Maryland Governor Hogan rips Pelosi for statue comments, says she's ‘lost touch with the...

[Michie]

...Baltimore community’

From the article:

Pelosi said "people do what they do"

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican, condemned House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., over her refusal to criticize those who tore down a statue of Christopher Columbus in Baltimore, the city where both her father and brother served as mayor in the mid-1900's.

Pelosi, when asked Thursday about the tearing down of the statue on July 4, said that she supported the removal of statues of those who served the Confederacy and mentioned that she "doesn't care much about statues."

She added that the tearing down of the statue "doesn't diminish my pride in my Italian-American heritage" and that "people will do what they do. I do think from a safety standpoint it would be a good idea to have it taken down if the community doesn't want it. I don't know that it has to be a commission, but it just could be a community view."

Hogan objected to the speaker's answer.

Continued below.
Maryland Governor Hogan rips Pelosi for statue comments, says she's ‘lost touch with the Baltimore community’

 

[The Barbarian]

Republicans are cross-eyed with fury that democrats care more for the lives of ordinary people than they care for "important statues."

Go figure.

 

[Brightmoon]

I can see her point. if the community is going to rip it down it is better for it to be down rather than have someone get injured over it. Columbus is controversial because of his genocide and slave making . Most of us weren’t told about that aspect of his discovery of some of the Caribbean islands . Confederate statues do need to come down there’s no point in celebrating traitors and racists.

 

[CaspianSails]

I can see her point. if the community is going to rip it down it is better for it to be down rather than have someone get injured over it. Columbus is controversial because of his genocide and slave making . Most of us weren’t told about that aspect of his discovery of some of the Caribbean islands . Confederate statues do need to come down there’s no point in celebrating traitors and racists.

Well, unlike Pelosi who apparently is ok with community standards being decided by only by radical mobs, I would rather see a real community discussion. This is not community action this is lawlessness. Radicals have refused to discuss but only act and in a manner not consistent with a free and open society. The rule of the minority is always mob rule. In a time when any dissent is labeled racism one cannot find the truth. It is hidden by the radicals who are not interested in race or fairness but are only driven by ideology and bent on the destruction of society in order to create a new more insidious future of intolerance and the absence of what they claim is honorable dissent from their point of view. Where us the evidence that Columbus ordered any genocide. Some peoples were wiped out after the European reached the continent but indirectly so as without knowledge the Europeans brought disease unknown to people unprotected by immunology and this resulted many deaths. The facts belie the myth that has been created by revisionism and books and studies written by those with other agendas reaching far beyond the acts of Columbus. Was he a saint, certainly not. Did he commit some atrocities, apparently so. But he was not what is now portrayed. Revisionism is not fact. In fact Columbus did not enslave people instead they were subjugated to the Spanish crown in the same manner that Spaniards were subjugated to the crown especially those of the loser classes which while not acceptable today was the standard form of government and the feudal system. He was only governor for a decade and most of what the revisionist claim are atrocities committed by him actually occurred after he was recalled to Spain for mismangement of the region.

 

[The Barbarian]

Where us the evidence that Columbus ordered any genocide.

He effectively wiped out Taino and Arawak tribes in many areas. He was so aggressive that Spanish missionaries complained to the King, who actually had him arrested for it and returned to Spain in chains.

Some peoples were wiped out after the European reached the continent but indirectly so as without knowledge the Europeans brought disease unknown to people unprotected by immunology and this resulted many deaths.

This is true. The extermination of the Taino in particular was made much easier by diseases brought to America by Europeans, and this was almost never intentional. The collapse of the Mississippian civilization was effectively finished by imported diseases before Europeans actually got to the area; they were surprised by the great structures and earthworks, and with no sign of the society that built them.

The facts belie the myth that has been created by revisionism and books and studies written by those with other agendas reaching far beyond the acts of Columbus. Was he a saint, certainly not. Did he commit some atrocities, apparently so. But he was not what is now portrayed. Revisionism is not fact. In fact Columbus did not enslave people instead they were subjugated to the Spanish crown in the same manner that Spaniards were subjugated to the crown especially those of the loser classes which while not acceptable today was the standard form of government and the feudal system.

No. The Spanish missionaries complained bitterly to the Spanish government that mistreatment and enslavement of natives was interfering with their work. And investigators from Spain concluded that they were correct.

It wasn't just in the Caribbean; this was a common complain of Spanish missionaries in many different parts of the New World. If one were to overgeneralize the situation, the Spanish generally sought to enslave the Indians, the French generally sought to commercialize and trade with them, and the English generally wished they would just go away. (occasionally "helping" them do so).

He was only governor for a decade and most of what the revisionist claim are atrocities committed by him actually occurred after he was recalled to Spain for mismangement of the region.

It was an ongoing process, based on the Spanish idea of exploitation. As you suggest, the issue was more complex than either the statue-keepers or the protestors would have it. Columbus was no hero, but he is a very important part of American history and while we should provide a more balanced view of him, it makes no sense making him an unperson.

The statues generally need historic context that could be easily provided by plaques or other sculptures, filling in the missing parts of the story.

Just my thoughts.