No Justice, No Peace

An interesting and illustrative exchange involving five different individuals follows (I've numbered each quote for reference). I apologize for the length these quotes add to this post, but to get the full effect of the exchange you really have to see them together in sequence.

McG #1 wrote:

What is it about these statues that has you so riled up?

edgar #1 wrote:

It's like you have never had it articulated on these forums, why one is opposed to the statues as a glorification of hatred and oppression. If you don't know by now, nobody can help you. - edit - It isn't just a matter of placating juveniles. There are plenty of us geriatrics that are opposed to those symbols.

(emphasis added)

McG #2 wrote:

Glorification of hatred and oppression?! I can understand the deal with the Confederate flag being a symbol of oppression, but are there a bunch of racists running around dressed like Robert E Lee? During Halloween are people running around all over the south land dressed like Confederate Generals carrying around hate signs?

I don't see the connection between Robert E Lee statues and hate groups... When are you guys going to go after Jefferson and Washington? Next summer?

(emphasis added)

edgar #2 wrote:

What have you got against Jefferson and Washington?

McG #3 wrote:

I have nothing against either. I hold them up as examples of great Americans.

But, both owned slaves... that makes them racists and oppressive so it will be just a matter of time before your sides wingnuts take aim at them and start demanding they are taken out of history books and statues get taken down and streets re-named...

(emphasis added)

DrewDad #1 wrote:

Jefferson and Washington owned slaves.
Seeing an unjust government, they started a revolution and brought forth democratic principles to guide our new nation.

The Southern states had slave owners.
Seeing rising democratic opinion that opposed the ownership of slaves, they abandoned democracy to start a revolution in order to maintain the oppression of fellow humans.

See the difference?

(emphasis added)

Setanta #1 wrote:

The idiocy here is just stunning. Washington went to war to achieve national self-determination. Somewhat over ten thousand Americans died. Lee and Jackson went to war to defend the institution of slavery. Well over 600,000 Americans died. Washington fought in a noble and unselfish cause. Lee and Jackson fought in an ignoble and selfish cause.

I guess one is obliged to explain such things to conservatives in simple, childish terms--and even then have no confidence that they will understand.

(emphasis added)

oralloy #1 wrote:

If people are unpersuaded by your argument, that does not mean they necessarily do not understand it. I find your denunciations of Confederate generals to be horribly one-sided and unfair.

But comparative morality between the two groups of figures is really beside the point, and would be even if I'd agreed with you. The liberals are already going after monuments to slave-owning Founding Fathers, so the question of "where will the liberals ever stop" is actually a very good point.

(emphasis added)

Setanta #2 wrote:

Don't attempt to piggy-back your witless and biased arguments on my posts, you idiot.

It is important to keep in mind that as this thread has expanded over the last six or so days to include a discussion of Charlottesville, simultaneously, a discussion of the very same series of events has been going on in and through the media. In that discussion, one of the key points made by President Trump and people who oppose the idea of tearing down Civil War monuments as well as those who are merely observers of the modern Left, is represented by the question "Where will it stop?"

In other words, if slavery is the primary reason why the statutes must go and the clear villains during the dark age of slavery in America are those who bought, sold and owned slaves, shouldn't slave ownership disqualify any American from being granted the honor of a public monument?

As we all know and McG pointed out, quite a few American heroes owned slaves and have had both modest and grand honors bestowed upon them by the nation and it's people, ranging from having a Middle School named after them to an entire state. Statues and grand monuments dedicated to slave owners fill Washington (There we go again!) DC and are littered throughout the country.

This argument makes things a bit awkward for those who support the tearing down of statutes honoring the warriors of the Confederacy, because most of them (and certainly in the case of Democrat politicians) don't want to get behind a movement to tear down the magnificent monuments erected to honor Presidents Jefferson and Washington, change faces adorning currency and rename scores of schools and public institutions, our nation's capital, a huge bridge connecting NY and NJ, and and our nation's 42nd state. At least not yet. If the public attitude towards the concept starts to shift as it did with same-sex marriage, wait and see how fast they jump on that train.

What to do? Easy peasy...change the justification for tearing down confederate monuments from slavery to rebellion! Yes, Washington and Jefferson owned slaves (so did just about every learned and well positioned gentleman in colonial America!) but they were the personifications of patriotic honor while scum like Lee and Stonewall Jackson not only owned slaves, they were traitorous rebels and responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of their fellow Americans.

To assist in dealing with irony inherent in this switcheroo,(see McG #2) and to help create the impression that there never actually was any change made, they make the new improved argument in a condescending and/or insulting manner (see Setanta #1 and DrewDad #1) as if only a foolish conservatives would think their objection to Confederacy monuments was ever based on slave ownership. However edgar, who is apparently not overly discomforted by the possibility that tearing down Lee and Jackson monuments might lead to the same treatment of those honoring Washington and Jefferson, did care to be bothered with countering the "Where will it stop?" question and so stuck with the original reason.

Of course when oralloy points out the obvious, that failure to accept an argument made doesn't necessarily imply a lack of understanding, and provides the actual answer to the $60,000 question (See oralloy #1), he is informed, (with considerable graciousness I might add) that a) He is not permitted to respond to certain comments in this thread and b) His response to one of the sacred texts is an attempt to leverage a far more brilliant and objective point in advancement of his biased and idiotic argument. (See Setanta #2)

No doubt both DrewDad and Setanta will be comforted to know that I have little doubt that at this juncture they would not approve of changing the name of the state of Washington to "Pacifica" or the Chinookan equivalent of " Land of Tolerance" or "No Privilege" or of razing the Jefferson Memorial, but oralloy is correct that efforts are already underway to rid the nation of any monument to our Founding Slave Owners:

CNN-Angela Rye

There May Come a Day

Quote:

Don Lemon responded by saying Jefferson represented "the entire United States, not just the South." But he added: "There may come a day when we want to rethink Jefferson. I don't know if we should do that."

Leave it to Lemon to spear head the switcheroo. To be fair, Lemon voiced his uncertainty about the rightness of tearing down monuments to slave owning Founding Fathers, but he was clever enough to leave the door open to the inevitable point where he changes his mind. It seems some pundits are finally catching on that statements they make on air will live with them forever.

Take Em Down NOLA

The Take Em Down NOLA campaign is almost a sidebar in this article which focuses mainly on Aaron Astor, a history professor at Maryville College in Tennessee who may be the originator of the new argument.

"Charlie Rose" - Al Sharpton

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See what I mean? There are none so blind as those who will not see. So, to make the point once again, Lee and Jackson and Beauregard and so many others went to war with their nation to preserve the institution of slavery. Washington did not go to war to preserve the institution of slavery, but rather to achieve national self-determination. Certainly northerners who fought in the revolution did not do so to preserve slavery. But Lee and Beauregard and all the other traitors of their society went to war for no other reason than to preserve slavery. Finny delivers another of his prolix and overblown polemics in the attempt to re-assert that statues such as those of Lee and Beauregard are taken down because they were slave owners. They are taken down because they are traitors whose actions killed hundreds of thousands of Americans.

I suspect it won't sink in this time either, because people like Finny have their heads so far up President Plump's backside it's a wonder they can breath. All of this hot air from the right is a feeble, dull-witted attempt to make Plump's point for him. It didn't work when he tried it, and it's still not working.

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For the record, I agree with the argument that monuments to Confederate leaders and warriors to not belong on public grounds, and statutes of Robert E. Lee are no exception.

There are those who peddle revisionist history about Lee which attempts to make the case that he was actually opposed to the institution of slavery.

One piece of evidence that is commonly used to argue for a kinder view of Lee, a letter he wrote in 1856 because in it he describes slavery as a "moral and political evil," however the following excerpt from the letter shows that this description has been taken, by revisionists, out of context and is hardly the proof of an stalwart opponent of slavery:

Quote:

I think it however a greater evil to the white man than to the black race, & while my feelings are strongly enlisted in behalf of the latter, my sympathies are more strong for the former. The blacks are immeasurably better off here than in Africa, morally, socially & physically. The painful discipline they are undergoing, is necessary for their instruction as a race, & I hope will prepare & lead them to better things. How long their subjugation may be necessary is known & ordered by a wise Merciful Providence. Their emancipation will sooner result from the mild & melting influence of Christianity, than the storms & tempests of fiery Controversy.

(emphasis added)

So Lee apparently believed that slavery, while being an evil to white men, was a necessary element in the civilization of black men, and the harsh and cruel treatment they received was actually to the benefit of their race. This is textbook racism.

The Robert E. Lee of legend was a great general and the epitome of the gentile Southern culture. My only comment on his skills as military leader is that the army he commanded lost the war it fought. It may have been a just about a foregone conclusion due to an asymmetry of resources, but great generals manage to find ways to win wars they are supposed to lose. He may have been a man of great personal bravery, but I don't believe there are any tales of his bravery in battle which he led from well behind the front lines.

I've no doubt that Lee was the ultimate gentleman at plantation social events and I imagine that he strictly observed all of the obscene honorable niceties of war (at least as they pertained to officers), but I doubt very many of the slaves he owned saw him as a gentle shepherd, courteously leading them and their family members (including the one he sold off to other slave owners) towards an eventual free and prosperous life.

In another thread I have explained why I can understand why Southerners who themselves are not racist, long to preserve the mythology of the gentile antebellum South and if any Confederate figure fits the profile of a hero within that mythology, it is Lee. However these folks are deluded by a romantic notion that desire to believe in, and, more critically, insensitive to the perspective and experiences (or the experiences of family members who lived during the era of slavery and passed their terrible tales down to the descendants) of their fellow Southerners who are black.

Put aside the monuments with inscriptions that glorify the subjugation of blacks as there is no conscionable argument that can be made for preserving them, but while it may be possible to lose one's perspective in the haze of romantic mythology, it shouldn't be possible to lose one's respect for the entirely valid perspective of one's neighbor's for the nightmarish reality. I can't see any reason for why African-Americans could or should not be highly offended by monuments on public ground that honor the men who sought to perpetuate the enslavement of their ancestors, and if at all possible, extend it to them.

I also understand why African-Americans might object to honoring any person who owned other human beings as slaves, and I don't see their desire to put an end to the national honoring of them as anything like crazy. I don't think it would be advisable to attempt to push for such things as tearing down monuments to Founding Fathers or renaming schools, cities or a state, but I also think it would be wrong. As horrible as it was, slavery was a largely respectable institution of the time. The respect it received was, no doubt, due in large measure to the great economic advantage it provided those who owned slaves or benefited from the largess of slave owners, but it was a far different time with far different perspectives on a great many aspects of life and society, and the importance of men like Washington and Jefferson to the United States of America then and now is undeniable and incalculable. Some would even argue, with legitimacy, the importance of their contributions extends beyond our borders to the world.

Still, although I don't have much hope that it is possible, I think the subject should be discussed rationally in the public domain and not dismissed out of hand as the lunacy of radicals or opposition to it as a sure indicator of someone's racism. Right now I can't imagine that it will ever happen but even in my most radically left-wing early day I couldn't imagine that transgenders would even be considered for service in the military ever become legal in my lifetime. I don't think the two issues are equivalent beyond their both being (at one time) highly improbable, but I can't predict with anything close to certainty that the day will never come when the monuments to slave owning Founding Fathers are converted to edifices honoring some virtue rather than any individuals and Washington state is renamed Pacifica.

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@Setanta,

Setanta wrote:

See what I mean? There are none so blind as those who will not see.

The problem is not our ability to perceive your argument. The problem is that your argument is far from persuasive.

For starters, the liberals are already attacking monuments to the Founding Fathers based on them having been slaveowners. That one fact alone undermines most of your claims.

Setanta wrote:

So, to make the point once again, Lee and Jackson and Beauregard and so many others went to war with their nation to preserve the institution of slavery. Washington did not go to war to preserve the institution of slavery, but rather to achieve national self-determination.

Wrong. The south was attempting to achieve national self-determination every bit as much as the Founding Fathers were.

It is certainly true that southerners were out to preserve slavery while the Founding Fathers were not. The motive of the Founding Fathers was instead an attempt to avoid taxes lawfully imposed for the costs of defending a remote colony during a previous war (that's the British perspective at least).

However, the fact that each group had a different motive for their attempt to achieve self determination does not change the fact that their attempt to do so was outright treason.

Setanta wrote:

All of this hot air from the right is a feeble, dull-witted attempt to make Plump's point for him. It didn't work when he tried it, and it's still not working.

I realize that liberals continue to disregard reality when Trump speaks the truth, but it is refreshing to finally have a president who is willing to stick to the facts when liberals nationwide insist that everyone drink their Kool Aid.

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@oralloy,

Quote:

The south was attempting to achieve national self-determination

Is that similar to being determined to keep slavery alive and well?

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1,503 Confederate symbols are on display across America. Most are in the South. 179 are in majority black counties.

Confederate symbols in the U.S.

http://www.politico.com/interactives/2017/confederate-monuments-statues-and-symbols-in-the-south/images/full2-Artboard_1_copy_3.png

Black population density

http://www.politico.com/interactives/2017/confederate-monuments-statues-and-symbols-in-the-south/images/black_population2-Artboard_8.png

Correlation is not causation. But this is no coincidence. These things were erected in response to black progress toward freedom.

Quote:

The majority of these symbols were dedicated between 1900 and 1920, when the South enacted Jim Crow laws aimed at resegregating society or discriminating against blacks. There was also a notable spike in new symbols during the height of the civil rights movement.

http://www.politico.com/interactives/2017/confederate-monuments-statues-and-symbols-in-the-south/

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Southern solidarity is an important part of the "Lost Cause" myth. It is mythic, too. Unable to fill their armies' ranks, the Confederate Congress initiated conscription a year before such a measure was passed in the United States. Desertion rates remained high throughout the war. The state of North Carolina suffered more casualties proportionally than any other southern state--they also had the highest desertion rate at 23%. The northwestern counties of Virginia seceded from the Commonwealth when Virginia seceded from the Union. Initial Confederate attempts to keep those counties were a fiasco. McClellan ordered the First and Second Virginia (United States Volunteers) to secure important bridges on the Baltimore and Ohio railroad. Ohio and Indiana troops soon followed. At Philippi on June 3, there were few casualties, because Confederate forces ran away almost from the beginning of the conflict. It didn't rate as more than a skirmish because the Confederates didn't stick around long enough for it to become a battle. It was called the Philippi Races in the northern Press. In subsequent engagements, the Confederates were routinely defeated. General Patterson, a Mexican War veteran, although he defeated Jackson at Falling Waters, did not press the attack, and Joe Johnston was able to withdraw his little army and transport them over the Bull Run Mountains to join the rank incompetent Beauregard at the first battle of Bull Run. McClellan remained in command in northwestern Virginia, where Lee was put in command of Confederate forces. At Rich Mountain, beginning ten days before the battle of Bull Run, an impatient William Rosecrans tired of awaiting orders from McClellan, and split the Confederate forces with his large brigade. The Confederates fell into a disorganized retreat, and Robert Garnett's forces at Laurel Hill were also driven into headlong retreat by General Morris' forces who had defeated the Confederates at Philippi. Garnett was killed in the retreat, the first general officer killed in the war. The southern press dubbed Lee "Granny Lee" as a result. More than 20,000 men from Virginia volunteered and served in the United States Army in that war. Draft dodgers and deserters became such a problem late in the war that Lee, although strapped for men after the Overland Campaign, felt compelled to send two brigades to southwest Virginia to deal with the deserters.

A similar circumstance obtained in Tennessee. The first attempt to pass a secession ordinance failed in a popular vote, so legislators in Nashville organized a snap vote when members from the eastern counties were traveling back home, and passed a secession ordinance. County officials meeting in Knoxville informed the legislature that they intended to secede from Tennessee, so Confederate troops were dispatched to occupy Knoxville. In September, 1863, the much-maligned Ambrose Burnside conducted a commendably rapid advance, and entered Knoxville on September 3, 1863. Subsequent attempts to pry the United States troops out of Knoxville, lead by the much-vaunted James Longstreet failed miserably, and his troops from the Army of Northern Virginia suffered badly in the retreat over the mountains in the winter of 1863-64--desertion rates were very high, as well. More than 40,000 Tennessee men voluntarily served in the United States Army in that war. Their friends from over the mountains in North Carolina provided 25,000 more volunteers.

Sadly, many descendants of those draft dodgers, deserters and U. S. Volunteers have drunk the "Lost Cause" koolaid, and are today members of White Supremacist groups. To describe that war as a war of national self-determination is utter hogwash. It is only with historical distortion on a grand scale that the Lost Cause boys have been able to create an image of a unified South determined to resist the evil oppressor. I've said many time, but it cannot be said often enough: the South started that war, they got their military ass kicked, and they've been whining and lying about it ever since.

Here is an interesting article at Wikipedia about Southern Unioniests. Lincoln's second Vice President, Andrew Johnson, himself a slave-owner, had, as a Tennessee Senator, warned his fellow southern members of Congress that they stood to lose everything by going to war. Of course, he was not very popular in the post-war United States Congress, but he dodged a bullet when he was impeached.

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Even old DOOK University is getting the message. The students spurred the removal of a statue of R.E. Lee from their chapel!! My hometown is in this fight!

Quote:

Duke University authorized the removal of a Gen. Robert E. Lee statue from the front of its chapel Saturday after students made very clear they don’t want the Confederate monument there anymore.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/duke-university-is-removing-the-robert-e-lee-statue-from-its-chapel_us_5998346ce4b0e8cc855df9f9?ncid=inblnkushpmg00000009

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Good Lord! Are you seeing the size of the counter-protester crowd/marchers in Boston right now?

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Six Flags Over Texas has replaced five of the six flags they fly, with the stars and stripes, making them all alike, now.

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Additional American figures from whom we should consider stripping all public honors and memorials: (In no particular order)

WOODROW WILSON - 28th President of the United States, blatant racist, trampler of freedoms of speech and the press, jailer of Union leaders and would-be dictator.

Fortunately the movement to rid the nation of monuments to this, the worst president we have ever had, is already in motion. In 2015 a statue of Wilson was removed at the University of Texas. Before that, in November of 2015, students protesters at Princeton occupied the office of the university president and demanded that Wilson's name be removed from buildings throughout the campus. The University refused and offered some diversity program pap to appease the protesters, but I'm sure what with Nazis and the KKK on the rise in 2017, the thinking of the Princeton administration has changed and they are now amenable to a purge of all symbols honoring the evil guy.

https://foto.turistika.cz/foto/r/350/31471/126284/lrg__igp5779.jpg

ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL - Inventor of the telephone. Blatant racist. Honorary president of the Second International Eugenics Conference of 1921, esteemed member of the Committee on Eugenics and chairman of the board of scientific advisers to the Eugenics Record Office from 1912 to 1918. Advocated for California's compulsory sterilization law designed to weed out a "defective variety of the human race, " and which served as a model for Nazi Germany.

Bell was born in the UK and died a citizen of the US in 1922 but for two years in his early 20's he lived in Ontario and was a Canadian citizen. The Canadians may be more in awe of him (for his inventions of course) than Americans, because this impressive memorial is located in Brantford, Ontario. Our friends to the North don't have quite the same history of slavery as we do but there was a slave trade in Canada involving both Africans and Indians. As a British territory Canada saw any and all slavery abolished with the passage of the Slavery Abolition Act 1833, by the British Parliament. After 1833 the Canadians were still treating indigenous people pretty shabbily and while some Indian workers, for all intents and purposes, were treated as slaves, their masters didn't legally own them.

https://static.pjmedia.com/trending/user-content/51/files/2017/08/Alexander-Graham-Bell.jpg

FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT: 32nd President of the United States, architect of the New Deal and father of modern liberalism, serial philanderer, leader of America throughout most of WWII, and responsible for Executive Order 9066, arguably, the most heinous abuse of presidential power in American history. With one stroke of his pen, FDR ordered the relocation of hundreds of thousands of the "Issei" (first generation, non-citizen Japanese immigrants) and their children who were natural born citizens and known as "Nisei." They were all forced to give up their properties and businesses, and transported to camps built in remote locations in the interior of the nation. The internment of Japanese immigrants and Japanese-American citizens is widely considered to have been a racist drenched policy because Germans and Italians residing in America were not treated in the same way, however German and Italian nationals were also interned when their native lands declared war on the US. Some American citizens of German and Italian origins were also interned in camps, but this was based, primarily, on individual investigations that led to suspicion of them possibly being spies or saboteurs. Of course all Japanese American citizens were considered threats requiring segregated detainment so the charge of the policy having racist undertones is accurate.

The detainment of German nationals residing in the US due to a war with Germany was old hat thanks to the would-be dictator Woody Wilson and it was Wilson's freedom enshrining Alien & Sedition Acts upon which FDR based his authority to send hundreds of thousands of people to concentration camps.

All of this doesn't even mention the criticism he's received for not doing enough to save European Jews from Hitler (although to be fair, he received a lot of criticism within his own party for doing too much for European Jews), but the kicker sin which really requires a wrecking ball be taken to this cute statute of him and his little Scottie is the fact that in order to secure the support of Southern Democrats for the New Deal, he opposed anti-lynching legislation.

Purging the public square of all monuments and symbolic honors intended to extol the virtues of the man a great many people believe to be America's greatest president is going to be tricky. There are no states named for him, and no major cities, but his likeness is on our dime and there are probably thousands of schools and government buildings bearing his name. Maybe we can organize an army of millennial vandals to take on the job. They seemed to have had so much fun recently smashing statues of Confederate heroes that they'll probably jump at this assignment.

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/4f/0e/ed/4f0eedf812fed140d451d6fe4186962a--contemporary-history-lincoln-memorial.jpg

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Yet more American figures from whom we should consider stripping all public honors and memorials: (In no particular order)

J. WILLIAM FULBRIGHT: Sen. J. William Fulbright (D-Ark.) A one time hero of the Left, it's unlikely that he is well know by the general public regardless of their political affiliations. May be better known for the Fulbright Scholar Program than his political career. The program, though named after him, was not funded by him personally or by his estate after his death. It has always been funded by taxpayers and private donations so the name of the scholarship program has to be changed.

Despite being held in high regard by liberals once national opposition to the Vietnam war grew to significant size, Fulbright signed the Southern Manifesto in opposition to the Supreme Court's ruling against segregation in the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, joined with other southern Democrats in filibustering the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and voted against the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

http://digitalcollections.uark.edu/ui/custom/default/collection/default/images/fulbrightportrait.png

Hardly among the most famous of American statesmen, a statute of him was erected by the University of Arkansas. Of course he was an Alum and former president of UA, but the George Washington University renamed a residence hall in his honor as well (So when the University changes it's name, it can change the name of the residence hall too.)

Defenders of Fulbright's legacy will argue that he came to regret his early opposition to civil rights for African-Americans and not only was he an early opponent of Joseph McCarthy he was a leading Senate critic of the Vietnam War. What they may fail to recall is that not only did Fulbright vote for the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution which greatly expanded the US military involvement in Vietnam, he sponsored it. He had a history of fateful support of efforts that damaged the nation and its people, but he always seemed to evolve to a point where he regretted the harm he had caused. Sure sounds like a man who deserves public honors, doesn't he?

He's likely to be one of Latham's heroes as in the early 60's he publicly expressed grave concern that the right-wing radicalism of the John Birch Society and millionaire oil-man H. L. Hunt, had infected the United States military. As a result, conservative Senators Goldwater (R-AZ) and Towers (R-TX) unsuccessfully campaigned in Arkansas against his re-election (No doubt a highlight of the Latham Progressive Victory Hit Parade). He was also a huge fan of International Law and the United Nations.

Fulbright was the mentor and long time friend of President Bill Clinton and he and his wife joined the Clintons in investing in real estate and specifically one parcel of land along the White River in the Ozarks. Clinton awarded his friend the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1993

Having been a major figure in the Democrat's disastrous sharp shift to the Left after Nixon defeated "The Happy Warrior," LBJ's VP, Hubert H. Humphrey, Fulbright was primaried by another close friend of Clinton who defended him during his impeachment proceedings, the more conservative Dale Bumpers. Considering Fulbright's former status in the party the Bumpers victory was a stunning upset and one of the signals that the left-wing McGovern Days of the Democrat Party were over.

http://static.wixstatic.com/media/22d99d_4b0671e94a2b4a9d969bc62d18f9acda.jpg/v1/fill/w_577,h_380,al_c,lg_1,q_80/22d99d_4b0671e94a2b4a9d969bc62d18f9acda.webp

ROBERT CARLYLE BYRD: Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV) (Birth name: Cornelius Calvin Sale, Jr.) was the longest-serving Senator in United States history. He was also a legendary figure within both the august body in which he spent most of his career, and the Democrat Party. Although the Warner Bros. cartoon character Foghorn Leghorn wasn't based on Byrd, the similarity between the rooster and human windbags was striking. Upon his death in 2010, Hillary Clinton described Byrd as "the heart and soul" of the Senate. While that may have been a wonderful testimony for Byrd, it didn't speak well of the Senate.

In the early 1940's the heart & soul of the Senate, along with 150 of his good old boys started a new chapter of the Ku Klux Klan in Sophia, WV, and Byrd was unanimously elected to the top leadership position of "Exalted Cyclops" After receiving fulsome praise from a Klan official, Byrd recalls thinking to himself

Quote:

"Suddenly lights flashed in my mind! Someone important had recognized my abilities! I was only 23 or 24 years old, and the thought of a political career had never really hit me. But strike me that night, it did."

Lucky West Virginia; lucky America.

In 1944 Byrd wrote in a letter to a Democrat Mississippi Senator:

Quote:

I shall never fight in the armed forces with a negro by my side ... Rather I should die a thousand times, and see Old Glory trampled in the dirt never to rise again, than to see this beloved land of ours become degraded by race mongrels, a throwback to the blackest specimen from the wilds.

For full effect, read this aloud in the best imitation you can manage of the voice of Foghorn Leghorn

In 1946, Byrd was back to letter writing and penned this to a Klan Grand Wizard:

Quote:

"The Klan is needed today as never before, and I am anxious to see its rebirth here in West Virginia and in every state in the nation."

In 1958 Byrd made a bid for the Senate seat of a Republican incumbent, and won. He successfully campaigned against the Republican's support for civil rights.

In 1964 Byrd joined our old friend Sen. William Fulbright in opposing the Civil Rights Act; joining in the Democrat filibuster of the legislation and personally taking to the Senate floor for 14 straight hours (Now that's commitment!) He also voted against the Voting Rights Act of 1965

He was the only senator to vote against confirming both of the only two African-Americans nominated to the Supreme Court, Thurgood Marshall and Clarence Thomas. His reason for rejecting Marshall was that he suspected the man was a commie. Unbelievably, the former Exalted Cyclops of the KKK stated he opposed Thomas because he found the judge's comment about being the target of a "high-tech lynching of uppity blacks" to be offensive. "I thought we were past that stage." Byrd offered.

Byrd of course expressed deep regret for his young and foolish days in the Klan and his opposition to just about any piece of legislation involving civil rights. His Baptist church had helped to set him on the right path and he was a "changed man." However in 2006 he told Tony Snow on a Fox News show:

Quote:

They're (race relations) much, much better than they've ever been in my life-time ... I think we talk about race too much. I think those problems are largely behind us ... I just think we talk so much about it that we help to create somewhat of an illusion. I think we try to have good will. My old mom told me, 'Robert, you can't go to heaven if you hate anybody.' We practice that. There are white niggers. I've seen a lot of white niggers in my time, if you want to use that word. We just need to work together to make our country a better country, and I'd just as soon quit talking about it so much

I bet he did as it always got him in trouble and this time was no exception and yet another expression of regret was required.

As another one of those Democrat Lions of the Senate, Byrd has a statute commemorating his long service in the Capital's Rotunda, but he was also a legend for his ability to bring truckloads of pork back home to West Virginia, and as a result there are numerous statues of the man in his home state and just about every highway, school, and municipal building in West Virginia is named after him. The sheer volume of work required to purge his undeserved honors will rival that required when we take on George Washington's legacy.

The ground has been broken and the effort is already underway.

https://c1.staticflickr.com/9/8387/8543073569_3c93d3733c_b.jpg

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All that Finn is accomplishing with his tiresome display is verifying that he himself is terribly uncomfortable with the recent huge resurgence of determination to rid our public areas of Confederate memorials. As always, he tries to dress up and bury his ugky, base thinking and motives inside overlong, bullshit screeds. He's not convincing anyone but the dimwits here who cheer for the NeoNazis already. His efforts to obfuscate are not any more effective here than they are when he tries to pretend he's not a shill for the bloated disaster of a so-called president.

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Oh my Dog! What if there were no more statues, of anyone, anywhere ? ! ? ! ? What if dozens, mayhap even hundreds of brass and bronze founders were thrown out of woark? How would the economy limp along?

King James of Scotland and England commissioned a translation of the bobble in 1604, which was completed in 1611. Dozens of prominent scholars of the day worked for seven years to produce a translation which was not only as accurate as they could make it, but which was intended to be read aloud. Produced in the seventeenth century, it was written in the speech common to all Englishmen in the sixteenth century, because, once again, it was intended to be read aloud, and to be understood by all those listening. It is a great literary monument, without regard to the religious scruples, or lack of them, of any English-speaker living today. Do we remember King James VI and I for his administration? Not bloody likely. Do we remember him for the bible translation he commissioned? We certainly do. Do we remember the scholars who undertook the work, or even know who they were? Of course not. But these men left behind a monument which endures and has endured for more than 400 years, and likely will for centuries to come. Great ideas, great deeds, solid accomplishments are the most durable monuments.

We have here a spectacle of a shill for the Koch brothers attempting to make a silk purse out of the sow's ear that is President Plump. Will we ever be free of such pathetic displays and insincere polemic? Not likely--as the King James Bible tells us, ". . . man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward."

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I think I should short bronze futures.

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@snood,

snood wrote:

All that Finn is accomplishing with his tiresome display is verifying that he himself is terribly uncomfortable with the recent huge resurgence of determination to rid our public areas of Confederate memorials.

Most Americans are. Liberalism really is a cancer gnawing away at the heart of this great nation.

snood wrote:

As always, he tries to dress up and bury his ugky, base thinking and motives inside overlong, bullshit screeds.

Translation: Finn posted facts that the extremists can't refute (again) and now the extremists are whining (again).

snood wrote:

He's not convincing anyone but the dimwits here who cheer for the NeoNazis already.

Translation: Everyone who disagrees with Snood is a dimwitted Nazi.

snood wrote:

His efforts to obfuscate are not any more effective here than they are when he tries to pretend he's not a shill for the bloated disaster of a so-called president.

His posting of facts that make you whine is hardly obfuscation.

Trump is a disaster only for the demented ideology of liberalism. For actual Americans Trump is a blessing.

That someone defends our president from your deranged attacks hardly makes them a shill. Some people simply like to do what is right.

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Well, I guess you gotta give it to a dimwit for at least being predictable.

http://blogs.denverpost.com/opinion-cartoons/files/2015/06/confederate-flag-cartoon-beeler.jpg

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@Setanta,

Setanta wrote:

See what I mean? There are none so blind as those who will not see.

I do see what you mean in all of your feeble attempts to transform the underpinnings of the movement to tear down statues of Robert E. Lee and other figures of the Confederacy from their connection with slavery and racism to their being traitors.

You need not repeat these feeble attempts. We understand full well the argument you are making, we simply do not buy it. Restating it ad nauseam may result in your being ignored, but it doesn't make it any less feeble. I realize it's difficult for you to accept that there are those alive who don't share your confidence in your brilliance, but I assure you it's the case, and no matter how many times you write the same dreck we're not going to have an epiphany and buy into it because you've rearranged some sentences.

If you wish to debate the point instead of simply repeating yourself while slinging mud, explain why a great many of the people who want to take down a statute of a confederate general, also advocate the elimination of memorials to Thomas Jefferson, George Washington and Woodrow Wilson (among others). None are connected to the Civil War. None were, strictly speaking, traitors, but two were slave-owners ( a defacto admission of racism) and the third was simply a garden variety racist.

Perhaps you adamantly believe that the Confederate memorials should be removed because the South and it's leaders were involved in a traitorous rebellion, but you certainly appear to be presenting yourself here as a spokesman for a much wider group, and considering the fact that you have spent quite a lot of your precious brilliance insisting that the Civil War was all about slavery, the fine distinction you are now attempting to draw between slavery and treason is, to say the least, disingenuous.
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@snood,

snood wrote:

All that Finn is accomplishing with his tiresome display is verifying that he himself is terribly uncomfortable with the recent huge resurgence of determination to rid our public areas of Confederate memorials. As always, he tries to dress up and bury his ugky, base thinking and motives inside overlong, bullshit screeds. He's not convincing anyone but the dimwits here who cheer for the NeoNazis already. His efforts to obfuscate are not any more effective here than they are when he tries to pretend he's not a shill for the bloated disaster of a so-called president.

You can continue to post your erroneous and defamatory assumptions and conclusions about my thinking and intentions, but it's a poor substitute for an intelligent and reasoned refutation of what I have actually written.

In the meantime, you really should see your doctor about your obvious short attention span. Your trouble with any post longer than 100 words could be a sign of Adult ADD. I understand there are pharmacological treatments that can work wonders. Good luck with it.

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@roger,

It might not hurt.

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