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C: This post was made in April of 2018 and has not been revised since.
R: It does not agree with my claim and explains why these monuments should be taken down.
A: Kermit Franklin is the author and the URL reveals that it is a network domain.
A: There were no current spelling errors on this post.
P: It informs us on the history of these monuments and why they should be taken down.

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C: This post was made in September of 2017 and has not been revised since.
R: It does agree with my claim by explaining why removing these monuments accomplishes nothing.
A: Cheryl Benard is the author and the URL reveals that it is a Organization domain.
A: There were no current spelling errors on this post.
P: It Informs us on the history of these monuments and why they should stay where they are.

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As president of a cultural heritage organization, I feel obligated to weigh in on the current controversy over Confederate monuments. The semi-hysterical push to remove them is, I strongly believe, a mistake, a dangerous precedent, and an exercise in ignorance. Mobs pull statues down. ISIS destroys monuments. Fanatics rewrite history to edit out the bits they don't like. Our country should not be walking down that road.

To the advocates of historic cleansing, this is about racism. Remove its reminders from public spaces, and you are helping to remove it from society. That is a bold assumption-in fact it's many assumptions: that what a monument says to you is what it says to everyone. That negative periods of history should be erased. That the losing side in a conflict also loses, for all time, the right to honor or mourn its dead. That driving an opposing sentiment underground will make it go away.

My nonprofit helps people in conflict zones protect their endangered heritage sites or rebuild them if they were damaged by war or terrorism. For example, we are working to restore the last remaining Judaeo-Christian pilgrimage site in the vicinity of Mosul, the only one that was missed by ISIS in its rampage. From my vantage point, the idea that the way to deal with history is to destroy any relics that remind you of something you don't like, is highly alarming. It's bad enough when some insane bunch of fanatics has this idea. When it happens in a supposedly rational, knowledge-based society, it sets a terrible precedent. And by the way it doesn't even accomplish its aim-quite often, a destroyed monument thereby gains in power and resonance. There are much better ways to process the past.

The first problem with projects of cultural cleansing is that they must always, inevitably, be subjective. The people behind the destruction of a statue or an edifice or a monument of course believe themselves to be justified. They see Object X as offensive to their beliefs and values. Others may argue for its survival by pointing out that it does no harm, or that it is art, or that they are sentimentally attached to it, or that they want it to remain for any number of other reasons. But even if everyone agrees that Object X should go, later generations may find that decision appalling, a loss to culture, to art, to science, to knowledge and to the historic integrity of the urban landscape.

To the Taliban, the ancient Buddhas of Bamiyan were impious remnants of a pre-Islamic age, idols that deserved to be blown up. Now these irreplaceable, priceless and beautiful statues are gone, lost to the world. ISIS dynamited Palmyra ("a heathen site") and many other beautiful and valuable places in Syria and Iraq, including the tombs of the Biblical prophets Jonah and Daniel and countless other historic treasures. And they can make a case for so doing-not a case you and I might agree with, but a case nonetheless. They disapprove of monuments altogether-a sort of radical "thou shalt make no graven images" argument, and they especially disapprove of monuments honoring anything that is not Islamic, or not Islamic in line with their own particular vision, which is why they also destroy historic mosques and Muslim shrines. They feel virtuous and justified in targeting something they despise and turning it to rubble. The rest of us ought to beware of that feeling.

The second problem with this method is that it doesn't work. Object X will just become one more martyr. Fifteen years after their obliteration, the Bamiyan Buddhas are arguably the most vivid Buddha figures in the minds of millions of people. There are other colossal Buddha statues in the world-but how many can the average nonarchaeologists, non-Buddhist name? The Buddha of Hyderabad anyone? Of Kamakura? Similarly, can we seriously expect that removing Robert E. Lee from perches in parks will contribute to the elimination of racism in America? Taking a statue away is not a social reform action, it is a pseudo-action to make people feel they are accomplishing something when in fact they are not.

Another thing to consider, and perhaps be healthily humbled by, is the temporal nature of our societies, their accomplishments, their battles. Tour the archaeological ruins of any formerly great civilization, and you will invariably encounter inscriptions that have been chiseled away, faces that have been obliterated, heads that have been struck off the rumps of their statues. Someone overthrows or assassinates a predecessor and orders his or her name and image removed. Often, the relevant dynasties have been lost to historic memory, and no one has any clue what their bitterly monumental conflicts were about, who won, who lost, who got slaughtered, what they believed in. What could have remained is their story, and any lessons later humans might draw from it. Erase your story and you erase yourself.

And on the subject of stories: a monument does not impose a story. A monument is just a piece of stone or metal. The "get Robert E. Lee out of here" contingent assumes that anyone who stands before his statue will be thinking, "how noble it was to own a plantation and have slaves, I wish the South had won." A reasonable viewer, however, is more likely to think: "How sad that so many thousands of young men had to die for this lost cause. Too bad that Robert E. Lee, by all accounts a brilliant man, made the wrong call. We should all learn to subject our loyalties to very careful moral scrutiny." Instead of removing the object, it's much better to try and shape what lesson it conveys.

And President Donald Trump was right to ask where this will end. Our Founding Fathers were flawed personalities on many levels, and one could make the case that none of them deserve to be put on pedestals. An estimated 70 precent of the signatories to the Declaration of Independence owned slaves. And let's spend a moment perusing the following quotation:

I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races- I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.

Any guesses on who the speaker was? Robert E. Lee perhaps? Stonewall Jackson? No, these are the words of Abraham Lincoln. The sad hard truth is that although he presided over the abolition of slavery, Lincoln was and throughout his lifetime remained a racist. Shall he now be purged from our memory and deprived of our esteem, or shall we accept-as Professor Tanya Marsh argues in an exceptionally engrossing article-that history is " messy." And not just ours.

Which is why we need to ask ourselves: what's the bottom line here? That after a societal conflict, the losing side should have its symbols erased? That instead of looking forward and considering how to do things better, we should focus on looking backward to retroactively judge and eviscerate the past, in a Cultural Revolution of Politically Correct Righteousness?

It's true, of course, that there are historic personages who should not be honored or venerated. But I don't agree that keeping a monument means venerating the person or era it depicts; it can just as well stand witness to the folly of some despot's hubris or some tragic mass delusion. If North Korea ever becomes a normal state, I for one sincerely hope that they keep the bizarrely grandiose monuments of the peculiar dynasty that kept them in thrall for so long-as a historic curiosity, an object lesson, and a warning. Statues can have many meanings. In Vienna, just off the Ring-the broad circular boulevard that was built in place of the old fortification wall when the city had begun to sprawl beyond its medieval boundaries-stands an expansive fountain. At its head looms a twenty-meter high column topped by the statue of a Russian soldier holding a shield with the insignia of the Soviet Union in one hand and a Soviet flag in the other. At the base are two quotations from the dictator Stalin. The statue was erected by the Soviet army in 1945, using German POW's as forced labor. Designed in the trenches before the troops had even entered Vienna, the plan for the monument was modeled out of bread, since the architects had no other materials to work with.

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Destroying Confederate Monuments Hurts Us All-and Accomplishes Nothing

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As president of a cultural heritage organization, I feel obligated to weigh in on the current controversy over Confederate monuments. The semi-hysterical push to remove them is, I strongly believe, a mistake, a dangerous precedent, and an exercise in ignorance. Mobs pull statues down. ISIS destroys monuments.

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C: This post was made in August of 2017 and has not been revised since.
R: It does agree with my claim by showing that i'm not the only one who thinks that they should stay.
A: Ailsa Chang is the author and the URL reveals that it is a Organization domain.
A: There were no current spelling errors on this post.
P: It informs us that most people just like me think that these statues should not be removed yet kept.

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In cities across the U.S., calls to take down monuments to Confederate leaders are growing louder since the deadly events in Charlottesville, Va.

One of the most dramatic monuments to the Confederacy is called Stone Mountain, in northern Georgia. It's sort of a Confederate Mount Rushmore, with Stonewall Jackson, Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis carved into a mountainside.

Andrew Young, a former mayor of Atlanta and lifelong African-American civil rights activist, says the memorial should stay. Young served as a congressman from Georgia and ambassador to the United Nations. He was with Martin Luther King Jr. the day he was assassinated.

"That is a tremendous carving. And I don't want to see that destroyed. I don't care who it is," he says.

Young is not alone. An NPR/PBS NewsHour poll released this month found that 44 percent of African-Americans believe Confederate memorials should stay, compared with 40 percent who say they should be removed. Nationwide, 6 in 10 Americans say the monuments should remain. Still, Young's comments come as prominent Democratic and African-American activists call for the monuments to be removed or "contextualized," to avoid celebrating the leaders who supported slavery.

Interview Highlights
On how removing Confederate monuments alienates potential civil rights allies
We made progress in the civil rights movement as 12, 13 percent of the population at most. We couldn't have made any change with that. In order to make change we had to build a majority of at least 60 percent. We could build a majority around lunch counters. We could build a majority around jobs.
On the Black Lives Matter activists calling to dismantle Confederate memorials
I'm saying these are kids who grew up free, and they don't realize what still enslaves them - and it's not those monuments.

What worries me is that this country will turn to the right so that it'll - be taking down Martin Luther King's statue next when the racist majority takes over. And I'm saying that a minority can't be provoking a racist majority that is still underemployed, undereducated and dying faster than we are - that the issue is life and death - not some stupid monument.
On adding to - not removing - the Stone Mountain monument
I would only consider adding to it a freedom bell because Martin Luther King said in his speech, "Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain [of] Georgia." He named that specifically.

Morning Edition editor Daniella Cheslow and Web producer Heidi Glenn contributed to this story.

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Civil Rights Activist Argues To Keep Confederate Monuments

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In cities across the U.S., calls to take down monuments to Confederate leaders are growing louder since the deadly events in Charlottesville, Va. One of the most dramatic monuments to the Confederacy is called Stone Mountain, in northern Georgia. It's sort of a Confederate Mount Rushmore, with Stonewall Jackson, Robert E.

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C: This post was made in August of 2017 and has not been revised since.
R: It does agree with my claim of why we need to keep these statues right where they are standing.
A: John Daniel Davidson is the author and the URL reveals that it is a Communication domain.
A: There were no current spelling errors on this post.
P: It Persuades us to keep these statues standing instead of taking them all down.

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In the wake of Charlottesville, a chorus of media outlets, political activists, and random people on the Internet have called for the removal or destruction of Confederate statues in cities across the country. They say we shouldn't honor a bunch of racists who fought to preserve slavery, and that it's long past time for these painful reminders of our past to come down-stow them away in a museum or smash them to pieces, just get them off the streets.

This iconoclastic impulse is a mistake, even after the harrowing events in Charlottesville last weekend. It's a mistake not because there was anything noble about the Confederacy or its raison d'être, which was slavery, but because there is something noble-and, for a free people, necessary-about preserving our history so we can understand who we are and how we should live.

For all the tough talk this week about the problems with these historical monuments, there hasn't been nearly enough discussion of their history. Most of them were built a half-century after the war, as the Civil War generation was beginning to die off. Before the turn of the century, Confederate graves had for the most part not been cared for in federal cemeteries, and erecting a Confederate monument was considered treasonous.

But as the veterans of the war began to die, there was a renewed push for reconciliation between North and South, and with it an outpouring of filial piety. Of course, the monument boom across the South during the first two decades of the twentieth century came at a time of terrible race relations, mass immigration, and the pernicious influence of the Lost Cause mythos, which poisoned the South.

So the monuments reflect more than one current of early twentieth-century America. They served to venerate Confederate heroes like Robert E. Lee, thereby cementing the narrative of the Lost Cause and all its misty-eyed nostalgia about the South. But they were also an outpouring of grief and remembrance for the hundreds of thousands who had died in the war. Nearly a quarter of Southern white men in their twenties were killed or died from disease. Is it any wonder that decades later, as families began to bury Confederate veterans in greater numbers, there would be a push to erect memorials to that generation?

And for as much as Lost Cause mythology adorns so many of these monuments, their purpose was also to convey to future generations why so many people kept fighting, for years and in the face of staggering casualties. For the ordinary soldiers who fought and died, devotion to the Confederate army did not arise primarily from a devotion to the institution of slavery (just as most Union soldiers were not fighting primarily to end slavery) but from a devotion to their home states and a sense of honor and duty to defend them from what they considered to be an invading army.

That they were wrong about slavery does not excuse us today from the burden of trying to understand what motivated them to fight-and what motivated them and their families to undertake a flurry of monument-building decades later as the surviving veterans began to die off.

Speaking on Memorial Day in 1884, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., a Union veteran who saw a great deal of action, talked about the importance of transmitting the emotional weight of the war from one generation to the next, and he specifically mentions the role of monuments: "I believe from the bottom of my heart that our memorial halls and statues and tablets, the tattered flags of our regiments gathered in the Statehouses, are worth more to our young men by way of chastening and inspiration than the monuments of another hundred years of peaceful life could be."

For Holmes, it was also the duty of Civil War veterans themselves to convey the significance of the war to posterity. He said, "the generation that carried on the war has been set apart by its experience. Through our great good fortune, in our youth our hearts were touched with fire... we have seen with our own eyes, beyond and above the gold fields, the snowy heights of honor, and it is for us to bear the report to those who come after."

This Isn't Really About Confederate Monuments

Nevertheless, a common objection to these statues today is that because they occupy public spaces, they serve to venerate their subjects, who were of course racists and fought to preserve slavery. But if we know the history, why can't we see them in a different light? Why shouldn't we view them as we should, as a haunting and cautionary tale?

Certainly, the statues were not originally meant to educate future generations about the evils of slavery and secession, but that doesn't mean that we can't take them as such today. Indeed, the fact that these statues were erected in prominent public places is itself a powerful lesson in American history-a testament to our turbulent past that would be diminished if they were removed to a sanitized display in a museum. Not every statue or piece of public art has to comfort and console us. Sometimes, they should oblige us to grapple with our nation's history and the vagaries of human nature.

Even so, some conservatives are willing to let the things go. Kevin Williamson at NRO urges conservatives to do nothing. "The Left's vandalism is intended mainly to get a rise out of the Right, in the hopes of getting some Republican to wrong-foot himself over a racial question," he writes. Even if some conservatives sympathize with those who want to remove Confederate memorials-and plenty of prominent right-of-center writers clearly do-there's no need to join them because the iconoclasm sweeping the country, says Williamson, "mainly consists of local authorities making democratic decisions about the disposition of public property," and thus "there is a case for political quietism in this matter."

That would be fine advice if it were true that this is really just about local authorities making democratic decisions about statues. It would even be fine if it were just about the moral preening of Democratic politicians and activists, seizing on an opportunity to shame and embarrass Southerners for gradually abandoning their party in favor of the GOP.

But the iconoclasm on display now is about more than anathematizing the Confederacy or scoring cheap political points against hapless Republicans. It's part of the Left's overarching critique of American constitutionalism, the goal of which is to overthrow that order.

The Real Reason The Left Wants To Forget The Past

President Trump was mocked for suggesting that if we tear down statues of Lee then activists would demand the removal of George Washington or Thomas Jefferson next. But sure enough, later in the week the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC was vandalized with spray paint. A Lincoln statue in Chicago was burned. Al Sharpton said the Jefferson Memorial should be abandoned. A pastor in Chicago asked the mayor to remove the names of Washington and Andrew Jackson from city parks because they owned slaves. A writer at Vice News called for Mount Rushmore to be blown up. One columnist in Philly even argued for tearing down a statue of Frank Rizzo, who served as police commissioner and mayor in the late 1960s and '70s. In some cases, any monument would do.

All this sounds crazy, but jumping from Confederate statues to Lincoln to Rizzo follows a certain logic. For the Left, the Confederacy is just a small part of a much larger problem, which is the past. Iconoclasm of the kind we've seen this week is native to the Left, because the entire point is to liberate society from the strictures of tradition and history in order to secure a glorious new future. That's why Mao's Cultural Revolution in China torched temples and dug up ancient graves, why the Soviets sacked Orthodox churches and confiscated church property, and why various governments of France went about de-Christianizing the country during the French Revolution.

The modern-day American Left isn't as bad as all that, but its ideology about the past is more or less the same. Hence the statement issued Thursday by Seattle Mayor Ed Murray calling for the removal of all "symbols of hate, racism and violence that exist in our city." Murray is at least consistent, as he includes not just Confederate symbols but also a well-known statue of Vladimir Lenin. These symbols, Murray says, represent "historic injustices," and "their existence causes pain among those who themselves or whose family members have been impacted by these atrocities."

He is not interested in the history of the statues themselves, the people or events they depict, or "what political affiliation may have been assigned to them in the decades since they were erected." Don't be fooled by the therapeutic language about causing pain. The statues must go because they remind us constantly of a past that needs only to be overcome and forgotten.

A more mature society would recognize that the past is always with you and must always be kept in mind. There's a reason Christians in Rome didn't topple all the pagan statues and buildings in the city, or raze the Colosseum. Edmund Burke had strong words for the French during their revolution, while they were doing their best to destroy a rich past and slaughter one another in the process:

You had all these advantages in your ancient states; but you chose to act as if you had never been molded into civil society, and had everything to begin anew. You began ill, because you began by despising everything that belonged to you... If the last generations of your country appeared without much luster in your eyes, you might have passed them by, and derived your claims from a more early race of ancestors. Under a pious predilection for those ancestors, your imaginations would have realized in them a standard of virtue and wisdom, beyond the vulgar practice of the hour: and you would have risen with the example to whose imitation you aspired. Respecting your forefathers, you would have been taught to respect yourself. You would not have chosen to consider the French as a people of yesterday, as a nation of low-born servile wretches until the emancipating year of 1789.

That is part of why these memorials and statues are important. Perhaps not all of them need be preserved, but giving into the iconoclasm of the Left, with temperatures running high, will mean we lose far more than we gain by hiding these physical reminders of our nation's troubled past.

Let them stand as a memorial of our ancestors who died, a challenge to understand their time and its troubles, and a warning for the present day.

John Daniel Davidson is a senior editor at The Federalist. His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Claremont Review of Books, The New York Post, and elsewhere. Follow him on Twitter, @johnddavidson.

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Why We Should Keep The Confederate Monuments Where They Are

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In the wake of Charlottesville, a chorus of media outlets, political activists, and random people on the Internet have called for the removal or destruction of Confederate statues in cities across the country.