Torch wielding protestors yell Nazi slogans as they defend Confederate statue

[Millhouse]

(05-15-2017, 05:37 PM)Sociopathicsteelerfan Wrote: You could make the same argument with Erwin Rommel, Erich von Manstein, Ewald von Kleist, Erich Hartmann, etc.  All brilliant military minds or soldiers associated with a vile cause.  Does that cause diminish their brilliance or accomplishments?  I completely get the confederates are traitors to the US argument, because I've frequently made it.  But I don't see how memorializing the great men associated with it promotes the confederacy itself.  To me they are tragic figures but I get that some uphold them as heroes on the right side.  I just don't believe that erasing them from history, because of the beliefs of a small minority, is doing our recognition of our shared national history a service.

Removing these statues doesnt remove them from history. If anything it removes the history of the actual statue on who made & paid for it, not the history it represents. It's like if a statue of Lincoln doesn't exist anywhere, does that mean he is erased from history? No, because history is found in books and now of course the interweb, though books is where the real history is told. 

To the bolded above, a vast majority of these statues were erected in the decades after the Civil War ended when the south was in full segregation mode. It was almost as if they were put up to remind the black population that even though we lost the war, we did not lose the war on equal rights with you.