Robert E. Lee statue
Republicans complain about Democrat KKK members from decades past.
Every now and then a conservative commentator says they want to keep one of these statues (presumably to preserve the Republic identity because that's just the way it was).
WTF???
Charlottesville: people marching around with torches. Yeah that's a real good look.
A few people saying "that's not what the flag really means."
Duh. Oh yeah. They WANT it that way.
Granted there's prejudice everywhere, but the difference is the rest of the world doesn't wear it on their sleeves.
So sad.
Edit: plaque could say "America the beautiful, land of the Republic." There ya go.
You know that saying about not learning from history? Erasing it is a really good way to guarantee that forgetting it will happen. It's certainly not being taught in schools, so how will people learn it if they don't know that it should be learned? Avoiding topics because "it makes the kids sad" is BS. We have too many generations of kids who have been coddled when they should have learned about reality. It's hard to block them from the major tragic events, but past history is something that isn't learned in real time, so the way it's presented can be tailored to the age groups, to make it less traumatic. No point showing l little kids videos of people being murdered at, or the bodies being dumped into mass graves at the concentration camps, after all.
History is ugly but people should stop being afraid to learn about it- they might see that they should change their ways.
WWII is a good example of horrible events that Germany dealt with in a way that didn't paint a rosy picture of it. The link below has some good perspectives, IMO.
"For decades, Germany has taken a sober, straightforward approach to explaining its Nazi-era heritage. It has avoided sensationalizing, historical facsimiles or anything that can't be meticulously documented.
"It's an approach that's based on the idea that people shouldn't be intimidated and shocked but informed in a matter of fact, factual way," said Hans-Christian Jasch, a former government lawyer and director of the House of the Wannsee Conference Memorial and Educational Site, a villa in southwest Berlin where 15 high-ranking Nazis conceived the plan to deport and kill Jews during World War II."
"It is not always necessary to show big piles of corpses," Jasch said. "The point is not to overwhelm people with history, yet still grant them access to it." "
There are small signs Germany is more open to ways of talking about its Nazi past.
www.usatoday.com
Maybe it would be better to put the statues in a national museum and use them as an educational tool. They could put them in the "People Suck" section.
