what do you mean

it's important to acknowledge past wrongdoings, because that's the only way to move forward

but the past is also over, so you can't really apply stuff to what isn't even happening anymore

The monument demolishing is the same principle as what's recently been nicknamed cancel culture. The real roots of cancel culture lie in the growth of political correctness and attempting to whitewash impact and truth. To answer the question, I'd simply ask another question. Is blacklisting somebody and destroying their career a correct moral move to make over some internet statement made over a decade ago?

Personally I don't think so, because it does not acknowledge the possibility that said individual has matured or grown in that time span. I think this principle should be applied to monuments as well. It's a relic from another era. Information is the most important tool we have, whether or not the information suits our worldviews. These monuments provide a window into viewing the past and the people in that past, no matter how ugly. If anything, they should act as a reminder of what we could become again if we don't watch our step. We shouldn't give in to kneejerk emotional responses, "bad man in past must be erased!"

Bad man in past must be studied so that his mistakes are not replicated.

Aren't some Confederate Generals remembered more for their battle strategies/tactics and are still being taught to this day? Seems like just as good a reason to keep a statue up when you really know how to keep your opponent back while having your hands tied behind you.

Monuments of confederates make sense in the context of a place where they were important historically speaking. A statue of Lee or Picket or Longstreet at Gettysburg or a memorial to any person slain there is not out of place nor necessarily glorifying any cause. A statue of Lee in the middle of a city in Tennessee erected during Jim Crow for the intent of scaring the niggers back in to remembering their place is not historically relevant and should be tossed for something more culturally relevant to the place it was in.

If a statue exist that represents a person we as a society no longer deem to be worthy of glorification then we can choose to remove it, but I don't believe art should ever be destroyed and neither should historical monuments. Auschwitz still exists even though it could've been torn down decades ago because it stands as a permanent reminder of the atrocities that took place there. Something humanity should never forget.

Let a community vote on whether or not a statue should be removed, and if they vote yes, then just take it down and put it in a museum or at least in storage until somewhere appropriate is found to put it.

Best way to repeat history is to forget it.

People are multidimensional and not all good nor all bad. Statues are put up to commemorate a certain aspect of a person. Like how statutes of Washington are meant to pay homage to his role in establishing America, not the fact that he owned slaves. That being said, I am in support of the taking down of confederate statutes because they represent people who took up arms against America.

I think the reason people are against the taking down of these statues is because of how closely linked the movement is to cancel culture. People are (rightly) worried about the revision of history. But nations are fluid through history and things we value today may not be valued a century from now. It's important we remember them but it doesn't need to be in the form of a statute.

A monument by nature is purposefully designed to commemorate an historical figure for their past deeds. Removing statues honouring slave traders does not "revise" or nullify history any more than removing swastika flags and banners in Germany post 1945 did. You can appreciate and understand historical context without having to aggrandise morally bankrupt people with memorials.

Statues celebrating individual people are fucking stupid anyway. You can't attribute multi faceted historical feats to one person.

The majority of the Confederate statues were built in the 20th century by the Daughters of the Confederacy in response to the Civil Rights Movement. Any commemorative meaning behind these statues has only value held in racism, as that is why they were raised in the first place.

We should not have statues in celebration for traitors to the country, as that is what the Confederacy and its legacy is: A heritage of traitorous states that seceded so they could maintain the right to hold people in slavery.

I just want all statues of Andrew "The Monster" Jackson to be removed

yee da nae ask fer tha removal of the Great Remover himself lest thy find yeself... removed.

He was pretty much our Hitler.

In fact, Hitler, Trump, and Jackson have much in common.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trumpism

The roots of Trumpism in the United States can be traced to the Jacksonian era according to scholars Walter Russell Mead, Peter Katzenstein and Edwin Kent Morris. Mead, a noted historian and distinguished fellow at the conservative-leaning Hudson Institute acknowledges that the Jacksonians were often a xenophobic, "whites only" political movement.

Andrew Jackson's followers felt he was one of them, enthusiastically supporting his defiance of politically correct norms of the nineteenth century and even constitutional law when they stood in the way of public policy popular among his followers. Jackson ignored the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Worcester v. Georgia and initiated the forced Cherokee removal from their treaty protected lands to benefit white locals at the cost of between 2,000 and 6,000 dead Cherokee men women and children. Notwithstanding such cases of Jacksonian inhumanity, Mead's view is that Jacksonianism provides the historical precedent explaining the movement of followers of Trump, marrying grass-roots disdain for elites, deep suspicion of overseas entanglements, and obsession with American power and sovereignty. Mead thinks this "hunger in America for a Jacksonian figure" drives followers towards Trump but cautions that historically "he is not the second coming of Andrew Jackson", observing that "his proposals tended to be pretty vague and often contradictory", exhibiting the common weakness of newly elected populist leaders- commenting early in his presidency that "now he has the difficulty of, you know, 'How do you govern?"

Political science scholar Morris agrees with Mead, locating Trumpism's roots in the Jacksonian era from 1828 to 1848 under the presidencies of Jackson, Martin Van Buren and James K. Polk.

okay
butt

were Jackson or Hitler wrong?

Chinese doctor would say that Hitler was wong.