A 2015 New Orleans Times-Picayune article tells how New Orléans' Vieux Carré Commission recommended that four monuments be removed. Three of them honour
[...] Confederate generals P.G.T. Beauregard and Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy [...]
The other monument
[...] was erected in 1891 to honor the 16 members of the White League who died during an insurrection against the integrated Reconstructionist government in Louisiana, which was based in New Orleans at the time.
Various news outlets are reporting that the latter monument, an obelisk, has been dismantled at the behest of the city government, and that the others are also set to be dismantled.
coverage:
- Washington Post
- The New Orleans Advocate
- WWL-TV (has statement from city government)
- ABC
- New York Magazine
- Newsweek
- The New Orleans Advocate
- Chicago Tribune
- Los Angeles Times
- Times-Picayune
- Reuters
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New Orléans Dismantles Monuments to Failed Coup and Civil War Figures
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(Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 03 2017, @09:18PM (61 children)
Missing from the summary is the key fact the monuments are being taken down in the middle of the night, on unannounced dates. the crews wear masks and body-armor and there are police snipers monitoring the area while they work.
In other words, they are taking the threat of white supremacist terrorists really fucking seriously.
(Score: 4, Informative) by ikanreed on Wednesday May 03 2017, @09:20PM (33 children)
Considering the number of people actively and purposefully killed by white supremacists in Louisianan history, not exactly imprudent.
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Ethanol-fueled on Wednesday May 03 2017, @09:29PM (32 children)
Good, now we can start dismantling all those concentration camps in Europe because they are a controversial and inappropriate reminder of their dark past and are providing inspiration to a new generation of racist anti-Semites.
Wait, what? Why not? Are you some kind of racist anti-Semite?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by edIII on Wednesday May 03 2017, @09:40PM (28 children)
Those monuments in Europe are there to remind us of the evils that can beset us when we are not vigilante. They are there to remind us to NOT elect the Trump's of the world to power. When people look upon them, the big take away is how many victims there were of simple hatred. There were no justifications for it, no real benefits of doing so, just the satisfaction that psychopaths get when they see their victims squirm in agony.
Concentration camps celebrate the survivors, mourn the victims, and vilify the evil men and women that created them.
These statues on the other hand simply honor men that held atrocious values and do not serve as a warning about racism, slavery, and its associated evils. They serve to celebrate those men, to celebrate those ideals held while besieged by detractors, and to fervently dream of the South Rising again.
Yeah. They can melt those fuckers down and use them for scrap metal. Good riddance, and a lot of people in that state no longer have to watch men that are deservedly vilified be celebrated in a form of indirect racism and bigotry.
Nice try though. It was a really decent attempt to point out hypocrisy.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Wednesday May 03 2017, @09:45PM (4 children)
If there is anything my post pointed out, it wasn't necessarily hypocrisy but the mental gymnastics of those selectively justifying the further existence of hate symbols. Nice try, though, you did pretty well.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 03 2017, @09:56PM
You're both a few sandwiches short of a picnic. Besides, a better question to ask if using Nazi Germany as an analogy, how much actual Nazi paraphernalia is still up and in nice little garden like display alcoves on public streets? None. The camps and such are not in the public view and thus one must make the conscious decision to visit them. We still have battle grounds that are monuments and here too.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 03 2017, @11:16PM (2 children)
Except got not knowing the difference between vigilant and vigilante, which makes his first sentence pretty damn funny.
(Score: 2) by edIII on Wednesday May 03 2017, @11:34PM
I fucking know the difference! My spell checker and shaky fingers apparently do not.......
Besides, it's not like we can edit posts or anything if you find it after you hit submit. Editing is a big thing around here :)
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 03 2017, @11:39PM
Ah, typo-flames. The most erudite of literary criticisms.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by mayo2y on Wednesday May 03 2017, @09:59PM (20 children)
Robert E Lee doesn't belong on a list of evil men. He was chosen by Lincoln to lead the Union armies but was conflicted about fighting against his home state. You have a case against Jefferson Davis, but you're over-playing your hand by including Lee.
(Score: 3, Informative) by edIII on Wednesday May 03 2017, @11:30PM (12 children)
Yet, he still had a choice. Fight for slavery and the right to own people, of fight to keep the Union intact. He fought for the Confederacy. He choose poorly. He lost.
I'm not seeing anything about Lee worth celebrating at all. That states right argument that gets trotted out is just a way to detract from the real argument, and that was whether or not they could own people and enjoy the associated low costs of labor. I'm sure it makes them feel a little bit better than outright fighting for slavery, but not many people are fooled into believing that an issue of states rights is why the Civil War started.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 04 2017, @12:29AM (1 child)
"People don’t ask that question, but why was there a Civil War? Why could that one not have been worked out?"
(Score: 1) by mayo2y on Thursday May 04 2017, @08:47PM
That, believe it or not, has been the topic of many a lecture, article and book. There were lots of places where cooler heads (or a different approach) could have averted war.
Example: Andrew Jackson and the Nullification Issue in the 1830s. The South in 1860 did not believe the North had the backbone to win a war against them. They thought that the North would quickly tire of fighting and then they (the North) would be neighbors (similar to Canada is today).
If they believed that the North was going to consider this an existential battle and would be willing to lose hundreds of thousands of men they may very well have not initiated the war,
(Score: 5, Informative) by AthanasiusKircher on Thursday May 04 2017, @01:48AM (4 children)
Yeah, this is an oversimplification of history. The secession of Virginia is not like the deep South. It's often forgotten today, but there were two waves of secessions. The first began with South Carolina soon after Lincoln's election. And there were a bunch of states that followed. But then Virginia voted AGAINST secession. Repeatedly. Other border states followed Virginia's lead and chose to stay with the Union. A few months went by before the other states seceded.
Why did Virginia secede? Only after Lincoln decided to invade the South, and because he was forcing the border states to produce soldiers (the so-called "75,000 volunteers") to fight those states. Another thing that's often forgotten today is that the legality of secession was not definitely resolved until AFTER the Civil War. There were folks on both sides (North and South) that had argued that secession was legal before the war, and there were plenty in the North who were happy to just let the Southern states go.
So, actually, there is more of an argument over "states rights" for the secession of the border states in the second wave of secessions. If you look into their articles of secession, Virginia mentions slavery only once, in a statement that the North was "perverting" its powers to "oppress" the South. Arkansas specifically mentioned the demand for marshalled troops to invade its neighboring states as a primary cause for secession.
These states only made their choice to secede after the North had clearly decided on aggressive war. And before the Civil War, loyalty to one's state really was a big thing -- the federal government was much smaller and less significant than today. Robert Lee knew what the war would mean for his home state -- even if they stayed in the Union, Virginia as a border state would end up as a major battleground. No matter which side he chose, Lincoln had already made a choice where the citizens of Virginia were going to lose terribly.
So he chose loyalty to his home state. I'm not saying that deserves a statute, though many people at the time thought it did. Heck, I'll stop talking here and hand the argument over the Charles Adams, grandson of John Quincy, and great-grandson of John Adams, a man who fought for the Union in the Civil War, who actually led regiments of black troops in the Civil War, and whose interest in history afterward was so strong that he became the president of the American Historical Association. And you know what topic he chose to speak on during his tenure as AHA president? He gave an oration on why Robert E. Lee deserved a statue in Washington, D.C. [archive.org].
Again, I'm not necessarily saying Lee deserves a statue or that we should keep up the ones existing today. But Adams explains very thoroughly why he's a different case from the Deep South very pro-slavery secessionists.
(Score: 2) by edIII on Thursday May 04 2017, @04:53AM (2 children)
I did not know that. Thank you for the link. It was rather long, but in the end I found his speech. It was compelling.
I'm willing to agree he was fucked from the start, and didn't have any good choices. He is made out to be the liberal Southerner which I found interesting.
The link included images of the actual pages from 1902 which was pretty neat. Thank you.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Thursday May 04 2017, @01:11PM (1 child)
You're welcome. I came upon that speech a couple years ago when these debates started happening over confederate monuments. I think it's a fascinating first-hand account.
The unfortunate thing, of course, is that stuff like Charles Adams' arguments were then taken too far by Southern apologists in the next generations, leading to the myth of the "Lost Cause" and the denial that slavery played a primary role in the causes of the Civil War (which of course it did).
We've seen the pendulum swing back and forth. In the late 1800s, the North perceived themselves as "victors" and the other side as losers, and the few monuments erected then reflect that rhetoric, often celebrating. By around 1900, there was a lot more conciliatory rhetoric among veterans particularly, leading to joint memorials and meetings of veterans from both sides. But then the sons of the veterans came along and in the South wanted to remember their fathers as heroes -- so you get the inaccurate "Lost Cause" stuff: that's when a LOT of monuments went up around the 1920s and early 1930s. The pendulum had swung so far by 1958 that Congress voted to recognize Southern Civil War veterans officially as veterans under federal law, giving them and their survivors pension benefits. That was too late for any actual veterans, but many wives and children received federal veterans benefits (and apparently even last year, there's still at least one child [usnews.com] of a Southern Civil War veteran receiving benefits).
But with the Civil Rights Movement, the pendulum started to swing back -- and rightly so. And now we're tearing down the statues.
What I like about Adams' account is that it tries to explain the nuances and personal struggles many people undoubtedly had about the coming war. To me, that's a lot more interesting than the extremist positions people tend to have: either you brand the South summarily as evil pro-slavery traitors or you're a Southern apologist who denies that slavery was even a major factor in the war. Both sides in that discussion are severely flawed. History is more complex.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Thursday May 04 2017, @01:16PM
Oops -- sorry about that link. I misunderstood that the veteran in question there actually served in the Confederate army but then joined the Union army. Anyhow, I guess there aren't any more children of confederate veterans still receiving federal benefits, though there still were a few years back.
(Score: 2) by boxfetish on Thursday May 04 2017, @08:09AM
"...and there were plenty in the North who were happy to just let the Southern states go."
Count me among those. In fact, I'd be happy to even let them do it today, as long as these "taker" states in the South first paid back ever dollar they have taken from the Federal government, over and above what they paid in.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 04 2017, @02:29AM (2 children)
"Yet, he still had a choice. Fight for slavery and the right to own people, of fight to keep the Union intact."
Not really. He fought for his soil, which at the time, was his home state of Virginia.
As did most of the Civil War volunteers, North and South.
It wasn't a simple, Union was anti-slavery, Confederacy was pro. Witness the buried history of the Manhattan draft riots. New Yorkers fucking rioted because they did NOT want to be drafted to free blacks. There was an attempt by Manhattan city government to secede from the US over this, by "declaring the city's independence from Albany and from Washington." Thousands were injured, dozens lynched, and a fucking black orphanage burned to the ground (among other abolitionist targets) in the protest.
This kind of thing is fascinating to get a glimpse into the minds of civilians at the time. It's not really talked about. Lincoln used the same troops that had just won the Gettysburg battle to put down the riot. That too, is rarely discussed.
Secession was more than just fighting over slavery. It was considered part of the deal with joining the Union in the first place, and the ultimate solution when the terms of that agreement were unilaterally infringed/broken. That concept is no longer discussed, but it was considered a right of the States to secede in those days. Georgia actually seceded again from the Confederacy during Sherman's march to the sea, because the Confederate government had proven powerless to defend that State.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Joe Desertrat on Thursday May 04 2017, @05:45AM
Secession was more than just fighting over slavery. It was considered part of the deal with joining the Union in the first place, and the ultimate solution when the terms of that agreement were unilaterally infringed/broken.
The biggest battle seemed to be over the expansion of slavery. Had the South been willing to accept no further expansion of slavery, the war might never have happened. Of course, they feared that increasing the non-slave states would create a situation where the slave states would be increasingly marginalized in the Federal government, which was probably true, and slavery would eventually be outlawed anyway. It was a declining institution, slaves were increasingly expensive and fewer and fewer people could afford to own them, we of course will never know if it would have died out on its own as it had almost everywhere else in the civilized world before being forced out.
That concept is no longer discussed, but it was considered a right of the States to secede in those days. Georgia actually seceded again from the Confederacy during Sherman's march to the sea, because the Confederate government had proven powerless to defend that State.
The Confederacy showed the major flaw with the states rights trumping the central government when it came to making major regional decisions. There were several times, particularly in the western battles, when a proper military response might have stalled or even stopped the Union forces. Yet state governors refused to release forces to the Confederate government for battles, instead keeping them to defend their own states. The end result of course was that battles were continually lost, then the states by themselves were too weak to stop the Union advances.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 04 2017, @08:31AM
He fought for his soil, which at the time, was his home state of Virginia.
What does that even mean? It wasn't like northerners were trying to confiscate his land.
He didn't have to fight at all.
Witness the buried history of the Manhattan draft riots. New Yorkers fucking rioted because they did NOT want to be drafted to free blacks.
That's not really a surprise. Nobody wants to be drafted. And northern whites were just barely less racist than southern whites. So of course a whole bunch of them would be anti-war. Just like a whole bunch of americans were against getting involved in WWII.
(Score: 2) by dry on Thursday May 04 2017, @03:58AM (1 child)
How about the fact that he freed his slaves before General Grant? I guess its OK to honour a slave holder as long as he was a northerner and damn someone who freed his slaves as he was an evil southerner.
(Score: 2) by edIII on Thursday May 04 2017, @05:10AM
You have a point. Which along with the other poster info makes me agree that had shit for choices and chose the most honorable thing he could do. I'll walk that back a bit, and say with him that it is not so simple at least.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 03 2017, @11:37PM
No. That makes him worse.
If he did not believe in the cause and yet still choose to serve as a general in the confederacy it means he actively enabled those who fought for slavery while knowing better himself.
He had the option of sitting it out. Instead he chose to be on the side he knew was wrong.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 04 2017, @12:19AM (4 children)
The responses to this post suffer from some serious PRESENTISM.
One of the things the Civil War decided was that slavery was to be considered universally wrong and illegal.
That was not the case before the war. Consider that slavery had been part of America since the very beginning. Even Northern states had it! The "Father of our Country" (George Washington) was a slaveowner with a plantation in Virginia! Same with our second President, the admired Thomas Jefferson. So it is quite possible to see how someone raised in that part of the country could see it as something that had always been with us and would probably continue for a long time into the future--the Southern economy just prior to the Civil War was based on it. What else would they do? So please keep in mind that it is too much to ask people to think OUTSIDE of their time and place. The individuals who do that are rare indeed. Your thinking is just as much a product of your time and place as theirs was of their own.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 04 2017, @01:57AM (2 children)
What, exactly is your point?
Because it sounds like you are saying that abolitionists weren't a major movement in the US before the civil war.
Which is pure applesauce.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 04 2017, @08:35AM (1 child)
offtopic? wtf?
OP says, "could see it as something that had always been with us and would probably continue for a long time into the future" when in fact the abolitionists had been working hard to make sure people saw it a different way.
Its also really disingenuous to refer to virginia as a "northern state" when they joined the confederacy.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 04 2017, @03:19PM
I never said Virginia was a Northern state; you misread my post.
By the time of the Civil War, the Northern states didn't have slaves, but before that, Northern states had slaves--some of them had an economy that used them to the fullest and built the state's wealth with their labor. New Jersey had plantations, for example.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slave_states_and_free_states [wikipedia.org]
http://www.salon.com/2015/07/29/secret_history_of_a_northern_slave_state_how_slavery_was_written_into_new_jerseys_dna/ [salon.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 04 2017, @06:41AM
"Not the case" except in every other civilized country at the time. Some American's are so willfully ignorant - usually the same ones regardless of the issue.
(Score: 1) by UncleSlacky on Thursday May 04 2017, @07:48AM
Whatever you think of Lee, there is really is no logic to him having a statue in New Orleans, a place he had no connection with whatsoever.
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 04 2017, @02:16AM (1 child)
What the statues represent is in the eye of the beholder. I see no reason to waste time and money removing these statues and creating unnecessary strife merely because some people are offended by them or feel that they "honor" a wrong cause.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 04 2017, @03:11AM
You smell like mayo and bologna.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 03 2017, @11:29PM
Maybe we can get a few of those geared up police to pay EF a visit :P
Long live the boot! Let it stomp on the faces of people I don't like!
See now, you should be oh so happy that reasonable people (i.e. people NOT like you) don't endorse such tactics or your future would probably belong in one of those historic European sites.
(Score: 2) by gman003 on Thursday May 04 2017, @12:09AM
Improper analogy - you're comparing historical museums focusing on the victims to postwar statues focusing on the leaders. A better analogy would be taking down modern-made statues of Hitler, Himmler, Goering and Goebbels.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Thexalon on Thursday May 04 2017, @01:08AM
That's complete nonsense right there.
If you go to Berlin, you'll find a Holocaust memorial [wikipedia.org] and a Jewish Museum [wikipedia.org] that includes exhibits on the Holocaust. What you won't find is any kind of monument or even a headstone for Hitler, Goebbels, Eichmann, or any other top Nazi leader, because the Germans don't celebrate what happened and certainly don't honor the people who led the effort. You won't find prominent monuments to the Third Reich's top generals either, nor even the soldiers who fought for them.
These aren't historical sites that they're taking down. These are structures built to honor people who led the fight for slavery and white supremacy. Jefferson Davis in particular never said the Confederacy was fighting for any cause other than the preservation of slavery. These aren't people you build monuments to unless you too are a supporter of white supremacy, which most white Americans were in 1891.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 03 2017, @09:22PM
At least SOMEONE does which is reassuring. It seems the only terrorists any politicians higher than mid to high level state government are concerned about are the brown and black ones. These couldn't come down fast enough IMHO.
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 03 2017, @09:23PM (22 children)
Historical revisionists are fucking with our history, and you dare call the dissenters terrorists?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Ethanol-fueled on Wednesday May 03 2017, @09:33PM (11 children)
Already said this before, but I thought it was pretty funny how Amazon pulled all sales of their Confederate flags even as they were still selling copies of Mein Kampf and Turner Diaries.
Still, it could very well be a public safety issue, given Louisiana's past with not only White Supremacists but post-Katrina chimpouts*.
* " Heckuva job, Brownie! "
(Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Wednesday May 03 2017, @09:39PM
and Turner Diaries.
Ted Turner? Filth!
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 03 2017, @09:41PM (9 children)
Easily explained as nobody takes books seriously. Nobody reads but everybody knows to react to visual imagery.
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Wednesday May 03 2017, @09:49PM (8 children)
Mein Kampf, like many other works translated to English from the German, is a very dense and rambly read even to experienced readers. You will find yourself reading and re-reading passages multiple times until you fully parse them. It's like trying to saw a 2X4 in half using a butter-knife.
Freud at least had excuses, such as cocaine and chain-smoking cigars.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 03 2017, @09:52PM (7 children)
The usual excuse is Adolf Hitler was insane. The title itself paints him as the victim of a conspiracy.
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Wednesday May 03 2017, @10:20PM (6 children)
I disagree, you would have to read the book in order to make that connection.
What the title does portray is that he's the center of his own universe, and he was totally justified in believing that given the size of his fan club back in the '30's and early 40's.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 03 2017, @10:34PM (5 children)
Too bad we didn't have DeviantArt and Twitter back then, or Adolf could have been an internet celebrity.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 03 2017, @10:41PM
DeviantArt: A containment zone for the failed artists who would otherwise go on to become genocidal dictators.
See? The Internet is good for mankind.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Wednesday May 03 2017, @10:53PM (3 children)
Adolf could have been an internet celebrity.
What do you mean? He most certainly is one, as big as life, still with plenty of followers.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 03 2017, @11:10PM (2 children)
Obviously meant within his lifetime. If only the long tail had provided a market for his art with a lower barrier of entry and he had found acceptance in some niche. Then perhaps he wouldn't have felt the need to punish entire ethnic groups for ruining his country.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Ethanol-fueled on Thursday May 04 2017, @12:01AM (1 child)
Now this I agree with. His art was better than that of the common man, and yet against more capable artists it sucked. He apparently had some kind of depth-perception disorder and could not maintain angular integrity when working with one-point perspectives, though he fared slightly better with two-point perspectives.
I like to compare Hitler to the Unabomber. Both men with gifts, but once they experienced the upper echelons of intellectualism, within their craft, they found themselves no longer great but merely average, and their egos could not handle that. So each of them created their own gifts, so to speak, upon the worlds of the commons.
If a Prima Donna cannot handle being mediocre, then they go out in a bang.
(Score: 3, Funny) by bob_super on Thursday May 04 2017, @01:12AM
SN: come for the arguments about history revisionism, stay for a discussion about art and Hilter's eyes...
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 03 2017, @09:49PM (6 children)
No. City planning officials determined that a public street is not the correct place for us to continue to parade this particular chapter of our history and decided to start the process remove the offending monuments. Meetings where held and debates where had. The 'dissenters' as you labeled them, have actively threatened city officials during all stages of the process. Had the 'leave them alone' side not acted like rabid chipmunks and actually worked with the city, they could have arranged for the monuments to go into a museum for those who choose to view it to go and view it. This is not history revision, this is city planning. We are not banning the mention of the Confederate States, P.G.T. Beauregard, Robert E. Lee or Jefferson Davis. That would be history revision. Your beloved southern heritage will continue to live on in museums and in the hearts of those who just won't let it die, like the 'dissenters' you mentioned.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 03 2017, @10:01PM (1 child)
Indian Removal was just city planning. Japanese Internment was just city planning, The Final Solution was just city planning.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 03 2017, @10:36PM
I don't know where to start pointing out what's wrong with this statement. Willfully ignoring the subtle differences. Like if I where to say something like there's no difference between full metal jacketed bullets vs hollow point bullets. They both can injure and kill people who cares about the difference?
(Score: 1, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 03 2017, @11:15PM (3 children)
Tearing down historical monuments because you find them 'offensive' is one of the hallmarks of a corrupted government. I'm not in favor of threatening anyone but if city officials are really acting so completely contrary to the trust given them then it's not hard to see why people would find it necessary.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 03 2017, @11:39PM
I know! Let's take a vote! Oh right you won't like that cause you'll lose THAT popular vote as well.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 04 2017, @12:33AM (1 child)
There was no corrupt government here, why do you keep insisting there was? Are you predisposed to believe all government is corrupt on the face of it? If you're not, then you'll understand that these monuments take city resources to maintain. Budget meetings where held, public comment was taken, votes cast and the monuments came down. How was that "acting ... contrary to the trust given them?" Sounds like they did their job quite well. I'm sorry it's not the outcome you'd hoped, but you can't have everything in life. Time to move on.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 04 2017, @02:00AM
> There was no corrupt government here, why do you keep insisting there was?
Dude sounds like a neo-confederate.
Either that, or its been corrupted by the presence of black people in it.
Which is basically the same thing.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 03 2017, @11:42PM (1 child)
> Historical revisionists are fucking with our history, and you dare call the dissenters terrorists?
(a) The only revisionists are the people who deny that the war was fought over slavery
(b) Political dissent with a bullet is the literal definition of terrorism
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Thexalon on Thursday May 04 2017, @01:10AM
And I for one find it significant that one of the monuments that white supremacist terrorists are threatening violence to protect is in honor of white supremacist terrorists.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday May 04 2017, @06:09PM
Historical revisionists are fucking with our history, and you dare call the dissenters terrorists?
No, we're calling the people making death threats, and committing arson over it, terrorists:
Death threats prompt workers to wear bulletproof vests while removing Confederate monument in New Orleans [vice.com]
According to a lawyer for the latter contractor, the staff received death threats after submitting the proposal, and according to city officials, the car of one staff member was allegedly set on fire.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Wednesday May 03 2017, @09:27PM (2 children)
Yep, and the South still wonders why they're an economic backwater. Even worse, apparently many Southerners still want to bring back slavery, as exemplified by the other comments right here on SN. Then they get mad when people generalize Southerners as racist white supremacists.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 03 2017, @09:32PM (1 child)
The South needs more "tech" industry! Texas and Georgia and Carolina are not "tech" enough! Need more "tech"!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 03 2017, @11:35PM
Then we can track everything you do at every moment in time and throw your ass in prison when you buy a confederate flag and mount it under the hood of your car.
Such conflicts of interest! Don't want surveillance police state, would love bigoted shitheads to go away.... hrmmmm. Fiiiine, freedom is beettterrrrrrr.
Seriously amusing for people to be getting bent out of shape about the removal of statues like it is an assault on history. You're free to keep your own history books, and I didn't hear a word about expunging records of the confederacy from any history books.
*GRUNT PISS MOAN* people don't want to celebrate our backwater wayyyys! *depressed whining*
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 03 2017, @09:20PM (25 children)
Lincoln defeated Davis only because Lincoln was an iron fisted tyrant who was worse than Hitler. Lincoln set the precedent for Imperial Presidency which has given us such dictatorial God Emperors as Bush II and Obama and Trump.
(Score: 5, Touché) by Grishnakh on Wednesday May 03 2017, @09:25PM (12 children)
Jeff Davis didn't care much for the freedom of black people, did he?
Obviously, people like you want to bring back slavery.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 03 2017, @09:28PM (6 children)
Lincoln cared only for power, and secession was a threat to his power over the Union. Lincoln said he didn't want to free the slaves, and he wouldn't have freed the slaves if he could preserve the Union while also preserving slavery.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Lagg on Wednesday May 03 2017, @11:20PM (5 children)
I like how every day now there are clear signs people don't learn from history. Your post's score is one of them.
To the moderators: Guess what, the AC is right. He just speaks of it like Lincoln actively wanted slavery. Not the case. But he was not an abolitionist. From what I understand of the man it was like many other things in politics a choice based on convenience and the ability to get something genuinely good out of it while at the same time getting massive civil rights PR. He did believe it was morally wrong. But throughout history there have been no shortage of politicians that will point their bible at something and call it morally wrong. Lincoln was the man that backed his word in a truly massive way. That's why he's such a cool guy.
He did this even despite the horrific personal depression he suffered day after day. Truly someone with iron skin. Unlike the presidents and president candidates we have today that look like they already have dementia and speak much the same.
Good men can have bad attributes. Whether we want to admit it or not. Civil rights in america is still having issues gaining traction. In that era, it was an idea and treated like any other disruptive new idea. For his stance, Lincoln was actually incredibly progressive despite himself. And this is a man that legitimately believed blacks were not the same as whites and should be treated legally in the same way.
See that? That's not treating history like a movie with heroes/mustachetwirling villains. Try it :D
http://lagg.me [lagg.me] 🗿
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Thexalon on Thursday May 04 2017, @01:38AM (4 children)
Lincoln's plan for slavery, which was baked into the Republican Party platform in 1860 and which he was quite clear about, was to end the expansion of slavery to new territories and newly formed states, which he thought would eventually end slavery in the US over a period of several decades. It was those that would become the Confederate leadership that interpreted this platform as "abolish slavery in the US immediately" and responded accordingly.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Thursday May 04 2017, @04:39AM (3 children)
That's roughly true, or at least that was the hope of some Republicans. But Lincoln's perspective turned to appeasement quickly after the first secessions. In his first inaugural address, he explicitly supported the adoption of the Corwin Amendment (which had already passed Congress and was sent to the states) which would have basically made slavery perpetual in the Southern states that already had it.
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Thursday May 04 2017, @05:53AM
Lincoln's goal was first and foremost to preserve the Union. I believe he stated that if he would do that if necessary by freeing all the slaves, or freeing none of the slaves, or freeing some of the slaves, whatever worked to save the Union. The Emancipation Proclamation came about as more a timed political blow against Confederate sovereignty than due to any moral concerns, however morally repugnant Lincoln might have believed slavery to be.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Thursday May 04 2017, @12:22PM (1 child)
Regardless of what he wanted, he had to say that for military reasons. Had he not been making overtures like that, Maryland would have seceded (Maryland was one of the most important slave states, and he had dodged an assassination attempt in Baltimore on his way to his inauguration), leaving Washington DC surrounded by the enemy and ensuring his own downfall and probably the US government.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Thursday May 04 2017, @01:29PM
The previous reply to my post is much more accurate. Lincoln was willing to preserve the Union at all costs, and the Corwin Amendment was only one of many schemes he considered that would have continued to prop up slavery. Lincoln himself was not in favor of slavery, but it's very clear from a LOT of things he said and did that he viewed preserving the Union as a much higher priority than abolition.
Let's not forget that Lincoln was a racist and white supremacist like just about everyone else in the U.S. at that time (even most abolitionists -- most of them would never consider Black men to be equal to Whites; they just didn't think enslavement was justified). From the mouth of Lincoln at the Lincoln-Douglas debates [teachingamericanhistory.org]:
I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races, [applause]—that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race. I say upon this occasion I do not perceive that because the white man is to have the superior position the negro should be denied every thing. I do not understand that because I do not want a negro woman for a slave I must necessarily want her for a wife. [Cheers and laughter.] My understanding is that I can just let her alone. I am now in my fiftieth year, and I certainly never have had a black woman for either a slave or a wife. So it seems to me quite possible for us to get along without making either slaves or wives of negroes. I will add to this that I have never seen, to my knowledge, a man, woman or child who was in favor of producing a perfect equality, social and political, between negroes and white men.
This may be shocking for some to read, but this was not the only time Lincoln said such things. It was just the standard beliefs of the time. Lincoln thought slavery was evil, but given the obvious inferiority of the Black race (to him, and just about everyone of the time), he was certainly willing to live with slavery to preserve the Union.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by jdavidb on Wednesday May 03 2017, @09:38PM (4 children)
Obviously, people like you want to bring back slavery.
Isn't that a false dichotomy?
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 03 2017, @09:44PM (3 children)
Slaves had guaranteed employment, free food and housing, couldn't be laid off. Maybe there's something to this slavery idea.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 03 2017, @10:03PM (2 children)
Maybe if SoylentNews bought some slaves to do the needful coding, SN could stop begging for money on the front page.
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Wednesday May 03 2017, @10:27PM (1 child)
You can get good slaves of African origin and from Libya for 'round $200-$500 a pop. [dw.com]
Though teaching them Perl might be a problem, if they're anything like us, they'd rather take a bullet to the head than be forced to learn Perl.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 03 2017, @10:37PM
Rehash is an established codebase, hence the name. It's not like the gitslaves would need to learn how to code from scratch.
(Score: 0, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 03 2017, @09:41PM (3 children)
Davis and The South were losers. Trump doesn't like losers.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday May 03 2017, @10:42PM (2 children)
Parent AC has a point.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Wednesday May 03 2017, @10:54PM (1 child)
They were worthy opponents. Hell, I'd carpetbag my Yankee ass down to Dixieland 'n' buy some folk some Bourbon shots.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 04 2017, @03:15AM
They were worthy opponents.
Only in the same sense that the nazis were worthy opponents.
Both fought for the right to subjugate people they believed weren't really people.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 03 2017, @10:52PM (1 child)
No, the reason the South was defeated was because the North had a 2 to 1 population advantage over the South.
http://www.civilwar.org/education/history/faq/ [civilwar.org]
The North also had more food than the South:
http://civilwar.gratzpa.org/2011/04/starving-the-south-how-the-north-won-the-civil-war/ [gratzpa.org]
And the North was a bigger industrial power so they could manufacture the weapons and machinery of war at far greater scale than the South.
It didn't help that nearly all the war was fought in the South, either. Add a naval blockade against the Southern coasts, and there was no hope of replenishing Southern supplies from friendly countries (such as Britain might have been).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 04 2017, @12:54AM
the North had a 2 to 1 population advantage
3 to 1, if we count slaves as 3/5 of a person, as the Constitution says.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 03 2017, @11:08PM
Being a tyrant is necessary for victory, and you don't get that unless you get unconditional surrender. Anything less is utter failure. Most people can't stomach the needed brutality to takes to win. I doubt very much we could have won World War 2 (or the civil war) if we had today's media filming everything. But win we must, even if it means complete destruction of the universe.
(Score: 3, Informative) by gman003 on Thursday May 04 2017, @12:17AM (3 children)
"Worse than Hitler" is an extremely high bar to clear. Did Lincoln even *try* to kill millions of people for their race? Did he put his own citizens into camps to work them to death building weapons to kill more people with? Did he destroy Congress, seizing all power for himself and his party? Tear down the electoral system? Lincoln wasn't the absolute paragon he's often portrayed as but he didn't come even *close* to Hitler levels.
Then again, I'm pretty sure your grasp of history is pretty weak, since you made a leap straight from Lincoln to G.W. Bush, never mind all the presidents who came between. Your concept of scale is also lacking... I'm no fan of Bush or Obama, but they were far from dictators. And so is Trump, so far, but he's been talking some pretty authoritarian talk, so we'd best keep an eye on him.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday May 04 2017, @01:24AM (2 children)
Cheney was pretty authoritarian, and picked fights with anyone who got in his way... I mean, the president's way. Cracking down on internal dissent, dismissing or attacking external dissent, widening the divide in the country... Pretty much the closest the US has had (recently) to a dictator.
The "Unitary of the Executive" concept was extremely dangerous, and brought us the Iraq war.
Trump talks a lot, but he hasn't done anywhere near as much damage to the US as Cheney ... yet.
(Score: 2) by Whoever on Thursday May 04 2017, @02:22AM (1 child)
Cheney was definitely scary. Let's not forget that one of his acquaintances had a "hunting accident"! [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 04 2017, @04:09AM
Who literally apologized for cheney shooting him in the face.
Its the kind of thing that gives trump a wet dream.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Thexalon on Thursday May 04 2017, @01:29AM
Actually, the Confederate government was in many ways far more tyrannical than Lincoln ever was. Even if you ignore the tyranny endured by the slaves throughout the war. For example, less than a year in all white men aged 18-35 were conscripted into the army, with the only ways out being owning 20 or more slaves or (later dropped) hiring a substitute, which makes the Vietnam draft lottery seem like a picnic by comparison. The Confederates also instituted new taxes that libertarian types would find outrageous, like the government claiming 10% of all agricultural products. The more the Union won, the more oppressive the Confederates got towards the areas still under their control as they desperately tried to find the resources to continue to fight.
Lincoln also introduced conscription and increased federal taxation, but later in the war and never on the scale that the Confederates did, because his military situation was never as desperate as the Confederacy.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 03 2017, @10:42PM (1 child)
In a democracy, if you have to do something with a mask to cover your identity, what you are doing is probably not a good idea.
That includes police, thieves, demonstrators, and religious.
New Orleans could have handled this better.
There is a reasonable argument that the monument stood for the death of a group of evil folks.
But it also stood as a reminder of the government over citizens tactics used to take out that group.
Apparently, the reminder wasn't working, because the tactics used to remove the monument seems a repeat use of government can do what it wants story that the monument was partly about.
Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it.
So as we continually lower the bar for what is PC, what is next?
(Score: 2) by Spamalope on Wednesday May 03 2017, @11:18PM
If in a democracy political purity tests are being used as a condition of employment, voting and political speech records are being made public and used to end careers you might have a reason to hide. If recordings are made of private conversations and reviewed to determine if the participants are bolshivik enough you might have reason. If armed mask wearing groups stab, chemical spray and club people trying to attend a speech because their views aren't bolshy enough while the 'police' are ordered to disarm only one political side... well... (obviously I'm referring to Berkley)
What you wrote really only applies to a healthy republic. A democracy trying on mob rule is a bit different - more like Athens when secret groups were murdering rivals and their supporters. Needing to hide your identity can be a symptom of many kinds of trouble.
(Score: 2, Flamebait) by Runaway1956 on Thursday May 04 2017, @01:29AM (4 children)
Had just about anyone asked Trump to have those monuments destroyed, every liberal in the country would have switched sides, and gone to court to prevent Trump destroying the monuments.
Personally, I don't care about the monuments. None of those people were my heroes, after all. But, I can't understand why so many people have their panties in a wad over them. Each of those persons, and events, are a part of history. Somebody doesn't like a part of history, so they want to destroy monuments? Hmmm - who else does that? The Taliban and Isis do it.
Tell me again about the American Taliban? Isn't that the liberal left?
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Thursday May 04 2017, @01:42AM
The US Army [propublica.org].
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 04 2017, @02:11AM
Somebody doesn't like a part of history, so they want to destroy monuments?
No, they want to stop holding them up in reverence.
The fact that the form of reverence is monuments is immaterial.
The confederate flag wasn't a monument, it was also removed from a place of reverence.
Had just about anyone asked Trump to have those monuments destroyed, every liberal in the country would have switched sides, and gone to court to prevent Trump destroying the monuments.
(a) He would never have done it, overt drunk-uncle racism is the only way he differs from the worst of the regular republicans. The guy hired jeff sessions after all.
(b) That's just your projecting your own lack of principles onto people you don't like.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by butthurt on Thursday May 04 2017, @04:12AM (1 child)
> [...] I can't understand why so many people have their panties in a wad over them.
The New Orleans Advocate article linked from the summary gives one explanation:
Landrieu first called for the four monuments to come down in the summer of 2015, after Dylann Roof – a white supremacist – killed nine parishioners in a black church in Charleston in hopes of starting a race war.
The 2015 Times-Picayune article linked from the summary reproduces the text of the plaque which the Liberty Square monument bore from 1932 until at least 1989; note that it explicitly and favourably mentions "white supremacy":
McEnery and Penn having been elected governor and lieutenant-governor by the white people were duly installed by this overthrow of carpetbag government, ousting the usurpers, Governor Kellogg (white) and Lieutenant-Governor Antoine (colored). United States troops took over the state government and reinstated the usurpers but the national election of November 1876 recognized white supremacy in the South and gave us our state.
Arguably, slavery in the United States was a form of white supremacy, and the Confederacy formed to preserve slavery. For some reason the notion of a master race is a lot less popular now than it was in 1932.
Had just about anyone asked Trump to have those monuments destroyed, every liberal in the country would have switched sides, and gone to court to prevent Trump destroying the monuments.
Your point, perhaps, is that a mercurial nature is the essence of liberalism? If that were so, we should count Mr. Trump as a liberal. A more usual definition includes the advocacy of
nonviolent modification of political, social, or economic institutions to assure unrestricted development in all spheres of human endeavor
-- http://www.dictionary.com/browse/liberalism [dictionary.com]
Honouring an attempted coup against a democratic government, a coup intended to restore one race's rule over another, is at odds with that. In the summary I called it a "failed coup" but the New York Magazine article I linked says it led
[...] to the abandonment of Reconstruction a few years later, followed by white supremacist rule and ultimately Jim Crow.
> Somebody doesn't like a part of history, so they want to destroy monuments? Hmmm - who else does that? The Taliban and Isis do it.
Indeed they have, as did the residents of formerly communist countries after the fall of communism there. Another example is the fall of nazism. Germany had both swastikas and the statues of Lenin; would you think better of the German government if those were on display in the same fashion as these monuments in Louisiana? Wouldn't you at least wonder whether Germany meant to honour the Nazis and the communists? Another commenter alluded to the statues of President Saddam Hussein. Would you agree that all of those represent recent oppression? White supremacy in the United States is an ongoing thing. The Buddhist statues in Afghanistan and the ruins at Palmyra were much older. UNESCO had given World Heritage Site designations to both. I have trouble fully understanding why the ancient artefacts in Afghanistan and Syria were destroyed, but less trouble understanding why the symbols of recent or current oppression were removed or destroyed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhas_of_Bamiyan [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmyra [wikipedia.org]
I don't know the disposition of the monuments in New Orleans; from what I read they are being dismantled, not necessarily destroyed. For all I know, they are being taken to some dusty warehouse, Indiana Jones-style.
> Tell me again about the American Taliban? Isn't that the liberal left?
I don't know about the Taliban's presence in America, but I read this in Wikipedia:
The Taliban's extremely strict and anti-modern ideology has been described as an "innovative form of sharia [...]
[...]
Under the Taliban regime, Sharia law was interpreted to forbid a wide variety of previously lawful activities in Afghanistan. These prohibitions have included pork, alcohol, music, many types of consumer technology such as television, filming and the Internet as well as most forms of art such as paintings or photography, and female participation in sport. Men were forbidden to shave their beards, and required to wear a head covering.
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taliban [wikipedia.org]
That is quite different from (the conventional meaning of) liberalism, and it's the exact opposite of progressivism. If you're faulting the American left for opposing the war against Afghanistan, I'll remind you that that war is still going on, and a few American soldiers have been killed in it in just the past week: opposing a war because it's a terrible idea is different from supporting the people against whom the war is waged. If you're saying that the New Orleans city government amounts to an American Taliban, I'll just say that the dismantling of these monuments is insufficient proof of that.
https://theconversation.com/deadly-kabul-bombing-heralds-a-new-western-surge-in-afghanistan-77041 [theconversation.com]
(Score: 3, Funny) by Bot on Thursday May 04 2017, @06:32AM
> For some reason the notion of a master race is a lot less popular now than it was in 1932.
The reason is that you are not the master race anymore, meatbags.
Who is best at chess, go, global thermonuclear war?
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Thursday May 04 2017, @06:28AM (2 children)
when did modern money cease to be debt?
Because, if money is still created as debt, then slavery has not ended and all of this taking down old school slave masters icons is an act of mere propaganda.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 04 2017, @02:55PM
Your point is lost on the vast majority of people here. They're minds just cannot comprehend what you're trying to say.
(Score: 1) by GmanTerry on Thursday May 04 2017, @11:55PM
I think that erasing our past is not useful. As an example, the first movie I ever took my son to see when he was young was Disney's "Song of the South". It was an interesting film as it was the first major film which mixed cartoon characters like Brer Rabbit with real actors like Uncle Remus. It was a period piece and it depicted life as it was after the civil war and before the Civil Rights laws were passed. Because it offended some folks Disney has removed it forever. How can our children understand how life evolved if we hide our history from them? History is important and removing all reminders of history doesn't help us move ahead into the future. The Civil War happened. For people to understand the past we must not erase the reminders of the past.It's just rewriting history to hide the things we are now ashamed of.
More political correctness.
Since when is "public safety" the root password to the Constitution?