Let the Nazis and confederate traitors buy the statues and put them on their own property and let’s stop using taxpayer money to upkeep monuments to people who advocated holding others as property.

No one is trying to outlaw statues (or confederate flags). We just don’t think we should be paying for them with our tax dollars.

“But Jefferson had slaves!” someone always responds. “Next you’ll want to tear down the Washington monument, too!”

No. Neither Washington or Jefferson declared treason against the United States and were willing to kill people in order to keep their slaves. We can make that distinction easily enough.

Many of these statutes were erected in the Jim Crow days, years after the Civil War, by southerners who insisted on celebrating the losers and the racists who caused the bloodiest war in American history.

Imagine having a statue to the KKK in the center of your city, complete with hoods and a burning cross in the background. Imagine how the Jewish residents of the city would feel walking past that every day. That’s how our black Americans feel when they pass by the monuments honoring people who committed war in order to hold blacks as property.

This isn’t censorship.  The statues can still exist. Let the bigots move these to private property and let them take care of them, in the same way we need to remove Ten Commandment monuments from public property.

Bottom line: We should not be using taxpayer money on people who rebelled and declared treason against that same government that now pays for the statues.