Civil Protest, Policing, Moving Forward

[David CO]

People have expressed the opinion that confederate statues and monuments should be removed because the confederate soldiers fought against the United States.  I haven't heard any of them suggest that the image of Crazy Horse, or those of any other Native American who fought against the United States, should be removed.  

 

 

[David CO]

1 hour ago, Troop75Eagle said:

I believe destroying monuments is absurd on its face.  

I see your point.  Personally, I don't like any of the large monuments carved on the face of mountains.  It's not a political thing.  It's a nature thing.  So I can also see the reasoning of those who would want to remove these monuments in order to restore the natural beauty of a park.  

Edited July 13, 2020 by David CO

[Navybone]

48 minutes ago, David CO said:

Now look who is engaging in historical revisionism.  

I am only quoting the cession documents presented to make the case of the states who joined the Confederacy.  If that is historical revisionism, what document from the time should if use.  I mean, they were written by the states themselves.  You don’t have to believe me, You find a copy here:  https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/declaration-causes-seceding-states

[Navybone]

41 minutes ago, yknot said:

Obliterating artwork and history set in stone is not going to accomplish any of the human aims we want. All it's going to do is erase a piece a of history. Also, you would be erasing a monument to a different kind of slave. All three men are mounted on horses who mutely served their masters through no wish of their own. Almost all of humanity of every color, ethnicity and race has only survived because they were able to enslave the horse. The only monuments that exist to these poor beasts are military ones like this one at Stone Mountain. Traveler, Little Sorrel and Black Jack are the names of the horses depicted on Stone Mountain.  Traveler, despite the side he served on, is one of the most famous war horses of all time, often listed in the same breath with Bucephalas, the beloved war mount of Alexander the Great, Napoleon's Marengo, and the Duke of Wellington's Copenhagen. Little Sorrel, Stonewall Jackson's war horse, was stolen from Union troops and made to serve the Confederacy through no equine choice of his own and yet people want to erase him.

I did not realize Stone Mountain was a tribute to horses.  Being funded by the KKK and all.  Opening the anniversary of Lincoln’s Assassination.   Maybe should have just left the people off of it.  Anywhere I can read more about Stone Mountain as a tribute to horses.  The sites webpage says nothing about this.  

Edited July 13, 2020 by Navybone

[elitts]

3 hours ago, walk in the woods said:

So what generation were all those politicians that passed the civil rights legislation and voting rights legislation in the 60s?

That would be the so called "Greatest Generation".  And while it's nice that they finally passed the legislation, the telling point there was that roughly 30% of congress was opposed to it.  So essentially, 1/3 of the the US (90%+ of the Southern congressmen) thought it was not just acceptable, but a right, that people be allowed to discriminate against minorities.

[yknot]

1 hour ago, Navybone said:

I did not realize Stone Mountain was a tribute to horses.  Being funded by the KKK and all.  Opening the anniversary of Lincoln’s Assassination.   Maybe should have just left the people off of it.  Anywhere I can read more about Stone Mountain as a tribute to horses.  The sites webpage says nothing about this.  

It's not a tribute to horses. Their appearance is accidental but of great historic interest. Any kid who did 4-H horse bowl could tell you how big Traveler's ear is. They could also tell you the name of Gen. Ulysses Grant's favorite warhorse -- Cincinnati. It's history. If we're going to start blowing things up because of offensive views, we'd have to start with our own racist and imperialistic Baden Powell, another great cavalryman. Many of the earlier guides his scouting books are based upon had useful horsemanship sections -- something largely lost in modern day scouting. 

If you are interested in the role of war horses or the role of the horse in general through human history just do a google search and you will come up with some good titles that will be interesting reading. 

 

[TAHAWK]

Over the years, people have pulled down statues of Saddam, Stalin,  Hitler, and Pol Pot.  In what sense did this diminish "history" or "art"?   But, then, I never saw a life-like picture of a soup can as "art," so I am likely as disqualified from opining about statuary as I am about music..

On the other paw,  mobs of  "cancel culture" morons attack statues of Lincoln, Grant, and Frederick Douglass - and burn down minority-owned business chanting "No justice; no peace" and "Black Lives matter."  Drive-by social change by Molotov Cocktail, clubs, rocks, guns, and looting.

As for [ Some] Black Lives Matter,  they have a beef.  My youth was pretty naive, but I roomed two years with a guy from Mississippi who was the first in his family to graduate high school.  He was finishing his Phd in history, summa cum laude.   Later,  when I left history, I found myself seated  for thirty weeks, for six hours a day M-F, next to the very intense President of the campus Black Student Union.  Their collective reading list was eye-opening.  I  had, for example, never previously heard of Kenneth M. Stampp and his monumental study of the horrors of American slavery of people of African dissent. I had known it was bad, but Stampp hammered home the full depth of the depravity with clinical precision.

But the false dichotomy [ Some] Black Lives Matter presents between police vs. more welfare once more evades a real discussion on why certain urban areas are centers of uber violence directed against their inhabitants by their inhabitants. 

SBLM's demand for he dismantling of criminal law and places of incarceration even when the vast predominance of the victims of criminals are Black people seems daft.   

They demand for "collective ownership" of  "the economy" is  an attempt at regression to the failed theories of centuries of socialism.

My dad's "people" came to this continent in convicts, losers in a civil war in Britain.  They were sent here by the English and certain Scots who picked the winning side. In that last, being reduced to bondage by their "own," they shared an experience with Africans. Their transportation, while under far less vile and fatal conditions than Black prisoners, was equally involuntary. They  were not regarded, like Black slaves, as property and had the opportunity, over years - sometimes decades- to "work off" their serfdom and cross over the mountains to the West, where they proceeded to evict the local population by force.  Some, thereafter, defended the king and some supported revolution.  Later, some supported chattel slavery and some, even in Tennessee, Kentucky, and Virginia fought and died to end it.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      Relatively few statutes are raised to the cannon fodder, whereas a great 351' obelisk has been raised to celebrate the treason of Jefferson Davis - as a political statement about slavery - that chattel slavery was the correct policy.   Such "art" in the midst of populations of Black people is akin to a stature commemorating The National Socialist party in Israel. 

[David CO]

2 hours ago, Navybone said:

I am only quoting the cession documents presented to make the case of the states who joined the Confederacy.  If that is historical revisionism, what document from the time should if use.  I mean, they were written by the states themselves.  You don’t have to believe me, You find a copy here:  https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/declaration-causes-seceding-states

Yes, but you are cherry picking.  Only 5 of the seceding states chose to issue a declaration of causes.  In those 5, it was clearly stated that they had other causes in addition to slavery.  Texas, for example, pointed out that if they did not secede, they would no longer be contiguous with the rest of the United States (because all of their border states had already seceded).  They would have been forced go to war with with an enemy army that could easily surround them.  This was a very serious issue in the Texas secession debates, as you might well imagine.

Likewise, some Southern states voted to not secede.  This wasn't because they were unsympathetic to the rebel cause.  They were on the border with Northern states, and knew they couldn't hold out against the federal army.   

 

Edited July 13, 2020 by David CO

[TAHAWK]

"Stone Mountain was "the sacred site to members of the second and third national klans."^[27]:262

The rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan – the second Klan — was inspired by D. W. Griffith's 1915 Klan-glorifying film, The Birth of a Nation.^[28] It was followed in August by the highly publicized lynching of Leo Frank, who had been wrongly convicted of murder, in nearby Marietta, Georgia. On November 25 of the same year, Thanksgiving Day, a small group, including fifteen robed and hooded "charter members" of the new organization, met at the summit of Stone Mountain to create a new iteration of the Klan. They were led by William J. Simmons, and included two elderly members of the original Klan. As part of their ceremony, they set up on the summit an altar covered with a flag, opened a Bible, and burned a 16-foot cross.^[7]:20[29]

Stone Mountain was the location of an annual Labor Day cross-burning ceremony for the next 50 years,^[30] only ending when the state condemned the property^{[clarification needed]}.

Fundraising for the monument resumed in 1923. In October of that year, Venable granted the Klan easement with perpetual right to hold celebrations as they desired.^[31] The influence of the UDC continued, in support of Mrs. Plane's vision of a carving explicitly for the purpose of creating a Confederate memorial. She suggested in a letter to the first sculptor, Gutzon Borglum:

I feel it is due to the Klan[,] which saved us from Negro dominations [sic] and carpetbag rule, that it be immortalized on Stone Mountain. Why not represent a small group of them in their nightly uniform approaching in the distance?^[7]:21[22]

The UDC established the Stone Mountain Confederate Memorial Association (SMCMA) for fundraising and on-site supervision of the project. Venable and Borglum, who were both closely associated with the Klan, arranged to pack the SMCMA with Klan members.^[32] The SMCMA, along with the United Daughters of the Confederacy, continued fundraising efforts. Of the $250,000 raised, part came from the federal government, which in 1925 issued special fifty-cent coins with the soldiers Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson on them.^[33] The image on the verso of the coin was based on The Last Meeting of Lee and Jackson,^[34] executed in 1869 by Everett B. D. Fabrino Julio (American, b. St. Helena 1843 – 1879, emigrated to US 1860), itself an icon of Lost Cause mythology; it is now in the American Civil War Museum (until 2012 the Museum of the Confederacy).^[35] When the state completed the purchase in 1960, it condemned the property to void Venable's agreement to allow the Klan perpetual right to hold meetings on the premises.^[32]"

 

"Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia."

[walk in the woods]

16 hours ago, elitts said:

That would be the so called "Greatest Generation".  And while it's nice that they finally passed the legislation, the telling point there was that roughly 30% of congress was opposed to it.  So essentially, 1/3 of the the US (90%+ of the Southern congressmen) thought it was not just acceptable, but a right, that people be allowed to discriminate against minorities.

Legislation never passes unanimously unless the system is rigged or it's a Communist rubber stamp parliment.  If that's your definition of acceptable (Unanimous consent) we're far down the slippery slope.

But back to your original argument that we've been generationally deficient (save the Greatest Generation), there was federal civil rights legislation passed in 1957, 1964, 1965, 1968, 1974, 1977, 1987, 1991, 1995, 2007, et al.  To say that nothing has been done is simply wrong.  I'd also argue that to say attitudes haven't changed is also wrong.  The world's not perfect, nor will it ever be, but to deny progress is folly.

[David CO]

17 hours ago, elitts said:

And while it's nice that they finally passed the legislation, the telling point there was that roughly 30% of congress was opposed to it. 

People have to be very careful about voting for civil rights legislation.  It's not just the language in the bill they are voting on.  It's also the expanded meaning the courts will add to it.   

[walk in the woods]

1 hour ago, David CO said:

People have to be very careful about voting for civil rights legislation.  It's not just the language in the bill they are voting on.  It's also the expanded meaning the courts will add to it.   

And how much cruft it gets loaded with because it's "must pass" legislation.  Reference the covid relief legislation today or the bi-annual Army reauthorization and funding.

[elitts]

19 hours ago, walk in the woods said:

Legislation never passes unanimously unless the system is rigged or it's a Communist rubber stamp parliment.  If that's your definition of acceptable (Unanimous consent) we're far down the slippery slope.

But back to your original argument that we've been generationally deficient (save the Greatest Generation), there was federal civil rights legislation passed in 1957, 1964, 1965, 1968, 1974 (covered sex, marital status and sexual orientation), 1977, 1987, 1991, 1995, 2007, et al.  To say that nothing has been done is simply wrong.  I'd also argue that to say attitudes haven't changed is also wrong.  The world's not perfect, nor will it ever be, but to deny progress is folly.

No, legislation usually doesn't pass unanimously, however there are frequently situations where pretty much everyone agrees that something needs to be addressed and they only disagree over the methods.  In the case of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 however, the "opposition" wasn't arguing for an alternate approach, they just plain wanted to maintain white superiority and segregation.  Senator Russell, the leader of the opposition was quoted as saying "We will resist to the bitter end,any measure or any movement which would have a tendency to bring about social equality and intermingling and amalgamation of the races in our [Southern] states".

[TAHAWK]

Everett M. Dirkson , the Republican Minority Leader and manager of the bill in the Senate, rose to say the last word in support of ending the Democrat filibuster that had held up the  the bill that became the Civil Rights Act of 1964:

 ""Stronger than all the armies is an idea whose time has come.'  The time has come for equality of opportunity in sharing in government, in education, and in employment. It will not be stayed or denied. It is here...

Pending before us is another moral issue. Basically it deals with equality of opportunity in exercising the franchise, in securing an education, in making a livelihood, in enjoying the mantle of protection of the law. It has been a long, hard furrow and each generation must plow its share...

It is to take us further down that road that a bill is pending before us. We have a duty to get that job done."

 

 

" 

[walk in the woods]

1 hour ago, elitts said:

No, legislation usually doesn't pass unanimously, however there are frequently situations where pretty much everyone agrees that something needs to be addressed and they only disagree over the methods.  In the case of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 however, the "opposition" wasn't arguing for an alternate approach, they just plain wanted to maintain white superiority and segregation.  Senator Russell, the leader of the opposition was quoted as saying "We will resist to the bitter end,any measure or any movement which would have a tendency to bring about social equality and intermingling and amalgamation of the races in our [Southern] states".

And so what?  Two ideas were brought before the congress for debate, one the status quo, the other change.  The ideas were debated openly and the better idea prevailed.  That's how the system works.  

As for unanimity, remember, that's how we got the unpatriotic Patriot Act, the freedom-denying USA Freedom Act, the star-chamber FISA system, etc.