No, Leon... the hair would be impossible to mold.

Surely you'd just use the existing mold.

umm that's his real hair lol

Would this go at the base of the Trump statue?

I can not tell a lie.

Randomizer: I love irony, but statues aren't the right place for it.

I think you should put Trump's "grab 'em by the pussy" quote on his statue. Then it would be statutory rape.

I'm dead.

why aren't we tearing down the Pyramids? why aren't we tearing down the Colosseum?

those two are MUCH larger shrines to the oppression of slaves.

Because the people who were oppressed by the Romans and Egyptians don't exist any more. The legacy of slavery lives on in the states and worshipping the heroes of the confederacy is sick, not historical. Destroying a 40 year old statue isn't destroying history.

their ancestors still exist. it's a longer time frame, but why does the length of time matter to this?

if my ancestor was put in slavery 100 years ago, and someone else 200 years ago, does the length of time between both incidents somehow make the latter incident less bad?

and the two sites are still massive testaments to slavery throughout history.

as for the george washington statues, i mean if you want the statues taken off of public land the you can hold a vote on it, but george washington is much less attributed to slavery than the pyramids or the colosseum.


let me frame it in another sense: how about the washington monument in DC? does that need to be taken down?

History is written by the winners, baby.

Lets also take away any statues that assume genders (as to not trigger) lets take away war memorials against the japs and vietkong because people from those countries exist. Lets also take away police badges and make them simple ID cards because they arrest innocent pot heads. Lets get rid of republicans because of democracts and lets get rid of democracts because rebuclicans exist. As soon as someone or some group of people form an opinion, take away their opposition.

Remember kids, have an opinion BEFORE your opposition, also have louder people in your group, righteous sounding people, and you will get more girls and a bigger house or something that will most definitely help you in your life.


NOT!!!

Well said Monfils

It's not that hard to understand really.

Some slaveholders were not traitors. Some were.

Those who were traitors should *NOT* be lauded by any level of government in the United States.

@JK

that's a fair argument. frankly, anything on public ground is subject to the public's opinion on whether or not it should be there. this is one of the few times when the "mob rule" democracy is justified: on a state and local level.

Also the US can take away your house if they want to build a highway through it.

Fuck the fact that it is possible and or legal though, means nothing in ethics

There are no remnants of the Roman enslavement of the Gauls. There are no substantial economic impacts on the French or Italians because of it, there's no need for guilt or restitution. Slavery was never really dealt with in the states other than abolition. Blacks are still second-class citizens.

The federal government out to tie federal funding of some sort to whether or not Confederates are honored by states and local government. They'd come down really fast.

*ought

I prefer a battle of ideas. If there are people who feel the George Washington shouldn't be honored because he was a slave owner let them make their case. Then those who feel that George Washington stands for more then slavery make their case.
Hold a public vote to see which side appealed more to the people of that town.
Personally I feel there will always be a couple of crazies in the world but I don't believe everyone just bends over backward so they don't trigger someone, or at least people are capable of common sense. If anything people just got more raunchy.

@condecension

if you want economic restitution, that's a whole other argument. we're talking about statues and monuments, memorializing the people of that time.

They don't deserve to be memorialized because they were fighting to keep black people in chains. People are alive now who were born when former slaves still lived. The scars these assholes left on the social fabric are still being felt today and they shouldn't be worshiped.

Should we leave statues of Hitler up in Germany? These men were made from the same cloth.

George Washington =/= Hitler

but, the difference in-between Washington and Hitler, is back in the 1700s, there were actual "Scientists" saying the black people weren't even human. a subspecies developed in africa. people like Samuel George Morton and Carolus Linnaeus (yup, even Linnaeus) believed in the scientific differentiation, and for the former, inferiority of black people. Petrus Camper, Blumenbach... there are a LOT more

they were simply believing the scientists of the time period.

Dr Martin Luther King Jr, when responding to a homosexual boy asking for help wrote this:

http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2015/07/13/here-is-what-martin-luther-king-told-a-teen-struggling-with-his-sexuality/


now this is a fairly nice thing, for the amount of information he had. but King couldn't know what we know now with a mapped genome and biological as well as environmental factors, and much better knowledge of psychosexual development.

the uninformed are not evil.

Hitler also believed a bunch of pseudoscience about race...

These people were able to look into the faces of human beings and condemn them to generations of servitude and suffering. Misinformed scientific beliefs don't excuse that.

ok, but that's not what happened

http://www.heritage.org/american-founders/report/how-understand-slavery-and-the-american-founding

Washington supported legislation to abolish slavery, and although while in office he couldn't formally pardon the slaves at the white house, he freed many of them by the end of his presidency, and he ended up paying all of his slaves and creating lodging for them until well after his death.

slavery is still wrong, but to equate this to Hitler is laughable.

at this time in history, they needed a united front against the British. The BRITISH who actually continued incentivizing the slave trade well after it's economic benefits were running dry. the independence effort meant reconciling with the south, and getting them to join together. to create the union they had to make concessions, but slowly over time the abolition movement gained ground, Benjamin Franklin and John Adams were two men who were entirely against slavery from the beginning.

concession by concession, while preserving the union, slavery was slowly being attacked. in 1860 there was more conflict than just slavery, there was the tariff of abominations that had been done several decades later, and the south had been very much opposed to the north's policy for a while. with the election of Lincoln, there were major concerns about both the north's overreaching influence, and the protection of the institution of slavery.

so the south seceded. interestingly enough, Lincoln isn't the greatest hero. he waited until several years into the war to free the slaves in the south by the emancipation proclamation, but politically he was forced into keeping slavery in the border states. preserving the union he thought was most important, as he didn't want the constitution and the basic rights it espoused to be negated.

in his own personal notes however, Lincoln actually talked about how it would be an atrocity to see blacks and whites intermarrying. the 13th amendment was ratified 8 months after Lincoln's death, and thus began the failed reconstruction era.

now, if you want to condemn slavery outright and say it should have been abolished from the beginning, that's a perfectly fair stance to take. but there's also a chance we wouldn't have ever attained independence if we did.

France had an easier task, as they were fighting within their homes, not against a ruler from abroad. but the 18th century enlightenment revolutions are such a vital part of our modern western civilization, if America had failed, I can't begin to imagine what other course the world would have taken, but one that emboldened the british empire might not have been as pretty.

When Rome fell, the invaders who sacked the city didn't see fit to destroy the Colosseum... When the Egyptian Old Kingdom collapsed, and the 'sea people' over-ran all the bronze age kingdoms of the time... Well maybe Egypt actually survived, but it was never back on top to the glories of the Old Kingdom.

There are slaves traded today, does a statue or monument to Washington stop you from acting to oppose modern slavery?

Also destroying civil war era statues today is creating history, it is a modern movement to stop celebrating the confederacy; perhaps a reaction to people with confederate flags who march beside people with nazi flags... I don't know. The reactors may have felt their entire lives that these statues were wrong, but never had a movement or political power to destroy them before - this isn't a destruction of history, it is a continuation of it.

Like the flag debate, it matters today who is affected by these monuments. If the confederate flag represent white supremacy, should it be banned? Or does freedom of expression mean Americans should be able to wave (and burn) any flag thry want?

Does freedom of expression mean that burning the US flag is expressly protected ny what that flag represents? (Should we be tolreant of intolerance??).

Nobody in the mainstream is advocating for banning the confederate flag. They are advocating for governments to remove controversial statues from public places.

Confederate generals defended genocide. They're no different to Nazi generals.

James, I would suggest not using the heritage foundation as a source. Or Matthew Spalding. It is like using Howard Zinn. Sure most of the data is correct, but it is cherrypicked and included to support a political narrative. In short, not a great way to learn about history.

@jengamaster

i was just looking at the part of the article dealing with Washington, and everything he said in that part is factually true. i don't usually use the heritage foundation though, but it's a fairly basic historical record. i'll admit Washington was much more nonchalant about slavery pre-revolution though, but i'm simply not going to accept the idea that he was equivalent to Hitler in some way

I don't really want to get into this, but would it be fair to say that Washington respected native americans as little as hitler did the Jews/gays/disabled/mentally ill?

Particularily when it came to the right to life?

That is a question by the way, i don't know enough about Washington. I do know that the British had agreed to give all land beyond the Apalachians to the Indians and this would have severly limited the growth of the colonies (in 1812, the British even tried to create an Indian state to act as a buffer between Canada and the US).

"Confederate generals defended genocide. They're no different to Nazi generals."

-Lol someone knows nothing about history.

Washington (and Jefferson) aren't really remembered for having slaves. They're famous for other things. If I waa American I wouldn't want out taken down.

Orathaic, no that is not a fair comparison. The native Americans were used as pawns on all sides during the war of American Independence. I doubt he viewed them with any more or less respect than any of his contemporaries. But the history books I've read of the time detail little to no interaction between him and native americans. The Indian Wars didn't really start till after he had died, too.

True, but Washington fought against the American Indians under the British.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/18/politics/donald-trump-history-culture-sculptures/index.html

Trump doesn't care about statues when they cost him money. But he learned that tearing them down can cost him publicly.

Okay? It was a war and most tribes sided with the British over the colonials for fairly obvious reasons.

also, there were quite a few Native Americans who owned slaves. just a not-very-fun fact