tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9479398.post7565570329761984373..comments2024-03-27T14:45:28.176-05:00Comments on Adventus: Monuments erasing historyUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9479398.post-58100652386049812882017-08-17T21:24:50.101-05:002017-08-17T21:24:50.101-05:00Well, we all should, of course.....Well, we all should, of course.....rick allenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07612435616018593956noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9479398.post-33883656105164518312017-08-17T20:24:20.380-05:002017-08-17T20:24:20.380-05:00Or maybe I should just shut up and listen.Or maybe I should just shut up and listen.Rmjhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06811456254443706479noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9479398.post-42625979704087864742017-08-17T19:42:35.202-05:002017-08-17T19:42:35.202-05:00"Nostalgia is the longing for the breakfasts ..."Nostalgia is the longing for the breakfasts of our childhood," some Chinese philosopher supposedly said. Something like that.<br /><br />I think one problem with these monuments (set aside mob violence against them) is that we grew up with them, and consider them "normative." Of course, we also grew up white, and both remember what Confederate symbols meant in 1971. That "confederate flag," for example, was not the flag of the confederacy at all, but a battle flag of a military unit. 100 years later it stands for something else entirely, and many things unpalatable to both of us.<br /><br />But we grew up thinking those monuments had stood since the 19th century. Why did they start going up 50 years after the war had ended, and who were the "survivors" putting them up? 50 years was the better part of a life time, on average, in 1903. And it's telling that the efforts immediately after the war, to incorporate the southern states back with the northern, were abandoned by these monuments to men who were, after all, traitors and rebels against the government you and I grew up in.<br /><br />And "Children of the Confederacy" in 1959? Isn't that rather like Nazis nostalgic for Hitler in Germany in 2019? What could such "children" remember about 1865? And what they remember is simply antithetical to the historical record. Was slavery the sole reason for that war? Is that even a serious question, because does the answer matter? Several of the states which seceded specifically cited slavery as a reason. It's a little disingenuous to even infer it didn't matter THAT much, now.<br /><br />But, as I say, we grew up with them, so they set a norm for history we accepted. A far better memorial is the one Grant put up around his farm near St. Louis. It's still there, I visited it several times when I lived there. He took 2500+ rifle barrels from the war and used them for a fence. He meant it as a memorial.<br /><br />It's a very proper one. A reminder of war, of what some call the first industrialized war, because so many guns were made so quickly, and so many instruments of war unknown before that time (medicine didn't catch up until nearly a century later).<br /><br />And I don't know about France and Germany. The former wasn't ruled by Napoleon because of treason, the latter wasn't formed into country until Bismarck in the 19th century, and the Nazis were the government, not the usurpers of government. How many monuments do the English have to Cromwell and the Roundheads?<br /><br />I think the closest they come is Guy Fawkes Day.<br /><br />I think it behooves us, children of the south who grew up with statues we thought were always there, where historically accurate and memorialized great things, to look from a different perspective, to think about how it appears to people without our background. And to think about how we form history, and reform history, and deform history.<br /><br />Because just because we're comfortable with it, doesn't mean it should be left alone until we're gone.<br /><br />Then again, I don't think they should all be torn down by mobs. As to what to do with them, I understand a lot of them were mass produced in the North and sold to Southerners in the early 20th century. Not exactly works of art, not exactly unique treasures. The Smithsonian is "America's attic." Maybe we could stick 'em all there.<br /><br />I just don't think my memories of them should be the measuring stick of their value. Especially since my presumptions about them have proven to be so false, and the truth about who put them up ("Children of the Confederacy"?) is so ugly.Rmjhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06811456254443706479noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9479398.post-4357488065611624412017-08-17T18:42:21.981-05:002017-08-17T18:42:21.981-05:00I have some conflicted feeling about this whole mo...I have some conflicted feeling about this whole monument imbroglio.<br /><br />As a kid at Robert E. Lee High School I really hated all the Confederate stuff and would have been happy to have had the whole mess pulled down.<br /><br />And as an old man who considers the current president a threat to the republic I'm not unhappy at yet another controversy that might inch us toward an early end of the administration.<br /><br />But I think fundamentally I am not an iconoclast. I don't like mobs pulling down statues. And I'm not sure, really, what the criteria should be for removing old monuments (I take for granted that lawful removal will result in some sort of preservation somewhere).<br /><br />I am sure that there are more monuments to the bad than to the good, starting with Ozymandius. But part of the problem is that symbols are not univocal. They mean different things to different people. Their meaning can change over time. A swastika means something different to an Eastern Buddhist than to a typical modern Westerner. So when we assert that a monument "really means" this rather than that, I wonder if the "real meaning" itself has any objective reality. Our discussion of these matters seems to kind of blithely assume that it does, and ascribe my own understanding to everyone.<br /><br />It's like asking whether the "real cause" of the Civil War was "slavery" or "states' rights." The cause of any war is obviously complex, and just as obviously, slavery was the hot-button issue that raised the tricky question of where sovereignty ultimately lay under the Constitution. But to argue as if there were a single cause is a little naïve (most of us with a high school education could probably come up with ten other less important causes). <br /><br />Nor am I comfortable with those who draw a sharp line between Confederate "traitors" and Colonial "founding fathers." Why shouldn't we think of Washington as a traitor to the crown he earlier served?<br /><br />What am I trying to say? That Trump is right? I hope not. More to the effect that there is a great deal of nuance in historical interpretation, and that I am a little uncomfortable with the political utility of these characterizations obscuring the nuance of historical judgment, which is a genuinely valuable thing.<br /><br />In Santa Fe there is a civil war monument on the plaza. It is a monument to Union soldiers rather than Confederate soldiers, but the inscription is highly unPC, and some years ago there was a movement to remove it. <br /><br />Instead of removing it, they did what I think was close to brilliant. They put a second inscription with the first:<br /><br />"Monument texts reflect the character of the times in which they are written and the temper of those who wrote them. This monument was dedicated in 1868 near the close of a period of intense strife which pitted northerner against southerner, Indian against white, Indian against Indian. Thus we see on this monument, as in other records, the use of such terms as 'savage' and 'rebel.' Attitudes change and prejudices hopefully dissolve."<br /><br />So....Germany remains Germany without Nazi monuments. France would undoubtedly not be France if all the monuments to the tyrant Napoleon were toppled. Is the American South still the American South if the stern visages of the failed Confederacy are excised from the public square? Or is their poisoned legacy still too toxic to tolerate? Those are genuine questions from me. But compromise does not seem to be he order of the day.rick allenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07612435616018593956noreply@blogger.com