Why the Statues have to go.

Imagine you are the son or daughter of an American soldier who fought in WWII.  You are visiting Germany on a holiday and fly into Berlin airport.  There as you enter the airport you are greeted with a large statue of Nazi leader Hermann Göring.  What would your reaction be? (1).  Or if you visited Japan and found them honoring a Kamikaze pilot attacking Pearl Harbor?  You would probably be disgusted and wonder what the people where thinking? (2)

Statues were designed to honor and memorialize a person or event.  Thus we have the statue of the Marines raising the flag on Iwo Jima.  Or the Statue of Liberty, in New York Harbor.  Or it might be a religious statue like the Pieta; Mary holding the crucified Christ.  The statue is usually there to give pride, encouragement and memories.  Well what if those memories represent failure, cruelty and hatred.  The toppling of statues is a well known tactic in war to demoralize the enemy.  But sometime is it the enemy - as the toppling of the statue of Stalin,torn down on October 23, 1956 by enraged anti-Soviet crowds during Hungary's October Revolution.

What the statue represents is also important,  It might have been commissioned for one reason, but then takes a life on of its own.  The reason the Civil War Monuments have to come down is practical as well as emotional.  It has already been 75 years since the end of WWII.  It has been 155 years since the end of the Civil War.    Even figuring 25 years between generations - it is over 6 generations since that war ended - why are we still fighting it?  Maybe because it was not about slavery - it was about power.  Now ask 10 historians and you will get different answers - political, economic, moral; but even Lincoln said; if he could save the nation without ending slavery he would.  And he abhorred slavery - maybe not as much as John Brown, but personally he did.

So maybe we keep fighting the Civil War because there was no clear victory.  The slaves were free but for what?  There was little money or economic support - most were free in word only.  It was 100 years later that they were still fighting for equality in housing, education and voting rights.  All the lives that were lost on both sides and we keep fighting, 155 years later  - when does it stop?

So in the goal of reconciliation and the ability to move forward, we need to tear down the statues and declare victory.  Not to dishonor the men, but to erase the memory, like cutting out a cancer.  The history will be taught in schools - not with regret, or boasting.  This was a terrible time in our country.  The Founders, as great men they were, kicked the can down the road when it came to slavery.  Are we strong enough as a country to stop the can and say no more? Here is where it stops; and start to build a new future.  That would make America great and the shining beacon to the world.

(1) This is far from a made up story - there was a memorial to Göring and when it was found out it was taken down.

(2) Japan had a sinilar problem with its "Comfort Women"exhibit.