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If it were quietly melted down and not bandied about as some great victory over the outgroup I'd care less, but the most publicized images of this event have the face of Lee carefully removed and cuts ritualistically made into it leaving just enough for the face to remain intact(Fig. 1). Who ever did that had the intent of a humiliation ritual, no matter the intent of anyone else involved, and it has been signal boosted to the moon and back.
I'm not ever really happy when I have to admit that neo-confederates were right about anything, and would like to avoid it in the future.
/images/16987226581720212.webp
Indeed, it's a humiliation ritual. Again, I cannot even name one statue of Stalin or Lenin that suffered the same fate.
Neither Stalin nor Lenin betrayed their country. This kind of ritual humiliation was SOP for traitors, which Lee was - or at least an unsuccessful rebel, which counts as a traitor under the traditional rules. You can argue that Lenin was a traitor to the Kerensky government, but he was a successful rebel so it doesn't count.
Yes they did, as did George Washington.
You're essentially try to argue that a man is not a rebel if his rebellion succeeds. Are you saying that you would you feel more well-disposed towards Lee if the Confederacy had won?
All else aside, I suspect many people would feel exactly that way. When it comes to your legacy, the greatest sin in war is losing.
Sure, but if the only real moral principal being held to here by the Pro-Statue removal crowd is "Might makes Right", I think we should make that clear.
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Beg your pardon, but how is literally overthrowing their government any less of treason than trying to secede?
Was he declared a traitor immediately after the war by the side that won?
If this is your moral framework you should declare it from the start, because using generic words like "traitor" leads me to the mistaken conclusion that you are using the word the same way I would. To me, what you're saying here sounds like "it's not cheating if your wife never finds out".
It also seems like a punk move to do it 160 years later. To me, it seems pathetic.
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And General Lee was never charged with, nor found guilty of, "treason", so that doesn't count either.
Leaving aside the fact that he was, indeed, charged with treason, are you seriously contending that an American who waged war against the US did not commit treason? Because that is the literal definition of treason
Excuse me but somehow I don’t feel compelled by an argument based on a grand jury indictment that is described as “forgotten legal and moral case” that “went missing for 72 years” (Huh? What even?). Considering a case where a general of a defeated army isn’t found guilty by any court on the victorious side of treason, or anything of the same magnitude for that matter, I’m prone to accept their judgment, or rather lack thereof, instead of that of modern-day Red Guards 150 years later who’re obviously all cocksure in their own ability to always know better.
But anyway, I get your point, or at least I think I do, but keeping in mind that accusing someone, even in his grave, of treason is serious business, especially if he was held in high regard by Churchill, Eisenhower, Wilson and so on (see the link above) so I think we ought to word such accusations accurately. What exactly did Lee betray? A constitution that is explicitly anti-racist and forbids slavery? Clearly not. A federal system that clearly forbids the secession of federal states in all cases? As far as I know, that’s not the case either – again, I understand that that Confederate states technically didn’t secede in a legal manner. A president who wanted to abolish slavery? No.
At the end of the day, what he did betray in full is a political code which holds that a military officer, when appointed and ordered, is to march his men into his own homeland and wreak destruction on it as if it was enemy territory.
What he "betrayed" is not particularly relevant. He literally waged war on his country, and he commanded armies which killed tens of thousands of his fellow citizens. To try to argue that that isn't "really" treason is rather silly. It is certainly possible to argue that he deserves a statute despite committing treason -- lots of people deserve statues despite having done some bad things -- but to argue that he didn't commit treason at all does not make sense.
For my part I feel like this comment throws the fundamental differences between progressive and conservative moral intuitions into stark relief.
The progressive doesn't see the object and context of the alleged betrayal as relevant because in a progressive's mind, the moral valance of an individual is more a product group membership/loyalty than it is one of personal conduct. All behavior is acceptable so long as it is aimed at an acceptable target.
Meanwhile to the conservative for things like the circumstance of the alleged betrayal is not only relevant but essential information because, to put it in rationalist terms, it helps you sort the potential cooperators from the defectors. In a conservative mind Hobbes' state of nature is an ever-present specter, and thus the moral valance of an individual often ends up boiling down to "can I trust this guy not to screw me over/stab me back". Hense the old sentiment that it is better to have an honorable foe than a perfidious ally.
To me, comments like those of @atokenliberal6D_4 and @fuckduck9000 above, and to a lesser extent yours here speak to a very particular sort of blindness. Progressive can't seem to imagine the shoe ever being on the other foot. They can't seem to imagine ever finding themselves on the "wrong side" because obviously whatever side they're on is going to be the "right side" and thus they start asking questions like why shouldn't we be cruel to our enemies?
...and that question is the first step down a very steep and slippery slope.
The shoe is never again going to be on the other foot with respect to people who believe so strongly in hereditary racial hierarchies that they think Confederacy-style slavery is the best way to organize society.
This question in particular is one the very rare exceptions where we can be extremely confident what the "right side" actually is. There are in fact certain values that are so obviously wrong that you don't have to extend any charity at all to them and it's ok to be as cruel as possible to those that support them. Whatever led to confederate-style slavery is one of them. Kill-all-non-Aryans Nazism is another. Almost nothing else is like this, but it's important to recognize the very special cases where you can make such strong statements.
When we're talking about things like actual 1940's-Germany Nazism and the the literal Confederacy, we're so far away from any normal political question that we really don't have to worry about slippery slopes. It's like saying taking antibiotics is a slippery slope of normalizing killing that will end in murder.
I realize that people have abused the words like "Nazi" so much that this kind of statement pattern-matches to something that's very worrisome and not true, but we can't let the corruption of the word make us unable to consider the concept---there were historical cultures in Virginia in 1850 and Germany in 1940 that really were that horrible. If the moderation team actually believes that insulting these specific historical cultures isn't ok here, then please ban me. I'm really not interested in discussing with any hypothetical poster that actually agrees with their tenets.
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Except that I was not talking about betrayal in the abstract. I was specifically referring to the very particular issue of whether Lee's actions merit a statue, and even more particularly whether his taking up arms against the govt constitutes "treason." You seem to want to talk about something else.
Then apparently I am not a progressive.
Again, then apparently I am not a progressive
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It gets tiring repeating this to you, but I’m not woke or progressive by any stretch of the imagination. I’m only in this because of the analogy to nazi germany and the prussian military tradition, as a german I’ve had to think long and hard about what it means to act justly within an unjust system, and I don’t think it can be done. The loyal dog of an evil master is not a good dog. So no, I do ponder constantly what to do when you’re on the ‘wrong side’. Frankly you guys are mindkilled, you’d defend anyone to get back at the woke.
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Well, yes. Armies kill people; that's what they do. But anyway, I stand by what I said: if a military officer does not get sentenced for treason even in a political situation such as that we are discussing here, I see no good argument to call him a traitor.
Yes, that is the point.
Anyhow, if you really think "is no good argument to call him a traitor" -- like, literally, no good argument -- I guess we need to agree to disagree.
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I was under the impression that his country declared independence from the country he waged war on?
So, if I renounce my US citizenship, declare my state an independent country, and lead an army towards Washington, DC, I have not committed treason? Neat trick! It does raise the question of why a pardon of Confederate soldiers was deemed necessary, however. This conversation is bordering on silliness. I really do not understand the need to refuse to concede a single point to one's opponents in an argument. Again, it is perfectly possible to argue that Lee deserves to have a statute, despite committing treason.
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