Should the Stone Mountain Confederate Memorial carving be removed?

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otseng
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Should the Stone Mountain Confederate Memorial carving be removed?

Post #1

Post by otseng »

Rueters wrote:
The world's largest Confederate Monument faces renewed calls for removal

Stone Mountain Confederate Memorial, a nine-story-high bas-relief sculpture carved into a sprawling rock face northeast of Atlanta, is perhaps the South's most audacious monument to its pro-slavery legacy still intact.

Despite long-standing demands for the removal of what many consider a shrine to racism, the giant depiction of three Confederate heroes on horseback still towers ominously over the Georgia countryside, protected by state law.
Is the carving a shrine to racism?
Should the carving be removed?

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Re: Should the Stone Mountain Confederate Memorial carving be removed?

Post #61

Post by Purple Knight »

bjs1 wrote: Wed Sep 16, 2020 12:45 pm
koko wrote: Sun Jul 05, 2020 4:08 pm While I respect the views expressed, I cannot agree since Davis, Lee, and Jackson were all traitors who betrayed the USA in favor of secessionsists. Hundreds of thousands died because of them. Try that today - who would call you a patriot? a hero? an American? Nobody would.
I have never understood the “traitors” argument. America was founded by traitors. Any standard that would call Davis, Lee, and Jackson traitors would also have to call Washington, Franklin and Hamilton traitors.
The only difference is that the former group lost. It's also a fantasy to think that the larger group of Americans respected all human life as equal and that the South was the aberration. Native Americans, anyone?

I am not endorsing slavery but I also don't support using slavery to muddy the waters as to whether secession is a right. It is. It is enshrined in the Constitution. The North broke its own rules.

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Re: Should the Stone Mountain Confederate Memorial carving be removed?

Post #62

Post by Difflugia »

Purple Knight wrote: Thu Oct 21, 2021 2:07 pmI am not endorsing slavery but I also don't support using slavery to muddy the waters as to whether secession is a right. It is. It is enshrined in the Constitution. The North broke its own rules.
I'm not sure that it is or that they did. The right of secession can be inferred from the Declaration of Independence, but even then, the Declaration enumerates a long list of offenses of which the King of England was guilty that removed his moral authority to prevent it. If the government of the United States wasn't guilty of any of those specific offenses, then one may arguably further infer that the right of secession didn't apply to the situation in which the Confederacy found itself.
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Re: Should the Stone Mountain Confederate Memorial carving be removed?

Post #63

Post by Purple Knight »

Difflugia wrote: Thu Oct 21, 2021 2:59 pmIf the government of the United States wasn't guilty of any of those specific offenses, then one may arguably further infer that the right of secession didn't apply to the situation in which the Confederacy found itself.
Not necessarily, since the new US gave itself the right to moral self-determination when it gave itself the right to unilaterally determine what is a moral offence. I'm sure King George disagrees, and unfortunately he is the authority at that place and time.

The logical inference is not (at least, to me) that these specific offences grant the right to secede, but that peoples have a right to moral self-determination.

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Re: Should the Stone Mountain Confederate Memorial carving be removed?

Post #64

Post by bjs1 »

Purple Knight wrote: Thu Oct 21, 2021 2:07 pm I am not endorsing slavery but I also don't support using slavery to muddy the waters as to whether secession is a right. It is. It is enshrined in the Constitution. The North broke its own rules.
I am confused by this statement. Where does the Constitution enshrine secession?
Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.
-Charles Darwin

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Re: Should the Stone Mountain Confederate Memorial carving be removed?

Post #65

Post by Difflugia »

Purple Knight wrote: Thu Oct 21, 2021 3:11 pmThe logical inference is not (at least, to me) that these specific offences grant the right to secede, but that peoples have a right to moral self-determination.
And you've now entered the conflict between things like textualism, originalism, purposivism, and strict constructionism. Your interpretation is certainly arguable from a particular view of what "consent of the governed" means, but it's unfair to claim without qualification the Union broke its own rules. The Declaration clearly asserts the right of secession in certain cases, because it enumerates at least some of them. On the other hand, since those cases were enumerated, it would be absurd to conclude that a group, or even individual, may legally secede for no reason other than whim. You have asserted without qualification that the Confederate States had the right to secede and if we treat the Declaration as binding, they certainly did in at least some circumstances. The question, though, is if they had that right under the circumstances that they and the rest of the nation found themselves in. Did "consent of the governed," for example, include the slaves? In fact, one could constitutionally argue that it did. While the three-fifths clause limited their representation, it did establish that they were legally "persons." Even if not intended at the time of framing, did that establish that the government had a legal responsibility to protect them and consider their "consent" to be governed by a rogue state?

Your assertion is based on certain simplifications that may be useful, but such simplifications necessarily omit details that are important to at least some circumstances. In this case, the omitted details are arguably salient. It's like a creationist claiming that radiometric dating as a concept is fatally flawed because penguin corpses return deceptively old 14C ages. A particular conclusion under a particular set of circumstances, even generally representative ones, can't be considered universal or absolute if details are omitted. One may certainly claim or attempt to show that certain details aren't relevant, but you haven't done that. Your statement was absolute.
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Re: Should the Stone Mountain Confederate Memorial carving be removed?

Post #66

Post by Purple Knight »

Difflugia wrote: Thu Oct 21, 2021 4:46 pmDid "consent of the governed," for example, include the slaves?
If not, then they had no right to take their slaves with them, but they still had a right to secede. The proper outcome may even have been for the North to declare war (if they said free the slaves and the South said no) but after the war, after the slaves were forcibly freed from their masters' grasps, the South would still have been its own country, not forced back under the yoke of the North.
bjs1 wrote: Thu Oct 21, 2021 3:19 pmI am confused by this statement. Where does the Constitution enshrine secession?
The entire Constitution of the United States establishes the precedent of the right to break with a corrupt power and establish one's own government. This is a hot-button issue for me and I insist that if Texas wants to go, they should be let to. If we end up with ten thousand Petorias this just means the government was intolerable enough, to enough people, to make that happen.

If there is no right to secession then the Constitution is an illegal document and all Americans are actually rebellious British citizens.

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Re: Should the Stone Mountain Confederate Memorial carving be removed?

Post #67

Post by bjs1 »

Purple Knight wrote: Thu Oct 21, 2021 6:43 pm The entire Constitution of the United States establishes the precedent of the right to break with a corrupt power and establish one's own government. This is a hot-button issue for me and I insist that if Texas wants to go, they should be let to. If we end up with ten thousand Petorias this just means the government was intolerable enough, to enough people, to make that happen.
I’m not at all comfortable with this approach. A legal document, like the Constitution, usually has to spell something out specifically. I don’t see anything in the Constitution that even hints at the right to succession. If this is a hot-button issue for you, perhaps you could explain how you came to the conclusion that the text of the Constitution supports this idea.
Purple Knight wrote: Thu Oct 21, 2021 6:43 pm If there is no right to secession then the Constitution is an illegal document and all Americans are actually rebellious British citizens.
Well, yeah. The American Revolution was a rebellion. The first generations of Americans betrayed Britain to form their own nation. The British still call it “The War of Insurrection.” All subsequent generations have been part of a new nations, but the first Americans believed that their duty to their homeland superseded their duty to the crown.
Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.
-Charles Darwin

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Re: Should the Stone Mountain Confederate Memorial carving be removed?

Post #68

Post by Purple Knight »

bjs1 wrote: Thu Oct 21, 2021 10:19 pmI’m not at all comfortable with this approach. A legal document, like the Constitution, usually has to spell something out specifically. I don’t see anything in the Constitution that even hints at the right to secession.
It's also a matter of logic. If the right to secession does not exist, the entire Constitution is a bust. It is nothing. It has no power to establish anything. So, if anything in the US Constitution, anything else at all, is to be assumed to be good, as in, the new government has the right to establish these new rules, then there must be a right of secession.

If you're looking for a specific place, I would say the preamble, specifying that if your government doesn't work for you, get rid of it, it's a right.

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Re: Should the Stone Mountain Confederate Memorial carving be removed?

Post #69

Post by JamesWilbur »

Leave it be, if nothing else it shows what is not of God. It is something we can explain to our children. Leave the unbelievers additions to themselves, like the mountains, they will soon erode to nothing again.

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Re: Should the Stone Mountain Confederate Memorial carving be removed?

Post #70

Post by JamesWilbur »

Romans 13: 1-5 speaks to this discussion.

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