The Robert E. Lee Problem (Get the eraser ready)

NY Times ^ | June 26, 2015 | David Brooks

[C19fan]

The debate about the Charleston Bible study shooting has morphed into a debate about the Confederate battle flag and other symbols of the Confederacy. This is not a trivial sideshow. Racism is not just a personal prejudice and an evolutionary byproduct. It resurfaces year after year because it’s been woven by historical events into the fabric of American culture.

That culture is transmitted through the generations by the things we honor or don’t honor, by the symbols and names we celebrate and don’t celebrate. If we want to reduce racism we have to elevate the symbols that signify the struggle against racism and devalue the symbols that signify its acceptance.

[Daffynition]

What are they going to do with the RE Lee mansion at ANC?

Turn it into a gay wedding chapel?

[Billthedrill]

If we want to reduce racism we have to elevate the symbols that signify the struggle against racism and devalue the symbols that signify its acceptance.

I wonder if Brooks realizes how manipulative and totalitarian this really is. But that's the game plan. People are too stupid to make up their own minds on these topics, you see, they need guidance. And guess who is more than willing to provide it?

[virgil]

It is kind of creepy how the libs keep calling to erase our cultural and historical past.

[ThePatriotsFlag]

But if they “erase’ history, Lee, Flag, etc ... don’t they also erase slavery ... so if if “never happened” ... what is all the yelling and screaming about? I’m getting very tired of “we need to have a discussion on race!” ... that’s BS, we need to SHUT UP on race, I’m tired of it.

[Charles Martel]

Mayor Mitch Landrieu [NOL] yesterday, called for statues honoring the Confederacy to be removed from the city.

That has probably been on the Mayor's Office wish list since Mitch's daddy was mayor.

This is a city, mind you, where a visitor can pay to take a guided tour which will include visits to restored slaves' quarters. Is the city going to order those structures bulldozed, Mitch? It's all part of the same story.

One thing New Orleans has *never* done is flinch at its past - good, bad or sordid. Well, until now.

IIRC, the monument in Lee Circle has been on the National Register of Historic Places since the 1990s. It'll be interesting to see if that still means anything.

[Charles Martel]

It is kind of creepy how the libs keep calling to erase our cultural and historical past.

Straight from Mao's little RED book.

[x]

If you were at West Point in 1915, you might realize the importance of Americans not killing each other again, of keeping North and South together. Other domestic questions would pale beside that important consideration.

Put concern for national unity and sectional reconciliation together with a shared West Point background and an admiration for Lee's military capacities and you can understand where Eisenhower was coming from.

If you were at West Point in 2015, the necessity of keeping the country together, of blacks and whites not killing each other in the streets might be most important for you and regional considerations secondary (if that).

So today's Eisenhowers and tomorrow's might look at Lee differently than Ike did. Approaching the question with the same values in mind could yield a different answer given the differences in the national context.

[detective]

“in 2015, the necessity of keeping the country together, of blacks and whites not killing each other in the streets might be most important for you”

Eisenhower's letter concerning General Lee was intelligent, thoughtful and well articulated.

The current politically correct trend to lie about great Americans in the past and distort our history is stupid and destructive.

The Democrats try to create and exploit racial animosity and racial violence. Some call for a race war. Democrats are the party of slavery, the party of the Ku Klux Klan and the party of racial violence. They are the party of government enforced segregation. They are now using race to poison the minds of many and make violence and crime acceptable.

The case in South Carolina was a drug user and criminal who attacked Christians. This goes on all the time and would be ignored by the Democrats and the media but they saw it as a chance to create racial animosity and to exploit it.

[Sherman Logan]

In which case Houston wasn’t a confederate governor.

[skinndogNN]

My middle name is Lee, my fathers middle name was Lee. And my fathers grandfather first name was Lee. My great grandfather was named Lee and he was from Iowa. Nothing to do with the south.

I gave my son my middle name. Is he going to be judged because he has the name of his great great grandfather from Iowa?

The PC police. It’s out of control.

[Don@VB]

Let’s stop displaying the Declaration of Independence. After all, we risk showing children the signatures of Lee’s father, Richard Henry Lee and uncle Francis Lightfoot Lee. They are displayed prominently at the bottom of the document .

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

Declaring them “non-persons” must go back farther! Many were US officers in the war with Mexico, and Jefferson Davis was Secretary of WAR before the late unpleasantness between the states.

He also experimented with the first US Cavalry Camel Core in the 1850s.

All this reminds me of the movie THIS LAND IS MINE(1943) in which school teacher Charles Laughton is forced to have his students tear certain pages out of text books.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0036431/?ref_=nm_flmg_act_34

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

There is already calls for it to be blown up.

[gusty]

Brooks’ point of view is soft fascism. Under our late Constitutional system, the people were free to determine who they honored and who they did not. What Brooks’ wants is a consensus of elite cultural figures determining what the rest of us should think. Unfortunately I see no end in sight. In ten years time you will not be able to write or read a history book about the Civil War that does not meet the criteria set down by our so-called cultural betters.