[OrangeBlossomBaby]

Originally Posted by CoachKandSportsguy

I come from the same family as Abraham Lincoln, which landed in Hingham MA in the 1630s, but not a direct relative, as there are none remaining, and I trace my origins back to Lincolnshire, England.

What people forget in their American history class is the UNITED STATES part, a collection of states rights, and that the Constitution was written in a very different time and place, with very different attitudes, but with great intentions for being the best government for the people of the times.

Keeping the union of 50 states with states rights is a huge balancing act, and is getting harder to manage the bigger we grow, and the in the age of worldwide social media, has other governments wanting to subvert through psy-ops. . . .

That is the nature of the human existence, especially in european and western cultures. Similar issues in the Euro, which is a collection of european country rights to try to compete with the US and others collectively.

Humans having some herding instincts find that having a common enemy helps survival and organization for a leader. . . in behavioral psychology, its competitive human organizational games versus cooperative human organizational games.

What's the solution then? Do we split up the USA into countries? Do we force Texas to secede (which I personally think would be a swell idea)? Do we split up Florida into its own North and South, with south being more progressive-minded and north being less (since that's pretty much how it is now anyway)?

Does the governor become the emperor of his state-nation? What's the duty tax for imports and exports going to look like now? How will they pay for the gas pipeline that is no longer part of their country, since they're no longer one of the United States? Do we have 50 different countries now? Does each region become a single country? Like - New England and New York are now The United States of New America, and the central states become "The United States of North-Central America" and what not?

How would that even work?

It might be necessary, some day. But right now? Not gonna happen. So we need solutions for now.

And right now, we have a "United" country that is "divided" politically to the point where any mention of any "issue" becomes an exercise in futile teeth-gnashing at best, violence at worst.

[JMintzer]

Originally Posted by cj1040

And what about disgusting Andrew Jackson on our currency? Then there are the slave owning leaders such as Ben Franklin? Maybe just a photo of the white house and capital building and NO People on our currency???

From The History Chanel...

"He spent his later years as an abolitionist.
Franklin owned two slaves during his life, both of whom worked as household servants, but in his old age he came to view slavery as a vile institution that ran counter to the principles of the American Revolution.

He took over as president of a Pennsylvania abolitionist society in 1787, and in 1790 he presented a petition to Congress urging it to grant liberty “to those unhappy men who alone in this land of freedom are degraded into perpetual bondage.”

While the petition was ignored, Franklin kept up the fight until his death a few months later, and even included a provision in his will that required his daughter and son-in-law to free their slave to get their inheritance."

[JMintzer]

Originally Posted by Blackbird45

The civil war end on April 9, 1865.
The Robert E Lee statue was erected in 1924.
The question should not be how much it cost the tax payers to take it down, it should be how much it cost in todays dollars to put it up.
Let not forget this war was a stain on our country.

Most of the statues were paid for via private donations...

[JMintzer]

Originally Posted by DAVES

As I've stated we deal with one issue at a time. REALITY where we actually live does not happen that way. I would not expect or demand that anyone read all my posts. But, I did say that Lincoln unlike what is INDOCTRINATED to students in our current school system had as his main goal to preserve the Union. Not to free the slaves.m to be running our country.
The simplistic view we are good and they are evil.

What was that quote of Lincoln's?

"If I could preserve the Union without freeing a single slave, I would do it"... (I may have paraphrased a bit)...

[JMintzer]

Originally Posted by zendog3

The fathers of the Confederacy claimed to be fighting for the principle of state's rights, one of those rights being the institution of slavery. But many made it abundantly clear they considered black people inferior. Therefore, they stated clearly that the war was to preserve the institution of slavery.

Lincoln was no saint. While his position of the status of black people changed over his life, he felt that blacks should not be slaves, but it would be generations before they evolved to a position of equality with white European immigrants.

Immediately after the Civil War, blacks had relatively equal status with whites. But after the north removed the occupation of the south. Whites moved quickly to reimpose repression of black people. It was in that period that veneration of Confederate generals took place.

Put simply, do we want glorious statues to men whose main claim to fame was that they were willing to die and put others to death to preserve the right of white people to keep black people in chains? Again, think about what slavery is. If you were a black person, how would you feel walking under a heroic statue to a general who fought to keep your family in slavery?

Although overt racism is out of vogue, there are still people who think Lincoln was right. Black people aren't relatively equal to white people. If you are one of that–shame on you. America will never be the great nation we aspire to be until all Americans have equality. And, we should not have monuments to people who fought against that ideal.

Ummm...

The 3/5s of a man was a compromise demanded by the NORTH. Not the South...

It was to preserve their population (and therefore voting representation) dominance over the South...

[JMintzer]

Originally Posted by jimjamuser

President Johnson pushed through Civil Rights Legislation, but it did NOT go far enough. it needed mechanisms to eliminate "ghettoes" and encourage non-white home purchases in White areas. It needed Federal laws against restrictive building codes that were NOT for safety, but rather, to maintain racial separation. Also, adoption laws that REQUIRED adoption of different races - would have been NICE. The US MISSED its WINDOW of opportunity toward FULL equality in the 1960s!

Are you familiar with his notorious comment about what would happen once he passed the bill?

[Ben Franklin]

Originally Posted by Michael G.

Whatever side your on, one question I always wondered about.

If people insist on confederate statues being removed for whatever reason,
who is paying for the machinery and man power to remove them??

Can you say "the tax payers".



If these groups insist on removeable, let them collect the funds to pay the removal.

Why? If people didn't want the statues in the first place, why did they have to pay a sculpture, and then the machinery to place it there, AND maintain it every year? Why didn't those who wanted it in the first place pay for everything, and not charge it off to the taxpayers?

[Bay Kid]

Originally Posted by jimjamuser

As in....television or The Villages? tv or tv?

Sorry television. Never too much TVs!

[ThirdOfFive]

Originally Posted by Michael G.

Whatever side your on, one question I always wondered about.

If people insist on confederate statues being removed for whatever reason,
who is paying for the machinery and man power to remove them??

Can you say "the tax payers".

If these groups insist on removeable, let them collect the funds to pay the removal.

It's a bit mystifying that it's taken the virtue-signalers among us about 170 years to even realize the statues were there.

[ThirdOfFive]

Originally Posted by jdulej

Confederate generals and Confederate politicians were all traitors to the United States.

Many Confederate soldiers later served in the ranks of the U.S. army after the Civil War was over. This included four former Confederate generals; Gen. Joseph Wheeler, Gen. Fitzhugh Lee (nephew of Confederate General Robert E. Lee), Gen. Matthew C. Butler, and Gen. Thomas L. Rosser.

Apparently the people of the time were not nearly so ready to see the soldiers who served the Confederacy as traitors, as many are today.

[tvbound]

Originally Posted by ThirdOfFive

It's a bit mystifying that it's taken the virtue-signalers among us about 170 years to even realize the statues were there.

"about 170 years to even realize the statues were there."

That's simply not true. Decent people have been complaining about them being on public property, pretty much since they were put up to intimidate black Americans and push back against eliminating Jim Crow and segregation laws. As for being "170 years," there's a timeline in a previous post, w/link, that showed when the most active periods of the vast majority of these statues/monuments were erected (20th Century) - but certainly wasn't 10 years prior to the Civil War even starting.

[Bay Kid]

Originally Posted by tvbound

"about 170 years to even realize the statues were there."

That's simply not true. Decent people have been complaining about them being on public property, pretty much since they were put up to intimidate black Americans and push back against eliminating Jim Crow and segregation laws. As for being "170 years," there's a timeline in a previous post, w/link, that showed when the most active periods of the vast majority of these statues/monuments were erected (20th Century) - but certainly wasn't 10 years prior to the Civil War even starting.

Not on Monument Ave. Not until the Floyd ordeal.

[Laker14]

The idea that the United States was EVER a politically and ethically united country is a total myth. From the time the first explorers and settlers came to this continent, they came from different countries, and for different reasons, and they brought with them most of their ethical, moral and political beliefs. They often conflicted with each other over borders, politics and religion. In addition to trying to shove those beliefs on each other, they shoved them down the throats of the aboriginal population.
Slavery is just one of the many issues upon which various powerful factions disagreed. From the time of the original founding of the USA, all the way to the Emancipation Proclamation, it was a point of contention between Northern and Southern states, but more for the reason of political and financial power, than for any feeling of empathy for the plight of the slaves themselves.
When the Civil War (or "War of Northern Aggression" as the Confederate States referred to the conflict) was over, and slaves were "freed", they were not given any status of citizenship. They were not conferred any status of equality with white people. They were denied education, denied land except in a very few instances, and they were denied the right to vote. So while they may have been ceremonially "free", they still needed to eat, and to have a roof over their heads, and the only way to do that was essentially to live the same life they had always lived, and their progenitors had lived, and that was working the land they didn't own, for whatever the owners would give back to them.
I come from Sicilian immigrants who were, when they arrived, discriminated against. They worked their butts off, but nobody would sell them the land that they needed to build their own lives on. For a while. Eventually someone sold them land, and in 15 years they owned their own home, free and clear. The next generation went to war, and to college, although many of them were the first Italian-Americans to be admitted and eventually graduate from their respective schools. They were also discriminated against, but not to the extent that the previous generation had been. The next generation, my father's, also went to war and to college. My father said he never experienced any racism or bigotry attached to his Italian heritage. I was born in 1953, grew up in Ohio, and I never experienced any either.
When I walk down the street nobody looks at me and says "there is a descendant of Sicillian immigrants". Nobody knows, nobody cares, and THAT, folks, is because I'm "white".
It is completely different for an African-American. He or she wears their heritage on their skin. If you are a white person in this country you have NO FREEKING IDEA whatsoever what it is like to be a black person in this country. None, whatsoever.

If you think it's OK to honor rich, white slave owners who fought in an effort to preserve the institution of human slavery, and you can't see why the descendants of those slaves find it offensive and inappropriate and even threatening to do so on public land, then you do not understand, or you do not care about the generations of human suffering and oppression that those monuments honor.

[tvbound]

Originally Posted by Laker14

The idea that the United States was EVER a politically and ethically united country is a total myth. From the time the first explorers and settlers came to this continent, they came from different countries, and for different reasons, and they brought with them most of their ethical, moral and political beliefs. They often conflicted with each other over borders, politics and religion. In addition to trying to shove those beliefs on each other, they shoved them down the throats of the aboriginal population.
Slavery is just one of the many issues upon which various powerful factions disagreed. From the time of the original founding of the USA, all the way to the Emancipation Proclamation, it was a point of contention between Northern and Southern states, but more for the reason of political and financial power, than for any feeling of empathy for the plight of the slaves themselves.
When the Civil War (or "War of Northern Aggression" as the Confederate States referred to the conflict) was over, and slaves were "freed", they were not given any status of citizenship. They were not conferred any status of equality with white people. They were denied education, denied land except in a very few instances, and they were denied the right to vote. So while they may have been ceremonially "free", they still needed to eat, and to have a roof over their heads, and the only way to do that was essentially to live the same life they had always lived, and their progenitors had lived, and that was working the land they didn't own, for whatever the owners would give back to them.
I come from Sicilian immigrants who were, when they arrived, discriminated against. They worked their butts off, but nobody would sell them the land that they needed to build their own lives on. For a while. Eventually someone sold them land, and in 15 years they owned their own home, free and clear. The next generation went to war, and to college, although many of them were the first Italian-Americans to be admitted and eventually graduate from their respective schools. They were also discriminated against, but not to the extent that the previous generation had been. The next generation, my father's, also went to war and to college. My father said he never experienced any racism or bigotry attached to his Italian heritage. I was born in 1953, grew up in Ohio, and I never experienced any either.
When I walk down the street nobody looks at me and says "there is a descendant of Sicillian immigrants". Nobody knows, nobody cares, and THAT, folks, is because I'm "white".
It is completely different for an African-American. He or she wears their heritage on their skin. If you are a white person in this country you have NO FREEKING IDEA whatsoever what it is like to be a black person in this country. None, whatsoever.

If you think it's OK to honor rich, white slave owners who fought in an effort to preserve the institution of human slavery, and you can't see why the descendants of those slaves find it offensive and inappropriate and even threatening to do so on public land, then you do not understand, or you do not care about the generations of human suffering and oppression that those monuments honor.

"If you are a white person in this country you have NO FREEKING IDEA whatsoever what it is like to be a black person in this country. None, whatsoever."

Excellent post! If only more people understood the truth/facts - and felt like yourself. Not to mention, that almost none of those who downplay being born black, ever even think that they wished they had been born with black skin in this country.

[Byte1]

Originally Posted by zendog3

The fathers of the Confederacy claimed to be fighting for the principle of state's rights, one of those rights being the institution of slavery. But many made it abundantly clear they considered black people inferior. Therefore, they stated clearly that the war was to preserve the institution of slavery.

Lincoln was no saint. While his position of the status of black people changed over his life, he felt that blacks should not be slaves, but it would be generations before they evolved to a position of equality with white European immigrants.

Immediately after the Civil War, blacks had relatively equal status with whites. But after the north removed the occupation of the south. Whites moved quickly to reimpose repression of black people. It was in that period that veneration of Confederate generals took place.

Put simply, do we want glorious statues to men whose main claim to fame was that they were willing to die and put others to death to preserve the right of white people to keep black people in chains? Again, think about what slavery is. If you were a black person, how would you feel walking under a heroic statue to a general who fought to keep your family in slavery?

Although overt racism is out of vogue, there are still people who think Lincoln was right. Black people aren't relatively equal to white people. If you are one of that–shame on you. America will never be the great nation we aspire to be until all Americans have equality. And, we should not have monuments to people who fought against that ideal.

Lincoln was a racist too. Wasn't he involved in the creation of Liberia, consisting of an experiment in exporting slaves/former slaves to Africa? Guess we had better tear down monuments honoring him. Washington had slaves so tear down the Washington Monument. Better yet, every man is flawed so let's remove any reminders to anything that is not showing America favorably.