Pandora's Box: New Orleans prof says Confederate purge would target Andrew Jackson, too

[WestVirginiaRebel]

Fox News:

If New Orleans intends to purge all symbols of the Confederacy, it must take down its famous statue of Andrew Jackson, too, according to a Big Easy professor, who says his tongue-in-cheek demand is meant to show the absurdity of measuring historical figures by contemporary standards.

 

With rebel symbols under fire around the nation in the wake of the mass shooting in June of black worshipers at a Charleston, S.C., church by a white supremacist who embraced the stars and bars, New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu has called for the removal of statues of Confederate stalwarts Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis and PGT Beauregard. But a local university dean says a longstanding city ordinance being invoked by Landrieu would just as easily apply to the seventh president, known as "Old Hickory" and famous for defeating the British in the War of 1812's pivotal Battle of New Orleans.

 

The ordinance allows city officials to remove any statue or monument deemed a nuisance if, among other things, it "honors, praises, or fosters ideologies which are in conflict with the requirements of equal protection for citizens as provided by the constitution and laws of the United States." Taken at its word, and without the benefit of historical context, the ordinance would mandate the removal of the statue of Jackson on horseback that has marked Jackson Square since 1856, said Tulane University Prof. Richard Marksbury.

 

“I don’t want to see any statues taken down," Marksbury told FoxNews.com. "I’m trying to prove a point.”

________

 

The Middle East has ISIS destroying history. In the US, it's liberals.

[Valin]

If Andy came back today and saw what had become of his party...that would be....interesting. Jackson was not the sort of person to suffer fools well...or for long.

 

noun: presentism

 

uncritical adherence to present-day attitudes, especially the tendency to interpret past events in terms of modern values and concepts.

[Draggingtree]

Lee’s Memory

By Philip Leigh on

 

Apr 4, 2016

In the wake of growing hostility toward the Confederacy a New Orleans Robert E. Lee statue is scheduled for destruction and debate is underway in Charlottesville, Virginia to remove another one. Even though Washington & Lee is a private university, it has already yielded to pressures to remove the Confederate flag from the Lee Chapel. The school may ultimately feel compelled to drop the Lee name unless at least a few venerable historians publicly object to the escalating tyranny toward Confederate symbols. To date none have done so, presumably for one of two reasons.

 

First, they believe the odium is justified. Given such an opinion there is no reason why they should object to degrading Lee’s memory and may even wish to promote it.

 

Second, others who think the disdain is excessive lack the will to speak out due to the prevailing opposite sentiment among their peers and the public. It takes courage for historians who have spent years earning the favor of others to express a contrary viewpoint because it may adversely affect their popularity, reputations and book sales. Nonetheless, Mississippian Shelby Foote set a good example of such pluck fifty years ago in the afterword of the second volume of his three-volume Civil War Narrative:http://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/blog/lees-memory/