Thomas Jefferson statue removed from NY City Hall after 187 years

Should the statue have been removed?

  • Yes

    Votes: 5 33.3%
  • No

    Votes: 10 66.7%

  • Total voters
    15

Thatgirloncfforums

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I know, but I meant that the animal sacrifices were the original place where it was biblically referenced. It was a foreshadowing of what Christ would become for us, but the guy I was talking to labels himself as a non-believer, so I made reference to what he could look up in a book.
Ah. Sorry.
 
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Hans Blaster

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Not to disrupt the thread, but what's with all the protective gear? Coming from a rugby union and a rugby league background it seems like...overkill? And possibly more dangerous.

Escalation. It started as a bit of light padding to protect players in a variant of the sport already oriented toward collisions, then the protection got better, and the "protection" was being used as a weapon, requiring, of course, more protection. Fortunately, the organizers of various levels of the sport have been trying to reduce the weaponization of the protective gear. For starters they have (finally) made it a violation of the rules to use the hard helmet to hit other players. (In some cases resulting in ejection.)
 
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Hans Blaster

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That I can't make you feel better about this.

I don't want to "feel better" about the regressive and anti-democratic elements of Christian doctrine and scripture. I'm finally freed by my lack of faith to despise them. It's quite refreshing.
 
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Thatgirloncfforums

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@Aldebaran ,

I looked up 'own':

Definition of OWN

You're right, we own each other.

Perhaps too, to help @Hans Blaster out, the problem came in when mankind went from 'bone of my bone; flesh of my flesh' to 'your desire will be for your husband and he will rule over you'. Both are statements of possession and ownership, but the first is organic the second is disruptive and forced. This would apply to servants and masters too.
 
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Thatgirloncfforums

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I don't want to "feel better" about the regressive and anti-democratic elements of Christian doctrine and scripture. I'm finally freed by my lack of faith to despise them. It's quite refreshing.
Ok.
 
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IceJad

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Like a lot of things, its a spectrum with gray areas. And maybe Jefferson belongs on the "good" side of the gray area when its all said and done.

My point to you though was: its nothing like exhuming corpses, who can just as well lie in the dirt forgotten where no one has to see them. Its about places of honor in the public spaces we share and how to decide who belongs in them.

Please it was never about him owning slaves. Not after 195 years after he died. It is about social control. You're telling me after so long there somehow someone today suddenly grew a righteous indignation towards these statues. His ownership of slaves is justification for the act not the root cause.

Unlike the former Soviets client states who immediately destroyed the statues of Soviet leaders after its fall. You're telling me that a generation that have never been enslaved find it inconceivable to have a statue of Jefferson that even their own grandfathers have no issues with?

To know who you rules over you know who you can't insult. And I know who in the West I can't insult.

First they come for the racist, then the racist adjacent, then the family, then all the way down the line. Finally one day they will come for you.

It's called giving an inch taking a yard.
 
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Bradskii

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Escalation. It started as a bit of light padding to protect players in a variant of the sport already oriented toward collisions, then the protection got better, and the "protection" was being used as a weapon, requiring, of course, more protection. Fortunately, the organizers of various levels of the sport have been trying to reduce the weaponization of the protective gear. For starters they have (finally) made it a violation of the rules to use the hard helmet to hit other players. (In some cases resulting in ejection.)

That makes some sense. I remember years ago reading what a brain surgeon had written about motorbike helmets (I've always ridden). Back in the day, there were no full face helmets and he said that if you came off and your face hit something solid, then it would, ahem, 'absorb the impact'. So you might need facial reconstruction but your brain would be ok. But...with a full face helmet, your head stops dead but your brain bounces around inside and does all sorts of damage. Seemed to make sense. But I always wore a full face.

I was following another bike some time back and he had a spare helmet clipped to his seat and it came off. Bounced into oncoming traffic and a truck hit it. I honestly thought it might have rolled over it or it would have bounced away. But it went under the wheel and simply exploded. I just kept thinking of my head in that helmet.
 
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Bradskii

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Please it was never about him owning slaves. Not after 195 years after he died. It is about social control. You're telling me after so long there somehow someone today suddenly grew a righteous indignation towards these statues. His ownership of slaves is justification for the act not the root cause.

Unlike the former Soviets client states who immediately destroyed the statues of Soviet leaders after its fall. You're telling me that a generation that have never been enslaved find it inconceivable to have a statue of Jefferson that even their own grandfathers have no issues with?

To know who you rules over you know who you can't insult. And I know who in the West I can't insult.

First they come for the racist, then the racist adjacent, then the family, then all the way down the line. Finally one day they will come for you.

It's called giving an inch taking a yard.

It's called education. Rather than accept someone at face value ('Hey, he was a founding father, therefore...'), people are investigating a little more. Scraping off the bright surface veneer and checking to see what lies beneath. And sometimes what lies beneath is not very pleasant. But we need to know. We need to confront the truth. We need to accept that we're all fallible and that sometimes our heroes are not the knights in shining armour in the way that they've always been presented. That along with the great things that they did, they did wrong.

Yeah, we can fall back on the fact that it was different times and there were different views back then. But suggest to any given Christian that morality is relative and you'll get shot down. No sirree. What is morally wrong now has always been morally wrong. So that is how we must judge Jefferson. As a man of his times but as a man who actually knew he was doing wrong but did it anyway.

So should we laud him as one of the founding fathers of America and the writer of the constitution? Of course we should. But does that mean we ignore the man himself? Of course it doesn't.

So what about honouring him with a statue? Do we put one up and ignore the bad? Or tear one down and ignore the good? It's a difficult decision and I'll be honest with you - I don't have a simple answer. Because there isn't one. So simply writing this off as some left wing conspiracy and look out! They'll be coming for you next! is ignoring the subtleties of the argument and turning a difficult and important conversation into something akin to a bumper sticker slogan.

But then again, maybe you're not interested in being part of the conversation. That's your call.
 
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IceJad

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It's called education. Rather than accept someone at face value ('Hey, he was a founding father, therefore...'), people are investigating a little more. Scraping off the bright surface veneer and checking to see what lies beneath. And sometimes what lies beneath is not very pleasant. But we need to know. We need to confront the truth. We need to accept that we're all fallible and that sometimes our heroes are not the knights in shining armour in the way that they've always been presented. That along with the great things that they did, they did wrong.

Yeah, we can fall back on the fact that it was different times and there were different views back then. But suggest to any given Christian that morality is relative and you'll get shot down. No sirree. What is morally wrong now has always been morally wrong. So that is how we must judge Jefferson. As a man of his times but as a man who actually knew he was doing wrong but did it anyway.

So should we laud him as one of the founding fathers of America and the writer of the constitution? Of course we should. But does that mean we ignore the man himself? Of course it doesn't.

So what about honouring him with a statue? Do we put one up and ignore the bad? Or tear one down and ignore the good? It's a difficult decision and I'll be honest with you - I don't have a simple answer. Because there isn't one. So simply writing this off as some left wing conspiracy and look out! They'll be coming for you next! is ignoring the subtleties of the argument and turning a difficult and important conversation into something akin to a bumper sticker slogan.

But then again, maybe you're not interested in being part of the conversation. That's your call.

Oh I don't know. Not like there is no pattern observable. Wait.....

Now they’re coming for Jesus

US: University of Rhode Island to remove WWII murals because they have too many White people.
 
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Bradskii

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Oh I don't know. Not like there is no pattern observable. Wait.....

Sorry...you don't know what? That there is a discussion to be had? That some of these matters are difficult to resolve? That each example needs to be assessed on its individual merits? Or do you want to bundle all these examples together and reject them en bloc as you just did? Do you think that's the best approach? Comparing some individual's extremist views about the depiction of Jesus versus Jefferson's ambivalence to slavery? It appears that you do.

Or would it be better to put forward your arguments why someone might be wrong to take whatever position they are taking on a specific matter and then (this is tricky bit) listen to their arguments and make an honest appraisal of them. And yeah, I'll admit that takes some time and some thought and some empathy. It's certainly a lot more difficult than throwing out a few links and shouting that they - whoever 'they' are, will be coming for you next (not that that makes any sense whatsoever in this context).

Again, it's your call how to approach these matters. But why don't we give it a go and discuss Jefferson's attitude to slavery? Do you think that he knew he was doing wrong?
 
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durangodawood

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Please it was never about him owning slaves. Not after 195 years after he died. It is about social control....
You do realize that having "founding father" statues up in the first place is about social control, right?
 
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RDKirk

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Do you think he knew it was wrong?

Jefferson himself wrote that God would punish America for slavery.

American abolitionists had been preaching that slavery was a sin since the early 1600s, including Roger Williams, from whom Jefferson cribbed that line about the separation of church and state.

During the writing of the Constitution, at one point all of the delegations had agreed to write an abolition clause in the Constitution, including the delegations of the slave-holding states, except South Carolina. South Carolina then convinced the other slave-holding state delegations to withdraw their support of abolition.
 
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RDKirk

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He actually inherited slaves, and was not able to legally free them because that would actually have been against the law at the time.

I don't think that's true. What law forbade freeing slaves? Particularly since Jefferson did make a deal with Sally Hemmings to free her children if she agreed to return from France with him.
 
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Hans Blaster

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I don't think that's true. What law forbade freeing slaves? Particularly since Jefferson did make a deal with Sally Hemmings to free her children if she agreed to return from France with him.

Perhaps there is confusion with Washington who could not free all of "his" slaves at his death because they were really the "property" of the estate of Martha's first husband and had to pass to his children (Washington's step children). I don't know if this was a general part of inheritance law in Virginia, a stipulation of the will, or how it related to marital property laws of the time.
 
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bekkilyn

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Well personally, I believe that one of the purposes for which God created what we call the American eagle is to set an example of what a good, lifetime mating...er, marriage should be like. They are both so invested in each other, in their nest, in their provision, their protection, and in their eggs and later eaglets, and then eventually, they are wise enough to know when it is best to boot the eaglets from the nest after teaching them what they need for an independent life.

Whether we like it or not, Jefferson is a founding father, and without him, we may not even have a United States with all the freedoms and opportunities we have here, so we need to respect that regardless of how we may feel about him as a person by our 21st century moral standards (what few of them we seem to have remaining anyway.)

And today I will also celebrate Thanksgiving and not only be thankful for Jefferson's contributions to our independence as a country, but also to all the other founding fathers AND mothers and of course most of all to God's provision.
 
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RDKirk

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To be fair, who said it wasn't consensual? People nowadays like to assume the worst about anyone who is white. I take it all with a grain of salt since most of it is assumed out of racial hatred of white people---uh, I mean "social justice".

When one is a slave, "consensual" is not a consideration.

When Thomas Jefferson went to France as ambassador, he took Sally Hemmings as a personal servant. His problem was that slavery did not exist in France, which meant Hemmings could simply walk away.

Jefferson secured Hemmings' presence by leaving her children back on the Virginia plantation and promising them freedom only if she remained his slave and returned with him.

That doesn't bode much for "consent" on her part.
 
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