Every statue removed or torn down of our founding fathers and presidents should be restored

[BudgieForce]

I literally forgot the 1619 project existed until OSR mentioned it in this thread.

Nobody actually cares about some random article(s) in the NYT.  Biden is running to be president, not a media critic.  I don't really care what his opinion is on a series of articles he's probably never read.

The NY Times has a major impact on the Dem party and liberalism as a whole .

Maybe 10 years ago, but I'd argue they dont have much sway now. After their botched coverage of Hillary's emails and the Warren+Klobuchar endorsement, their image has taken a pretty big hit.

[OSR stands with Israel]

I literally forgot the 1619 project existed until OSR mentioned it in this thread.

Nobody actually cares about some random article(s) in the NYT.  Biden is running to be president, not a media critic.  I don't really care what his opinion is on a series of articles he's probably never read.

The NY Times has a major impact on the Dem party and liberalism as a whole .

Maybe 10 years ago, but I'd argue they dont have much sway now. After their botched coverage of Hillary's emails and the Warren+Klobuchar endorsement, their image has taken a pretty big hit.

Well with voters overall no just like the WSJ/National Review doesnt on the right anymore but many of the establishment it does have effect and they still endorsing far left ideas gives those ideas mainstream credibility

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

I literally forgot the 1619 project existed until OSR mentioned it in this thread.

Nobody actually cares about some random article(s) in the NYT.  Biden is running to be president, not a media critic.  I don't really care what his opinion is on a series of articles he's probably never read.

The NY Times has a major impact on the Dem party and liberalism as a whole .

Maybe 10 years ago, but I'd argue they dont have much sway now. After their botched coverage of Hillary's emails and the Warren+Klobuchar endorsement, their image has taken a pretty big hit.

Well with voters overall no just like the WSJ/National Review doesnt on the right anymore but many of the establishment it does have effect and they still endorsing far left ideas gives those ideas mainstream credibility

It shouldn't, and it especially shouldn't be expected to have an effect on Biden after it basically rejected him in the primaries. Congresspeople who take it as a serious gatekeeper these days need to be told to spend some time in their constituencies.

[cp]

Old School is being needlessly hyperbolic; but he's right that no real progressive nor historian should touch the Black Lost Cause that is the 1619 Project with a ten-foot pole.

Professional historian here: that's nonsense. The 1619 Project is bringing to a mass audience the sort of historical research that was cutting edge 15 years ago but is considered the far side of banal now. The only criticism worth taking seriously - the one about Nikole Hannah-Jones' overstatement of the role of slavery as a causative factor in the Revolution - is the sort of reasonable disagreement that historians have all the time; hardly a calumny on Hannah-Jones as a historian or the 1619 Project as a whole. Broadly speaking, having one's work published or referenced in it is considered something of a badge of honour in professional historical circles. Definitely something you'd brag about on your CV if you wanted to impress a hiring committee.

The fact that there's a narrative about the 1619 Project being anything but top notch respectable history is a function of two things: reactionary conservatives doing their culture war kabuki theatre; and old school (read: white male boomer) tenured history professors who are predictably uncomfortable about generational turnover in their discipline.

[GeneralMacArthur]

The right consistently dramatically overestimates the impact that the media, academia, and twitter have on Democratic voters.  90% of Democrats couldn't care less about anything being said in any of those mediums.

I can't think of a single time something coming out of academia swayed my opinion.  When it comes to politics, I literally only ever hear about academia in the context of "some crazy professor at some far-left university said something stupid."  Oh some tenured professor of anthropology at Evergreen State said that having a gender selection question on the census is a hate crime and worthy of impeachment?  Why do I care?  It's just a story to stir up controversy.

Likewise for Twitter.  Nobody cares what Twitter thinks.  Twitter is overrepresented in the media because lazy journalists would rather just look at their Twitter feeds than go out and interview real people.  But Twitter has been consistently wrong about literally everything for years.  Nobody cares what Twitter thinks except Twitter itself and some talking heads on MSNBC.

Finally, people watch/read opinion media largely just for entertainment or to confirm their own priors.  Chris Hayes promoted Sanders 24/7 on his show for a year, and I don't think anyone was actually convinced by his blathering.  All he did was turn away people who didn't like Sanders because they weren't having their priors confirmed.  The only time media has real influence is when it's reporting news.  The NYT stories about Clinton's e-mail server looked like news, so they had influence on people (even though they were actually thinly-veiled anti-Clinton opinions splashed across the front-page).  Maddow's bad reporting about Trump's scandals had influence on people because she framed it as delivering news.  Fox News has an influence on people because they deliver opinions that are disguised as "news."

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

This seems like a pretty predictable step; after toppling anything associated with the confederacy, anyone who owned slaves would be next.

In the end, I think we need to have a view as a society that we can have historical figures we respect despite their flaws instead of either whitewashing them or tearing them down. The end result of this would require no statues of anyone who isn't perfect -- so only Jesus and Mary. Not that most people would accept that they're perfect either, etc etc.

I'm not really sure how we get from here to there, but we need to have some positive understanding of our culture that has enough nuance to see our predecessors as imperfect sinful men, but still worth honoring for what they have built. We need to be able to respect our country and it's figures without complete conviction for everything they stood for. Heck, I don't think the American Revolution was a just war, but George Washington is still the founder of my country. If nothing else, I need to respect him on some level because he is a kind of emblem for my country, family, friends, neighbors, etc.

Washington is on the dollar, the quarter, and the namesake for our capital. I’m sure we can find some more recent figures than 18th century slaveholders to idolize in statue form. I’d support removing every public statue of a confederate or a slaveholder, and replace them with icons from the 20th century civil rights era, or our inventors who made our modern world so much better than when our country was founded.

Might I suggest to Portland these alternatives than Washington:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lola_Baldwin - one of the first female police officers
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Engelbart - invented the computer mouse
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linus_Pauling - co-founder of quantum chemistry and molecular biology

I'll add:

Admiral Grace Hopper (invented compilers and was instrumental in the creation of modern computer languages)

[urlhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Hamilton_(software_engineer)]Margaret Hamilton[/url] (invented modern computer programming while she was writing code for Apollo.

[TJ in Oregon]

This seems like a pretty predictable step; after toppling anything associated with the confederacy, anyone who owned slaves would be next.

In the end, I think we need to have a view as a society that we can have historical figures we respect despite their flaws instead of either whitewashing them or tearing them down. The end result of this would require no statues of anyone who isn't perfect -- so only Jesus and Mary. Not that most people would accept that they're perfect either, etc etc.

I'm not really sure how we get from here to there, but we need to have some positive understanding of our culture that has enough nuance to see our predecessors as imperfect sinful men, but still worth honoring for what they have built. We need to be able to respect our country and it's figures without complete conviction for everything they stood for. Heck, I don't think the American Revolution was a just war, but George Washington is still the founder of my country. If nothing else, I need to respect him on some level because he is a kind of emblem for my country, family, friends, neighbors, etc.

Washington is on the dollar, the quarter, and the namesake for our capital. I’m sure we can find some more recent figures than 18th century slaveholders to idolize in statue form. I’d support removing every public statue of a confederate or a slaveholder, and replace them with icons from the 20th century civil rights era, or our inventors who made our modern world so much better than when our country was founded.

Might I suggest to Portland these alternatives than Washington:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lola_Baldwin - one of the first female police officers
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Engelbart - invented the computer mouse
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linus_Pauling - co-founder of quantum chemistry and molecular biology

I'll add:

Admiral Grace Hopper (invented compilers and was instrumental in the creation of modern computer languages)

[urlhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Hamilton_(software_engineer)]Margaret Hamilton[/url] (invented modern computer programming while she was writing code for Apollo.

Surely you guys see that while they might be fine people to put up statues of, none of them have had the level of existential influence over America that George Washington had?

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

This seems like a pretty predictable step; after toppling anything associated with the confederacy, anyone who owned slaves would be next.

In the end, I think we need to have a view as a society that we can have historical figures we respect despite their flaws instead of either whitewashing them or tearing them down. The end result of this would require no statues of anyone who isn't perfect -- so only Jesus and Mary. Not that most people would accept that they're perfect either, etc etc.

I'm not really sure how we get from here to there, but we need to have some positive understanding of our culture that has enough nuance to see our predecessors as imperfect sinful men, but still worth honoring for what they have built. We need to be able to respect our country and it's figures without complete conviction for everything they stood for. Heck, I don't think the American Revolution was a just war, but George Washington is still the founder of my country. If nothing else, I need to respect him on some level because he is a kind of emblem for my country, family, friends, neighbors, etc.

Washington is on the dollar, the quarter, and the namesake for our capital. I’m sure we can find some more recent figures than 18th century slaveholders to idolize in statue form. I’d support removing every public statue of a confederate or a slaveholder, and replace them with icons from the 20th century civil rights era, or our inventors who made our modern world so much better than when our country was founded.

Might I suggest to Portland these alternatives than Washington:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lola_Baldwin - one of the first female police officers
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Engelbart - invented the computer mouse
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linus_Pauling - co-founder of quantum chemistry and molecular biology

I'll add:

Admiral Grace Hopper (invented compilers and was instrumental in the creation of modern computer languages)

[urlhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Hamilton_(software_engineer)]Margaret Hamilton[/url] (invented modern computer programming while she was writing code for Apollo.

Surely you guys see that while they might be fine people to put up statues of, none of them have had the level of existential influence over America that George Washington had?

[gerritcole]

This seems like a pretty predictable step; after toppling anything associated with the confederacy, anyone who owned slaves would be next.

In the end, I think we need to have a view as a society that we can have historical figures we respect despite their flaws instead of either whitewashing them or tearing them down. The end result of this would require no statues of anyone who isn't perfect -- so only Jesus and Mary. Not that most people would accept that they're perfect either, etc etc.

I'm not really sure how we get from here to there, but we need to have some positive understanding of our culture that has enough nuance to see our predecessors as imperfect sinful men, but still worth honoring for what they have built. We need to be able to respect our country and it's figures without complete conviction for everything they stood for. Heck, I don't think the American Revolution was a just war, but George Washington is still the founder of my country. If nothing else, I need to respect him on some level because he is a kind of emblem for my country, family, friends, neighbors, etc.

Washington is on the dollar, the quarter, and the namesake for our capital. I’m sure we can find some more recent figures than 18th century slaveholders to idolize in statue form. I’d support removing every public statue of a confederate or a slaveholder, and replace them with icons from the 20th century civil rights era, or our inventors who made our modern world so much better than when our country was founded.

Might I suggest to Portland these alternatives than Washington:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lola_Baldwin - one of the first female police officers
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Engelbart - invented the computer mouse
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linus_Pauling - co-founder of quantum chemistry and molecular biology

Ah but none have condemned the Grand Mufti which is problematic. Are we sure of their stance on Israel Palestine ?

[beaver2.0]

This seems like a pretty predictable step; after toppling anything associated with the confederacy, anyone who owned slaves would be next.

In the end, I think we need to have a view as a society that we can have historical figures we respect despite their flaws instead of either whitewashing them or tearing them down. The end result of this would require no statues of anyone who isn't perfect -- so only Jesus and Mary. Not that most people would accept that they're perfect either, etc etc.

I'm not really sure how we get from here to there, but we need to have some positive understanding of our culture that has enough nuance to see our predecessors as imperfect sinful men, but still worth honoring for what they have built. We need to be able to respect our country and it's figures without complete conviction for everything they stood for. Heck, I don't think the American Revolution was a just war, but George Washington is still the founder of my country. If nothing else, I need to respect him on some level because he is a kind of emblem for my country, family, friends, neighbors, etc.

Washington is on the dollar, the quarter, and the namesake for our capital. I’m sure we can find some more recent figures than 18th century slaveholders to idolize in statue form. I’d support removing every public statue of a confederate or a slaveholder, and replace them with icons from the 20th century civil rights era, or our inventors who made our modern world so much better than when our country was founded.

Might I suggest to Portland these alternatives than Washington:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lola_Baldwin - one of the first female police officers
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Engelbart - invented the computer mouse
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linus_Pauling - co-founder of quantum chemistry and molecular biology

I'll add:

Admiral Grace Hopper (invented compilers and was instrumental in the creation of modern computer languages)

[urlhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Hamilton_(software_engineer)]Margaret Hamilton[/url] (invented modern computer programming while she was writing code for Apollo.

Surely you guys see that while they might be fine people to put up statues of, none of them have had the level of existential influence over America that George Washington had?

[Frodo]

I read the article, and nowhere is the 1619 Project (which I haven't heard of until now) even mentioned.

 

[OSR stands with Israel]

I read the article, and nowhere is the 1619 Project (which I haven't heard of until now) even mentioned.

 

Look at the spray paint

[Hammy]

Lmao at leftists saying it doesn't matter when their side is the one triggered enough to be tearing it down.

There's quite a difference between saying it doesn't matter and being "triggered" by statues, and pointing out (correctly) that tearing down a statue, while being vandalism, is not in any way "Un-American" nor does it in any way undermine "what America stands for."

Or are people like you making the claim that we must hold these statues as idols in order to qualify as real Americans is to hold these statues as sacred and that Americanism is truly rooted in worship of false idols such as statues to men or pieces of cloth?

[TJ in Oregon]

Lmao at leftists saying it doesn't matter when their side is the one triggered enough to be tearing it down.

There's quite a difference between saying it doesn't matter and being "triggered" by statues, and pointing out (correctly) that tearing down a statue, while being vandalism, is not in any way "Un-American" nor does it in any way undermine "what America stands for."

Or are people like you and OSR making the claim that we must hold these statues as idols in order to qualify as real Americans is to hold these statues as sacred and that Americanism is truly rooted in worship of false idols such as statues to men?

Why does the interpretation of statues have be through the hermeneutic of extreme iconoclasm? Is there any intermediate level of respect for a person and their statue between worshiping it as an idol and supporting its being torn down by an angry mob? This sounds weirdly like how a certain type of Evangelical views Catholic statues of saints as necessarily idolatrous, but Jesus was fine with even Cesar on a coin. I think most of us want a healthy, positive concept of our country, even with the nuance of its faults, not that we're genuflecting before an image of George Washington.

[Hammy]

Lmao at leftists saying it doesn't matter when their side is the one triggered enough to be tearing it down.

There's quite a difference between saying it doesn't matter and being "triggered" by statues, and pointing out (correctly) that tearing down a statue, while being vandalism, is not in any way "Un-American" nor does it in any way undermine "what America stands for."

Or are people like you and OSR making the claim that we must hold these statues as idols in order to qualify as real Americans is to hold these statues as sacred and that Americanism is truly rooted in worship of false idols such as statues to men?

Why does the interpretation of statues have be through the hermeneutic of extreme iconoclasm? Is there any intermediate level of respect for a person and their statue between worshiping it as an idol and supporting its being torn down by an angry mob? This sounds weirdly like how a certain type of Evangelical views Catholic statues of saints as necessarily idolatrous, but Jesus was fine with even Cesar on a coin. I think most of us want a healthy, positive concept of our country, even with the nuance of its faults, not that we're genuflecting before an image of George Washington.

The outrage that people have for statues and anything involving the flag far outweighs the outrage many of these same people have over what happens to actual people. And while I am not going to advocate not building statues (I don't personally care, frankly) nor am I going to advocate vandalism (which this realistically is, I'm not denying it) to claim that the toppling of a statue is Un-American or some sort of cultural war on America by people whose roots are here, and who are angry about what is going on, strikes me as not just bizarre but disturbing.

[Horus]

Sounds about Portland.

[dead0man]

Wow, the pro-slavery crowd is getting really triggered by this one.

is a thing a person would say who was losing an argument

[dead0man]

 

Oh no not the chunk of metal.

indeed, those protesters sure were triggered by a hunk of metal.  Weird take by your color of avatar, but you guys have confused "hot" takes all the time, so not that weird I guess.

[Citizen (The) Doctor]

The things we choose to care about.

What I love about these types of arguments is that there seems to be no real logical answer. It just ends up being a reflection of the present mores of the day.

[Sestak]

ThE nY tImEs HaS a MaJoR iMpAcT oN tHe DeM pArTy AnD lIbErAlIsM aS a WhOlE

[sparkey]

The things we choose to care about.

What I love about these types of arguments is that there seems to be no real logical answer. It just ends up being a reflection of the present mores of the day.

Sure, the vandalism and reaction teaches us a lot about today, just as the monuments themselves teach us a lot about the time in which they were built. And sure, the monuments don't always teach us as much about their subjects. But I'd suggest to stop focusing on the past or the present, and think instead of the future. What will our future generations think of how many monuments were vandalized in this time period? If it helps, what do we think now of all of the damage done throughout history to priceless art due to periods of iconoclasm?

[lfromnj]

The most shocking claim Garrow relates is that King was present in a hotel room when a friend of his, Baltimore pastor Logan Kearse, raped a woman who resisted participating in unspecified sexual acts. The FBI agent who surveilled the room asserted that King “looked on, laughed and offered advice.”

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/06/04/how-to-make-sense-of-the-shocking-new-mlk-documents-227042

Rumor has it that MLK did this, would you all support cancelling MLK day/and tearing down all his statues if this is true in 2027?

[All Along The Watchtower]

I’m curious as to what exactly all this vandalism is supposed to accomplish in terms of racial, social, or historical justice - or accomplish, period. What’s the end game here? Hell, what’s the short-term goal here? Inquiring minds would like to know.

In criminology, we distinguish between expressive and instrumental crime.

Haha, nice.

[The Dowager Mod]

The most shocking claim Garrow relates is that King was present in a hotel room when a friend of his, Baltimore pastor Logan Kearse, raped a woman who resisted participating in unspecified sexual acts. The FBI agent who surveilled the room asserted that King “looked on, laughed and offered advice.”

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/06/04/how-to-make-sense-of-the-shocking-new-mlk-documents-227042

Rumor has it that MLK did this, would you all support cancelling MLK day/and tearing down all his statues if this is true in 2027?

Slavery wasn't a rumor.

[lfromnj]

The most shocking claim Garrow relates is that King was present in a hotel room when a friend of his, Baltimore pastor Logan Kearse, raped a woman who resisted participating in unspecified sexual acts. The FBI agent who surveilled the room asserted that King “looked on, laughed and offered advice.”

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/06/04/how-to-make-sense-of-the-shocking-new-mlk-documents-227042

Rumor has it that MLK did this, would you all support cancelling MLK day/and tearing down all his statues if this is true in 2027?

Slavery wasn't a rumor.

My point is rather that the full files can't be confirmed until in 2027, if this was found to be true what should be done about MLK?