The problem is people are not just going after Confederate statues, but statues of any figures that had a dark or troubling past. Which has included Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and even Abraham Lincoln who was about polar opposite of a Confederate general. All of these men were a product of their own times and deeply complex men. If we take down the Jefferson Memorial and the Washington Monument as some have suggested, we will be sending a message to our children and even ourselves that these men were not important. There are so many other aspects of their lives that mean so much to us. The fact that they once held slaves shouldn't completely define them.
Where does this end? I will take two presidents that I do not like, but if we continue to call for all racists having their statues being taken down, they both would qualify. I will call for both men not to have anything taken down and we must remember them for all of their good and ill.
The first is Woodrow Wilson. I believe he is the most racist president post Civil War. He single handedly helped reinvigorate and bring back the resurgence of the KKK. He also did more than probably any other president to limit and curtail the rights of American Citizens in World War I. But I do not believe any statues or memorials to him should be taken down, even though as a small government constitutionalist I think the damage he did was immense.
Then there is President Franklin Roosevelt. He committed one of the darkest racial crimes in our history when he approved the rounding up and internment of Japanese Americans. I think his big government, big spending programs retarded our growth and didn't accelerate it. Yet those programs got the credit and set the example for future leaders to follow. Even though I don't like the man, I think removing statues of him would do the nation a great disservice. Let's keep these statues up and learn from these men's failures as well as their successes.
I send my love to all of you.