The only must read article on the subject: "Why do people believe myths about the Confederacy? Because our textbooks and monuments are wrong." "History is the polemics of the victor, William F. Buckley allegedly said. Not so in the United States, at least not regarding the Civil War. As soon as Confederates laid down their arms, some picked up their pens and began to distort what they had done, and why. Their resulting mythology went national a generation later and persists — which is why a presidential candidate can suggest that slavery was somehow pro-family, and the public believes that the war was mainly fought over states’ rights. The Confederates won with the pen (and the noose) what they could not win on the battlefield: the cause of white supremacy and the dominant understanding of what the war was all about. We are still digging ourselves out from under the misinformation that they spread, which has manifested in both our history books and our public monuments...." http://www.washingtonpost.com/poste...xtbooks-and-monuments-are-wrong/?tid=pm_pop_b
This is a good read. I agree with some points and disagree with others. It is by the author of "Lies My Teacher Told Me".
Right. I never read that book, but now I am inclined to look at it. What points do you disagree with? Maybe list the agrees and disagrees.
I can sort of see the taking down of the flag, though i think its another thing that has been blown way out of proportion, and most of the country agrees with me but renaming all the streets and monuments? These are peoples ancestors, and your making an awfully big leap to say they were all fighting just to support slavery, IMO, the stretch your now making is akin to changing any monuments honoring of vietnam vets because in hindsight that war looked like a colossal fuck up. These guys paid the ultimate price all because of what some politicans at the time thought, and because of what some politicians told them to do, in most cases their intentions are noble, they are doing what they have to do to protect their home. Its not like the people mentioned in monuments were guilty of mass genocide or anything even close to the atrocities that went on in nazi germany. There are still lots of war heroes who are honored in russia even though they were fighting at the time to support brutal regimes who were comitting mass murder. People still don Che Guevara t-shirts even though he was a racists genocidal maniac, why dont we take all those down too?