The push to remove confederate statues has been spreading across the country after the protests in Charlottesville, Virginia. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and other leading Democrats have been making the removal of such statues a priority issue. Pelosi has called for statues to be removed in the Capitol even though those statues were there when she was Speaker of the House of Representatives. A Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll, however, has found that 54 percent of adults said Confederate monuments “should remain in all public spaces.” Only 27 percent said they “should be removed from all public spaces” while 19 percent had no opinion.
The poll also appears to support Trump’s view that there was blame on both sides in the violence in Charlottesville. Some 31 percent agreed that the rally as “an even mix” of rioting and intimidation by both white supremacists and left-wing counter-protesters. Some 28 percent blamed the white supremacists as the aggressors while 10 percent mostly blamed the left-wing counter-protesters. That means that 41 percent blame either the counter-protesters or both sides. The remaining 32 percent had no firm position.
The Poll is poorly worded, it should have addressed “relocating” not removal. Relocation to a more appropriate environment is not complete removal. I would think any reasonable individual with even a modicum of empathy should be able to understand the difference of having a statute of a confederate general in a museum where people can learn about him as opposed to say for example having him adorning the courthouse where an African American family is compelled to report to.
Once again, divide and conquer tactics prove ridiculously easy to pull on idiot Americans so the plutocrats (who couldn’t possibly care less about some old pigeon crap-covered hunks of rock) can keep robbing them blind.
Yup.
What’s Majority Of Americans, especially your kind goodself JONATHAN TURLEY to says Wether America should allow LOOTINGS by Pure Evils or Oppose it’s criminal OFFENCES?. Thanks with regards. Shahabuddin Bhojani.
Oh God, Cape Cod. That was good.
Well, I see that the University of Texas @ Austin has pulled a Baltimore and removed 4 Confederate
statues under cover of night. One is the son of a former Governor of TX even! Guess nobody needs
to remember him. Antifa thugs were filmed at the midnight event, screaming how much they hated the US. Wonder how many of them were university students, lacking any sense of irony?
In 1830, 7% of Cherokees owned black slaves (about the same number as white Americans). And they took those slaves with them on the Trail of Tears when the U.S. Army removed them further west. Of all the Indian tribes, most Americans claim to be part Cherokee. In the 2000 census, about 730,000 Americans claimed to be full or part Cherokee, and by the 2010 census, that number had risen to about 830,000, even though there are only about 340,000 actual Cherokees recognized by the government based on blood. So why do so many people want to be Cherokee? The article I read gave a number of explanations. In the aftermath of the civil war, many white southerners glamorized the Cherokees for being the one tribe that fought the U.S. government for their autonomy. Even though they lost, as did the south, their courage and independence were respected. Then beginning in the 1960s, came the attack on American culture, so white liberals didn’t want to be white. Also, there were the tangible benefits (affirmative action in education and employment) that came with claiming a drop of minority blood. So all in all, white Americans who can’t handle being white want to claim Indian blood, but it has to be the heroic Indian (Cherokee), not the lazy defeated Indian lying drunk on the reservation. And the article also said that virtually all whites who claim to be Cherokee had a great-grandmother who was a Cherokee princess, even though the real Cherokees never had any such title or designation by any other name. So myth, fantasy, mass delusion or cynical benefit-seeking, there’s something for everyone. Except my former blue-eyed manager, who when he was up for promotion suddenly claimed the ubiquitous Cherokee great-grandmother, and ended up laughed out of the office.
My Amerindian great*grandparent came from around Green Bay, Wisconsin. I claim no close relation to Cherokee.
Ojibwa? Would Canada grant you and your six children dual citizenship? If so, could you put a word in for my three children? They might need it someday. Even though they wouldn’t qualify by George’s theory.
We need to keep fighting to keep speech and protesting as our right to be fre, but removing history if not going to be helpful for future generations.. Privacy is every Americans right. Freedom of speech and freedom of the internet,. We must keep the internet free from the government. No tracking search engine that owns its own search results Lookseek.com try it have a nice day
I’m one of those who says LEAVE THE STATUES / MONUMENTS alone. We are 235 years old or thereabout and no country this age can boast of never having made mistakes. It was a bad time for America but it is still out history and important to learn from mistakes. If the libs would teach the CORRECT history in our schools this wouldn’t be such a problem. The crazies who are tearing down historical monumnets have NO IDEA why they’re doing it – except mob rule. And for those mobs, someone needs to remind them that the slaves owned slaves prior to selling them on American soil. GIVE IT A REST, PEOPLE!! For the sake of us all! Use some common sense if you have any.
“I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.”
– Isoroku Yamamoto
_____________________________________________________________________
One can only hope.
“Mayor Mitch Landrieu’s Address on Removal of Four Confederate Statues”
https://youtu.be/t0jQTHis3f4
The transcript:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/23/opinion/mitch-landrieus-speech-transcript.html
That is a fine speech.
David Benson – actually, the speech is all over the map and waves several bloody flags to make his points. It is an emotional speech designed to rouse the rabble, not designed to sway the intellectual.
In New Orleans he had many audiences to speak to, not all of whom suffer each other dearly. I think it has the appropriate unifying ring to it.
See below for Frank Bruni’s reaction.
I agree and hope that more people will listen and/or read it.
Frank Bruni, back in May:
Mitch Landrieu Reminds Us That Eloquence Still Exists
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/23/opinion/mitch-landrieu-new-orleans-mayor-speech.html
“I didn’t realize how starved I was for talk like this until Landrieu fed me. It’s the stuff of solace, the grist for hope. We subsist now on a meager vocabulary of winners and “losers,” of “sad!” naysayers and “nut job” adversaries. We’re asked to see an absence of eloquence as the presence of authenticity.
“But that’s bunk. Words, like monuments, matter. They nudge. They shape. That’s true when they elevate what shouldn’t be elevated, encouraging complacency or evil, and that’s just as true when they show us a better way and help us get there.
“Landrieu did that, putting some poetry back in public life and demonstrating afresh that in language beautifully rendered, we find our humanity fully acknowledged.”
A rousing op-ed. One of his better efforts.
He plays Mitch Landrieu’s press agent and that’s ‘rousing’ and ‘one of his better efforts’? Soft bigotry of low expectations….
Go back to sucking limes…
Looking at it, I was reminded of the aphorism that in the 17th century, public men quoted Scripture; in the 18th, the Classics; in the 19th, Shakespeare. In the 20th century, they quote each other. So, we get to hear the wit and wisdom of ‘President Barack Obama’, supplement with Wynton Marsalis.
Where’s the Beef?
Does ‘fine’ incorporate the smarmy ‘thank you thank you thank yous’ at the beginning?
Seems fairly banal. Our politicians are people who can work a room (full of donors), not orators.
It was a speech of reconciliation, not an oration.
Who is he ‘reconciling’?
A majority of ‘people’ do. Recall that for progressives, people don’t count. They just elect the student government, whose authority is limited to what the principal will allow.
The people who count are judges, lawyers who argue in front of judges, faculty (especially those who manufacture the intellectual matrix swirling around judges), media stirring the pot, and ‘activists’.
For progressives, like me, it is people that matter and corporations which are to be kept under the strictest supervision.
‘Strictest supervision’ by whom and for what purpose? Can we extend the ‘strictest supervision’ to the higher ed biz? Why or why not?
Yes, every one has a governing board. For public institutions the members are appointed by the governor.
Yes, every one has a governing board.
Composed of lapdogs.
Antifa thugs always wearing masks should tell you something, now shouldn’t it.
Sure does. They don’t care to be recoginized OR arrested. COWARD’S WAY OUT.
The NPR/Marist poll had 62% of Americans wanting the statues ti stay put. That includes a majority of BLACK people polled!
Charles Barkley put it eloquently. “I have not thought about a Confederate statue one day in my life. It’s wasted energy. Black folk need to focus on getting an education, stop killing each other and seek economic opportunity.”
This is all the Dem party has left. identity politics. Rich, white, liberals telling black folk they need these statues torn down. it diverts their attention that they have been voting for Dems in the 90% range and are worse off every year. At some point that will dawn on them and then WATCH OUT!!
How sad that Americans are uninformed as to the nature of one of the easiest events in our history. The Civil War was a result of terrorist traitors to the USA putting their sick twisted hate and greed ahead of country. I understand rascists will try to muddy the waters with excuses such as not 100% of the north were against slavery or that the Civil War was nuanced (arguably one of the dumbest comments) . NOOOO! One needs only to read South Carolina’s Articles of Succession (pack leader of the traitors) and know who fired the first shot to know the south was led by terrorists and traitors.
Did many southern soldiers die not having a real clue what they were fighting? Of course. But southern leaders were both terrorists and traitors. There is a reason these statues didnt show up for decades. And a shame an uneducated public does not truly understand the rascists who decades later changed history and somehow made these terrorists and traitors southern icons to respect.
I wonder if the poll was properly asked “Do you support the removal of statues of unamerican traitors and terrorists being removed from public grounds” what the results would be?
Your trumpian racism is not attractive but I’m sure your brownshirts need pressing and your jackboots that need a shining. Go for it.
Of course. Whites don’t have a problem with anything that keeps their delusional superiority complex in the forefront. Statues erected during Jim Crow were not for cultural reasons but for white pride and white dominance. Go to a Civil War national park if you want to see your pro-slavery idols. Go to a museum if you want to pray before the gods of human bondage. Keep them off the public square where those whose ancestors were enslaved by these men don’t have to see this display of white supremacy. The Germans have Auschwitz but they don’t have statues of Hitler. America has Gettysburg but it doesn’t need statues of treasonous Lee and Forrest on its public spaces.
I do not think that finding this to be absurd, is a delusion:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmO-ziHU_D8
One might call it a superiority complex, but I think it is often more a case of simply believing what your two eyes are showing you. Which is why even those whites, including presumably YOU, who poo-poo that “complex”, do not live in the black inner city, travel into those areas at night, or send their kids to predominantly black schools.
Yet, you still parade around thumping yourself on the chest and proclaiming loudly, and often, “Look at meeee! I am such a good white person, and not at all like those mean old racist white people!”
Hilarious, but also sad in a way.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Squeek, Wow!
It’s like some Theatre of the Absurd production, except it is for real.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Hear, hear!
I just prefer rational thought to your eugenics based model.
I was brought up in the inner city. I had black neighbors. My mother was not prejudiced since she worked with many a minority. I went to highschool with 50% minorities. I had/have black, Jewish, Catholic, Latino friends and business associates. None I know are celebrating pro-slavery confederate statues. You are the company you keep.
A majority of Americans approve of background checks, legalized marijuana, and single payer healthcare, but the same people who support pro-slavery confederacy deem that majority silent.
Now go crawl back in your confederacy, pro-slavery approving hole and write about how awful it is that Benedict Arnold, KKK grand wizards, lynching trees, Andrew Johnson, and Oliver North don’t have more statues in the public square.
Big whoopeee! You grew up in an inner city! But when was that? 1950 maybe? The Pre-drive-by days??? I notice that you didn’t say, “I currently live in an inner city. And I bet your kids, and grandkids don’t go to predominantly black schools in inner cities, now do they? Heck, even Maxine Waters has better sense than to live in her black district. Nope, she scooted over to the rich white folks section of town.
Maybe you’ve been partaking of too much pot, whether legal or not, and it has affected your thought processes???
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
“but the same people who support pro-slavery confederacy deem that majority silent”
Straw man.
Whether a nation or an individual, we are a product of our past. If a public display of our past is of no value, then why memorialize anything? What’s the logic in amending the constitution instead of editing it? Why do cities/towns decide to place a totaled vehicle on display near a high school? We display things to remember both the good and the bad. One is to inspire and the other a warning; both are deserving and necessary for civil society to learn from history and better decisions for the future.
Olly, your statement is absolutely on point! I have been trying hard to come up with words that expressed exactly what you just stated here. Thank you for being a seriously great communicator. I agree with you.
Thank you faith.
Olly, your statement is on point!! Thanks for common sense.
Thank you Mary.