With all due respect,
@Bootie, for I recognize this is your site, and I will leave hereafter if you wish, but I will now make one last appeal as my message was taken out of context with the statement you wish to close upon.
@Hedgehog has brought this topic up in one form or another 3 times in the last month. I said as little as I could prior to that, but can no longer. (And I've PMed him and we are fine.) This topic has been my cause for 40 years and ending it on a mischaracterization of my remarks is unfair.
Why address the mischaracterization? Because this site is supposed to be about history, my position is in support of history, but no one is interested in the history.
"And I guess that is my point. What right does preserving the myth, even uniting the country around it, whether or not there is a historical basis, outweigh the damage it can cause, even to one individual?" I wrote that and stand by it. But the key word I would emphasize is MYTH. I am not asking that these be removed (AND preserved in a museum or cemetery!) because they offend people. But they do offend people, AND they are not history. This is a hot topic in America with everyone having an opinion based on this or that, but rarely do we ever see a debate from either side about the history. That was what I was trying to do here.
I privately explained to
@Hedgehog to that I don't lose sleep over this but I am bemused that for all the emotion behind this, people don't understand the basic facts. These statues themselves are an attempt to recreate history from one perspective but totally at odds with historical fact.
It is nice to look at one's cause as right and just, but no where on Earth should we celebrate an unjust cause just because some people, the defeated South, doesn't "have the morals and intelligence to discern and judge good and evil and act accordingly" nor have "moral fiber" "developed enough not to be offended or harmed by ideas you don't agree with ." I claim those that want to keep these statues either do not know the history of them, find it irrelevant because they just want what they want, or they are okay with letting a few former slave holder families control the narrative with myths and falsehoods.
Did the South fight for liberty and self-determination? How about letting local governments decide for themselves to keep or remove these statues on local public land? Isn't that the same kind of thing the Confederacy allegedly stood for?
Final summary:
Look at the history. Let's teach historical facts, not "feel good fables."
Communities should be allowed to decide for themselves what to do, as should families, and individuals so long as it isn't breaking laws or harming others. Communities have decided to remove these. I am not telling communities that wish to keep them to tear them down despite my objections. Why do we outside the communities get to force them to keep them?
Peace