Nosmo King
Gold Member
It seems to me that the Right wears blinders where the meaning of the protests over confederate memorials is concerned. They seem to have a political agenda used as a template when they gauge the movement to remove confederate memorials.
Some want to argue that past presidents and statesmen who held slaves are just as culpable in the preservation of slavery and the dissolution of the Union as those in the confederacy.. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, even Benjamin Franklin have been cited as examples of slave owners whose monuments and memorials worthy of removal just as the confederate leaders may or may not be worthy.
The difference is, and this is the salient point, the confederacy was formed to preserve state's rights. And, in particular, a state's right to permit its citizens to hold, beat, abuse, sell and buy human beings as labor without pay.
Confederate leaders raised their swords in open defiance in order to destroy the United States of America. Inarguably an so act of treason.
Many of these confederate monuments were erected during the darkest days of African American repression otherwise known as the era of Jim Crow. While proclaimed free, African Americans were not free to excerise their right to vote, own property or live in peace and security. African Americans lived every day with the threat of mob violence should they merely fail to step out of the way of a White person. If they had the temerity to whistle or cat call at a White woman. If they did not comply with senseless rules of segregation by sitting anywhere on a municipal bus or a lunch counter.
Monuments dedicated to the confederacy were built ostensively as a commemoration of southern heritage. But to the Black citizens of the south, they were built as warnings not to step out of line, to remember their proper place, to not become 'uppity'.
Does the Right understand that level of indignation? Does the Right respect all the rights extended to all the citizenry?
Whenever a group petitions to enjoy all the rights all Americans are to enjoy, which side on our political spectrum provides the resistance? Civil rights were opposed by the Right. Women's rights were opposed by the Right. Gay rights are opposed by the Right.
Anybody else see a pattern here?
Some want to argue that past presidents and statesmen who held slaves are just as culpable in the preservation of slavery and the dissolution of the Union as those in the confederacy.. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, even Benjamin Franklin have been cited as examples of slave owners whose monuments and memorials worthy of removal just as the confederate leaders may or may not be worthy.
The difference is, and this is the salient point, the confederacy was formed to preserve state's rights. And, in particular, a state's right to permit its citizens to hold, beat, abuse, sell and buy human beings as labor without pay.
Confederate leaders raised their swords in open defiance in order to destroy the United States of America. Inarguably an so act of treason.
Many of these confederate monuments were erected during the darkest days of African American repression otherwise known as the era of Jim Crow. While proclaimed free, African Americans were not free to excerise their right to vote, own property or live in peace and security. African Americans lived every day with the threat of mob violence should they merely fail to step out of the way of a White person. If they had the temerity to whistle or cat call at a White woman. If they did not comply with senseless rules of segregation by sitting anywhere on a municipal bus or a lunch counter.
Monuments dedicated to the confederacy were built ostensively as a commemoration of southern heritage. But to the Black citizens of the south, they were built as warnings not to step out of line, to remember their proper place, to not become 'uppity'.
Does the Right understand that level of indignation? Does the Right respect all the rights extended to all the citizenry?
Whenever a group petitions to enjoy all the rights all Americans are to enjoy, which side on our political spectrum provides the resistance? Civil rights were opposed by the Right. Women's rights were opposed by the Right. Gay rights are opposed by the Right.
Anybody else see a pattern here?