Why We Should Keep The Confederate Monuments Right Where They Are

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The Federalist

Why We Should Keep The Confederate Monuments Right Where They Are

Tearing down Confederate statues, or any monuments from our history, will not change the past. But it will make for a poorer, less enlightened future.

 By John Daniel Davidson AUGUST 18, 2017

 

In the wake of Charlottesville, a chorus of media outlets, political activists, and random people on the Internet have called for the removal or destruction of Confederate statues in cities across the country. They say we shouldn’t honor a bunch of racists who fought to preserve slavery, and that it’s long past time for these painful reminders of our past to come down—stow them away in a museum or smash them to pieces, just get them off the streets.

 This iconoclastic impulse is a mistake, even after the harrowing events in Charlottesville last weekend. It’s a mistake not because there was anything noble about the Confederacy or its raison d’être, which was slavery, but because there is something noble—and, for a free people, necessary—about preserving our history so we can understand who we are and how we should live.

 For all the tough talk this week about the problems with these historical monuments, there hasn’t been nearly enough discussion of their history.