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

[Calthrina950]

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/not-all-statues-are-the-same-pelosi-says-theres-a-difference-between-removing-confederate-leaders-past-presidents

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi Thursday made a distinction between taking down statues of Confederate leaders and those of past U.S. presidents who were slaveowners.


Pelosi has spearheaded an effort to take down 11 statues in the Capitol of Confederate leaders but stopped short Thursday of disavowing statues of President Thomas Jefferson and President George Washington, whom some activists say should no longer be enshrined since they owned enslaved persons.

"It's not about Washington and Jefferson, it's about Alexander Stephens," Pelosi said at a Capitol press conference.

<Snip>

Former Vice President Joe Biden also distinguished between statues honoring the pro-slavery Confederacy and other historic figures who have fallen out of favor. In a press conference Tuesday, Biden said the federal government has an obligation to protect certain monuments, like Washington and Jefferson.

I'm going to have disagree with Pelosi and Biden here. If you were a slaveowner you should be unpersoned from society.

Would you support demolishing the Washington Monument and the Jefferson Memorial? Because that is where your line of thought leads. Your viewpoint would have it that we would subscribe the memory of most of our Presidents up to and after the Civil War. Such a proscription would also include Ulysses S. Grant, who owned slaves at one point in his life.

[Calthrina950]

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/not-all-statues-are-the-same-pelosi-says-theres-a-difference-between-removing-confederate-leaders-past-presidents

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi Thursday made a distinction between taking down statues of Confederate leaders and those of past U.S. presidents who were slaveowners.


Pelosi has spearheaded an effort to take down 11 statues in the Capitol of Confederate leaders but stopped short Thursday of disavowing statues of President Thomas Jefferson and President George Washington, whom some activists say should no longer be enshrined since they owned enslaved persons.

"It's not about Washington and Jefferson, it's about Alexander Stephens," Pelosi said at a Capitol press conference.

<Snip>

Former Vice President Joe Biden also distinguished between statues honoring the pro-slavery Confederacy and other historic figures who have fallen out of favor. In a press conference Tuesday, Biden said the federal government has an obligation to protect certain monuments, like Washington and Jefferson.

I'm going to have disagree with Pelosi and Biden here. If you were a slaveowner you should be unpersoned from society.

Would you support demolishing the Washington Monument and the Jefferson Memorial? Because that is where your line of thought leads. Your viewpoint would have it that we would subscribe the memory of most of our Presidents up to and after the Civil War. Such a proscription would also include Ulysses S. Grant, who owned slaves at one point in his life.

The Washington Monument isn't a statue, but yes. We, as a society should have evolved to have stop venerating people who owned other people.

Then, following upon this, I suspect you want to tear down the entire country's system of government, then? Since the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence (and the Bill of Rights...) were in large part written by slaveowners, we can't have them guiding us anymore, now can we? To truly purge ourselves of the evils of our country's history, we need to discard these documents, and write completely new ones.

Moreover, we must rename Washington D.C.-what about the Douglass Commonwealth? We also need to rewrite our history textbooks, to blot out the names of slaveowners. Perhaps we should start American history after the Civil War, and move onwards. The point I'm trying to make is that if you truly want to stop "venerating slaveowners", you'll have to do much more than dismantling some monuments. It would require purging much of our history, which would defeat the effort of it. Rather, we should educate people on what was done, while not going to the extent of dismantling all tradition.

[Calthrina950]

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/not-all-statues-are-the-same-pelosi-says-theres-a-difference-between-removing-confederate-leaders-past-presidents

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi Thursday made a distinction between taking down statues of Confederate leaders and those of past U.S. presidents who were slaveowners.


Pelosi has spearheaded an effort to take down 11 statues in the Capitol of Confederate leaders but stopped short Thursday of disavowing statues of President Thomas Jefferson and President George Washington, whom some activists say should no longer be enshrined since they owned enslaved persons.

"It's not about Washington and Jefferson, it's about Alexander Stephens," Pelosi said at a Capitol press conference.

<Snip>

Former Vice President Joe Biden also distinguished between statues honoring the pro-slavery Confederacy and other historic figures who have fallen out of favor. In a press conference Tuesday, Biden said the federal government has an obligation to protect certain monuments, like Washington and Jefferson.

I'm going to have disagree with Pelosi and Biden here. If you were a slaveowner you should be unpersoned from society.

Would you support demolishing the Washington Monument and the Jefferson Memorial? Because that is where your line of thought leads. Your viewpoint would have it that we would subscribe the memory of most of our Presidents up to and after the Civil War. Such a proscription would also include Ulysses S. Grant, who owned slaves at one point in his life.

The Washington Monument isn't a statue, but yes. We, as a society should have evolved to have stop venerating people who owned other people.

Then, following upon this, I suspect you want to tear down the entire country's system of government, then? Since the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence (and the Bill of Rights...) were in large part written by slaveowners, we can't have them guiding us anymore, now can we? To truly purge ourselves of the evils of our country's history, we need to discard these documents, and write completely new ones.

Moreover, we must rename Washington D.C.-what about the Douglass Commonwealth? We also need to rewrite our history textbooks, to blot out the names of slaveowners. Perhaps we should start American history after the Civil War, and move onwards. The point I'm trying to make is that if you truly want to stop "venerating slaveowners", you'll have to do much more than dismantling some monuments. It would require purging much of our history, which would defeat the effort of it. Rather, we should educate people on what was done, while not going to the extent of dismantling all tradition.

The Bill of Rights and the Constitution are probably where I would draw the line.

As for renaming Washington D.C. Just drop the Washington, and change the Columbia to something else. District of ____ makes sense to me.

I'm glad that you would at least preserve these documents, even though George Washington and James Madison (two prominent slaveholders and early Presidents), had a role in their formulation. But I'm still concerned about your support for a purist drive of removing all "taints of evil" from our country's history. I highly doubt most Americans would support going this far, and this is exactly the kind of issue that would play into Republican hands. Purging symbols and figures of the Confederacy would seem to be the appropriate solution for me.

[Calthrina950]

Such a proscription would also include Ulysses S. Grant, who owned slaves at one point in his life.

Slaves, plural? You really should do at least a bare minimum level of research before you equate someone who was given a single slave against his will who he freed with other slaveowners.

A mistake on my part, and a needlessly hostile reaction from you, I might add. I'm very well aware that Ulysses S. Grant freed his only slave. That's exactly why I mentioned him. The point I was trying to make is that several of our early Presidents who had a part in slavery, ought to be judged on the whole of their records, not merely on the fact that they were slaveholders. This goes for Washington, for Jefferson, for Madison, for Jackson, for Polk, for Taylor, and for Grant.

[Calthrina950]

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/not-all-statues-are-the-same-pelosi-says-theres-a-difference-between-removing-confederate-leaders-past-presidents

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi Thursday made a distinction between taking down statues of Confederate leaders and those of past U.S. presidents who were slaveowners.


Pelosi has spearheaded an effort to take down 11 statues in the Capitol of Confederate leaders but stopped short Thursday of disavowing statues of President Thomas Jefferson and President George Washington, whom some activists say should no longer be enshrined since they owned enslaved persons.

"It's not about Washington and Jefferson, it's about Alexander Stephens," Pelosi said at a Capitol press conference.

<Snip>

Former Vice President Joe Biden also distinguished between statues honoring the pro-slavery Confederacy and other historic figures who have fallen out of favor. In a press conference Tuesday, Biden said the federal government has an obligation to protect certain monuments, like Washington and Jefferson.

I'm going to have disagree with Pelosi and Biden here. If you were a slaveowner you should be unpersoned from society.

Would you support demolishing the Washington Monument and the Jefferson Memorial? Because that is where your line of thought leads. Your viewpoint would have it that we would subscribe the memory of most of our Presidents up to and after the Civil War. Such a proscription would also include Ulysses S. Grant, who owned slaves at one point in his life.

The Washington Monument isn't a statue, but yes. We, as a society should have evolved to have stop venerating people who owned other people.

Then, following upon this, I suspect you want to tear down the entire country's system of government, then? Since the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence (and the Bill of Rights...) were in large part written by slaveowners, we can't have them guiding us anymore, now can we? To truly purge ourselves of the evils of our country's history, we need to discard these documents, and write completely new ones.

To be fair we have made changes to the constitution on a routine basis up until recently, doing away with the evils of the time (repealing slavery and the apportionment being based on blacks being 3/5 of a person being the most prominent examples.)

You're correct, and this is another reason why our founding documents need to be preserved. We have recognized the flaws which were inherent in them, and have sought to correct them (and hopefully, will continue to correct them). I was posing this hypothetical to NewYorkExpress so as to get a sense of how far he would be willing to go, to purge our nation of the figures and symbols who were involved in slavery, but provided major contributions towards our country's development.

[Calthrina950]

My position on this continues to be the same that it has been for years.

Every person is flawed in some way.  That includes great historical heroes.  And similarly, great historical villains often have redeeming qualities.

When we remember these people, we are celebrating their legacy, and the main things they are known for.  We are not venerating them as saints.  We are not declaring them as perfect.  We are not celebrating the entirety of their life and personality and saying that every single aspect was good and worth celebrating.

Hitler was probably very nice to his dog.  When we condemn Hitler, are we condemning his relationship with his dog, and saying that was evil?  No.  We are condemning the part of his legacy that actually matters.

Similarly, when we celebrate Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Roosevelt, etc. are we celebrating the more questionable parts of their legacies?  No.  We are celebrating their tremendous accomplishments.  These were all great men who accomplished incredible things.  Things that are worthy of celebration.
 We are not celebrating Washington's ownership of slaves.  It's not a religious cult where we have to pretend everything they did was good.  Nor is it a religious cult where only the pure and perfect are permitted to be celebrated.

When people celebrate confederates, it is different.  The legacy of Robert E. Lee is explicitly tied to his support of treason and slavery.  His battlefield accomplishments were in the name of a treasonous cause that existed to perpetuate the institution of slavery.  The same goes for other confederate leaders and generals.  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.

I agree with what you say here (and this is perhaps the first time I've ever agreed with you something). I think this is a very articulate explanation of the position which I was taking earlier.