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'Creating blind spots': Sculptor says statue removal advocates need reality check
The Washington Times ^ | 28 December 2020 | STEPHEN DINAN

Posted on 12/28/2020 8:09:44 PM PST by E. Pluribus Unum

Absolutely arrogant.

For Timothy P. Schmalz, an Ontario-based sculptor, that’s really the only way to describe the renewed push to tear down statues that commemorate people who are now deemed out of step with modern morals.

When a Confederate figure gets toppled in the U.S., or a prime minister who was part of brutal treatment of Indigenous people is destroyed in Canada, it says more than just disagreeing, Mr. Schmalz said. It’s a claim that we would have known better, acted otherwise.

And that’s the hubris.

“When one destroys or puts a Confederate statue in a museum, out of sight, out of mind, what they’re suggesting is if we were in their place we would have done something different. And that’s their arrogance,” he told The Washington Times.

It’s a notion that challenges the current zeitgeist, where statues are being taken down by everyone including city councils, university boards and mobs of demonstrators fired up over racial injustice in the wake of George Floyd’s death. Floyd, a Black man, died while in Minneapolis police custody last May.

Each monument is both history and memory, saying something about the generation that erected it and about the ensuing generations that allowed it to stand.

But Mr. Schmalz says it’s worth taking a reality check on the certainty the tear-down movement displays.

It was only two decades ago that the world rose in condemnation of the Taliban for destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas, two massive sculptures carved into a cliff face some 1,400 years ago. Taliban engineers bored holes into the carvings and set dynamite to blast them to rubble on the orders of Mullah Omar, who declared them “false idols.”

“We’re doing the same thing,” Mr. Schmalz said. “What’s it’s doing is creating blind spots.”

(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...


TOPICS: News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: afghanistan; arrogance; bamiyan; bamiyanbuddhas; blindspots; buddhas; cancelculture; communism; holierthanthou; hubris; iconoclasm; islamofascism; mobs; mullahomar; revisionism; riots; sculpture; taliban; waronart; waronstatues

1 posted on 12/28/2020 8:09:44 PM PST by E. Pluribus Unum
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

The history erasers are the American Taliban.

Nikki Haley was an early appeaser.


2 posted on 12/28/2020 8:13:58 PM PST by Lurkinanloomin (Natural Born Citizens Are Born Here of Citizen Parents|Know Islam, No Peace-No Islam, Know Peace)
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To: E. Pluribus Unum
Gene Philbin! So tear down all the statues!

/s

3 posted on 12/28/2020 8:14:06 PM PST by gw-ington (The Office of the President-Elect gw-ington and Vice President-Elect Loch Ness Monster)
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

I like his viewpoint and it is true. Liberals are doing the exact same stuff that the Nazis did and they think themselves as righteous for doing them and you can’t tell them otherwise.


4 posted on 12/28/2020 8:15:25 PM PST by Jonty30 (What Islam and secularism have in common is that they are both death cults. )
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

I know, because I’m a freedom lover firbeverybody that, if I lived in other eras, I would still have that as my core, regardless of what other faults I would have with the era I was in.


5 posted on 12/28/2020 8:16:39 PM PST by Jonty30 (What Islam and secularism have in common is that they are both death cults. )
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To: E. Pluribus Unum
... a Black man, ...

LOL. Typical fake-news MSM Washington Times which always writes the word "black" with a capital 'B' while always writing the word "white" with a lowercase 'w.' Talk about "systemic racism." Too funny. Maybe the Washington Times should just shut down its trash paper.

Fake-news MSM.

6 posted on 12/28/2020 8:18:17 PM PST by gw-ington (The Office of the President-Elect gw-ington and Vice President-Elect Loch Ness Monster)
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

Bradbury wrote about “Firemen.”

America has her “Street Sweepers.”


7 posted on 12/28/2020 8:20:20 PM PST by BradyLS (DO NOT FEED THE BEARS!)
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To: gw-ington

A few months back, that in fact became the new standard for news writers. There was a thread about it.


8 posted on 12/28/2020 8:22:32 PM PST by BradyLS (DO NOT FEED THE BEARS!)
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

l8r


9 posted on 12/28/2020 8:25:52 PM PST by preacher ( Journalism no longer reports news, they use news to shape our society.)
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To: BradyLS
A few months back, that in fact became the new standard for news writers.

Oh, so the nation's newspapers officially instituted actual "systemic racism" a few months back. Yet the violent Marxist Black Lives Matter/Antifa wild thug mob riot organization didn't violently riot because of the newspapers' systemic racism. Obviously, BLM/Antifa couldn't care less about "systemic racism." Just as I always thought.

10 posted on 12/28/2020 8:39:26 PM PST by gw-ington (The Office of the President-Elect gw-ington and Vice President-Elect Loch Ness Monster)
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

I wonder what these MOFOs would do if someone erected a statue of King Leopold of Belgium?


11 posted on 12/28/2020 8:44:11 PM PST by crz
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To: Lurkinanloomin

Yep at the very Top of the List


12 posted on 12/28/2020 9:18:07 PM PST by easternsky
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To: E. Pluribus Unum
"statue removal advocates need reality check"

So do the Supreme Court justices.

13 posted on 12/28/2020 9:22:28 PM PST by Savage Beast (God bless America! God save America!)
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

14 posted on 12/28/2020 9:36:10 PM PST by LibWhacker
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

The insidious demands are the operation of counter culture; demanding using political correctness or racial divide is the only way these vermin can be empowered, since they have no merits in their destitute character. Doxing people and demanding the culture bow to their racist and social justice demands is their way of gaining empowerment without actually having any value as human beings in the society. They have EARNED nothing.


15 posted on 12/28/2020 9:44:55 PM PST by MHGinTN (A dispensation perspective is a powerful tool for discernment)
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To: Lurkinanloomin

Well if they erase the history we get to pretend it never happened, right? No more Indians demanding their land back, or blacks demanding reparations?


16 posted on 12/29/2020 3:30:43 AM PST by kearnyirish2 (Affirmative action is economic warfare against white males (and therefore white families).)
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To: gw-ington

It all depends on which way the systemic racism is being applied. Against whites is fine, because white privilege or something.


17 posted on 12/29/2020 4:31:12 AM PST by HartleyMBaldwin
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

True. Looks like his career is over.
In reality, 90% of us would have been the Nazi or Commie prison guards.
Really.


18 posted on 12/29/2020 5:36:41 AM PST by vpintheak (Live free, or die!)
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