Winning versus Annihilation

[Szdfan]

There is a huge difference between:

• Banning the Confederate flag for private citizens, and
• Taking the Confederate flag out of the Mississippi flag

There is a huge difference between:

• Taking down public monuments dedicated to honoring people who did wrong, and
• Banning others from using these monuments on their own property

Petr is also engaging in some pretty significant historical revisionism here.

Yeah, I can't quite follow his account of German and Russian history.

His Reconstruction history sketchy too.

Petr, I wonder what you’re calling the South’s “real Negro problem.”

[temporal1]

Page 3

boot:
.. In America, some people are acting as though their freedom of speech gives them a right to insist that the government display things that are deeply insulting to many other Americans.

I don't think that's what the First Amendment is about.

hmm. you don’t.

My experience is opposite.
In my lifetime, the USSC has consistently ruled to protect free speech, even deeply insulting and hurtful/harmful to others, even the majority of others.

Perhaps for those who want to hurt others, they just didn’t notice.

In the 60’s-70’s, there was a big deal over burning the official U.S. flag - which seems to continue to be a fav preoccupation of some.

Pornography, vulgarity, violence, harms loads of people, yet the entertainment industry continues to thrive on it.

People are free to wave rainbow flags, altho these are deeply offensive to many, even blasphemous to many.

I never got the message I’m not to experience insults in my life.

We are told, and believe, “It’s their right.”
1st Amendment.

I experience many insults without taking any action at all - Aside from having the audacity to
complain, knowing I’m risking future housing and employment possibilities, if I dare to complain (and get caught).

Living in the U.S. was never about being protected from insults. Who made that up?

The idea was about having opportunities,
not security; not about having protections from any perceived insult.

Life on earth can be quite insulting.
Consult with Jesus Christ.

My perception is, Dr Alveda King might be coming from similar understanding.
Her words on statues are wise. Ignored, but wise.

[Ken]

Page 3

boot:
.. In America, some people are acting as though their freedom of speech gives them a right to insist that the government display things that are deeply insulting to many other Americans.

I don't think that's what the First Amendment is about.

hmm. you don’t.

My experience is opposite.
In my lifetime, the USSC has consistently ruled to protect free speech, even deeply insulting and hurtful/harmful to others, even the majority of others.

Perhaps for those who want to hurt others, they just didn’t notice.

In the 60’s-70’s, there was a big deal over burning the official U.S. flag - which seems to continue to be a fav preoccupation of some.

Pornography, vulgarity, violence, harms loads of people, yet the entertainment industry continues to thrive on it.

People are free to wave rainbow flags, altho these are deeply offensive to many, even blasphemous to many.

I never got the message I’m not to experience insults in my life.

We are told, and believe, “It’s their right.”
1st Amendment.

I experience many insults without taking any action at all - Aside from having the audacity to
complain, knowing I’m risking future housing and employment possibilities, if I dare to complain (and get caught).

Living in the U.S. was never about being protected from insults. Who made that up?

The idea was about having opportunities,
not security; not about having protections from any perceived insult.

Life on earth can be quite insulting.
Consult with Jesus Christ.

My perception is, Dr Alveda King might be coming from similar understanding.
Her words on statues are wise. Ignored, but wise.

Not one thing you just wrote is responsive to bootstrap's point that there is a difference between government-endorsed speech on government property and what private groups/individuals want to do/say on private property.

For example. There is nothing wrong with the Mormon church down the street erecting whatever sort of monument to Joseph Smith that it wants to on church property. That is freedom of speech and freedom of religion.

But it would be inappropriate for a minority of residents who happen to be Mormon capture the local city government in your town and use your tax dollars to erect a monument to Joseph Smith on city property that you pay to maintain with with your tax dollars. And even if the town was majority Mormon and wanted it, that sort of thing would still be inappropriate and illegal because it would be government endorsement of a specific religion and it would be violating your rights as a taxpayer not to fund that sort of religious display.

Same principal applies when white southerners who dominate municipal governments in the south use public dollars and public spaces to erect monuments to the confederacy that not all of their residents appreciate or approve of. Especially when it is done for racist reasons to reinforce Jim Crow segregation as was the case for the huge majority of confederate monuments that were put up in the 1920s.

Governments have coercive power over others through their ability to tax and write laws. Private citizens doing their own thing on their private property do not.

[temporal1]

I did not address it because it’s been sufficiently covered. And covered.

I’m more interested in the spirit of PetrChelcicky‘s post as it relates to the thread topic.

I’m not familiar with him, he hasn’t posted very much, I’d like to read more from him.

[PetrChelcicky]

temporal, thank you for the correction "must not" to "may not". (My fault - a typical fallacy for Germans who write English: In German "muss nicht" means "need not".)

Bootstrap: W.r.t. the matter of the statues we don't much differ. I would prefer statues on private property - the problem is that there is too much public space and too little private space nowadays. I had some years ago a similar discussion about the banning of crosses and other divisive religious symbols from the public space, and here the problem is similar: yes, crosses belong to the private space, but then the state must constrain itself and not stretch the public sphere too far.

By the way, France has a somewhat similar problem with the (memorials for) people who fought against the French Revolution. Here, Philippe de Villiers has found a very interesting solution: a big private theme park, dedicated to the memory of (mostly pious Catholic) people who fought against the Revolution. I would propose something similar for the Southern States.

[ohio jones]

The Hungarians have done something along those lines, though I think it may be publicly owned. After the fall of communism a collection of statues was moved to a park outside Budapest and made into an open air museum, the Memento Park. Those who wish to see them can, in a setting where their history is explained and where it's clear they are not being celebrated like the leaders at Heroes' Square.

[Szdfan]

temporal, thank you for the correction "must not" to "may not". (My fault - a typical fallacy for Germans who write English: In German "muss nicht" means "need not".)

Sie sind Deutsche? Ich bin teilweisse in Berlin aufgewachsen.

If you are German, I'd like to hear more about your opinion on denazficiation and furthermore, I'd be interested in hearing your opinion on the emergence of neo-Nazism in the former East after reunification as a possible outcome of their approach to the Nazi past vs. West Germany.

[PetrChelcicky]

Being a German, my view of the average American is: He is easily indignated and infuriated, but also easily reconciliated afterwards. This in opposition to Europeans who tend to fanaticism and to "hereditary enmities", bearing grudges forever. (For instance with us, until 1945 the French were dubbed "der Erbfeind" (inherited enemy), not that the French had much other ideas about Germans.)
So the Americans had a real age of reconciliation between 1877 and the 1930s. It started simply out of the emergencies of a democratic system, the Northerners not being able to govern without Southern support. But it was not before the 1930s, the "red decade" deeply inspired by European Leftism, that this reconciliation was replaced by a re-vitalisation of Civil War Mentality - as a propaganda tool for Troskyists who strove for worldwide civil wars and in particular for the first "good war", the Spanish Civil War.
Now we have a second "red decade", a second attempt to "deconstruct" reconciliation and to revive a civil war mentality. And I simply think that Mennonites should not take part in this.
The "celebration" of Confederate personalities has been privatised for a long time, by the Sons and Daughters etc. of the Confederacy - so donate the statues to these associations. And don't blame the South for Jim Crow laws most of which actually started in Northern States (Northeners finding that it was not as simple to live with Blacks as Ms. Beecher-Stowe had preached.)

[Ken]

Being a German, my view of the average American is: He is easily indignated and infuriated, but also easily reconciliated afterwards. This in opposition to Europeans who tend to fanaticism and to "hereditary enmities", bearing grudges forever. (For instance with us, until 1945 the French were dubbed "der Erbfeind" (inherited enemy), not that the French had much other ideas about Germans.)
So the Americans had a real age of reconciliation between 1877 and the 1930s. It started simply out of the emergencies of a democratic system, the Northerners not being able to govern without Southern support. But it was not before the 1930s, the "red decade" deeply inspired by European Leftism, that this reconciliation was replaced by a re-vitalisation of Civil War Mentality - as a propaganda tool for Troskyists who strove for worldwide civil wars and in particular for the first "good war", the Spanish Civil War.
Now we have a second "red decade", a second attempt to "deconstruct" reconciliation and to revive a civil war mentality. And I simply think that Mennonites should not take part in this.
The "celebration" of Confederate personalities has been privatised for a long time, by the Sons and Daughters etc. of the Confederacy - so donate the statues to these associations. And don't blame the South for Jim Crow laws most of which actually started in Northern States (Northeners finding that it was not as simple to live with Blacks as Ms. Beecher-Stowe had preached.)

Being German you probably need to brush up on your American history.

Jim Crow laws emerged across the south in after reconstruction was basically overturned by a political alliance of northern and southern white Democrats, which allowed the Democrats to recapture the House in 1874 and the Senate in 1878. by the 1880s with Republicans out of power, Jim Crow segregation laws were emerging across the south.

The Great Migration of African Americans from the rural south to the urban north did not really start until around WW1 and continued through the great depression and WW2. Prior to that, over 90% of African Americans lived in the rural south. Northern forms of segregation such as housing redlining did not get started before the 1920s because before that there were hardly any African Americans even living in the North.

Yes, racism and de facto segregation existed in every corner of the US. But overt Jim Crow segregation enforced by law was a uniquely southern institution. And it was established by southern white Democrats as soon as the Republicans lost their majorities in Congress. The idea that it was imposed on the south from the north is completely a-historical and frankly ridiculous.

But yes, your point about longer historical memories in Europe is certainly true. Serbians still get agitated about their defeat to the Ottomans at the battle of Kosovo in 1389.

[temporal1]

PetrC:
Being a German, my view of the average American is:
He is easily indignated and infuriated, but also easily reconciliated afterwards.

This in opposition to Europeans who tend to fanaticism and to "hereditary enmities", bearing grudges forever. .. ..

This is an interesting observation of what can be personal and/or cultural characteristics, there is a Christian aspect to it, too.

Grudge holders have the more difficult path, in my limited observation.
Although not intended, bitterness does more internal damage than external (the goal).