America has always housed a preference for the negative freedoms and liberties. There’s a proclivity for the government to be free of restraints and intrusion from their pockets, property and personal life. Our first amendment is what grants and protects our rights to free speech, expression and press. But what are the limits on the first amendments? How far does it protect hate speech, hate monuments? Not to my surprise, the United States since the civil war the
United States has allowed the people to honor and commemorate Confederate generals across the nation. With the heavy aggrandizement of the Confederacy, you would think that they won the Civil War on an honorable cause instead of the Union. In no way is there an expectation for America to conduct everything in a perfect manner and be an all-around great nation, America has a very flawed history like every other nation. Germany, for example, does not allow any circulation Nazi or Neo-Nazi paraphernalia because Nazism is not something that needs to be commemorated or celebrated. The Nazism that took place in Germany mirrors the Confederacy in America; these moments in time, symbols and martyrs for racism, terrorism and hate are not aspects of history that should be glorified. With this, all Confederate monuments and more importantly monuments, needed to be stripped from the normal discourse of our culture so that we can begin to take progressive strides towards a more tolerant country. As the Gainesville Mayor
Another issue with the statues are the actual subjects monumentalized. Notable people that are commemorated with having models of themselves publicly displayed are usually figures that the people of America are proud of, like Abraham Lincoln or Harriet Tubman. Confederate statues, however, are the exception; for they are monuments that represent the institutionalization of racism. “Our public spaces should not glorify historical policies of hatred and racism,” argues Kevin Kamenetz, executive and president of the Maryland Association of Counties (Eversley 2017). That single phrase perfectly sums up what people across the country are attempting to convey, and expresses the main issue that many have with these statues. No person who fought for the right to keep humans as property is deserving of modern honor.
Confederate monuments should stay in public because taking them down goes against the Constitution. The First Amendment gives citizens of the United States the freedoms of speech, expression, worship, and other liberties. Creating and keeping up monuments falls under this because it is symbolic speech towards the Confederacy, the South, and their generals (Nelson). The only way speech is
On the other Side of the argument, John Daniel Davidson author of “Why We Should Keep The Confederate Monuments Right Where They Are” and editor in chief of the online publication The Federalist, argues that Confederate statues such as General Jackson and Confederate war heroes should be kept where they are. In making this claim the author asserts that the public knows the history of the United States and should be able to conclude that these monuments don't represent what they would have represented during the Civil War. Rather, in present day American society they represent how the U.S. was able to make a dramatic change and turn away from slavery. Davidson begins his article with asserting, “They say we shouldn’t honor a bunch of racists
Thesis: As the debate continues on whether or not we should keep confederate monuments and symbols displayed publicly, it is important that we recognize both the benefits and downfalls of removing these symbols.
Confederate Monuments began to erect across the nation well after the civil war between the 1890’s and 1950’s. There seems to be a correlation of when these monuments began to pop up and the era of the Jim Crow Segregation. The highest spike of monuments being built were between the 1900’s and 1920’s. These monuments were meant to be a teaching point of values to people rather than being a symbol of hate as many people took them to be. According to Mark Elliot, professor at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro; “The values to which these monuments stood for included a glorification of the cause of the civil war.”
Confederate statues depict anti-abolitionists as heroes and very honorable men, therefore they should be removed. These men who are depicted as heroes fought for the institution of slavery. These statues not only glorify anti-abolitionists but they remind people of the strong racism of the time. Many people fight for the removal of these statues for the sole reason that they “serve as constant reminders of institutional racism, segregation and
The removal of Confederate monuments has been a controversial topic over the past few years. Many want to tear them down, others want to keep them up and some want them to be moved to museums. Although controversial, many still do not know why exactly people want these statues to tear down or be kept up. After reading and analyzing both Michele Bogart’s and The Guardian’s view on Confederate statues, I would say that Michele Bogart’s “In Defense of ‘Racist’ Monuments” article was the most persuasive. Right off the bat, Michele Bogart starts off with how the rise of white nationalism is causing officials around the country to remove memorials of Confederate soldiers, military leaders, and symbols of “the Lost Cause”. Bogart clearly states that not all civic statues represent white supremacy or racism, but that they are “the culmination of complex social and artistic engagement at the community level” (Bogart). She further explains how eliminating these statues is not going to help solve the problem of racism in the United States. Her purpose in this essay is to persuade the reader that civic monuments should be kept up as pieces of art, not as “symbols of hate”.
Thesis Statement: Three reasons why Confederate monuments or flags should be removed are they lie to themselves (white supremacists) by honoring the hero, even though they know they did wrong, The Nazi flag and the Confederate battle flag were designed by groups that rejected the founding American creed of the Declaration of Independence, that “all men are created equal, and It was a flag flown by a few regiments in the Civil War but widely popularized later by the Ku Klux Klan.
The Civil War continues to be a major talking point today -- a war that was fought over the extension of slavery. In 2017, a contentious conversation continues as the public debates the reasons of the Civil War, whether or not it was about slavery or states’ rights, and the ethics behind having massive monuments commemorating a time of our history that was so divisive. Symbols of the Confederacy, which includes the Confederate flag and monuments depicting leaders of the Confederacy, are seen to be racist and propaganda tools used by white supremacists. However, there are those who believe that these confederate symbols are misleading and leads to the false ideas that the South was patriotic and heroic during the Civil War. Through
Before engaging in discourse regarding the Confederacy, it is important to understand what, exactly, it was about. The Confederate States of America were formed in 1861 as a way for the deep South to continue owning slaves, due in part to the fact that their agricultural industries depended on slave labor to operate. While they did stand for other things, the origin and primary goal of the Confederacy was to fight against those who wanted to abolish slavery. Because of this, Confederate memorabilia and monuments are fundamentally linked with slavery and racism, and this aspect must be remembered when discussing what to do with regards to Confederate monuments.
51 years after the ending of the Civil War, you’d think that conflicts regarding Confederacy would be over. However, Confederacy issues just continue to get worse. Many Americans still believe and honor Confederate ethics. While many Americans strongly oppose the Confederacy. They believe that the Confederacy is responsible for destroying families, taking lives, and causing the bloodiest war in American history. Those Americans feel like we shouldn’t honor Confederacy and don’t want monuments or statues representing Confederacy here. Especially after hate crimes like the attack on an predominant African American church in South Carolina. It’s easy to understand why these people feel this way, as slavery and discrimination shouldn’t be represented on the “Land
To start, Confederate monuments are an image of white supremacy and are a significant leader to violence in the 21st century. For example, just this past month, there was a riot and march in Charlottesville that only caused destruction. This topic goes back to the 1900s and that is why this incident was not a surprise. From the Ku Klux Klan to segregation, the Confederate monuments were a slippery slope to violence and brutality. The cruelty back in the 1950s led to monuments being put up as well as the “bodies of black men, women and children during a long rash of lynching” (Cox). This trouble that these monuments have caused have lead to the violence created in Charlottesville. Americans began to protest against them because they got fed up with it. The events that led to a death that weekend have only shown the “cause of white supremacy and the deadly violence that has accompanied it”
The first action by the winner of a battle is to remove the flag of the loser, a sign of victory. A war against racism has been raging in America for nearly two hundred years. Many battles were fought in the courts and on the streets of southern cities in the 1950s and 60s. Although a new America emerged out of the birth pangs of the Civil Rights Movement, the victors did not remove the battle flags. This oversight must be remedied, The Confederate flag must never fly over any official building in the United States of America.
Like many armies, the Confederates decided to make statues and monuments for the men and women who did a spectacular thing. The United Daughters of the Confederacy memorial was put up in 1934 and dedicated to “the Loyal Women of the Old South”. The Augusta Confederate Monument in Augusta, Georgia was dedicated 1878 in to represent Private Benson, General Robert E. Lee, General Stonewall Jackson, General T.R.R. Cobb and General W.H.T. And the most common memorial, the Confederate Flag itself. There are eight statues dedicated to Confederate “war heroes” in Washington D.C. at the National Statuary Hall Collection. There is a statue for Jefferson Davis, a statue for Alexander Stephens, a statue for Joseph Wheeler, a statue for Colonel Zebulon Baird Vance, a statue for General Robert E. Lee, for James Z. George, for Wade Hampton III, for Edmund Kirby, for John E. Kenna, and for Chancellor Uriah M. Rose. All of these men and women are being commemorated for their excellent work in the war for slavery. These people thought of other races to be worth less than dirt; they couldn’t have cared less about these people. In fact, they didn’t even see other races as human beings. After centuries of white supremacy, we have finally been convinced that other races are just as valuable as us. So why do we still have these statues? Why do we still hold these men and women at such a high
The limitations of first amendment protections are pretty clearly defined in a huge body of case law ranging from chief justice Holmes, “you can’t shout fire in a crowded theater” ruling in Schenk vs US in 1919 to the Snyder vs Phelps in 2015 , upholding the Westboro Baptist Church’s right to make homophobic statements in public.