Violence in Charlottesville

[Strike For The South]

The best possible public memorial for Robert Lee is Arlington National Cemetery, a landscape of American war dead on land formerly of the Lee family's estate. (IMO better if it had been expropriated rather than purchased.)

I agree. A forced sale of land is a rather light punishment for treason. The leniency of the Union government is partially the reason we are in this mess. Meigs was very much playing the long game.

Good points. It probably has more artistic merit than most Confedertae monuments, despite being a failed federal project on Indian land designed as a tourist trap; I don't have many defenses against its removal other than budgetary ones. Is the grandeur accidental, or just superficial after all?

The entirety of the Americas is a project on native land. Do we simply excise all European influence? If so which one of the 000s of Native polities takes supremacy? Who gets what? How much native blood does one need to be part of this?

Are we arguing against monuments in general or are we arguing over the national myth? Or maybe historical pedagogy? America only works because of civic nationalism, if we don't have a common well to draw upon, we cease being a useful society. That well needs to be more inclusive and has for a long time. Removing these Confederate statues is a first step toward that.

I'm not sure when the end game is.

Maybe heads carved out of a mountain would be more fitting for Soviet premiers than American presidents.

I mean maybe, we all have our on tastes in aesthetics.

What about those that are carrying clubs, batons, rocks, brass knuckles or pepper spray?

That would qualify for me. I am unsure how the ACLU feels. The majority of the "left" people at the protest were locals. The people on the right were out of staters with firearms. It was not an equal situation.