Confederate statues

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There goes the Robert E. Lee

I grew up in Richmond and went to college at VCU in the heart of the city. At one point, we had an apartment near the Virginia Museum and I’d ride my bike down Monument Avenue to go to class each day. (Suddenly I’m remembering having to ride home in a sudden downpour, hoping the books in my backpack didn’t get too wet.)

Anyway, even then, my friends and I knew those statues to traitors should not be there. We called Monument Avenue “the Avenue of Losers” (and I even worked that into my novel BLOODSUCKERS: A VAMPIRE RUNS FOR PRESIDENT which begins in Richmond).

So I’m glad to see that they’re finally removing the statues to the traitors, which were only erected by confederate sympathizers and racists during the Jim Crow days. You know — losers.

You want to idolize an evil man who owned other people and was willing to kill fellow Americans for the right to continue to do so? Fine, put the statue on your own property. This property — this avenue — belongs to us. We are refusing to use our money to support your evil on our property.

We should not be spending taxpayer money honoring people who rebelled and declared treason against that same government that now pays for the statues.

“It’s not honoring, it’s history” claim people who literally think that is a good argument. I don’t think it’s worth wasting my time explaining to these morons that we don’t honor bad history, and we don’t need statues to learn about history. (Somehow, we’ve managed to learn about World War II without a single statue of Hitler anywhere.)

So yeah, good riddance. Proud of my old hometown.

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A proposal for the Confederate Statues

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.

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“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.