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Should the US remove Confederate memorials, flags, and monuments from public spaces?
Perspective
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The US should remove Confederate memorials, flags, and monuments from public spaces.
Pros
Cons
The principal legacy of Confederate statues is white supremacy and slavery. Since this fundamentally conflicts with American values and ideas, they should be removed.
The Confederates committed treason against the United States. The United States should not continue to honor or memorialize them.
The statues can be kept without glorifying what they once stood for. They can be kept in museums with proper historical context rather than on a plinth to be admired.
Public money should not be used to fund monuments that honour slavery
It is too divisive in modern day America to continue to display these monuments from a painful part of American history.
Removing or renaming Confederate memorials/monuments presents a slippery slope wherein eventually any memorial linked to the colonial era or other problematic legacies could be considered representative of oppression, and thus deserving of eradication.
The power to take down statues also is the power to control history and thus, to
control the future
. This power lends itself to being employed in the service of political agendas, rather than the good of society, and should be used as sparingly as possible
Monuments do not signify the enduring morality of the subject, but celebrate an aspect of their character within the context. Sometimes monuments celebrate nothing except a person's importance to history, good or bad.
These statutes have been around for a very long time and no one has cared. They were uncontested earlier and therewith became a part of our society.
Removal is the most drastic measure when there are more gentle alternatives.
Confederate monuments, flags and memorials honor an important part of the American story.
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