Wouldn't that money be better spent on the community? That's the only thing that sways my opinion to leaving them alone.

Removing the Confederate artifacts is itself the end sought for me. 

Will removing the statues and other paraphernalia provide a panacea for all of the various problems that ail the community?  Of course not.  But that is a onerous standard that no other proposed ordinance or legislation has ever been required to meet.  You didn't require that of the various ordinances that made Jacksonville Municipal Stadium/Alltel/Everbank field a reality, even though the proponents (I am one, BTW) argued about the numerous tangible benefits having the stadium would have on the community (though many economists assert the economic benefit a stadium provided to a community is vastly overrated).  The City Council could pass an ordinance regarding parking meters. Although related to cars, nobody would reasonably anticipate improvements to all automobile related issues in a community, like the inability of drivers to comprehend safe following distances, yield, etc. to flow from the passing of the ordinance.  Such a standard certainly was not mandated of the efforts to erect those contemptible statues in the first place, nor was it required to change the name of the school that was originally to be called Valhalla high school to Nathan B. Forrest.  It's disingenuous to require that of any proposal to remove the statues while not mandating a similar panacea effect for all proposed ordinances, to say nothing of the fact a statute covering the myriad problems society has would likely violate the single subject requirement.

Your screed about the standard of living is laughable.  Aside from the fact it presumes Africa has no electricity or air conditioning or other modern amenities, it presumes that the addition of a few creature comforts is worth the price of one's freedom.  If a white guy decided to move from Kentucky, one of the poorest states in the union to California for the mere opportunity for a better standard of living, conservatives would be outraged if it meant that California reserved the right to deprive him of any and every opportunity to enjoy whatever "improvements" he may have experienced from the move.  To take this from the abstract to the more tangible and historical, George Washington and the founding fathers lived in places that were less established than England.  None of the American cities at the time were as advanced as London was.  They didn't have the creature comforts we take for granted today.  Under your rationale, they had no reason whatsoever to revolt. The suggestion that air conditioning is worth the freedom of self determination is bigoted, condescending, and insulting.

While I am in one of my rare appearances here, I am going to address some other points raised not only here, but elsewhere.

History-the assertion by Neo Confederates that taking down of Confederate statues is an attempt to change history is ludicrous on many levels.  First, it presumes that a person or event has no historical significance or educational worth if he/she/it is not commemorated via statue.  Somehow, people have managed to learn about the Teapot Dome scandal without a plethora of statues commemorating it.  Along that same point, none of you deny the Monica Lewinski scandal happened, yet none of you are clamoring for a statue memorializing it.  Granted that would be quite the depiction in granite or bronze, but as of yet, none of you have called for it.  Is there no historical or educational value to learning about an adulterous president lying about an affair while in office?  Furthermore, the Neo Confederates who take the stance that history is inviolate betray their own arguments when they ignore the history of the very people they seek to honor.  They assert that the Civil War was not about slavery and racism in their after the fact attempt at PR to make the Confederacy less malignant.  Yet somehow, the very word of the leaders of the Confederacy uttered at the time of the war, and the actions of the Confederate states etched in writing at the time of their secession are not worthy of mention in the many years I have had these debates.  Alexander Stephens was vice president of the Confederacy.  His "Cornerstone of the Confederacy" speech outlined the specific reasons and rationales fir secession.  In relevant part  "But not to be tedious in enumerating the numerous changes for the better, allow me to allude to one other though last, not least. The new constitution has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution African slavery as it exists amongst us the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the “rock upon which the old Union would split.” He was right. What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact. But whether he fully comprehended the great truth upon which that rock stood and stands, may be doubted. The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old constitution, were that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with, but the general opinion of the men of that day was that, somehow or other in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away. This idea, though not incorporated in the constitution, was the prevailing idea at that time. The constitution, it is true, secured every essential guarantee to the institution while it should last, and hence no argument can be justly urged against the constitutional guarantees thus secured, because of the common sentiment of the day. Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the government built upon it fell when the “storm came and the wind blew.”

Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner- stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth." T(Emphasis added)

The states of Mississippi and South Carolina were among the traitorous Confederate states that seceded.  This passage was taken from the Mississippi Declaration of Secession:  "
In the momentous step, which our State has taken of dissolving its connection with the government of which we so long formed a part, it is but just that we should declare the prominent reasons which have induced our course.

 

Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery - the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product, which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin. "  (Emphasis added).

This from South Carolina...

"These ends it endeavored to accomplish by a Federal Government, in which each State was recognized as an equal, and had separate control over its own institutions. The right of property in slaves was recognized by giving to free persons distinct political rights, by giving them the right to represent, and burthening them with direct taxes for three-fifths of their slaves; by authorizing the importation of slaves for twenty years; and by stipulating for the rendition of fugitives from labor.

We affirm that these ends for which this Government was instituted have been defeated, and the Government itself has been made destructive of them by the action of the non-slaveholding States. Those States have assume the right of deciding upon the propriety of our domestic institutions; and have denied the rights of property established in fifteen of the States and recognized by the Constitution; they have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery; they have permitted open establishment among them of societies, whose avowed object is to disturb the peace and to eloign the property of the citizens of other States. They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes; and those who remain, have been incited by emissaries, books and pictures to servile insurrection.
For twenty-five years this agitation has been steadily increasing, until it has now secured to its aid the power of the common Government. Observing the forms of the Constitution, a sectional party has found within that Article establishing the Executive Department, the means of subverting the Constitution itself. A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all the States north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States, whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery. He is to be entrusted with the administration of the common Government, because he has declared that that "Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free," and that the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction.
This sectional combination for the submersion of the Constitution, has been aided in some of the States by elevating to citizenship, persons who, by the supreme law of the land, are incapable of becoming citizens; and their votes have been used to inaugurate a new policy, hostile to the South, and destructive of its beliefs and safety.
On the 4th day of March next, this party will take possession of the Government. It has announced that the South shall be excluded from the common territory, that the judicial tribunals shall be made sectional, and that a war must be waged against slavery until it shall cease throughout the United States.
The guaranties of the Constitution will then no longer exist; the equal rights of the States will be lost. The slaveholding States will no longer have the power of self-government, or self-protection, and the Federal Government will have become their enemy.
Sectional interest and animosity will deepen the irritation, and all hope of remedy is rendered vain, by the fact that public opinion at the North has invested a great political error with the sanction of more erroneous religious belief.
We, therefore, the People of South Carolina, by our delegates in Convention assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, have solemnly declared that the Union heretofore existing between this State and the other States of North America, is dissolved, and that the State of South Carolina has resumed her position among the nations of the world, as a separate and independent State; with full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent States may of right do. "

(Emphasis added)

This from Alabama  "[b]Sec 2. Be it further declared and ordained by the people of the State of Alabama in Convention assembled, That all powers over the Territory of said State, and over the people thereof, heretofore delegated to the Government of the United States of America, be and they are hereby withdrawn from said Government, and are hereby resumed and vested in the people of the State of Alabama.[/b]

[b]And as it is the desire and purpose of the people of Alabama to meet the slaveholding States of the South, who may approve such purpose, in order to frame a provisional as well as permanent Government upon the principles of the Constitution of the United States,[/b]"

(Emphasis added)


Stephens was there.  He was no fiction of people bent on maligning the good name of the south.  Alabama, Mississippi and South Carolina were there too.  They knew why they seceded and said so.  No revisionist history here, except by the neo Confederates trying to Jedi mind trick the Confederacy into moral agency after the fact.  If any of you acknowledged these truths, the "history argument" might have a veneer of truth.

The argument that the assault on Confederate monuments is an assault on white history is also patently silly.  You don't have to be white to know white history long preceded the rise and defeat of the Confederacy, and cannot factually or sensibly be constrained to that four year period of time.  Yet it is conservative whites who willfully constrain the entirety of white history to that four year period marked by public pronouncements of racism, support of slavery, treason, and the physical destruction of the very culture you purport to love.  Do you mean to assert whites cannot accomplish anything unless they are oppressing non whites?  When you conflate confederate history with white history, that is EXACTLY the effect.





 

If something can corrupt you, you're corrupted already.
- Bob Marley