Thomas Jefferson Statue Toppled

ThatRobGuy said:

It's a case of people trying to employ the logic of "judge people who lived 200 years ago by today's standards"

If that's going to be the standard, then take down anything made by people more than 100 years ago...because times change, and I'd guarantee that nobody in those times would live up to today's social standards.


...and that's not just the case with political related stuff. It's true of a number of things.

People still pay homage to Isaac Newton in the science realm, even though he thought ingesting mercury would turn it into gold (which everyone in modern times knows is absurd), yet, it's not controversial to mention his name in a high school science class.

Aristotle thought the earth was the center of the universe...

etc...

People who were considered great men by the standard of their time wouldn't be considered great by modern day standards.

Does anyone think that Doctor from 1850 could sit at a table with modern day Doctors have anything even resembling a productive conversation about disease and medicine? If the best doctor in the world in 1850 treated people, and people applied 2020 standards to them, they'd be regarded as a quack/charlatan and probably be locked up for harming people. In fact, if there was a time machine, and we could bring prominent doctors from the 1800's to present day and show them an MRI machine, their comment would likely be "what is this witchcraft???"

That doesn't mean that a statue/museum/etc.. dedicated to Louis Pasteur is a "monument to incorrect theories about fermentation"...nor should it negate any of the positive contributions he had to medicine that were the building blocks to much better things later on.

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Ana the Ist said:

This is utter nonsense....

I've never met an American who wasn't aware that Jefferson or Washington owned slaves. On the other hand, I've had to explain that native Americans owned slaves or aided with the Confederacy about a dozen times to posters on here alone.

I'd say that if anything....white Americans have over estimated the "evil" their ancestors have done and all Americans, white or otherwise, are astonishingly ignorant of the evils that non-whites have done throughout history.

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FireDragon76 said:

But it's a bit like the fact we remember Isaac Newton as a great scientist, when in fact he stole a number of ideas from his colleagues. Some narratives have been minimized in the process of wanting to have heroes and "progress".

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rjs330 said:

We'll never get anywhere tearing down all the past and blaming whites for everything. That creates more division.

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rjs330 said:

We'll never get anywhere tearing down all the past and blaming whites for everything. That creates more division. We ALL know we had slavery and Jim Crowe. But we also know we got civil rights. The time for blame and hatred is over. It's time to work on the real solutions on how to help. It's time to build, not destroy.

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Archivist said:

But so many white people never accepted civil rights. Blacks were given the right to vote in 1867. Poll taxes and Jim Crow laws prevented most of them from voting for over a century.

Brown v Board of Education was handed down in 1954. Ten years later George Wallace was blocking integration at the University of Alabama. Many American schools are still segregated.

If white Americans had openly accepted desegregation and equal rights for all after the Civil War instead of fighting equal rights for more than 100 years we wouldn’t be having problems we are having now.

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Ana the Ist said:

Huh?

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Which schools are segregated?

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I think you're mistaking civil rights and the civil war as having some connection.

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Caliban said:

They will pull down a few good statues. but, most people are very reasonable and will not support the damage of significant monuments--thinking of Jefferson and Lincoln in D.C. That would be tragic and the park service will not let that happen. Radicals will not be able to convince most local governments to willingly take down a Jefferson or Lincoln monument. I think there is a difference between the unauthorized destruction of monuments by crowds and the removal of monuments by civil authorities. If a community wants to remove a monument and lobbies the government to do it--fine. The unauthorized destruction of property is not a good thing. Local governments will have to take down confederate monuments if legal pressure is applied in most cases; that should probably be the course taken.

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RestoreTheJoy said:

Oh sure...they defaced the 54th Regiment Memorial to black soldiers, for goodness sakes. And other War memorials to fallen soldiers from all over the country. Way to go.

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Caliban said:

What does that have to do with anything I said???

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RestoreTheJoy said:

Only referencing the "most people are reasonable and will not support the damage of significant monuments" part. No, these are not reasonable people. Reasonable people lobby to change laws. They don't remove statues that offend them.

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Caliban said:

I didn't say the people pulling down statues were reasonable; I said most people are reasonable. See the difference? Most people will not support the removal of SIGNIFICANT monuments. That was my point.

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RestoreTheJoy said:

And my point is THESE people are not reasonable. The actions have shown this.

And I'm sure you are defining "significant" monuments in some way as to excuse the ones already toppled by vigilantes.

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