Posted on 12/28/2006 11:31:38 AM PST by peggybac
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) -- The new president of the University of Texas says he will appoint a panel to decide what to do with four bronze statues on the Austin campus that honor confederate leaders and have drawn complaints for several years. William Powers Jr., who took over as president this month, said the advisory committee would look into concerns about the statues, which include likenesses of Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederate States, and Gen. Robert E. Lee. "A lot of students, and especially minority students, have raised concerns. And those are understandable and legitimate concerns. On the other hand, the statues have been here for a long time, and that's something we have to take into account as well," Powers said in Wednesday's Austin American-Statesman. The university's previous president, Larry Faulkner, wrote an open letter to the campus more than two years ago saying the statues convey "institutional nostalgia" for the Confederacy and its values. "Most who receive that message are repelled," Faulkner wrote. Statuary on the Austin campus has grown more diverse over the years, partly as a result of student-led efforts. A student fee raised funds to install a statue of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. in 1999. Also in the works are statues of Hispanic labor leader Cesar Chavez and Barbara Jordan, the first black woman from the South elected to Congress.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
They're hypocrites. They preach about "tolerance" and "diversity" but then proceed to look down on others not like them.
My son has a couple "minority" friends (fellow college students) and listening to them talk, I've found out that they play the "minority card" every chance they get and they LOVE to brag about it and seem to be trying to top one another in doing it.
It gives them a special, higher, status above other students.
Then lets get rid of all staues of northern heroes also, starting with the Lincoln Memorial.
The "bunch of old guys that died years ago" is what history is all about, for cryin' out loud.
Much as the liberals would like to change history, it happened and the South has a rich history that doesn't need to be ignored.
History is just what it is and the good, the bad, and the ugly are all part of it. You can't go through life requiring that everything you see that doesn't agree with you be removed from sight.
That is a very "spoiled child" view of the world, symbolic of liberalism.
Maybe they should move 'em up to College Station? :)
(No, I didn't go to A&M, but from what little I know, they seem a tad more appreciative of America and American history up there.)
}:-)4
Retroactive ethnic cleansing ...
Those "old guys" were my great-grandfather, uncles, nephews and cousins. They died for what they believed was states rights.
What would you die for?
Weren't American colleges once about learning?
Abolish tenure. Fire teachers who don't or won't stay on topic. Students should be LEARNING at college, not being subject to social science indoctrination.
Shut up and teach.
Maybe they could replace them with heroes of the Mexican War; but I'm sure the Hispanic students would complain. You can't please everyone with history (maybe that's why they have revisionists so they can please the minority who do complain)
Why the North won!!!!!!
More Politically History? When will they teach the truth about the Civil War and the multitude of slaves that fought for the South?
make that Politically Correct history
What would you die for?
Good and fair question. I would die for the country, my children.
The city is named for Stephen F. Austin, who owned SLAVES!
I know I don't want to change history, but really who doesn't know that the North won the war. That is very well known. I don't believe removing a statue is going to make people forget who won the war.
Must kill off all historians and rewrite history. Book burning at 7:00.
Erect some black confederate statues.
Sorry, this one didn't either. The North went to war to preserve the Union, not free slaves.
"I think that getting rid of the statues will allow students to concentrate on studies instead of a bunch of old guys who died years ago."
History is a very important field of study. Without it, you don't know where you are, how you got there, or where you're going.
"I still don't get what the use of praising people who lost a war is about."
H. L. Mencken wrote, "The Gettysburg speech was at once the shortest and the most famous oration in American history...the highest emotion reduced to a few poetical phrases. Lincoln himself never even remotely approached it. It is genuinely stupendous. But let us not forget that it is poetry, not logic; beauty, not sense. Think of the argument in it. Put it into the cold words of everyday. The doctrine is simply this: that the Union soldiers who died at Gettysburg sacrificed their lives to the cause of self-determination—that government of the people, by the people, for the people, should not perish from the earth. It is difficult to imagine anything more untrue. The Union soldiers in the battle actually fought against self-determination; it was the Confederates who fought for the right of their people to govern themselves."
"People born in the South cannot possible be jealous of the North winning still can they?"
Jealousy never entered into it.
"I don't see us shoving it in your faces ever."
I see people insisting that the war was about slavery only and nothing else, that all Southerners were the moral equivalent of Nazi death camp guards, and that all other reasons for the war are merely lying attempts to justify slavery.
It's untrue as well as insulting.
I might suggest that you study up on Lee some time. If a father were asked by his son what a man should be, he couldn't do better than pointing at Lee.
General Robert E. Lee is widely considered, throughout North and South, to be the finest general in the history of the United States.
Your "hero," Abraham Lincoln, suspended constitutionally guaranteed rights, including the right of habeas corpus, in his zeal to usurp the rights of southerners. Further his "Emancipation Proclamation" freed only slaves held in the South. Slave owners in the north were not affected.
General Sherman's Union troops were ordered to burn a wide swath across Georgia. They burned everything, including churches, and ransacked houses as common thieves and pillagers. This has been documented, even by southern children of the time, who witnessed and wrote down the criminal acts of Union soldiers.
Blacks in my rural community near Nashville were FORCED to build a railroad bridge across the Harpeth River (a mile from my house) by the Union Army who was supposedly busy freeing those blacks from slavery.
If you knew the true history of the Civil War, and the honor of Southerners who died fighting it... and the carpetbagging aftermath, you'd better understand the hatred that still exists toward northern aggression into the South.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.