Why have they not done it yet. He is a proven racist.

All the important parts of Mormon doctrine / practice are a bit clouded, aren't they?


sorta like No True Scotsman, there isn't a true, Christlike mormon, even at the top of the ladder:

No One's perfect (as if that exists!)

sometimes the Lord's anointed 'Speaks as a man' & must be forgiven...

for us old-timers, DOMckay is said to have directed that Ricks College be moved to Idaho Falls... but that didn't happen (they couldn't get it under the UP RR underpass at Rigby!, ha ha)

the Complete African males / PH thing....We all know, along with the MMM 'situation'.

My father had a large BYU logo put on his headstone. It looks like an advertisement. Someday, that headstone will be toppled.

donbagley Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> My father had a large BYU logo put on his
> headstone. It looks like an advertisement.
> Someday, that headstone will be toppled.


In a cemetery near us a guy has a big Daredevil fishing lure on the headstone. It is carved in the rock stone and colored just like the real thing. The bright red on it sure catches the eye when you drive by. Catches the eye just like the real thing used to catch fish for him.

+GNPE:
"No One's perfect (as if that exists!)"

==Perfection is a relative term.
As for racism, either it is a good thing or a bad thing.
The Bible has no rules against racism, Why?
Sure, it might talk about neighbor this and that but are we talking global or just your own tribe?
Just read the tanakh. It sounds like it is ok to kill other tribes, man, woman little boys. It is ok to keep young girls as brides. It is ok to steel from other tribes.
It is not ok for a jew to kill another jew.

The Bible has no rules against or for pedophilia. No rules against or for abortions. No rules against blood transfusions (Jehovah's Witness). No rules for warfare. No rules for or against torture.

If humans are capable of deciding for themselves for all those other cases, then there is no need for the Bible at all.

~~~~iceman9090



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/02/2020 12:46AM by Tevai.

Frankly, if anyone should want it down it's women but we all know that isn't going to happen.

Well, if the church was going to rebrand BYU, now would sure be the time to do it and to come up with a different name that has nothing to do with a prophet or polygamist who espoused racist ideals. I have a feeling many if not most of the alumni would be very happy about that.

The only thing worse than rebranding,if it ever did try to do it, would be if they picked a new but equally negative or defective name.

The ONLY re-branding should be to Orson Pratt University.

Now there's a descriptive acronym!

Or so it seems to me...

BeenThereDunnThatExMo Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> The ONLY re-branding should be to Orson Pratt
> University. > Now there's a descriptive acronym!

An even more descriptive acronym would result if they renamed that megaschool after Whoreson Pratt's sibling, Parley.

Then the proud grandkid matriculates could cherish Alma Mater sheepskins emblazoned with PPPU.

They should rename it Sarah Pratt: she's the one with the integrity.

And the J. Reuben Clark Law School should be renamed the William Law School.

BeenThereDunnThatExMo Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> The ONLY re-branding should be to Orson Pratt
> University. > Now there's a descriptive acronym>
> Or so it seems to me...

The Journal of Discourses records an 1855 speech by Young in which he again spoke of a man who "was a fortune-teller, necromancer, an astrologer, a soothsayer and possessed as much talent as any man that walked on the American soil, and was one of the wickedest men I ever saw."

Young recalled the fortune-teller sought the golden plates and "rode over sixty miles three times the same season they were obtained by Joseph Smith."

Sounds like a powerful mentor to me.

If it comes to rebranding that campus under Timpanogas, let's call it Luman University!

"a fortune-teller, necromancer, an astrologer, a soothsayer and possessed as much talent as any man that walked on the American soil, and was one of the wickedest men I ever saw."
Brigham Young, JOD, 1865

Seems like Brig loved Luman as a brother Freemason.

Rolls trippingly off the tongue, Luman University.

It seems to me that the bulk of this fad is done by young dumb kids who have no respect for others' property. It's also, currently, 'The Thing to do'.

Want to tear down something? Tear down an old barn, or your parent's garage--and be prepared for what they will do to you as a result.

Or, if these kids have a car of their own, tear down each-others' car and see how proud they are for acting so juvenile and participating in such nonsense. (It ain't going to be a friendly pat on the back!)

You realize, I presume, that David Petraeus, a former four-star general and head of the CIA, recently wrote a piece in the Atlantic calling for the removal of all Confederate statues from public spaces and the renaming of all military bases that currently bear the names of confederate "traitors?"

Does he count as a "faddish. . . young dumb kid?"

No, because Petraeus advocated for the removal via democratic process, not by violent uprising.

Nice strawman that you knocked down there, though.

> No, because Petraeus advocated for the removal via
> democratic process, not by violent uprising.

Show me where I disputed that.


---------------
> Nice strawman that you knocked down there, though.

Since I did not dispute what you said, you are the one constructing the straw man.

Downtown SLC by the temple and the statue of Brigham Young posed like a conquering hero while the Native American man sits at the base. That has long disturbed me.

How about replacing with the Native American standing tall and Brigham at the base begging forgiveness for his atrocities to the indigenous peoples of this country?

Tearing down is only half the job.

Of course the Mormons would excuse Brigham by saying 'Heavenly Father works in mysterious ways.'

Good point about the First Nations representative sitting in the shadow of Brigham, Though it is a pretty fair metaphor for reality. There is a heroic-size native statue on the state capitol grounds, a few blocks up the hill. I believe it is a copy of a statue of Massasoit, the original done for the state of Massachusetts.

I just looked it up because I wasn't sure of the spelling of Massasoit, and there is apparently also a copy of the statue on BYU grounds. They found the mold in storage at BYU, and decided to make themselves a statue. The sculptor was Utah Mormon Cyrus Dallin. 'Dallin", that has a familiar ring.

https://universe.byu.edu/2002/02/04/indian-statue-a-welcoming-symbol/

I wonder if peppering Utah with statues of a well-known native of the North Atlantic coast of the US, but is simply a no-name native here, constitutes cultural appropriation, or tokenism? Not that I really worry about it all that much. There is only enough energy for so many battles, and that issue doesn't clear the bar for me at the moment.


As for Brigham, if he should be removed for anything, I would vote for polygamy as the reason. Yes, he was racist, but he wasn't famous or commemorated because of his racism. The racism, though it did real damage, was incidental.

I don't know that he was commemorated for polygamy either, but he was certainly famous for it.

So let's take a look at the ledger:
hostile racism toward Utah natives in the 19th century, who understandably objected to having their lands taken from them by Mormons.

Benevolent (?) racism toward natives by 20th century Mormons via the Indian Placement Program and similar efforts.

Institutional racism against African ancestry until 1978, and not a real disavowal of that racism until "the essay" posted on the LDS website in the early 21st century.

Institutional sexism of polygamy in the 19th into the early 20th century, with fairly prominent afterclaps of polygamy alive and well in Utah to this day.

Institutional sexism in Mormonism to this day, with the actual ruling authority in the church still denied to women.


You know, I think I just talked myself into changing my mind. Brigham ought to come down. There is sufficient just cause to do so, IMHO.

Oops. There I go assuming. They let apostate art onto BYU/Utah state capitol? Who knew there were such freethinkers in Utah. :)

He was born in Springville, and his parents had left the LDS Church before their marriage, Not sure when they married, but Cy was born in 1861, so they were early adopters of exMormonism!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyrus_Edwin_Dallin

Quite a list there. Makes me wish there were even more statues to tear down, haha.

Don't forget Joseph Smith having an African American sealed to him to be his servant for eternity in the CK. Shall we alert the media about that one? :)

I believe that sealing came after JS's death. IIRC, JS promised her exaltation but BY resisted and ultimately only agreed to let her into the Smith family as a servant.

Don't forget MMM, BoJ. That organized slaughter should rank high on the list of Young's sins.

Brigham Young was only as racist as god told him to be.

Time to remove god too!

See what happens when an AP goes bad?

It's straight to blasphemy against the Holy Ghost and then Outer Darkness!

I too was hoping that statue would get pulled down. Thats a good one to pull down for sure.

I would like to see ALL statues torn down !

Doctrine < > Policy

as long as ChurchCo thinks they're trapped by this binary model, I don't think any repudiation of BY, the PoGP,the D&C, or other written or spoken statements is possible.

A Winner Needs A Loser

Statue for a conquering hero
Reminder of enemies slain,
Bruised, battered, the losers
Vanquished, ensuring his fame

Secrets don't last forever
Unearthed, they wretch with their pain
Stories teeming with subplots
The legends may not remain

A grand fable still churning
The truth scratches and claws
For a face to be seen
As the hidden rumbles and gnaws

The losers will rise
As a new day unearths
A story replete
with multitude truths


By biding itself
Has time ever healed?
Or are wounds finally calmed
By what is revealed?



(Yes. Bored this morning enough to write bad poetry.)

Actually I really like your lyrics. To me that's what they are anyway...

Time is waiting for the right people.

Those who are left might be right.

Right now, they are lying, not standing.

Who stands for Mormonism actually falls. Fall is coming up.

This subject will keep doing it too.

The "leaders" will get horse. The "followers" will become (wo)men.

They will realize their fallacy. Brigham will fall Young.

It's a matter of time, and space.

It's a matter of kids growing up, walking up, and staying young.

Nope, leave them be.
Taliban in Afghanistan destroyed cliff carvings because they did not square with the groups religious belief. They destroyed history.
What we are seeing today is the same type of behavior.

Surely there are one or two differences. The Buddha, for instance, never killed or enslaved anyone whereas Young did and the Confederacy did.

Nor were there in Afghanistan any people whose suppression was symbolized by the cliff monuments when the Taliban destroyed them.

Those may not add up to a reason to destroy any art but they surely militate in favor of removing the problematic statuary from public spaces.

The problem with your standard is that it would have prevented the removal of statues of Hitler and Stalin from the conquered and largely enslaved countries of Central and Eastern Europe. Or do you think those statues should still be standing? How about the Chinese statues in Xinjiang, where Beijing is engaged in something close to genocide? If the Uyghurs ever get their freedom back, is it your contention that they should not remove the symbols of their oppression and even genocide?

The early Buddhist history of that region is hazy. In many places, local rulers adopted Buddhism presumably, and it spread in a manner similar to Christianity. Ashoka, who played a massive role in spreading Buddhism through the north of the subcontinent certainly did start out as a warlord, and a handful of his monuments still exist. The conversion of Tibet involved some political machinations, although only the scantiest details survive.

Gautama's lifestory is shrouded in myth and legend - one of the few "facts" (if they are such) is that we know he came from a royal family. So it is quite possible Gautama himself abused power at some point, and this was edited out of the hagiographies.

The destruction of those Buddhas (which I disagree with) is part of a tradition of Muslim defacing/destroying Kufir statues going back over a thousand years. Hagia Sophia was defaced in Istanbul, and so were the statues in the Kaaba in Mecca. They think the Buddhas are disrespectful to modern Islamic Afghan mores, and so must be removed.

> They think the Buddhas are disrespectful to
> modern Islamic Afghan mores, and so must be
> removed.

Yes, obviously. But that doesn't make them right.

Dear Vegetable, Or are Bell Peppers technically berries?

Anyway. Destroying History doesn't change it but only changes the record of a history, thereby clouding facts and allowing anyone with an agenda to add their own twist as they paint themselves the victims.

To the contrary some groups establish museums and write books to record history so "the atrocities are never forgotten in hopes they won't be repeated."


I find this a much better approach.

So important for everyone to do this. Most everyone will know about the Holocaust where so many Jews lost their lives and suffered because of the Museum of Tolerance. However few know of the other 5 million non-Jews who lost their lives as well. And the young gay kids I know have no idea that the gays were in the camps as well and when the camps were emptied most of the gays were taken to jail to finish their sentences. That is why sometimes I wear a pink triangle instead of making sure all pink triangles are destroyed.


Tear down all you want. It's building up with blocks of understanding that count.

Done & Done Wrote:
--------------------------------------------------
> Anyway. Destroying History doesn't change it but
> only changes the record of a history, thereby
> clouding facts and allowing anyone with an agenda
> to add their own twist as they paint themselves
> the victims.

Exactly.

> To the contrary some groups establish museums and
> write books to record history so "the atrocities
> are never forgotten in hopes they won't be
> repeated."
>
>I find this a much better approach.

Yes, but I've seen versions of both strategies in different places at different times. On the destruction angle, I've visited a few of these, seen a few old stone heads of former commie dictators (Ceaucescu, etc.) lying around gathering moss and graffiti in parks, and so forth. On the museum angle, Basque, Irish, etc. museums are out there dealing with persecution of their various groups.

The interesting thing is that phenomena has been going on for millennia, yet the atrocities keep being repeated. I wonder if there's a lesson there but probably not.

We could get into a digression here about how limited a lot of museums are in terms of their budget and exhibition space, and how many museums in actuality only exhibit maybe 10-20% of their total collection to the public at any given time. I think there's a high likelihood of a lot of these statues taken down "for musuems" will end up covered in tarp in some warehouse. Which is logical, but fundamentally disingenuous for politicans to talk about things "belonging in a museum."

They grossly overestimate the general public's motivation or ability to a) do their own research, b) put two and two together, c) give a damn when they're trying to make a living and pay the bills during the Coronapocalypse.


> So important for everyone to do this. Most
> everyone will know about the Holocaust where so
> many Jews lost their lives and suffered because of
> the Museum of Tolerance. However few know of the
> other 5 million non-Jews who lost their lives as
> well. And the young gay kids I know have no idea
> that the gays were in the camps as well and when
> the camps were emptied most of the gays were taken
> to jail to finish their sentences. That is why
> sometimes I wear a pink triangle instead of making
> sure all pink triangles are destroyed.

Not to mention Jehovah's Witnesses, socialists (of various sub-sect), Catholic dissidents (Kolbe, Bonhoeffer), and just about anyone who opposed the regime. Because that's what that sort of regime does. Granted, the NS had a particular hard-on for Jews, for whatever historical/psychological reasons, and this is not to diminish that reality.

The lessons not learned. Yes. But eight billion people on the planet each yearning to be A number one, the top of the heap, does not a great classroom make.

The abused often become the abusers they say. Seems to be true enough. How does that play into the world population as a whole?

The Mormons claimed to be victims, the persecuted, but ultimately were the perpetrators--- and not just Brigham. Takes two to tango but it took thousands and thousands to carry out his agenda. What a dance that was.

When one tyrant is stopped, there may as well be a host saying, okay, "NEXT!"

So the prophets today aren't that bloody, but are they any less dangerous?

Bell Pepper Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> The early Buddhist history of that region is hazy.
> In many places, local rulers adopted Buddhism
> presumably, and it spread in a manner similar to
> Christianity. Ashoka, who played a massive role in
> spreading Buddhism through the north of the
> subcontinent certainly did start out as a warlord,
> and a handful of his monuments still exist. The
> conversion of Tibet involved some political
> machinations, although only the scantiest details
> survive.

That's true, and the Tibetans themselves were noteworthy (even self-described, as if confessing a long-past error) as a warlike, feuding, violent race.

This was long before the Han, in their current version as the PRC, came to prominence thanks to population increases and westward migration pressures seeking minerals and living space, similar to the westward expansion of the United States, or the eastward expansion of Russia, all during the 19th century. Peculiarly parallel phenomena when you think about it. (And this was century's after the Mongols' vast empire had risen and fallen.) All of them had their particular religions (Buddhism, Confucianism, Orthodoxy, Protestantism, Maoism/post-Mao-communocapitalism, etc.)

But the essence of the true religions in every case hast to start and end with the individual. Krishna didn't tell Arjuna to drop his sword and quit being a warrior and become a sannyasin in some cave, he told him to do his duty and fight, only surrendering all to the ultimate, and doing it without any sense of being the "doer" of any action. Then no karma is created.


> Gautama's lifestory is shrouded in myth and legend
> - one of the few "facts" (if they are such) is
> that we know he came from a royal family. So it is
> quite possible Gautama himself abused power at
> some point, and this was edited out of the
> hagiographies.

True, and I don't believe in most of the "miracle" stories associated with Siddhartha Gautama / Shakyamuni Buddha (the last two names actually being titles or descriptive nics: Sage of the Shakya Clan, and the Awakened One.)

Siddhartha, prior to his awakening/enlightenment, was no doubt guilty of as many sins/errors as any other human being. Remember, during his 49 day meditation under the tree, he recapitulated all of his previous lives, something like 500 or whatever it's supposed to be (I'd've figured something like a few hundred million at least, but it doesn't matter.)

In some of those "past lives" (or even concurrent lives) he was a Buddha, in others a sinful person, and he even incarnated in various hell realms from time to time, either to work off his karma (if he had gained hell from his own causes) or to help those stuck there to work off their karma faster (if he was already a buddha in the previous life and chose to incarnate in a hell-realm; these are two very different things.)

Point being, Buddha's life history, lapses, even possible crimes (he might've murdered people in some prior lifetime) become irrelevant upon the attainment of Buddhahood, for himself and every other (apparent) sentient being.

The standard narrative is that when he finally stood up from his meditation under the Bodhi Tree after 49 days, he had wiped out all his karmas. (FWIW, YMMV, etc.)


> The destruction of those Buddhas (which I disagree
> with) is part of a tradition of Muslim
> defacing/destroying Kufir statues going back over
> a thousand years. Hagia Sophia was defaced in
> Istanbul, and so were the statues in the Kaaba in
> Mecca. They think the Buddhas are disrespectful to
> modern Islamic Afghan mores, and so must be
> removed.

Yes, that is clear and the hardline Islamic tendency toward iconoclasm of all sorts was inherent in the religion from the start. That's not necessarily wrong in and of itself; I understand how a person might feel, in their religion, that it's wrong to depict anything human in art, that it leads to idolatry, and so refuse to make such art or have it in their mosques. It crosses a line when you destroy someone *else's* imagery because you don't like it. Avoid iconography, fine, but don't mess with someone else if they happen to like it.

I also don't understand how the Buddha statues managed to last 1000 years without being destroyed, yet someone decided to destroy them in 2001. I'm wondering what got them so ticked off in the late 1990s. The failed Russian invasion? U.S. fiddling around? Wahabist militant preaching from Saudi Arabia?

This is why politics and religion will always be inextricably intertwined, for good and ill.

FWIW, I've been to the actual Bodhi Tree in Bodhgaya, Krishna's supposed birthplace in Vrindavan, watched corpses burning in pyres along the Ganges in Varanasi, saw the Temple of the Tooth in Sri Lanka which holds one of the Buddha's teeth (!) and barely missed getting blown to smithereens by a car bomb that had gone off at that location a few days before; the scorch marks and broken pieces of metal were still lying around.

I've also seen a hair of the Prophet's beard (PBUH!) at a museum in Istanbul, visited the tomb of Rumi in Konya and of Francis in Assisi, and had close encounters in real life with two popes (Benedict, on the plaza at Vatican City with about a thousand other people all around; and the pope of the Georgian Orthodox Church in Tbilsi, whatever his name was.)

Impressive history.

I'll add a few minor points. First, the Mongol Empire wasn't an empire in the usual sense. Steppe society was organized around the raid, not conquest, occupation, and administration. A federation would arise (this applied to the Hsung-nu, whom we know as the Huns in Hungary and to various other Turkic peoples who exercised significant power in Central Asia), then expand with attacks into China and Westward. The invaders would destroy, steal, demand repeated tribute, and return to the steppe. Usually the confederations then fragmented into the constituent tribes. It was booty, and the sharing of such, that held the larger organizations together.

The Mongols did not at first try to administer China. The administrators effectively taxed everything, leaving no resources to manage agriculture, roads, trade, etc. After a couple of generations, roughly coinciding with Kublai Khan, the Chinese branch had learned enough to want to rule consistently and a dispute with the confederate headquarters near Lake Baikal led to a severance of the connections as Mongol China went its own way. Much the same thing happened in India and Persia/Mesopotamia and the Golden Horde. Within a century the "empire" was became several regional dynasties.

Second, the Mongols did not have an official religion. They had their common tribal beliefs, but the strength of the steppe confederacy lay in its ecumenical organization--meaning that the Mongols, whose numbers never surpassed several hundred thousand--let the Turkic peoples, later the steppe Persians/Iranians, and others worship as they pleased. Just as the Khans maintained political power by distributing the spoils of war among the affiliated subordinate tribes, so too they sponsored various religions as a way to maintain loyalty or at least quiescence. Among the best contemporary histories, for instance, were one composed by a Taoist camp follower and another by an Iranian from Khwarazm.

Finally, in answer to your query about the Buddhist sculptures in Afghanistan it is important to remember the vast range of differences between various forms of Islam. Yes, the initial surge out of Arabia was iconoclastic. But the religion that took hold in Iran and more specifically Afghanistan and Pakistan was very tolerant. That was Sufi Islam, a spiritually individualistic, less hierarchical tradition that made the region a very pleasant place for foreigners as late as the 1970s. Meanwhile these countries did not forbid artistic representations of humans or animals; Iranian art in particular is full of such imagery. So there was no reason for people to take offense at the Buddhist statues.

Then came a series of transformative events. The partition of India, with its millions of casualties, started a gradual process of militarizing Pakistan. And in the late 1940s a particularly noxious form of Islam--Deobandi Islam--was started in northern India/Pakistan. The Wahabis in Saudi Arabia financed these groups but they achieved little success until the 1980s, by which time the US (and Saudi Arabia) was funneling money and weapons through the anti-western ISI in Pakistan into Afghanistan, whose military leadership--the Mujahideen--represented the most militant Muslim groups. When the US failed in the early 1990s to rebuild the devastated country, Afghanis and Pakistanis felt deeply betrayed.

What emerged from the Soviet war was accordingly an angry, xenophobic Islam radically different from the traditional Central Asian religion. The Taliban arose from this milieu. They were ideologically Deobandi, financially Saudi, and militarily aligned closely with the ISI. That is why bin Laden and Al Qaeda were able to establish such a strong position there, a base from which they spread largesse among the more aggressively Islamic Afghan tribes and political factions.

This explains how the statues lasted so long and were destroyed so suddenly. In traditional eyes, the monuments were pretty cool and nice to show foreigners. But the Soviet war, the American betrayal, and the influx of Deobandi and Wahabi ideas and money transformed Islam. By 2000 the Taliban had gained control of most of Afghanistan and was determined to impose its vision on everyone there--a process that was mirrored over the border in Pakistan's Northwest Province. The Islam we see in those countries now bears scant resemblance to the religion that existed up through the 1960s and 1970s.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 07/10/2020 04:32AM by Lot's Wife.

Just my opinion, but tearing down modern statutes is not "erasing history." It's only taking down modern edifices built with the purpose of honoring and respecting men who supposedly should require this honor and respect.

Should Germans not have removed statues and monuments of Adolph Hitler and should Russians not have removed statues and monuments of Lenin and Stalin because that is "removing the history of these men?"

History is not being erased. It will always be taught in the history books, displayed in museums, and be the main plot of documentaries, movies and best selling books. These men (or women) are simply being removed from public places because they are not worth veneration. That is the purpose of statues in public spaces, not simply to preserve history.

The Buddhist statues, on the other hand, are not modern edifices built with the intention of the modern world to reverence and respect, they are ANCIENT archaeological artifacts. Not the same thing. Most people are able to see the value in preserving rare and ancient artifacts, regardless of how disturbing the history behind the artifacts might be (unless you are a religious extremist like the Taliban who truly WANT to decimate and erase any trace of non-Muslim history).

Modern public statues should be displayed for modern people whose character and place in society most people can consider worthy of reverence and who have contributed to the benefit and progress of modern society and modern day citizens. If such statues no longer provide that, they should probably be removed and instead be placed in museums or private conservatoires for historical purposes.

It’s not so much that he WAS a racist. It’s that he perpetuated a system of oppression that lasted more than 100 years. But the church trying to rectify that, even if not being honest about it or denouncing it, seems to be different than the South trying its best to keep the oppression of the Confederacy alive and well and remembered. I do wish they’d change the text under the BY statue in SLC that separates out the “people” who came into the valley with BY from the “colored slaves.” But I’m ok with their recognition of him as a colonizer. I know y’all probably feel differently. It’s just that I’ve spent a couple decades of my life in Utah and a couple in Dixie and I never felt that BY was esteemed FOR his racism as the Confederate leaders are.

Nope. Leave the statues up. Failure to learn from history means you repeat it. I’m not a fan of erasing history. I hear lots of criticism of the LDS church doing just that.

So Germany was wrong to take down all the Nazi monuments and the Russians and Eastern Europeans should have left up all the statues of Lenin and Stalin?

Lot's Wife Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> So Germany was wrong to take down all the Nazi
> monuments and the Russians and Eastern Europeans
> should have left up all the statues of Lenin and
> Stalin?

Can we be a little more clear, going forward, about which specific statues we're discussing at a given time? There is a difference between CSA statues (an unrecognized, failed state) and statues of the actual founding fathers upon which the U.S. (or the given country) is based.

I truly fear some nutjob pulling a McVeigh at some point, and I'm not being snarky in the least.

Along the same lines, it's funny how we haven't heard much about Jihadi attacks lately. Maybe they're staying inside because of the Covid.

Speaking of Lenin and Stalin, there are several statues of both of these men standing in the U.S. For now.

Not to mention FDR, who interred thousands of Japanese-Americans in internment camps during WW2 because he felt a little suspicious about their loyalties, the racist.

Granted, he wasn't as bad as Woodrow Wilson. Wilson was a southerner (born in Virginia, raised in Georgia), the first Southerner to become President since before the Civil War. He re-segrated Federal agencies, and spoke strongly in defense of the KKK and and against Reconstructionist policies which had attempted to "put the white South under the heel of the black South," in his words.

Agreed on Woodrow Wilson in particular.

I'm merely pointing out the problem with the notion that all statues should stay.

I don't have clear ideas on which confederacy monuments should go and which should stay. I do favor the relegation of some/most/all to memorial parks and/or museums because when such things stand in public and governmental spaces they represent official views--and that is unfair to the huge number of people who suffered under the confederacy and other American institutions. They are as American (in some cases more American) than anyone else.

I am all in favor of saving history in books, in museums, perhaps in dedicated outdoor locations. But Germany was right to remove the Nazi memorials from public spaces and to build the Holocaust Memorial over the ruins of Hitler's administrative apparatus near the Brandenburg Gate. The Poles and Balts and Czechs and Hungarians and others were likewise correct to remove the symbols of their oppression by the Soviet Union. Having experienced a horror does not mean that the symbols of that horror must survive in public spaces.

I have no problem if those symbols are stored in a warehouse and only 10% of them are displayed in museums. They are history, to be sure, but they do not deserve official recognition. A few renderings of Chinggis Khan are enough: the world lost nothing by removing the memorials to Mongol power--huge pyramids of human skulls spread across Central Asia--that he built and preserved.

Contrarily, to look at this with Buddha Eye, it might be argued that the empty space in the outline or silhouette of the Buddha is a more appropriate emblem of his attainment than the statue.

The oldest Buddhist images consisted only of a pair of footprints or an umbrella with no one underneath, not any image of Buddha.

Although Brigham young's actions were in many instances deplorable he was a dominant figure in the western migration. If we go about tearing down these images of our nation's history then soon our true history will disappear. So for that reason I am opposed to tearing down any of these reminders of both the good and the bad happenings in our national history.