Statues come tumbling down. Updated. More monuments. Final updatte

FINAL UPDATE: So many Confederate monuments, place names and other tthings are disappearing or being toppled or otherise gotten rid of ttthat tthere is no way I can keep up with it. I am spending the whole day collecting documentation for my archives on stuff being taken down and will be working into this evening to get everything filed away.

There might have been a Confederate statue  that  wasn't spray painted, perhaps  in some remote area, but it seems that most got a lot of spray paint.

Some statues have come down.

Here the United Daughters of the Confederacy removed this statue which was at a prominent public place.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/02/us/confederate-statue-alexandria-trnd/index.html

They might put it up on private property, but it doesn't have any real power as a private statue as opposed to a statue on public property. When it is on public property it is basically endorsed by the government. On private property it can still do work as a private shrine, so it isn't completely powerless.

On private property the cost of the maintainancce and keeping the statue  falls on private individuals. This isn't just the statue itself and the pedestal. A path to the statue and gates and lawns and bushes have to be maintained. Trash has to be picked up. Governments with Confederate statues expend money on them in doing these functions.

It does happen that private groups raise funds for statues on public property such as restoration, but the fact that the statue  is on public property gives the statue status making it easier to raise funds.

The neo-Confederates are aging and how much  money they will have to maintain statues in the future.

In Birmingham, Alabama another statue wass removed last night or the night before.

https://www.al.com/news/2020/06/watch-live-birmingham-taking-down-confederate-monument.html

The State of Alabama is stating they will sue Birmingham. It will be interesting how this works out.

https://www.wvtm13.com/article/alabama-attorney-general-files-lawsuit-against-city-of-birmingham-after-removal-of-confederate-monument/32746959

The Republican Party will be identified with the Confederacy.

Another story about both statues.

https://apnews.com/810a6cb13ce6cdbde5b534661c5f2da6

I think that if the Democrats get elected, they won't be giving a free pass to Confederate monuments and symbols.

Recently the New York Times had an article about military bases named after Confederates.

They really couldn't care less up until 2015. Now they want the names changed. The centrist Democrats and neoliberals have decided that being anti-Confederate is part of a winning strategy.

Updated 6/3/2020

Athens, Georgia

https://www.redandblack.com/athensnews/mayor-orders-county-to-look-into-removing-confederate-monument-downtown-commissioners-speak-on-sunday-protest/article_1db335a0-a5a9-11ea-845e-bf003e49571c.html

Bentonville, Arkansas

https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2020/jun/01/confederate-monument-bentonville-square-be-moved/

Birmingham, Alabama

https://www.today.com/video/birmingham-mayor-discusses-decision-to-remove-confederate-monument-84290629554

Robert E. Lee statue taken down at Lee High School in Montgomery Alabama.

https://www.wsfa.com/2020/06/01/robert-e-lee-statue-taken-down-lee-high-school

Richmond, Virginia

https://www.richmond.com/news/virginia/northam-to-order-removal-of-richmonds-robert-e-lee-statue/article_311a23b3-fb8c-5d87-a0cb-ca564241b29a.html

Refuting African American defenders of Confederate memorialization

New podcast is done and is online. In this case I used the letter to the editor of Maryland Lt. Gov. Rutherford defense of keeping which makes the Confederacy equal to the United States of America in the Maryland statehouse. A lot of the argumentation might apply to any defender of Confederate junk, but there are some specific items regarding African American defenders of Confederate memorialization.

http://newtknight.libsyn.com/newscast-20191017-analyzing-and-refuting-arguments-in-defense-of-confederate-memorialization-by-republican-african-americans

Secession and Gun Control, or "That was fast!"

In this earlier Feb. 2018  blog posting I concluded that I thought the ignition point to get secession movements going was likely to be the passage of gun control legislation.

https://newtknight.blogspot.com/2018/02/status-of-texas-secession-secessionists.html#.Wsigt4jBqiO

The comment about gun control was at the very end.  It is part of a lengthy assessment of the status of the Texas secessionists. To give a very brief assessment, the Texas secessionists aren't going to gain any traction as long as Trump is in office and the Republicans control the government.

I blogged about a news article about secession and gun control March 27, 2018.

https://newtknight.blogspot.com/2018/03/liberal-left-is-noticing-secession-and.html#.WsihuIjBqiM

A left/liberal website Think Progress reported on some fringe elements advocating secession to prevent gun control. This is the link to their article.

https://thinkprogress.org/why-do-these-patriots-hate-america-ec1a093a8df6/

So I saw a developing idea among fringe elements. Maybe some time some where this would have consequences. I was really surprised that the issue of gun control and secession would find its way into state legislatures this fast with the introduction of a bill into the South Carolina legislature calling for secession if there is federal gun control legislation.

http://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/382003-south-carolina-house-republicans-introduce-bill-to-consider-secession

http://www.thestate.com/news/politics-government/politics-columns-blogs/the-buzz/article208132169.html

It became an Associated Press story.

Reminds me of the statement by South Carolinian James L. Petigru that South Carolina in 1860 was too small to be a republic but too large to be an insane asylum.

From the AP article we learn the following:

A trio of state House Republicans on Thursday quietly introduced a bill that would allow lawmakers to debate seceding from the U.S. "if the federal government confiscates legally purchased firearms in this State."

 The chief sponsor is Rep. Mike Pitts who contradictorily also says:

Pitts, a longtime law officer and Army veteran, said his bill isn't a call for secession but merely a proposal to make the action possible if events warrant.

"I'm not promoting secession. I served this country, and I don't want to see it broken up."

I think this shows that Pitts thinks that secession is a little out there as an idea or perhaps he doesn't have coherent thinking.

However, this puts the idea in the news for both South Carolina and in North Carolina where the story was covered in the Charlotte Observer.  https://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/state/south-carolina/article208132169.html  The story is identical to the article in The State.

It has gotten national coverage in the media and with the Internet the secession proposal in South Carolina can be accessed by a national audience.

Perhaps this is the next ultra position to show that you are really a strong supporter on gun control. Or maybe it isn't. It could be that the Republican leadership is ready to severely criticize the three Republican legislators. Or it could be that some other Republican legislators will join the effort to make sure they don't lose the next Republican primary. Or it could be both. I think I have covered all the possibilities there.

However, the fact that this is proposed at all is cause for concern. We don't hear calls for the resignation of these three Republicans by the Republican leadership.

It is another incremental step forward in the normalization of secession. A little here and a little there secession continues to be normalized.

The attitude of the media has been bemusement. The history of secession is that it seems comical or outlandish until it isn't.

Any political movement, anything new, starts first with imagining it. At this point we have secession being imagined. We don't have the imagining of the consequences, just some idealized fantasy of secession. I don't see any anti-secession movement getting people imagining the consequences. There is just bemusement.

There needs to be conceptualized some anti-secession strategies with some group having some ongoing focus on preventing secession. That way when a body of ideas is needed they will be developed and there will be something better than some slogan like, "Better Together." (Used in opposition to Scottish secession.)

The fundamental problem in getting people to take secession seriously is that people think that nations are composed of some solid material, maybe concrete, and indestructible. The reality is that nations are imagined and are composed of dreams. Once the dream is gone, the nations may have all the apparatuses of state power, but as imposing as they may seem, a nation dependent on them alone, and not the support of the general population is in a desperate situation.

The collapse of the Soviet Union should have taught the public that. It hasn't. The secessionists however, were quick learners regarding this. The neo-Confederate Kennedy twins discussed the Soviet Union in their second edition of "The South Was Right!" Other secessionists noticed.

Also, I fear that if secession starts getting some traction the opposition to it will be blunt and unthinking and act to enable secession. Opposition to secession needs to be grounded in the field of cultural geography and that field's understanding of nationalism. The reliance on force will be a losing strategy.

However, at this point secession has moved forward just an increment. Perhaps I can't really believe that this is going anywhere. Even to myself it seems outlandish. However, I think that it might turn out to be very real and a great danger.

Roy Moore perhaps might be our first neo-Confederate U.S. Senator

The following article by Matthew Sheffield brings to the public's attention that Alabama Republican U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore is a neo-Confederate.

https://www.salon.com/2017/12/12/never-mind-the-sex-scandals-roy-moore-is-a-son-of-the-confederacy/

The public is going to discover that there is an ideology against the 17th Amendment which has U.S. Senators directly elected and not selected by state legislators.

The public is going to discover that there is an ideology against women voting.

The public doesn't realize to the extent neo-Confederate ideology is percolating through the conservative movement.

This development is not without precedent. It used to be Republican office holders pandered to or joined the Council of Conservative Citizens and many were interviewed in the Southern Partisan.

The mainstream media wasn't interested. They were concerned about shaking out an extra electoral vote in some former Confederate state.

Rasmussen pollsters play with fire. Unpatriotic Repulicans

Rasmussen Reports has released this poll.

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/general_politics/february_2017/41_of_republicans_say_america_won_t_be_hurt_if_california_goes_solo

In the poll only 60% feel that it would be bad if California became another country. It really should be 90% or more and those who disagree should be considered cranks. The percentage that think that it would be a good idea is 18%.

Unfortunately the numbers thinking that it would be good if California became another country is driven by partisanship by Republicans of whom 25% thought it would be a good idea.

The headlines used by Rasmussen Reports need to be read carefully. They say that 41% of Republicans don't think America would be hurt by California secession which is 25% who are for it and 16% who say it would have no impact.

It seems that a lot of Americans don't see the obvious advantages of being in a continental nation or they don't think that these questions have real consequences, but are really just hypothetical and in the realm of fantasy.

Given that we have hundreds of statues in American honoring secessionists we should not be surprised that secession is legitimized and people are open to this really stupid idea.

Please consider the following petition.

https://www.change.org/p/edward-h-sebesta-ask-president-trump-not-to-send-a-wreath-to-the-arlington-confederate-monument

Asked Tim Donnelly to disavow his support for the Confederate flag.

I have finished with some other research business and I am starting to follow up with contacting people in California. I would like to see State Senator Stephen Knight be not re-elected if he doesn't disavow his vote for the Confederate flag. I am letting various people in California know about the neo-Confederate movement.

Tim Donnelly is a member of the California State Assembly. He was the lone vote in defense of the Confederate flag in a recent vote in the California State Assembly.

http://www.latimes.com/local/political/la-me-pc-confederate-flag-bill-20140820-story.html

He came in third in the recent Republican primary for governor.

I have asked Mr. Donnelly to reconsider his vote for the Confederate flag. I sent him the following email to his campaign website:

Dear Mr. Donnelly:

I learn with regret that you were the lone vote for the Confederate flag in the California Assembly. When I was young the Republican Party was the party of Abraham Lincoln and not Jefferson Davis.

I am an investigative academic researcher into the neo-Confederate movement. I am published by peer reviewed academic journals and university presses. My resume is online at www.templeofdemocracy.com/resume.htm.

People coming up with rationalizations for neo-Confederacy enable that movement.  At my online resume I think you will find material which will show why the neo-Confederate movement should not be enabled. Additionally there are free guest links to the my articles  and essays and reports at “Black Commentator” which I think you will find informative.

I ask you to disavow your vote in the Assembly regarding the ban on the Confederate flag.

A person who enables the neo-Confederate movement should not hold any office of public trust.

I hope that you will consider this.

Regards,

Edward H. Sebesta

Co-editor of “Neo-Confederacy: A Critical Introduction,” Univ. of Texas Press, 2008 (http://www.utexas.edu/utpress/excerpts/exhagneo.html), and “The Confederate and Neo-Confederate Reader: The ‘Great Truth’ About the ‘Lost Cause’” Univ. Press of Mississippi 2010. (http://www.upress.state.ms.us/books/1338).  Author of chapter about the Civil War and Reconstruction in the notorious Texas teaching standards in Politics and the History Curriculum: The Struggle over Standards in Texas and the Nation, published by Palgrave Macmillan.  http://www.keitherekson.com/books/politics-and-the-history-curriculum/