Saturday, August 19, 2017

Confederate Statues

If I thought it was simply about Confederate statues, I see the case for bringing them down one-by-one. I think these are local decisions that should be made in an orderly way. I personally have little sympathy for the Confederacy. It was about preserving the evil of slavery and not about "states rights." In addition - and like most evils - it was also incredibly stupid. The South couldn't win the war and they knew it. Yet, they still decided to fight it, costing over 600,000 lives.

But I am skeptical that for the progressive left that this is primarily about Confederate statues, nor will it stop at the statues. As we have already seen: tech companies are blocking alt-right websites, tiles in the NY subway that look like the Confederate flag are being taken down, and an Abe Lincoln statue was set ablaze, among other stupidities. How do I know this? Because it was already happening before the Confederate statues: see Colin Kaepernick kneeling for the American Flag, see the Portland school board changing the name of Lynch Elementary School, attempts to get Princeton to rename the Woodrow Wilson school,  and the movement to rename the Washington Redskins, among numerous other tedious and cheap displays of virtue signaling.

I also think it's indicative of the times and the dead end philosophy of the progressive Left that their best ideas are about bringing something down than actually building anything up.

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