Winning versus Annihilation

[Bootstrap]

As well, i stated i do not agree that statues and flags auto-equate to celebration.

There's a difference between a museum exhibit that explains history and the place of honor in a public park. There's a difference between a history book and waving a Confederate flag in an in-your-face way that makes a lot of black people uncomfortable and feel threatened.

How would you feel about a statue of Adolph Hitler on a horse in a military posture? Would you like to erect statues in honor of the British forces that fought against the Revolution in Boston, perhaps in the place of honor at government buildings? What guidelines would you suggest?

Should we have more statues honoring those who tortured Mennonites so we don't forget that history?

If you lose a war fighting for an unrighteous cause, that shouldn't require statues in your honor in prominent public places. Those statues were not erected at the end of the Civil War, they were erected in the 1900s.

[temporal1]

Should we have more statues honoring those who tortured Mennonites so we don't forget that history?

Briefly, that history remains, Mennonites have not forbidden Catholics or Lutherans from existence, they are not relegated to libraries/museums. It’s not an exact analogy, Mennonites didn’t win a war in a conventional military sense, the aim is to win the spiritual war.

Maybe not unlike my dislike of gaudy political logos. i’m not tearing down flags or statues, even tho i believe they are blasphemy.

This is my initial question about winning versus annihilating.

Btw, allowing and enabling vandals and arsonists has a troubling net effect of encouraging crime.
You, and many, are certain that “this one thing,” is reasonable and will end the crimes.

Sorry. There is no lasting peace outside Jesus Christ. Crime will not satisfy. It can’t.
You want to “fix it.” Well. You can’t. Jesus can.

[Bootstrap]

Sorry. There is no lasting peace outside Jesus Christ. Crime will not satisfy. It can’t.
You want to “fix it.” Well. You can’t. Jesus can.

No, I can't. But I can avoid picking at every wound and politicizing it. You can too. Why champion the cause of glorifying Confederate symbols?

If you choose to do that, please don't pretend you are only focusing on the things of Jesus. You can't have it both ways. If you want to focus on Jesus and his role in reconciliation, why not start a thread about that?

And FWIW, what is this annihilation you are talking about? Who is annihilating whom? Why all this dramatic emotional language?

Btw, allowing and enabling vandals and arsonists has a troubling net effect of encouraging crime.
You, and many, are certain that “this one thing,” is reasonable and will end the crimes.

No. I don't think vandalism and arson are the right way to do this. I didn't say anything about this ending crimes, that seems unlikely. But glorifying the Confederacy isn't something I would champion. Especially if what we really want to do is promote lasting peace in Jesus Christ.

[Soloist]

I had wrote a lengthy reply and then decided against it.

My Confederate flag was cut and burned long ago and I'll keep my personal thoughts on war figures to myself.

[temporal1]

I had wrote a lengthy reply and then decided against it.
My Confederate flag was cut and burned long ago and I'll keep my personal thoughts on war figures to myself.

i would read about your thoughts, probably they would fit better in another thread?

“Why champion the cause of glorifying Confederate symbols?”

i would hope for an apology for this. i’ll wait.

i’m not opposed to bringing Jesus into the topic of grace toward enemies, i presumed a connection would lead there, as a natural connection.

i’m not aware of Mennonites glorifying Catholics, altho, have not known of them “getting physical” about removing them or their possessions, legally or criminally.

so, again, i do not believe the presence of a statue equates to statue worship. that’s a heart decision.

Thus far on this topic, Arthur P, in Armenia, seems to understand best my questions, observations. His words were few, but they seemed heartfelt. Altho i don’t know him at all, only have this little bit he wrote (Page 1).

.. Arthur P wrote:
“I am Armenian.
Was borned in Soviet Union. Live in Russia.
I know very well how paifull could be the Civil War if defeated side is anhiliated.
Many Russian issues rooted back to 1917.
Oversimplifying is very dangerous”

[ohio jones]

.. Arthur P wrote:
“I am Armenian.
Was borned in Soviet Union. Live in Russia.
I know very well how paifull could be the Civil War if defeated side is anhiliated.
Many Russian issues rooted back to 1917.
Oversimplifying is very dangerous”

Annihilation of this sort seems to be an illustration of total depravity.

[Szdfan]

This is an excellent article on why there are no Nazi memorials in Germany and draws parallels to confederate monuments.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theatl ... le/597937/

There are no Nazi sites in Germany in the sense that there are plantation sites in the United States. The only equivalent sites that now exist in Germany are concentration camps. On the site of Buchenwald, where as many as a quarter of a million inmates were held, a museum dispels any notion that the citizens of the nearby cultural capital Weimar were unaware of what was happening in their midst during World War II. The idea that tourists would visit such a place seeking smiling women in dirndls—much as some visit American plantations looking for ladies in hoop skirts—is obscene. Not even members of Germany’s right-wing Alternative for Germany party would suggest glorifying that part of the past.

Germany has no monuments that celebrate the Wehrmacht. By choosing to remember what its soldiers once did, it has made a choice about the values it wants to reject. Other choices, like glass walls in government buildings, from the Reichstag dome on down, reflect the values it wants to maintain: Democracy should be transparent. When the Berlin Wall came down, it left behind prime real estate in the heart of the city. Instead of selling it to one of the many bidders, Parliament decided to dedicate 4.5 acres to what became the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, along with many smaller monuments scattered throughout the city. The rebuilding of Berlin—a long, sometimes maddeningly discursive process, in which historians, politicians, and citizens debated for more than a decade—was aspirational. No one, least of all a German, would claim that the renaming and rebuilding of public spaces eradicated the roots of racism. The city was not rebuilt to reflect what is, but what ought to be. Berlin’s public space represents conscious decisions about what values the reunited republic should commit itself to holding—decisions with which Americans are now struggling.

[Judas Maccabeus]

This is an excellent article on why there are no Nazi memorials in Germany and draws parallels to confederate monuments.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theatl ... le/597937/

There are no Nazi sites in Germany in the sense that there are plantation sites in the United States. The only equivalent sites that now exist in Germany are concentration camps. On the site of Buchenwald, where as many as a quarter of a million inmates were held, a museum dispels any notion that the citizens of the nearby cultural capital Weimar were unaware of what was happening in their midst during World War II. The idea that tourists would visit such a place seeking smiling women in dirndls—much as some visit American plantations looking for ladies in hoop skirts—is obscene. Not even members of Germany’s right-wing Alternative for Germany party would suggest glorifying that part of the past.

Germany has no monuments that celebrate the Wehrmacht. By choosing to remember what its soldiers once did, it has made a choice about the values it wants to reject. Other choices, like glass walls in government buildings, from the Reichstag dome on down, reflect the values it wants to maintain: Democracy should be transparent. When the Berlin Wall came down, it left behind prime real estate in the heart of the city. Instead of selling it to one of the many bidders, Parliament decided to dedicate 4.5 acres to what became the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, along with many smaller monuments scattered throughout the city. The rebuilding of Berlin—a long, sometimes maddeningly discursive process, in which historians, politicians, and citizens debated for more than a decade—was aspirational. No one, least of all a German, would claim that the renaming and rebuilding of public spaces eradicated the roots of racism. The city was not rebuilt to reflect what is, but what ought to be. Berlin’s public space represents conscious decisions about what values the reunited republic should commit itself to holding—decisions with which Americans are now struggling.

Although drindl has a far weaker connection with national socialism than hoop skirts with the antibellium south. In Austria it had far right connections that have been lost.

Perhaps the big difference was that in Germany no national reconciliation was needed. Regretfully they fought on the same side.

J.M.

[temporal1]

.. Arthur P wrote:
“I am Armenian.
Was borned in Soviet Union. Live in Russia.
I know very well how paifull could be the Civil War if defeated side is anhiliated.
Many Russian issues rooted back to 1917.
Oversimplifying is very dangerous”

Annihilation of this sort seems to be an illustration of total depravity.

The world has some egregious destructive history.

Did you read the other comment from Arthur P?
This was the first i noticed. i don’t see anything more from him.

Arthur Paronyan (Armenia) wrote to Karin Leslie:
“US has been exemplifying for its approach to its history.

Heroes from both sides of civil war where honored.
That's what you (U.S.) can teach the rest of the world.
Now the way to disaster started.”

i told him i think his English is very good.

he made me think of U.S. response to some former enemies, Germany, Japan, USSR-Russia, Vietnam.
my daughter and her contemporaries have no hesitation in thinking of visiting, and/or working in any of these countries. she was born in 1977. not long after U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam.
“in that short time” ..

the question remains, if you win, how do you behave? if you lose, how do you behave?
Jesus has answers to both. His main answer being, He has and offers victory.
1 Corinthians 15:57

.. 56The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.

57But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ!

58Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast and immovable. Always excel in the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.…

It drives masters and kings crazy when they realize Jesus sets their subjects and slaves spiritually free, even when bonds physically hold them. (This is my intrigue with what i’ve read about the Vikings taking Christians as slaves.) “The best laid plans of mice and men” ..

[Pelerin]

Esp since 2015, after Dylann Roof murdered defenseless victims in their own church building,
there has been an (obama initiated) emotional, political, violent movement to remove “all things Confederacy” from public view, public knowledge, from study, from existence.

A delayed post-war annihilation of the enemy, the enemy’s thoughts. A clean sweep.

At the time, ohio jones posted a brief comment something like this one (i just read on the internet). i’ve been mulling it over, trying to figure out, what did happen, post U.S. Civil War, and, why?

Why did the north win, yet they did not feel driven to obliterate the south?
Was winning enough? When is winning enough? To obliterate smacks of genocide, doesn’t it?
Are defeated enemies always obliterated? Is this a necessity? Is it in any way Christian?

The question:

.. please have patience as i try to move quotes here ..

I’ll give it a shot. It didn’t start with Obama. The Confederate flag that was taken off the South Carolina Statehouse grounds after the Charleston massacre used to fly on top of the capitol dome! It had been placed there in the 1960s as a statement against the Civil Rights movement. I remember very well the fight, around 2000, to take it down off the capitol dome.

As for what happened after the war, probably the best book if you’re interested is Eric Foner’s Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877.

Why didn’t the North feel obliged to obliterate the South? The parts of the South that Sherman’s March passed through might disagree with that characterization. The infamous “forty acres and a mule” originated as Sherman distributed plantation land to the freed slaves that had worked it. The idea being to dismantle the Southern aristocracy that drove the war in the first place.

After the war former Confederates were temporarily not permitted to vote or hold office, while freedmen could. This opened the path for black and Republican governments in the South, including several blacks were elected to Congress. There were other efforts as well to remake the South away from the Confederacy, for example the Freedmen’s Bureau.

A lot of the former Confederate energy, meanwhile, was directed into continuing the war in other ways, most notably the Ku Klux Klan. They were held at bay by the US Army that still occupied the South.

Reconstruction ended in 1877 and all because of politics. The presidential election in 1876 was disputed with no clear winner. The Democrats agreed to recognize the Republican as the winner in exchange for a number of concessions, including withdrawing the remaining troops from the South and taking a hands off approach to the South.

This done, the South was taken over by “Redeemers”—often former Confederates who were redeeming the South from the Republican governments imposed on them. They are the source of the Jim Crow laws. They’re also the source of a lot of the Confederate monuments that are being torn down. They were statements of defiance against the new order in the South.

So in summary, it’s not so much that the North didn’t try to uproot the Confederacy, but the roots went a lot deeper and the diggers weren’t diligent. The stump kept sending up shoots.

That’s kind of a down note to end on, so I’ll also mention the Fusionists: poor white populists in coalition with black Republicans that existed in the South in the late 1800s. There was even a Confederate officer who formed a fusion party in North Carolina that I came across the other week. I wish I could remember his name, but it does give a glimpse of another way things might have been.

(All this from memory and Wikipedia, so some parts might be a little fuzzy.)