re: Thoughts on Mayor Landrieu's speech before the removal of the monuments?

You cant whitewash history without affecting the story of the American experience. Think of it this way, take a book and start ripping random pages out of it. Now go to the beginning and try to read the book. What you have is a story that is missing key components, and hence the story is altered or lost. Now take the story of the civil rights struggle, and remove all the negative aspects that led to the struggle, civil war, segregation, Jim Crow, and all the rest. When you whitewash these things from history, the most important elements of the civil rights struggle are lost.

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You aren't removing it because of the men they represent. You are removing then because of why they were erected. The Cult of the Lost Confederacy.

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And Andrew Jackson has what to do with the Confederacy exactly? You know, considering he died 15 years before the civil war even began.

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And it immediately begs the questions: why there are no slave ship monuments, no prominent markers on public land to remember the lynchings or the slave blocks; nothing to remember this long chapter of our lives; the pain, the sacrifice, the shame

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So build fricking monuments to those things if you can't stand that there aren't any. I guarantee that not a single person would have raised a finger to stop him.

New Orleans' house is on fire. In response the mayor went out in the front yard and dug a hole.

When his neighbors showed up, they said "Hey dummy, why are you digging a hole when your house is on fire?"

He replied "I figured I should at least do something."

I wonder if this mentality works it's way to Egypt, cause I know they had many slaves. I'm sure the pyramids, tombs, and artifacts will soon be destroyed, just sad.

You can't compare societies with actual culture to the Confederacy

It was a well written speech and it's been catnip to those who already agreed with Mitch. But if you read it more carefully and aren't already inclined to cheer the toppling of the statues, you see a post hoc explanation that often evades reality. People leaving the city because of statues? Hmmm. A man using these four statues - or any statue, for that matter - as a teaching point with his daughter? These are mere rhetorical devices when the actual statues (other than Liberty Place) were the subject of very little, if any, controversy before. The mayor affects a conciliatory tone, saying that it is now time for us all to come together, but he took no action to help achieve such unity; e.g., taking down Liberty Monument, but leaving some or all of the others as statues of men, with all their strengths, imperfections, and inconsistencies. (See Condi Rice's comments). No, Mitch went scorched earth and prevailed. Bully for him. But to achieve unity you have to give a little something, too, or at least acknowledge the possibility of good faith in the thoughts and, yes, feelings of those with whom you disagree. In failing to do so throughout the process, Mitch ensured that his speech, however well written, would fail to move us any closer to unity.

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Texas won our revolution. The Alamo stays. No need to keep monuments for losers. Might as well build a giant participation trophy.

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The Alamo was a loss chief. Why honor losers?

The Emancipation Proclamation also led to the French pulling support for the South because it made it clear that anyone backing the Confederacy was backing slavery. Brilliant move by Lincoln. He didn't want to free slaves in border states yet because he didn't want to risk those States leaving the Union.

We won the first battle. Lost the 2nd. It was also a massacre. And it gave our men the motivation to win San Jacintio. So the Alamo wasn't a loss. It led to the end if the war.

The Alamo was a mission.
It contains a chapel.
The fact that a battle occurred there has never been reason to destroy it.