re: NOLA City Council Confederate Monuments Meeting

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Really? This decision carries weight? Cause I'm pretty sure my life will go completely unaffected regardless of which of these useless factions win this asinine argument.

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Sigh... seriously?

Yes, this decision does carry weight. Maybe you're the sort of person to whom history means nothing. I can't change that, and I won't try. But there are plenty of people to whom it does mean something.

Now, to me, this decision is not about Southern pride or racism or whatever bullshite people are are flinging each other. This is about whether the people of the past still have the right to leave their mark on the world. Who has the right to un-do the works of the past and pass judgment on those who came before us, who cannot defend themselves against modern presumptions about them.

Is there a statute of limitations on how much time must go by before we just tear down historical structures and monuments? Who is qualified to decide? If it's okay to pull down Confederate monuments, is it also okay to pave over Confederate cemeteries at Vicksburg and Gettysburg? What's the difference?

Why is one site sacred and another site disposable? What makes it so? Why is one slaveowner's monument (Lee's) disgusting, while another's (Jefferson's) is spared from the mob?

Culture isn't just meaningless items on the shelf that you look at and say "oh, that's nice, whatevs..." Culture is the set of values we agree to live by as a society. Every time something like this happens, the rules get re-written, for better or worse.

If you don't think the common glue that holds us together has weight, then I'm sure you will enjoy life alone. For the rest of us, we have to live together. And if we don't figure out what the rules are, we can't live together. A society with no shared culture is not a society.