12 AUGUST 24, 2017 RIDGEWOOD TIMES WWW.QNS.COM
EDITORIAL
Statue debate is more than meets the eye
It’s been 151 years since the Civil
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War ended, and yet in 2017, there
are a number of our fellow Americans
who are coming to the defense
of long-dead and defeated Confederate
fi gures.
They object to a nationwide movement
to have statues bearing the
likenesses of Robert E. Lee, Stonewall
Jackson and Jeff erson Davis removed
from public parks and plazas. This
movement seeks, in the mind of its
supporters, to end the glorifi cation of
historical fi gures who rebelled against
the United States government largely
to defend the indefensible practice of
slavery.
The movement has picked up steam
since the Aug. 12 episode in Charlottesville,
VA, when neo-Nazis in town
to protest the proposed removal of
a Robert E. Lee statue clashed with
counter-protesters.
In New York, for example, lawmakers
are moving to have the names
of Confederate generals removed
from streets in military bases, and
Governor Andrew Cuomo wants
the busts of Confederate figures
removed from public schools and
universities.
From pundits to letter-writers, however,
many have come to the defense of
Confederate statues. They claim that
removing them from public places
constitutes an eff ort to “erase history.”
This mimics one of President Trump’s
talking points; he asked the press at an
Aug. 15 conference why there was no
eff ort to remove George Washington’s
statues since he owned slaves — drawing
a false equivalence between one
of our nation’s founding fathers and
those who sought to break away from
the republic Washington founded.
The fact that we’re re-litigating the
roles of Confederate leaders all these
years later is a sad commentary on the
state of our republic — and a very good
reason, in and of itself, as to why those
statues need to come down. Aft er all
this time, as far as we’ve moved as a
society, we should know better than
to glorify those who fought to split our
nation and defend racism.
For those concerned about the
preservation of history, we remind
them that history is not taught in
statues alone. The Civil War is taught
in every school in the country. There
are entire museums, battlefi elds and
library bookshelves across this nation
dedicated to the bloody confl ict. These
paths of education are the most eff ective
way to learn about the past as it
was, not as we want it to be.
The white supremacists and
neo-Nazis want to use the Confederate
statues as rallying points by
which to advance their ignorant
cause. Our nation fought a civil war
and a world war to stop their brand
of bigotry. Getting rid of the statues
won’t eliminate white supremacy, but
it will bring us another step closer to
stamping it out for good.
