HuffPo: UNC Students Topple Confederate Monument

[Sumner 1868]

Only rabid Southern reactionaries care about the "honor" of these statues. Those people are already locked into the GOP.

[DrScholl]

No voters will care about this but already hardcore Republicans that will vote for anyone with an R next to them. But if some people think running a campaign based on confederate statues is a productive campaign they should go ahead and run said campaign.

[Progressive Pessimist]

Best news in a while.

Not true. Today alone, and entirely, has been a good news day.

[All Along The Watchtower]

All involved should be criminally charged with vandalism if the school will not discipline.

It's not vandalism if they are cleaning up trash.

They are the trash of this country.

This. I hope UNC will punish them (won't hold my breath though, academia is lost...) and I hope footage of this disturbing event can be used to help the GOP win elections -- in NC as well as elsewhere. Fits perfectly in the "left gone wild" narrative that needs to be promoted everywhere.

Why are you, a European, so invested in the US Republican Party winning elections and in bashing the Left here in general?

[Fuzzy Bear Loves Christian Missionaries]

That's fine, but we live in a country where the rule of law prevails, where courts are open and in session, and where mobs are not supposed to rule.

You may have missed that this took place in North Carolina, a rather special state for "rule of law" and "courts prevailing" in the U.S. these days. The state politburo has expressly closed off all legal avenues for local communities to remove statues commemorating slaveholding and rebellion.

So be it.  I don't favor such laws, but counties and states are creations of the cities they are in.

And "Silent Sam" has absolutely NOTHING to do with slaveholding and rebellion; it has a lot to do, however, with honoring UNC alumni who served what was THEIR country at the time.

Here's some history:  North Carolina was the state that was the most reluctant to secede.  It was not the plantation state that Virginia and South Carolina were, and the western part of the state was not at all enthusiastic about secession.  Had Virginia not seceded, it is likely that North Carolina would not have seceded, but had North Carolina not seceded, it would have been surrounded by hostile neighbors, cut off from the union.  Once Virginia seceded (it took the promise of making Richmond the capital for this to happen), North Carolina's hand was arguably forced.

"Silent Sam" is not a slaveholder, he's a reminder of the gallantry and honor graduates of UNC displayed in battle during the Civil War.  They were going to be breaking someone's law, and their home was North Carolina; their choice as to which nation they were part of was made for them by Fire Eater politicians who carried the day.  This act was unfeeling, and based on ignorance of history; it dishonored gallant war dead and attaches circumstances to their service (defending slavery) that isn't entirely valid.  Silent Sam was a way to honor the dead without honoring a slaveowner.  

Instead, a bunch of ignorant punks held sway.  Punks.  

[ProudModerate2]

... "Silent Sam" is not a slaveholder, he's a reminder of the gallantry and honor graduates of UNC displayed in battle during the Civil War.

Yes, and that is why ...

You must be logged in to read this quote.

[All Along The Watchtower]

A Trump supporter lecturing others on the "rule of law" is about as convincing as a mob lawyer lecturing others on professional ethics.

[Fuzzy Bear Loves Christian Missionaries]

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.

[All Along The Watchtower]

We should also honor German veterans of WWII.

[ON Progressive]

Awesome news, awesome students. Hoping for many more “extralegal” solutions like these.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

I would fully support toppling a memorial to German WWII veterans as well. Also would for a memorial to Soviet Afghan War veterans, Russian Chechnyan War veterans, Serbian Bosnian War veterans, etc.

[Rookie Yinzer]

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.

[Fuzzy Bear Loves Christian Missionaries]

... "Silent Sam" is not a slaveholder, he's a reminder of the gallantry and honor graduates of UNC displayed in battle during the Civil War.

Yes, and that is why ...

You must be logged in to read this quote.

That may be, but the idea behind Silent Sam is a reasonable one.  By your logic, Antifa's actions ought to ratify everything Trump says or does.

So what will happen when patriotic Americans topple the statue of Lenin in Seattle?  Will that be OK?  

There's a monument to Malcolm X on the campus of Columbia University.  What about all the folks who recognize Malcolm X as a person with hatred in his heart toward Jews who have to look at that monument; why should they have to look at it?  Why should Jewish students have to walk by the statue of a man who was an unapologetic anti-Semite?  

Anyone who thinks that Malcolm X didn't really hate Jews has never read The Autobiography of Malcom X edited by Alex Haley.  And any white person who held views about Jews that Malcolm X did would be an absolute pariah at Columbia University.  But he's got a statue at an Ivy League University (Obama's undergrad alma mater) and everyone's just fine with it.

https://genius.com/Malcolm-x-chapter-19-1965-annotated

I'll let Malcolm X speak for himself.  But based on that writing, why shouldn't folks outraged at Malcolm X's comments about Jews not want his statue ripped down forcibly?  Why should Jewish students at Columbia have to look at a statue that honors a person who was a flat-out HP for anti-Jewish sentiment?

I prefer, of course, for folks to live within the law.  Something the Tar Heels Gone Wild failed to do.  But if this is how it's going to go, perhaps I'll find a public statue of some HP who's a fave of the left and have at it.  Especially if no one is going to arrest me or cause me to suffer a penalty.  

[Fuzzy Bear Loves Christian Missionaries]

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.

I will give honor where honor is due.  The right kind of honor to be sure.  I will not honor the cause of slavery, but I will honor the principle of young men doing what they believed to be their duty to their Country.  

I'm not defending the mindset that allows folks to believe that slavery is OK.  There's a lot of self-deception and willful blindness required to get to that place.  And I'm not confused about what the Southern White Establishment has traditionally been all about.  But there are a lot of less than perfect folks who showed courage when called upon.  I'm not going to urinate on their graves, literally or figuratively.  That's, in a real sense, what this mob did.

[IceSpear]

I'm sure there are legions of neo Confederate voters that were considering voting for Kamala Harris but will now vote for Trump instead because some students at a university they've never been to or heard of vandalized a statue.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

I will give honor where honor is due.  The right kind of honor to be sure.  I will not honor the cause of slavery, but I will honor the principle of young men doing what they believed to be their duty to their Country.

I'm not defending the mindset that allows folks to believe that slavery is OK.  There's a lot of self-deception and willful blindness required to get to that place.  And I'm not confused about what the Southern White Establishment has traditionally been all about.  But there are a lot of less than perfect folks who showed courage when called upon.  I'm not going to urinate on their graves, literally or figuratively.  That's, in a real sense, what this mob did.

It's revealing that you see a statue explicitly dedicated to slavery as some sort of emblem of courage and honor, and talk positively about people abandoning the Constitution and killing their countrymen in order to protect slavery. But when it comes to young people today standing up against the establishment for what they believe in - including freedom and equality- then, you've got nothing but scorn.

[7,052,770]

I know this post is pointless and Fuzzy will never respond to it (or if he does, it will be some 10,000 character digression that doesn't address my point), but it's extremely well-documented that Malcolm X had some problematic racial beliefs, but repented from them after going on the Hajj to Mecca. The passages that Fuzzy linked were written before the repentance.

I just don't think that someone could be familiar enough about Malcolm X to cite words from the autobiography without knowing about how he disavowed racism (remember, he was assassinated by a black supremacist, not a white supremacist), so I don't see how Fuzzy posted that in good faith.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

The law needs to be enforced here - penalties, minimum...
FuzzyBear is 1000% correct.

[windjammer]

Great news!

[Brittain33]

I'm sure there are legions of neo Confederate voters that were considering voting for Kamala Harris but will now vote for Trump instead because some students at a university they've never been to or heard of vandalized a statue.

[Rules for me, but not for thee]

Just take all these statues and put them into a History Hall of Shame, so people can still learn about the past instead of just erasing it 1984-style.

[Person Man]

I'm sure there are legions of neo Confederate voters that were considering voting for Kamala Harris but will now vote for Trump instead because some students at a university they've never been to or heard of vandalized a statue.

[fhtagn]

Nothing respectable about spoiled brats that think vandalism is okay.

[Since I'm the mad scientist proclaimed by myself]

Of course conservatives would be outraged by the vigilante tearing down of a statue that no one on the school wants.

[Stranger in a strange land]

The town and the university have both long wanted the statue gone, but the state legislature has prevented them from removing it.