About the Statues

Time to go to bed, great great great great grandpa. You’ve done plenty for your country, your state, and your people. You won’t be forgotten.

But you were on the wrong side of history. Like siding with the Nazi’s in WW2 – not a wise choice. There are consequences.

You sided with the states looking to overthrow your country. You volunteered to lead young men in those states into war against the United States of America.

You lost that war and you lost a lot more. You lost your slaves, your dignity, and you lost your country.

After the war were you tried as traitors or terrorists? No. Were you ostracized and forced to live out your years in shame? No.

There was a reconstruction. Millions of dollars spent trying to mend the country.

I’m not offended by statues honoring the soldiers. The poor soldiers always pay the price for their wealthy masters mistakes.

But now, 150 years later, you don’t deserve praise and pronouncements from the American government. You don’t deserve a heroic statue on public grounds. Even your descendants agree with me.

The only reason your statue is there in the first place is those same slaves and their children kept driving for freedom and the right to vote, which bothered former slave-owners so much they carved statues of you and put them all over the south.

Most of these statues were put up during the so-called jim crow era (1890-1970) after the civil war when racism and multiple forms of segregation were entered into law.

They were put up to intimidate newly freed slaves and to celebrate the cause of the south rising again. Some statues were earlier, but even those were tied to white nationalism.

And no Mike Rowe, these aren’t statues of some old soldiers…. they are cement racist weapons that we’ve wore as a shameful scar on our democracy for generations.

Vandalism in the Carolinas. When the Sheriff said he’d pursue felony charges against the people pulling down the statue, over 1000 people showed up and waited in line to be arrested.

Now, just like Saddam Hussein, that great hero of Iraq being pulled down by the very people that he oppressed for decades, it’s time for these monuments to go.

Unlike a scar, they can just be removed. They weren’t there before those celebrating treason and racism infiltrated local governments and allowed them put up.

Replace them with a different statue (someone from the 20th century perhaps) or build a starbucks, I don’t care.

They don’t need to be destroyed, but will be, if governments don’t quickly remove them from public lands. This applies especially to lands not dedicated to the civil war and displays where the full story of the war is ignored.

Museums would be perfect places for them. Art galleries too.

Even southern companies, resorts, and millionaires that want to pay for the upkeep and deal with the backlash could host and protect them. They are an important part of American history. Why destroy any statue?

However, there is no government in America – local, state, or federal – that should display these traitors as heroes. My tax money shouldn’t be used to wipe bird shit off these things.

Especially since I haven’t seen a SINGLE STATUE of a slave or a person fighting for abolition in this country.

Where are the slave statues? The abolitionist statues? The underground railroad statues?