Yeah, I saw before that they arrested one female statue toppler and are using the video of it to go after the others.

I don't know how many Nazi ****s got busted, but are the police using any beatdown videos to make more arrests?

Speaking of Jefferson, did the wags in P7 ever figure out whether slave rape was wrong or not? I haven't checked back there in a while.

You've brought me fame and fortune and everything that goes with it

like i guess it's a step in the right direction that some foxnews talking heads are openly displaying dissent and criticizing the dear leader, but it's insane that anybody would actually be surprised or shocked by what he said or didn't say.

When you watch the video, you'll realize how this comment gives up that you didn't watch the video.

I say this in a whisper because goodness knows these right-wing *******s are beyond disingenuous and I ain't really in the business of making their arguments for them

...but this is a pretty bull**** argument. It's basically pretty stark moral relativism or "winners write the history" form of moral adjudication.

I'm OK with complex legacies but actually venerating a bunch of slave holders should be moral turpitude even if they successfully led a revolution or wrote wonderful political prose. Like I said, I'm loathe to go further down the right-wing clown show whataboutism rabbit hole but the "Jefferson and Washington were national heros, Lee was simply a traitor" is as much an accident of history than anything to do with their moral character, and the audience for these forms of arguments are basically only mindless patriot types. Which is fine. We take the easy wins when we can get them.

But we should not become wedded to the idea that "did historically significant things" is some Get Out of Moral Reprobate Jail Free card.

Like Jefferson did historically significant things that might be worthy of honor and Lee did precisely nothing at all worthy of honor is a good argument for why you might have a statue of Jefferson but not Lee, but it says nothing at all about the righteousness of deifying Jefferson. Obviously given the false dichotomy of having only a statue of Jefferson or Lee, I'd snap take Jefferson, but like 57 On Red said, we didn't need to venerate Jefferson, that was a kind of collective political cultural choice we weren't forced to make.

Yeah the left needs to get their story straight on this. If they're going to go around using "former slave holder" as a metric, everything before Lincoln has to come down. I've already seen a few lefties on FB make this argument. And while I think they have a point - man is that a losing argument with the normies. And it give them legitimate ammunition for "what's next?".

I'm surprised Hannity hasn't seized on it already.

I'm more partial to the "Almost all these monuments were erected during Jim Crow to intimidate blacks. Heritage was an afterthought" argument.

Simply put, a statue of Jefferson is NOT celebrating his status as a slave owner. A statue of Lee IS celebrating his fight to protect the institution of slavery.

I agree with this as a good reason, but the right will just say, "You can't know what's in a man's heart, especially a man from 70 years ago. Maybe they just wanted to celebrate heritage!"

I will say this, any time someone says we need those statues to remember and learn from history, we must all slap that BS down with, "Cool, how about a statue of a HERO from that era, like Harriet Tubman, then?"

Again: given the false dichotomy of having only a statue of Jefferson or Lee, I'd put up a statue of Jefferson. But you can't say celebrating Jefferson isn't celebrating his status as a slave rapist. We only celebrate him as the author of the Declaration and for the wisdom of Louisiana Purchase but not his slave concubines -- that's not a coherent argument. Isn't that just the redux of the Joe Paterno argument?

For everyone else, I will reiterate if forced to have a statue of either Joe Paterno or Jerry Sandusky, I would put up a statue of Paterno but "he coached all those young boys up to be men and donated a YUUUGE LIBRARY" doesn't erase his morally repugnant self serving behavior. So it goes with Jefferson.

Great video linked here

But a statue of Jefferson IS honoring his ideas on freedom and independence on which he WAS THE LARGEST HYPOCRITE OF ALL TIME.

LOL, Dvaut1 really does want Foldn and co posting itt.

This is all correct of course, although I would be willing to negotiate on the details. Make all the Jefferson statues portray him writing the Declaration while raping Sally Hennings. Let's give the full picture here.

Right. Honestly, I think it's fine to keep dunking on right wing whataboutism principally because they are forcefully arguing for celebrating Confederate generals and so they have no sensible ground to stand on.

I would just caution everyone that the contemporaneously popular argument I've seen on Twitter, here, etc. today that it's OBVIOUS why Jefferson would get a monument but Lee wouldn't is both 1) true but 2) dangerous because the right is trying to precisely goad people into apologizing for slave holders. You gotta toe a real tight ****ing line on this argument that it only explains why Jefferson > Lee, not why Jefferson should be celebrated. The sharper knives in the deplorable drawer would desperately love to have the left follow them down the moral relativism abyss that tries to create an institutional forgetfulness if not outright historical apologia around the fact Jefferson raped his slaves.

Nicely done. The Rachel KKK video I just posted does something similar a few minutes in. They played the Trump press conference audio over various pics from Charlottesville.

Yours is better though.

It's a really bad idea to remove all monuments of America's slavery past. Germany has the right idea in that they force you to remember everywhere. This is how it doesn't happen again.

Let's check in with this guy, being topical:

http://deadspin.com/the-progressive-...nfe-1797864121

I listened to the National Review podcast this morning (god help me) and they were already on the "but where does it end?" track

Guy makes a post of 34 bullet points and then claims he can't hear us. Buddy you can hear us loud and clear or you wouldn't have felt the need. You know what I hear? Your base cracking because it's charmin soft.

I mean ultimately who gets a statue and who doesn't is up to human foibles, the course of history, etc. There's no bright line as to who gets one and who doesn't, so the "but where will it end?" logically goes the opposite direction as well, but that doesn't seem to be a problem.

"Lee was on honorable man. Yea, so was my grandpa. Give him a bronze statue in the town square."

Germany's Culture of Remembrance is supposed to be a thoughtful and most importantly critical examination of the past. The Jefferson Memorial has precisely one reference to slavery AFAIK, an inscription that makes it appear like Jefferson is critical of the institution. That's a whitewash, it's really nothing like Germany's notion of forcing people to remember. The Jefferson Memorial almost asks people to forget. It's like Trolly says: add a statue of Jefferson raping Sally Hennings in her slave quarters while their kids scream nearby or something like that, and maybe we'll be onto something.

There were Founding Fathers who didn't own slaves. Some were rather strident abolitionists.

Take down celebrations of white supremacy. This isn't difficult.

Imagine a future USA that has Osama bin Laden statues, monuments to the 9/11 hijackers, and sharia law is enforced. Would leaving those statues up be correct and important for remembering?

That is what we have. The statues and the flags celebrate white supremacy. Jim Crow was an explicit sharia law. The legal system today maintains it implicitly.

Imagine being black and going into a courthouse that has a confederate monument in front. No message could be clearer that the law, the government, the guns, justice, these are only for white people.

The time to put up monuments to keep people from forgetting is after the war is won. This war isn't even close to over, and white supremacy has lost a couple of battles but has done enough winning that I'm sick of it.

Donald ****ing Trump is President and actively apologizing for Nazis, I'm fine with giving the right that argument. If our society gets to the point that Nazis are marching to keep up statutes of Thomas Jefferson then our children will just have to deal with Dinesh D'souza III citing our Twitter feeds and publishing a book about how Democrats are the real slaveholder apologists.