In dispute over statues, where do you draw the line?

It's not a 'rush to judgement.' The Confederacy was NOT a part of the U.S. and they LOST the Civil War. Why should we want any glorification of brutal people who backed an atrocious system that violated the civil rights of a great number of human beings, etc on our soil? I see the Confederacy as equivalent to the Nazis and the sooner we rid ourselves of any glorification of their hateful past, the better. We need to do like Germany did after WWII and ban flags, salutes, etc associated with the Confederacy. Let those states all secede again if they have a problem. Then rest of us can go on trying to really make America great.

At the risk of stating the blindingly obvious, this stuff plays into the hands of the Trumpies. The whole “Who’s next?” meme is an almost childishly transparent attempt to distract attention from Confederate statues; build support among moderates; and sow division among liberals. Don’t play the game. The answer to every question about statues is: I don’t know. Let’s tear down the memorials to Confederates who fought a war in defense of slavery, and then we can decide later if we ought to do anything more. OK?

-- Kevin Drum

Tough question, who deserves to have a statue erected and maintained for them? Trump has stated that if one removes statues of people who fought for the right to torture and enslave other people, then we also have to remove the statues of people who fought a war to make America independent of Britain. Could it be? Could Trump be wrong? What a novel idea. Who would think that such a wise and honest leader could ever be wrong?

"By taking monuments down or hiding them away, we facilitate forgetting," said Alfred Brophy, a law professor at the University of Alabama who has been studying the issue. "It purchases absolution too inexpensively. There is a value in owning our history."

What complete and utter rubbish. There are no statues of Hitler, yet we all remember him pretty well.

Activists in New York and San Jose, California, are targeting statues of Columbus, who is seen as a hero to many, particularly Italian-Americans, but a murderous colonizer to Native Americans and others.

Good. Columbus was a monster.

Some question where it will end. If New York's 76-foot Columbus statue is removed, then what about Columbus Circle, where it stands? And the Columbus Day holiday?

The circle will still be there. We can make a new holiday.

This is the thing people reflexively protecting historical figures from modern examination don't understand: we aren't slaves to the past. Every moment we live, we create the values we want to live by. If we decide that a genocidal explorer or a traitor and racist general don't represent the values we want to live by, we don't owe their ghosts a monument.

I suspect many wringing their hands about this whole discussion are secretly just afraid to face the possibility that the histories they've venerated for most of their lives is false. Many of the people Americans treat as heroes, aren't. And so rather than face the possibility that they would have to learn a new set of heroes (and there are plenty to go around), they just demand we leave the demons they lionized on pedestals.

It's weird though- the same people who think the tree of liberty has to be refreshed every few years, meaning we should just let people die in continual revolution against authority, tend to be the same people who want to protect a bit of bronze in the shape of a man from ever going away ever. They have more respect for the effigies of dead men than the real lives of living ones.