Last week I was listening to the news and a story came up of yet another protest against a Confederate monument right here in AZ.
I didn’t even know there was such a thing, nor that AZ soldiers fought for the Confederacy. Heck, I didn’t pay enough attention to history when I was in school.
Actually, it seems to be a widespread problem, and that is a problem
Have you ever heard the old adage;
“Those who do not understand their history are doomed to repeat it”?
A real problem we have going on in this day and age of everybody is offended by everything.
I find it amazing people can be offended by something that happened way before they ever came along. In judging our history by the trend of PC modern entitlement to be offended, we try to wipe the slate clean of all that should not have happened – and yes some of it, slavery, for example, was reprehensible, but did happen.
Did we learn a lesson about slavery?
Have we learned a lesson about sexual harassment?
I think so and while the markers of the past, specifically in these two cases, Confederate monuments and perceived as sexist pop culture contributing to today’s rape culture, were, and are, pertinent as marking and understanding our history, many believe that because they are offensive now, to those offended by everything, we should remove them and pretend like it didn’t happen.
That sounds like a communist ideal to me, let’s skip right over socialism and into communism. Yay!. Why not, it’ll be fun.
That’s what the Russians said about socialism and communism… I digress.
Let’s say we do get rid of all this offensive history. Then what?
I’ll tell you what, we stop teaching it and stop having the visuals and other historical markers to remember it and in as little as 2 generations it will be as if it never happened.
Not only then do the future generations not understand it, but they also don’t even know the true history of the United States. It’s already skewed enough by the party lines in public schools, why make it worse?
Consider This:
The Holocaust was offensive.
Nobody denies it, yet nobody is trying to petition to get it erased from history. In fact, most of the sites of concentration camps have been made into memorials and museums with the specific intent of showing the horror of it to today’s generations.
Why?
So we don’t forget.
Sure there’s shame in history but it’s not our shame today. We live in times when slavery, sexism, genocide and many many other terrible happenings from the past are not acceptable. We try to right the wrongs, that doesn’t mean we should erase them.
Those who do not understand their history… you know.
I don’t want to repeat all that, do you?
Incidentally, in regard to the monument in AZ, the Governor made it mandatory for these protests to go through a petition process to a committee for public works in order for them to make a decision on what should stay and what if anything should go.
He then abolished the committee. Good move Governor.
To Your Mental State, whatever it may be.
Running Naked With Scissors 
One issue generally with Confederate monuments is that they celebrate the Confederacy. They are not like the camps across Europe to show the horrors of war. The monuments hold up the leaders of the Confederacy as heroes, and that is a large part of why people object to them now.
Well, but, they are our history. It’s like when Joe Paterno died and they tried to take down his statue. You can’t just erase it. So what? People are offended looking at them? Doesn’t change it happened and it needs to be acknowledged. But you have a good point my friend…
I think the majority of the people offended have never actually seen the statues or read about the people in the statues. All they know is one word: Confederacy. I say if we have to take down the statues of the Confederacy, we should take down Washington’s statue; after all, he was a terrorist and a traitor.
Since schools DO NOT TEACH the Civil War, I would venture to guess we will need to have another one. I can lay odds which side will win.
xxx
Spot on!
<3<3