Only rabid Southern reactionaries care about the "honor" of these statues. Those people are already locked into the GOP.
My wife and sons are direct descendants of General John Bell Hood, and in the family tree of Robert E. Lee. My wife and I grew up in the North, and are Northerners by birth and by rearing.
I'm not a CSA guy, but I consider honoring Confederate veterans to be a different issue than honoring Confederate leaders. Silent Sam was a low key way to appropriately do that.
There is no difference between the two. The Confederate veterans were all virulent racists who believed black people were feral animals who deserved the status of slave. Stop trying to romanticize it and pretending that they were doing anything other than ensuring they had a permanent underclass that they could have to make themselves feel better about their own miserable lives.
