(06-11-2020, 01:25 AM)JagJohn Wrote:

(06-11-2020, 12:06 AM)americus 2.0 Wrote: Another thing I personally don't care about. The other being the confederate flag/nascar thing. I have friends who are pretty put out by the flag/nascar thing and I don't get it.

I was born in CO and raised in FL by parents/stepparents who were not from the south (CO, AZ & RI) so I was not raised with "southern pride". I never cared or paid attention to the confederate flag or statues or names of schools. That stuff was not important to us growing up and it's not important to me now.

My concern is the freedom being taken away from people who want to display the flag. Who cares if they want to paint a target on their house/vehicle/clothing? Because that's what it is now. If they're adult enough to display it then they are adult enough to deal with possible consequences. At least they have a choice.

Taking away all of this stuff doesn't teach any lessons or change anyone's minds, it just pisses them off. It's not going to make society better because it changes nothing. I suppose these things being gone will make folks feel better until they find something else to be angry about. I tell my Christian friends, you can't legislate morality, people have to want to do the right thing. The same applies here.

There is a reason why the concentration camps in Germany have not been torn down. They serve as a history lesson and reminder of a thing that should never happen again. Having visited Dachau while living in Germany I can assure you that is the feeling you have while there. We can choose to see flags, statues and school names the same way. Or we can just burn it all to the ground.

The huge difference is that places like Auschwitz are kept as a somber reminder of the evils that humans can do to one another. That is a stark contrast to many places in the US. I lived in Charleston, SC for a couple years, and the whole city is set up as a shrine for the Confederacy. Market Street in Charleston was the main slave market in the main slave trading city in America. 40% of slaves that came to America came through Charleston. I hope we can all agree that slavery is one of the greatest tragedies of history. Market Street was where these human beings, stolen from their own land, were then sold like animals into forced labor. And yet Market Street is now the lively party area of town, lined with bars and restaurants catering to predominantly white tourists having a great time in the "holy city". In the middle of the street lies the remains of the original slave market, where you will typically find old black ladies weaving baskets to sell to the tourists. At the top of the street, raised up high so it literally looms over everything, is the 'Daughters of the Confederacy' museum. The whole city is a concrete metaphor for the fact that, even though the south lost the civil war, they wanted to remind everybody who still had the power, and that they weren't going to let it go easily. These things matter, and anyone who truly wants to live in an America where race is no longer an issue needs to confront these things directly.

Thanks for the history lesson. I did not know that about Charleston. Again, I was never exposed to traditional southern pride or history. Whatever we learned in school was what I knew and I'm pretty certain slavery wasn't on the list and that was a long time ago. I don't imagine it's taught now. What you're saying makes sense but I never learned it like you  explained it. 

Stuff like that I get.... Taking down shrines I get. There really is no need for a shrine for any one person IMO. Statues that represent a group of people like the one in Jacksonville that represents the confederate soldiers who died in battle, I don't have a problem with. Iron Mike up here at Fort Bragg represents soldiers of the 82nd Airborne, not just one person. The statues and monuments for all  military (like Iron Mike or the ones in Washington DC) from all wars I don't have a problem with. I never understood the whole idea behind behind statues and shrines of a person anyway.

---