Nah, you know what? I don’t care anymore. Burn down all the Confederate statues. Destroy them all. I don’t understand why conservatives want to die on the hill of protecting those things.
“It’s history! Don’t erase history!”
We can teach history without celebrating the guys who fought on the side of slavery and secession. Those statues were created and placed in spaces that were clearly designed to commemorate/celebrate the guys’ contributions. We don’t need to celebrate them at all, actually!
“Are you going to support Thomas Jefferson’s statues being torn down?”
Thomas Jefferson contributed important things, such as the Declaration of Independence. His existence was a net positive for us.
Confederates? Slavery? That shit was bad, and anyone who fought on the side of that shit was bad. Confederate soldiers fought explicitly for the side that broke away from our country to keep slavery legal. They were literally fighting as traitors whose only contribution to history was wanting to maintain the ability to own human beings under the guise of “states’ rights.” The context of keeping up a statue of Robert E. Lee is entirely different from maintaining a statue of Thomas Jefferson, and I’m tired of pretending it’s exactly the same in conservative circles.
