Columbus Circle monument could be next statue to go

by freemindfade 79 Replies latest social current

• 

  never a jw

  • "Their civilization lost - I feel bad for people who suffered injustice but not for the culture. What did it produce? Where are the accomplishments? Where are the achievements?"
  • 
    

  Agree. To the winners belong the spoils and the opportunity to write history. However, a good and objective history course should not be just about the people who won. Even Herodotus, the father of history, 2,500 years ago described in great details the life of the Persians. Kudos to him.

  • "Did he include gay marriage?"

  Touche. Screw MLK day then. I didn't like it that much anyways
  
• 

  LoveUniHateExams

  What troubles me is the Eurocentric narrative of the American continent - well, to be blunt, most if not all the technology, life improvements, democracy, personal freedoms came from the Europeans.

  Although the Europeans committed atrocities, made war and unwittingly spread disease, their cultures were, and even today are, superior to Africans' or Native Americans'.

  This has nothing to do with skin colour or ethnicity, BTW.

  Not all cultures are equal, unfortunately
• 

  never a jw

  • "I'd bet if you examine it historically, the Indians there are statues of a lot worse than Columbus in terms of human rights."

  As a Libertarian, I don't care if all towns in the South start erecting statues of David Duke. It's their call. Tearing down statues is a local issue. Anyone has the right to put the statue of their favorite character, as long as it's done with his/her own money. My main point that I tried to make ad nauseam is that Columbus is overrated.
  
• 

  never a jw

  • "Not all cultures are equal, unfortunately"

  Agree 200%. My point still stands. Calling Columbus a discoverer is a Eurocentric idea. He didn't discover shit.
  
• 

  never a jw

  • "Newsflash: everyone alive today, you included, is more than not likely descended from some victors of some conflict at some time or another, possibly more than one."

  That why I said "I don't give a f*&k about my ancestry" Whatever bad or good they did is not to my discredit or credit. Only what I do.
  
• 

  LoveUniHateExams

  Calling Columbus a discoverer is a Eurocentric idea. He didn't discover shit - I see the point you're making.

  Yes, N. & S. America already had groups of people living there before Columbus was even born.

  But Columbus added to the known world. He helped put the American continent on the map. He and other Europeans like Marco Polo and Leif Eriksson sailed hundreds or even thousands of miles to new places, adding them to the known world. It was usually Europeans who did this, not the other way round. You didn't have Africans, Asians or Native Americans sailing thousands of miles and discovering, say, Europe.

  This is the context for using the word 'discover' ...
• 

  never a jw

  "It was usually Europeans who did this"

  Good point. I don't have a quarrel with who won what. Western civilization has been influenced mainly by great thinkers who lived north of or around the Mediterranean sea. I don't know what my life would have been if history takes another route, but I am grateful for the ancient Greeks and Romans and those who came after and picked up where they left off. My opinion is not to demonize the winners. It's only my opinion about a man who dared cross the Atlantic at a time when nobody dared. He deserves more credit than Charles Lindbergh for doing the same thing, but not much more.
  
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  LoveUniHateExams

  I don't have a quarrel with who won what - well, the point I'm making isn't about 'winning', as if the Europeans and the natives were evenly matched.

  Unfortunately, blood was spilt and the Europeans did indeed win.

  It's only my opinion about a man who dared cross the Atlantic at a time when nobody dared - more like a European dared cross the Atlantic at a time when non-Europeans couldn't.
  

  Here's the key point: European cultures were light-years ahead of aboriginal cultures - and still are. European cultural achievements deserve recognition and respect ... what they don't deserve is being trashed by 'activists'.

  The only cultures that even come close are the cultures of the South Koreans and Japanese, and maybe the Chinese.

  And I'm not bashing aboriginal cultures. These were good in that they helped groups of people survive for millennia. There's much knowledge about local plant life and animals - what's safe to eat, what should be avoided and what is medicinal. But how do these cultures contribute to humanity in general?
  

  It's strange but when you think about it ... in 2017 we have European and Japanese scientists working on cloning extinct species ... while at the same time some tribes are still hunting with bow and arrow or spear.
  
• 

  glenster

  My little contribution to this discussion is JWs-sounding. If you want statues
  to be just "good" make them for ethics or ideals--not people (except JWs would
  go farther and make it a concern not to be idolatrous which I wouldn't bother
  with). Nobody's perfect and in some cases it could get pretty thorny. If you
  make them for people you better know your history and be ready to make explana-
  tions.

  If you're going to take down any statues to people who aren't consistent with
  modern outlooks (don't be 'centric and intolerant about things that don't merit
  being that way--gender, sex orientation, age, handicap, race, nationality, basic
  belief in God or not, etc.) it's like "Jaws"--you're going to need a bigger
  boat. You're going to need bigger museums and more of them to put them in. You
  can't just put statues for confederate generals in there.

  For example:

  Many of our rock heros, like Lennon, financed organized crime to buy their
  heroin or cocaine. (The latest Beatles PR is that they didn't know where the
  money was going to. Big money Beatles PR must be powerful stuff.)

  Gen. Patton had a virulent antisemitic streak--and let it be known at the end
  of WWII!

  MLK--justifiably renowned for braving threats of bullets to combat racism--
  had the conservative doctrine about homosexuals according to a 1958 letter he
  wrote. (They choose to be sinners like crooks and if they persist they're going
  to hell). An associate of his was homosexual but that just shows he wasn't as
  strict as a JWs leader about fellowshipping--most Christians aren't in compari-
  son. He maintained a conventional consideration of the Bible as a source of
  wisdom for his speaches as a pastor up to the time he died in the late 1960's.
  (What is this--what kind of bigotry do you prefer?)

  Think of all the plaques to wars. Every modern war I know of comes with war
  crimes.

  The biggest bloody mess in the history of big bloody messes--WWII--is usually
  thought of as controversial due to the two atom bombs. Actually, they just made
  killing non-combatants more convenient. Firebombing of non-military targets had
  been going on for a while by then.
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firebombing

  FDR and Churchill initially wanted bombs to hit military targets only but the
  Axis anti-aircraft weaponry was so good the bombers couldn't fly in the day low
  down they had to fly high up at night. And they couldn't be surgical about it.
  (I vaguely remember a source saying Hitler bragged that his strategy of killing
  non-combatants forced his opponants to emulate it to combat it.)

  Who is better remembered as an Allied hero than Jimmy Stewart? There's a
  statue for him in Indiana, PA. He led bombing raids of Berlin near the end of
  the war. How many men, women, and children non-combatants did he kill?

  God said so, what else could we do rationalization, we didn't know back then,
  etc. Get ready to explain something.
  
• 

  Hecce

  “Gone With the Wind” will be gone from The Orpheum’s summer movie series, the theater’s board said Friday.

  I posted a link to this information, I was wondering what is going to happen with "Roots"; GWTW is child's play compared to Roots and the later served back in the 70s to awake a lot of people to the horrors of slavery.

  I guess that it will have to be banned.

  GWTW was historical in many aspects, one of them was that Hattie McDonald became the first African American actress to win an Oscar.