Robert E. Lee statue to be moved in Virginia

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Desdichado

Senior Member
Feb 9, 2014
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#81
Hitler killed approximately six million Jews.
Just under 2 million slaves died in route from Africa.
While the numbers are smaller but I think 2 million could reasonably be called a holocaust
The Holocaust was a campaign of extermination which was planned and operated by the elite of a revolutionary regime. Even the regular army generals in the Wehrmacht such as Erwin Rommel cannot be compared with Hitler's supreme evil on these grounds. Nor Zhukov with Stalin.

American chattel slavery was a social and economic system that Lee was born into. It had existed for roughly 200 years before his birth. He didn't build it himself or even defend the people building it. By that point, it was more comparable to medieval serfdom. The slave trade itself, the catalyst for the deaths you referenced, was extinguished long before Lee's birth. It was perpetrated by people of many nationalities as well, not just American Southerners. This is a relevant fact.

The men are hardly comparable and so are their statues.
 

Dude653

Senior Member
Mar 19, 2011
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#82
Also my original point was that you don't need statues to remember history.
to this day in Germany it is illegal to publicly display a swastika and no one has forgotten the Holocaust
 

Desdichado

Senior Member
Feb 9, 2014
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#83
Correction: The American participation in the international slave trade ended when Lee was one year old. I was wrong.
 

Desdichado

Senior Member
Feb 9, 2014
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#84
Also my original point was that you don't need statues to remember history.
to this day in Germany it is illegal to publicly display a swastika and no one has forgotten the Holocaust
Removing statues that have been up does not erase history, but it is often a reminder something is being forgotten or worse- deleted.

America would be a better place if there were more monuments and museums. Even to the things that are not necessarily laudible but still important such as the Stalin bust in Bedford, VA.
What magical powers do people think sites like this have (in reference to Hitler's home)?

Lenin's corpse still gets juiced up every eighteen months. That unbearably ugly tomb of his still stands. Yet the chances of Russia going Communist again are roughly the same as Lloyd Christmas ending up with Mary.

Perhaps that old Soviet monument stands as a reminder of something...
I have to clarify I'm not a Communist or admirer of the Soviet Union. Quite the opposite.

The old Red monuments and busts which stand today are, in my mind, worth retaining precisely because they remind us of history's ugliest atrocities and the men behind them.
 

Dude653

Senior Member
Mar 19, 2011
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#85
Then put up monuments to the victim's instead of tribute to the perpetrators
 

Dude653

Senior Member
Mar 19, 2011
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#87
White privilege is when almost every historical monument in America looks like you and having no empathy for people of color who find monuments to slave owners offencive
 

Dude653

Senior Member
Mar 19, 2011
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#89

iamsoandso

Senior Member
Oct 6, 2011
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#90
Okay but it has nothing to do with my argument
if you're trying to say that secular people are inherently lawless then I'm going to need to see some data to back that claim

Your looking at it as though there may be an government/nation that we could form/mold into something but there is the beast and there is God. It is no coincidence that from Rome till now Rome divided into nations. It is no coincidence that the nation you speak of rose after those nations and the three nations of the others France,England and Spain are the three powers that ruled from Rome till those thirteen small colonies took away their power. Just be patient the nation that received the deadly wound has been set back up and is allied with it. Just don't be distracted by the tv,,,look at it from the Scriptures.
 

Dude653

Senior Member
Mar 19, 2011
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#91
And I guess we're just going to completely ignore the whole graven images thing right?
 

iamsoandso

Senior Member
Oct 6, 2011
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#92
And I guess we're just going to completely ignore the whole graven images thing right?

Well no there are graven images discussed in Scripture and we are well aware of how they are spoken of(the law,whose image was on the coin,image of the beast ect.).. The Jews during the revolt were offended by the images on the Romans coins https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Jewish_Revolt_coinage and printed their own.

There are graven images that are offensive to almost everyone. There are the US bills with images of Pyramids,Roman numerals and even the thirteen stars are arranged in the Star of David. We have football teams named "Redskins",Chiefs.Vikings and others. The Cross is offensive to the people who are not Christian and so some will want those removed will they not?

There is the British flag and it is offensive to Irish and many others. There is the red white and blue flag that represented at first the original thirteen colonies and it is offensive to the American Indians and it is the root of slavery in the United States of America. There is the word "America" which is an continent and not any individual nation,that is Canada.Mexico and all the way to the tip of Peru are Americans in that they were born and dwell in South,Central or North America shall we force the USA to stop using America to refer to it's nation because it is offensive to all other Americans?

If we begin to remove images that are offensive to everyone then yes but then we should not be bias in that approach we should do away with the Heisman trophy and not offend those who don't like football. We should not sell plastic model airplanes of ww2 Japanese,German or Italian planes nor their tanks or warships. Then it would be appropriate to not sell any of the allied forces toys anymore either?

What about the statues and buildings I showed you a few post back shall we go one after the other and remove the images of the Black American hero's if they offend others? Should we go street by street and change Grant road Lee Boulevard and MLK to something else? There is an graven image on US 59 in Huntsville of Sam Houston I think is offensive to Mexico.

We the whole world seem to forget the offense we might have on another with our graven images and though it might seem as if I disagree with you about it I do not. I think that especially as Christians we should beware of our idols https://biblehub.com/1_john/5-21.htm and not have set any of them up in the first place.

That said though I ask, seeing there are all these graven images that understandably could be seen offensive to someone and that the world set them up anyway what rules will we follow? Will we only remove this one or will we be non-bias and on request remove all the others? As for me though not any of the images mean anything to me except the Lords and so knowing that he is about to remove them all at his coming it seems as if none will succeed in removing them until he does. If he said these things would be clean dissolved then surly we will not remove them before he comes so can we remove them before he does? I know some might argue that I should not even see an Cross or the symbol of a fish denoting Christ but I have to admit I enjoy seeing it when I am looking for mine own brothers and sisters. If the other images don't mean anything to us in the first place why not let them ponder what they mean until the Lord removes them?
 

Desdichado

Senior Member
Feb 9, 2014
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#93
I'm confused. Are you supporting monuments to victims or ridding the country of monuments altogether?

And I guess we're just going to completely ignore the whole graven images thing right?
Then put up monuments to the victim's instead of tribute to the perpetrators
 

Dude653

Senior Member
Mar 19, 2011
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#94
I'm confused. Are you supporting monuments to victims or ridding the country of monuments altogether?
How about we just put up a plaque that says
This happened, it was bad don't do it again
 

Desdichado

Senior Member
Feb 9, 2014
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#95
1. Why are statues necessarily idols?
2. Because history is more complex than a Marxian victim vs. oppressor narrative. Some people had vices worth denouncing and virtues worth celebrating. The statue is there because they were significant, not necessarily perfect. Their example has a lesson to teach. Now there may be times a statue is worth removing, but statues are like fences- they are erected and maintained for a reason and it's best to thoroughly contemplate that reason before their removal. What we see today in this rash of statue-toppling isn't reasoned. It's an emotivistic brand of self-righteousness.




How about we just put up a plaque that says
This happened, it was bad don't do it again
 

p_rehbein

Senior Member
Sep 4, 2013
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#96
Found this from Snopes:

9 'Facts' About Slavery They Don't Want You to Know

www.snopes.com/fact-check/facts-about-slavery
Aug 17, 2016 ·
  • The first legal slave owner in American history was a black tobacco farmer named Anthony Johnson. Possibly true. The wording of the statement is important.
  • North Carolina’s largest slave holder in 1860 was a black plantation owner named William Ellison. False. William Ellison was a very wealthy black plantation owner and cotton gin manufacturer who lived in South Carolina (not North Carolina).
  • American Indians owned thousands of black slaves. True. Historian Tiya Miles provided this snapshot of the Native American ownership of black slaves at the turn of the 19th century for Slate magazine in January 2016
  • In 1830 there were 3,775 free black people who owned 12,740 black slaves. Approximately true, according to historian R. Halliburton Jr.: There were approximately 319,599 free blacks in the United States in 1830.
  • Many black slaves were allowed to hold jobs, own businesses, and own real estate. Somewhat true. There were exceptions, but generally speaking — especially after 1750, by which time slave codes had been entered into the law books in most of the American colonies — black slaves were not legally permitted to own property or businesses.
  • Brutal black-on-black slavery was common in Africa for thousands of years. True, in the sense that the phenomenon of human beings enslaving other human beings goes back thousands of years, but not just among blacks, and not just in Africa.
See all full list on snopes.com
 

Dude653

Senior Member
Mar 19, 2011
12,649
1,091
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#97
Found this from Snopes:

9 'Facts' About Slavery They Don't Want You to Know

www.snopes.com/fact-check/facts-about-slavery
Aug 17, 2016 ·
  • The first legal slave owner in American history was a black tobacco farmer named Anthony Johnson. Possibly true. The wording of the statement is important.
  • North Carolina’s largest slave holder in 1860 was a black plantation owner named William Ellison. False. William Ellison was a very wealthy black plantation owner and cotton gin manufacturer who lived in South Carolina (not North Carolina).
  • American Indians owned thousands of black slaves. True. Historian Tiya Miles provided this snapshot of the Native American ownership of black slaves at the turn of the 19th century for Slate magazine in January 2016
  • In 1830 there were 3,775 free black people who owned 12,740 black slaves. Approximately true, according to historian R. Halliburton Jr.: There were approximately 319,599 free blacks in the United States in 1830.
  • Many black slaves were allowed to hold jobs, own businesses, and own real estate. Somewhat true. There were exceptions, but generally speaking — especially after 1750, by which time slave codes had been entered into the law books in most of the American colonies — black slaves were not legally permitted to own property or businesses.
  • Brutal black-on-black slavery was common in Africa for thousands of years. True, in the sense that the phenomenon of human beings enslaving other human beings goes back thousands of years, but not just among blacks, and not just in Africa.
See all full list on snopes.com
Irrelevant and non sequitur
 

tourist

Senior Member
Mar 13, 2014
42,538
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Tennessee
#98
Then put up monuments to the victim's instead of tribute to the perpetrators
Are those still presently alive victims from things that happened a couple hundred years ago? After awhile, remaining a victim becomes a choice.
 

Dude653

Senior Member
Mar 19, 2011
12,649
1,091
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Are those still presently alive victims from things that happened a couple hundred years ago? After awhile, remaining a victim becomes a choice.
deliberately missing the point. If you're going to put up monuments to human Rights atrocities then honor the victims instead of the perpetrators
Actually, very relevant in regards to the social injustice movement.
Yeah imagine I robbed a bank and told the judge
Yeah but other people have robbed banks to so you should totally not put me in jail today