A Trump-nominated federal judge has halted the removal of the Reconciliation Monument in Arlington National Cemetery, which the cemetery indicated Saturday would otherwise take place by week's end. While the iconoclasts have been momentarily restrained, the fate of the historic monument, also ca...
  • NeuromancerM
    -6•9 months ago

    I think this sums up best.

    Clyde stressed that the memorial is exempt from the removal requirement because it “does not honor nor commemorate the Confederacy and that it commemorates reconciliation and nation unity.” Additionally, “the Naming Commission’s authority explicitly prohibits the desecration of grave sites.”

    I think people forget the confederacy was mainly democrats and many of the people who fought in the war, did so for their state and not the politics. Lee said that had Virginia stayed in the union, he would have fought for the union. Grant owned slaves.

    People want to pretend everyone fought for or against slavery and that simply is not true on either side. It was a complicated time in our history but I do think we should honor the dead soldiers as part of reconciliation.

    I don’t mind the base renamings since most of them were shitty generals and that alone should prevent a base from being named after them.

    I will leave it at that.

    • @ZapBeebz_
      9•9 months ago

      Doesn’t matter if you fought for your state or not, if you fought for the Confederacy, you fought for the right to own other people. End of story.

    • @[email protected]
      2•9 months ago

      People want to pretend everyone fought for or against slavery and that simply is not true on either side. It was a complicated time in our history but I do think we should honor the dead soldiers as part of reconciliation.

      But that’s true of everything everywhere. Even Trump/Biden support is complicated and uniformly full-throated on both sides.

      Lee said that had Virginia stayed in the union

      Yeah, I had to look that up. I guess it’s true.

      There’s still question of why you would represent national unity and reconciliation by praising the losers of a conflict. It’s not like we recognize the NCAA champion every year with a player from the losing team. That argument just sounds like sophistry.

      • NeuromancerM
        -3•9 months ago

        There’s still question of why you would represent national unity and reconciliation by praising the losers of a conflict

        https://www.arlingtoncemetery.mil/Explore/Monuments-and-Memorials/Confederate-Memorial

        President William McKinley kicked off his “Peace Jubilee” nationwide tour with a speech in Atlanta in which he proclaimed, “in the spirit of fraternity we should share with you in the care of the graves of Confederate soldiers…. Sectional feeling no longer holds back the love we feel for each other. The old flag again waves over us in peace with new glories.”

        What I take from this is it’s saying we are all Americans again. It doesn’t honor the war but honors that we are all Americans.

        I have no issue with statues honoring confederate because it’s complicated until the 1950-1960 time frame. Those are less about honoring and more about segregation in my opinion.