The events in Charlottesville and the ensuing disappointing
response from President Trump (which later was doubled down to a frightening
defense of the hate-mongers who initiated the violence) have dominated the news
in recent days. No doubt there are some,
perhaps many, who once again lay blame on the ‘fake media’ for misinterpreting
Trump’s remarks or for whipping the 'libs' into a frenzy on this issue.
The march of the white supremacists and neo-Nazis in
Charlottesville was prompted by the prospect of the city taking down a statue
of Robert E. Lee. This poses a question
about the general purpose and value of such memorials and whether there is
indeed a justification for removing them.
At first blush, one may think that it is foolish to try to
erase the past by taking down memorials of Confederate heroes. Isn't this a part of history and doesn't the south have a
right to celebrate its war heroes?
But as I have thought more deeply about the question of
civil war memorials and honoring historical events and people, I have come to
the conclusion that most of these monuments should indeed come down. There is of course the danger of trying to
‘purge’ historical memory or rewrite history.
But in reality, the monuments extolling the virtues and heroic efforts
of Confederate leaders are the real ‘whitewashing’ of history.
The simple fact is that the primary reason, the casis belli,
for the Civil War was slavery. The
Southern nostalgia for the pre-Civil War era and its sentimental regard for
confederate soldiers is misplaced at best and a complete delusion at worst. The ‘lost cause’ was not the genteel way of
life that one sees in romantic mythology like ‘Gone With the Wind’ and it was
not states’ rights. The ‘lost cause’ - the primary reason that the south seceded - was to avoid what they saw as the
inevitable abolition of slavery were they to stay in the Union. Pure and simple.
Was it tragic that millions of young men lost their lives
and that terrific hardship was visited upon the south? Of course it was. Were there heroic men, heroic gestures and
heroic sacrifices in the war? Of course
there were. Just as there were many
heroic deeds by German soldiers in World War II. But do you see monuments and statues in
Germany extolling the virtues of their soldiers and the ‘lost cause’ of the
third Reich?
It was a bitter pill to swallow, but the Germans faced up to
the fact that the best way the suffering by their own people in WWII could be
idealized, memorialized or sanctified was to put up monuments honoring the
truly helpless victims – the Jews and the Gypsies and all the others that the Nazis
exterminated. And the best way to honor
the suffering and sad loss of so many Germans was to vow to never let hatred,
extreme nationalism and prejudice take root again in German culture.
This should have been the approach of the post-Confederacy
south – an honest recognition that an immoral embrace of human slavery was the
cause of their downfall - not the propagation of a myth about a noble ‘lost
cause’ and the tragic destruction of the plantation lifestyle, which quite
frankly was only possible because of the horrific enslavement and exploitation
of Africans. Monuments are, to put it
simply, not appropriate.
