Pelosi, Biden say there is a difference between removing Confederate leaders, past presidents

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

South Dakota Governor deliberately blurring the lines between the Founding Fathers and Confederate traitors.
https://twitter.com/thehill/status/1279374661877448705


In a way it makes sense, I suppose. There really are two nations in the United States. There's the one founded in 1776 and victorious in 1783, imperfect, but striving for over two centuries for human rights and democracy. And then there's the one founded in 1861 that lost a war in 1865, whose reason for existence is for oppression, racism, and rule by a tiny white elite.  The Confederacy was defeated but not destroyed, and is now with Benedict Donald and his Banana Republicans at the helm it is once again attacking the United States.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

Why do blue avatars think bringing up Muhammad is an ultra-effective gotcha?

Once you go down the "they were slaveowners" rabbithole, it has endless logical offshoots. 

Oh look ... Fuzzybear making sure he gets his two-cents in regarding Muhammad.
Who would have thought?

And I thought you missed me!  

My broader point actually made by another poster) is that Mohammed was, indeed, a slaveholder, as are any number of World History figures who, to date, have been venerated in America.

I'm suggesting that the "They were slaveholders!" argument is rather faulty when it comes to the Cancel Culture.  We can do better than trashing George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and folks like that.

There ought to be some respect for the fact that a majority of Americans hold Washington and Jefferson in high regard, and justifiably so.  History isn't ALL about slavery, and it isn't ALL about race relations.  The establishment of our Constitutional Republic, it's maintenance, and the good that has done is part of that as well.  The majority of Americans who believe George Washington is worthy of honor, warts and all.  It's one thing to apply this to Alexander Stephens and Jefferson Davis.  It's another thing to apply it to George Washington.  

So basically you agree with what Pelosi said. "It's not about Washington or Jefferson, it's about Alexander Stephens."

I'm for removing statues of Confederates who left and become part of the CSA government.

Stephens is particularly reprehensible.  As a coincidence, one of his descendents, Rep. Robert A. Stephens (D-GA) persuaded 5 Democrats to join the GOP to block an investigation of Watergate by the House Banking Committee prior to the 1972 election. 

I would make one exception (if there's a statue for him in the Capitol) and that one exception is former President John Tyler.  Tyler served in the Confederate Congress, dying in 1862.  He was the first VP to succeed a President who died in office and he is historically significant in that role.  Tyler solidified the legitimacy of the Presidencies of Presidents elevated to office by the death or resignation of their predecessors.  That's an important feature of our Republic and that is worthy of honoring.

Tyler is also responsible for the Texas Annexation, among other things. He was a Southern Democrat to his core, just look at him pushing for the Texas Annexation or his choice to veto the rechartering of the national bank. He was every bit as bad as the rest of his southern ilk. If you really want to honor a president elevated, the first good choice is Chester Arthur, given Tyler, Fillmore, and Johnson were all horrible.

Tyler was referred to "His Accidency" when he ascended to the Presidency.  He had to work through that, every step of the way.  He was probably the 2nd best President (behind Polk) after Jackson, with the possible exception of Van Buren.  Can you imagine what would happen if Andrew Johnson, an alcoholic with alcoholic sons whose nickname was "Andy The Sot" was the first VP to succeed a President?  Without Tyler's example, it would have been a Constitutional Crisis right on the heels of the Civil War's conclusion.

That shouldn't be forgotten.  Tyler should be remembered, and even Honored, for that particular example.  He wasn't a great President, but he succeeded in establishing the acceptance of Vice Presidential succession.

I have a bust of John Tyler in my famous Virginians display in my apartment. Underrated President by far.

He was a LITERAL traitor.

So was George Washington. After the month long idiotic misuse of that term bandying it about does nothing for me. This ahistorical garbage where people insist they'd have 21st century opinions no matter when in history they are is stupid. No one on here would be demanding transgender bathroom protections in the 1776 Declaration. No one here would be lecturing Thomas Jefferson on his "white privilege". And this notion that in a world where there is no form of real time long distance communication, where most people had never traveled more than 50 miles from their home, and where your entire extended family and literally everyone you know personally is within that 50 miles, that it is expected for you to abandon everything you own and walk hundreds of miles across hostile territory to take up arms against your home, your family, and everyone you know because of some vague calls for patriotism and 21st century values is ridiculous. Sorry not sorry family loyalty controls for me and they'd have been traitors for abandoning their families so either way they are "traitors" no matter which side they went with. You can keep lying to yourself all you want though.

Immutable rule of history that people who win revolutions are traitors. Robert E Lee and Jefferson Davis would not be considered such have they won their slave owners revolt , but they didn't.

The Confederates were not attempting revolution. They were fleeing the United States out of fear that  law and democracy would not be utterly subordinate to their own desires. After they seceded they then attacked the United States. The whole thing was a despicable mass-murdering exercise in self-gratification by Southern elites. 

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

We should no more celebrate them and their accomplishments than we should celebrate men like Rommel, Yamamoto, Benedict Arnold, Ho Chi Minh, or other exceptional military leaders who fought against the United States in the name of deplorable causes.

My views on Confederates and the issue of honoring them are extremely complex and nuanced, so much so that it would take a lengthy discussion to do justice to them.  But right now I'd like to address the last part of your post.  

The issue with Benedict Arnold isn't that the British/American loyalist cause was terrible--even today, I don't think you can argue it was, even if you sympathize with the Patriots.  It's that he was on the Patriot side and went over to the British.  It's not at all clear to me that Ho Chi Minh's cause was a bad one--clearly much of the Vietnamese population, North and South, supported him.  And while Rommel and Yamamoto served governments that did not have morally good causes, I don't think they should be condemned either --they were also serving their respective countries, and as someone once remarked, if you serve in your country's military you don't get to decide whether you're on the "right side."  And both men have, in fact, been widely respected even in the countries they fought.  

Fair on Benedict Arnold.  I probably should have left out the "deplorable causes" part, and just said "fought against the United States" in general.

If Germans, Japanese and Vietnamese want to celebrate Rommel, Yamamoto and Ho Chi Minh, good for them.  The largest city in Vietnam is named after the guy after all.  Here in the United States, we aren't going to build statues to men who fought against our country and did their utmost to kill as many American soldiers as possible.  Even if, in the case of Rommel, there are a lot of folks who think he was low-key a good guy on the wrong side.  In the same way, we here in America should not celebrate men like Jackson, Lee, or Davis, who declared war on our country and led an army that killed hundreds of thousands of American men with the goal of permanently breaking the country in two and perpetuating chattel slavery forever.

I'd actually compare Rommel pretty closely with Lee.  Both are men who were loyal servants to the leaders of their regime, led their armies to a lot of decisive and brilliant victories, seemed remarkably incurious, at best, about the atrociously amoral regime they were defending, and had their reputations refurbished after the war.  In both cases, their former enemies had political reasons to acquiesce to the rehabilitiation -- the lionizing of Lee was a symbolic victory northerners were willing to give away as a bargaining chip during reconstruction, and "Rommel and his troops were alright blokes" was key to the allied justification for re-arming ex-Nazi West Germany during the Cold War.

George Washington fought against Great Britain and tried to kill as many British soldiers as possible.  Yet there's a statue of him in Trafalgar Square in London.  Just a thought.

As for Rommel, one might ask what would satisfy you as showing sufficient concern about the Nazi regime on his part.  After all, the Third Reich was a dictatorship.  It's not like even the July 20th plotters ran out into the streets shouting "Hitler is evil!" (and Rommel may have been involved in that plot to some extent).

If you want a German officer who did more than Rommel, look no further than Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, who regularly (and sometimes successfully) opposed Germany's awful treatment of prisoners, conspired to remove Hitler, and regularly passed information to Allied intelligence. He was also the head of German Military Intelligence from 1935 until the Gestapo and SS finally caught up with him in early 1944.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

I feel an important element lacking from this debate is the tibiit that unlike statues of the founding fathers, statues of confederate leaders were not built to honor there achievements or there connection to the local community but rather they were built (normally with funding and assistance from the KKK) when the civil rights movement was starting as an unsubtle way of saying “f you darkie and remember your place”

Exactly.  By repeatedly comparing them with the Founding Fathers and other actual major historical figures, the right is just trying sow confusion about what the these statues truly are: a bunch of overpriced racist lawn gnomes.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

We should no more celebrate them and their accomplishments than we should celebrate men like Rommel, Yamamoto, Benedict Arnold, Ho Chi Minh, or other exceptional military leaders who fought against the United States in the name of deplorable causes.

My views on Confederates and the issue of honoring them are extremely complex and nuanced, so much so that it would take a lengthy discussion to do justice to them.  But right now I'd like to address the last part of your post.  

The issue with Benedict Arnold isn't that the British/American loyalist cause was terrible--even today, I don't think you can argue it was, even if you sympathize with the Patriots.  It's that he was on the Patriot side and went over to the British.  It's not at all clear to me that Ho Chi Minh's cause was a bad one--clearly much of the Vietnamese population, North and South, supported him.  And while Rommel and Yamamoto served governments that did not have morally good causes, I don't think they should be condemned either --they were also serving their respective countries, and as someone once remarked, if you serve in your country's military you don't get to decide whether you're on the "right side."  And both men have, in fact, been widely respected even in the countries they fought.  

Fair on Benedict Arnold.  I probably should have left out the "deplorable causes" part, and just said "fought against the United States" in general.

If Germans, Japanese and Vietnamese want to celebrate Rommel, Yamamoto and Ho Chi Minh, good for them.  The largest city in Vietnam is named after the guy after all.  Here in the United States, we aren't going to build statues to men who fought against our country and did their utmost to kill as many American soldiers as possible.  Even if, in the case of Rommel, there are a lot of folks who think he was low-key a good guy on the wrong side.  In the same way, we here in America should not celebrate men like Jackson, Lee, or Davis, who declared war on our country and led an army that killed hundreds of thousands of American men with the goal of permanently breaking the country in two and perpetuating chattel slavery forever.

I'd actually compare Rommel pretty closely with Lee.  Both are men who were loyal servants to the leaders of their regime, led their armies to a lot of decisive and brilliant victories, seemed remarkably incurious, at best, about the atrociously amoral regime they were defending, and had their reputations refurbished after the war.  In both cases, their former enemies had political reasons to acquiesce to the rehabilitiation -- the lionizing of Lee was a symbolic victory northerners were willing to give away as a bargaining chip during reconstruction, and "Rommel and his troops were alright blokes" was key to the allied justification for re-arming ex-Nazi West Germany during the Cold War.

George Washington fought against Great Britain and tried to kill as many British soldiers as possible.  Yet there's a statue of him in Trafalgar Square in London.  Just a thought.

As for Rommel, one might ask what would satisfy you as showing sufficient concern about the Nazi regime on his part.  After all, the Third Reich was a dictatorship.  It's not like even the July 20th plotters ran out into the streets shouting "Hitler is evil!" (and Rommel may have been involved in that plot to some extent).

If you want a German officer who did more than Rommel, look no further than Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, who regularly (and sometimes successfully) opposed Germany's awful treatment of prisoners, conspired to remove Hitler, and regularly passed information to Allied intelligence. He was also the head of German Military Intelligence from 1935 until the Gestapo and SS finally caught up with him in early 1944.

My point wasn't that Rommel did the most of anyone, it was that if you're going to be critical of him for supposedly not showing enough concern about the nature of Nazism, that raises the question of what would have been "satisfactory" for him to have done.  Moreover, it seems to me that someone in that situation could have realized that Hitler and his regime were horrible but still concluded that they had a duty to fight for their country. 

I wasn't trying to criticize your mention of Rommel, or be particularly critical of him. I just think that Canaris did a lot more good, while Rommel tends to get a lot of focus as "the good WWII German general" and its good to remember that he wasn't the only high-ranking German opposed to Hitler (while still believing in Germany as a cause worth fighting for).