APNewsBreak: New Orleans to take down Confederate statues

Associated Press ^ | Apr 24, 2017 2:39 AM EDT | Jesse J. Holland

[Timpanagos1]

I never did say that I advocate the removal of all the Confederate monuments in New Orleans but do believe that the monument to the White League should be removed and indicated that Lee Circle should be left alone.

My only observation was that people in New Orleans do not seem to be all that opposed to the removal of any of the monuments.

And clearly, opposing the president on a policy that has not been codified into law or is a direct threat to national security is not Treason.

[Yardstick]

Pulling down these statues is a propaganda victory and display of power by the left and the Democrats.

[Trump20162020]

Is another town going to take these, or what?

The AP article only says New Orleans will “store” them until they decide what to do with them.

[Governor Dinwiddie]

Shameful.

It has been the old camel with its nose in the tent trick. We keep acceding to their demands hoping that will appease them. No. It never does.

They will not be satisfied until they have turned America into a Congolese "paradise".

[Yardstick]

Well you might consider explaining yourself a little when you make annoying comments that seem to sympathize with the left’s agenda.

Otherwise you risk being mistaken for a troll.

[Charles Martel]

Lee Circle without Gen. Lee is going to be weird.

For the most part, people who actually live in New Orleans do not seemingly oppose to removal of the monuments.

However, I’m sure there will be some outside agitators who will protest the removal of the Confederate monuments.

New Orleans wasn't of great importance during the Civil War, really. It fell early on and was occupied by Union troops. However, New Orleans was very important to the slavery market in the decades leading up to the secession votes and subsequent war.

Perhaps Lee's statue should be replaced by one in the image of a free Louisiana black who owned, bred and sold slaves in the state. I see no reason why not - Landrieu hasn't demanded that all restored slaves' quarters be stricken from guided tours within the city. That's two-faced beyond belief - the city wants the "antebellum" stuff to bring in the tourists - but let's not mention the "bellum" part, mmm-kay? Charming.

Where slavery is concerned, New Orleans has a lot more to answer for than any soldier who wore Confederate gray.

[Charles Martel]

My only observation was that people in New Orleans do not seem to be all that opposed to the removal of any of the monuments.

New Orleans is majority black, and of that majority only a small handful are willing to say that they believe the monuments should remain untouched. The rest - who never cared one bit about the matter in the past - are just doing what the Democrat plantation masters command.

[Netz]

This is so stupid. At this rate the Liberty Bell will be removed from public viewing because the crack reminds some gender idiot of a human rear end and that it somehow discriminates against the human rear end crack...this is the future folks...

[Does so]

Maybe the growing Latino population in Texas will begin throwing fits over statues/monuments about the Texas Revolution and Mexican–American War?

Latinos are naming or renaming streets in Miami-Dade County. Some Miami street signs are in jeopardy due to "Under Indictment". ;)

http://cuban-exile.com/doc_201-225/doc0218b.html

[nathanbedford]

The retention of a wayward state and the federal union by military force was at least an arguable constitutional question on both sides in 1861. After Sharpsburg, Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation converted a political question into a moral crusade against slavery. In subsequent years, the right of a state to voluntarily separate itself from the union was no longer arguable because it was attached to the preservation of slavery.

I do not mean to express these principles in absolute terms, nor do I contend they applied to all people at all times during the Civil War but in the long thrust of history we see the conversion of the war between the states into a war for the abolition of slavery. It became not a political question but a moral one.

I hold to the precept that culture trumps politics. The left is far more adept than conservatives at shaping culture and exploiting it to win the political argument. We have seen these arguments be so successful that states rights to retain representative power among the people of the state have been swept aside when the left wins the cultural arguments. For example, it has now been standard doctrine in the Supreme Court and applied to the whole nation that an alleged right of privacy trumps the power of the state to criminalize use of birth control, criminalize abortions, criminalize sodomy, criminalize mixed marriage, or even fail to recognize homosexual marriage. What once could only be accomplished with the deaths of 700,000 Americans in our Civil War, is now accomplished at the stroke of a pen by five unelected Supreme Court Justices, the rights of the people of the state to govern themselves is simply usurped.

Race has been a pivotal issue in America which is been used by the left to distort the Constitution. Slavery was such a compelling moral issue for both sides that the constitutional issue could only be settled on the battlefield. Since the civil rights movement of the 1960s, the issue of race has become dispositive of many constitutional questions but the issues are settled all in one direction because the culture has so dictated. By way of examples, the idea of discrimination based on race is out of bounds unless the discrimination favors a designated race in our universities. Measures to prevent fraudulent voting are struck down because they allegedly place undue burdens on the African-American race. Voting districts are shaped or reshaped because of their inclusion or exclusion of African American or Mexican American races.

Today the left is attempting to weaponize race to frustrate reform of Obamacare or to reform criminal justice sentencing and our drug laws. Once the left captures a critical mass of media and academia by pleading race, it captures a critical mass of the population and gets its political and legal will enforced over others. The left has been so effective that it is now a widespread conviction of much of our citizenry that any discrimination whatsoever, not even related to race, is not just wrong but illegal.

The removal of the Confederate statues in New Orleans should not be viewed as a aberration in our history but as one more a latter stage example, or better one more symptom, of the war over culture often involving a war about race to dominate politics.

The "Lost Cause" of the Confederacy is being lost one more time today in the war for the culture. As arguable on both sides as it is whether the Civil War was a war about slavery, it was also incontestably a war about liberty, the constitutional right of (certain) citizens of a state to govern themselves.

I would extend the meaning of the purge of history in New Orleans by shorthand: lose the often contrived war about race and risk losing not just your history but your liberty. Watch your destiny and your power within your state to defend your liberty migrate into very few elitist hands. Some of those hands are attached to Supreme Court Justices, some to federal politicians, some to bureaucrats. In New Orleans the power is now vested in the City Council but that Council is operating within a culture.

[Timpanagos1]

“However, New Orleans was very important to the slavery market in the decades leading up to the secession votes and subsequent war.”

And those places in New Orleans where slaves were sold should be marked with monuments and descriptions of what exactly occurred on those sites prior to abolition.

[Timpanagos1]

The Liberty Bell is not Liberty Place.

At Liberty Place, the Democratic White League revolted against a government and their revolt was based on race.

[arthurus]

Those statues don’t matter any more. Most, if not all, public school grads have no notion who and what they commemorate. All they have heard is about the evil racists that evil southerners put up statues to.

[arthurus]

make believe history never happened

That is a very Moslem thing to do. Everything before Islam took over an area must be eradicated because history begins with the advent of Islam. And the Koran teaches all the history anyone need know, anyway.

[a fool in paradise]

Is there a boycott of all things named after Jean Laffitte in New Orleans? He was importing and even smuggling slaves into America.

[blackbetty59]

Just like ISIS, we are removing historical monuments, and erasing history. Maybe New Orleans can put up monuments commemorating important black kings: Rodney, Martin, Shawn, and Don.

[OIFVeteran]

Very good points about the civil war and civil rights. I heard it said once that slavery is America’s original sin, and like all sin it has had a corrupting influence.

One of the reason’s we have such an overreaching federal government now is because states failed to protect the rights of some of their citizens. So the federal government had to step in and protect the rights of all citizens in those states, and rightfully so.

Now the left uses this history and applies it to all other movements it supports. Then paints anyone who opposes the “march of history” with the racist or sexist brush.

[DoodleDawg]

...from what some say are symbols of racism and intolerance.

Others say they are reminders of history.

[WHBates]

How is this different than what the Taliban did in Afghanistan, in destroying historic sites because they somehow offended the Koran & the profit?

[G. W. McLintock]

I am offended that they’re taking the monuments down.