[Leica] IMG: Czech Holocaust memorial

[Howard L Ritter Jr]

Douglas—

One of the wonders of the U.S., not an unmixed virtue, is that the freedom to say any damn fool thing you want to, with few limitations, is as prized as the freedom to own (and sometimes carry) firearms. It would be unthinkable for any American legislative body to prohibit any form of speech that does not directly seek to incite violence or to reveal official secrets. That is why white-supremacist organizations are able to demonstrate. No one is willing to trust the government to decide what speech is impermissible. In my opinion, even to attach additional penalties to the commission of a crime when the criminal was motivated by “hate” is indefensible; it is to punish a person for his thoughts as well as his criminal actions. A law such as Ireland’s of 1989 would be unthinkable here.

The response I keep wishing for to these terrified losers when they assemble is: Don’t attend. If you must attend, stand still with your back to the marchers and don’t make a sound. If you can’t stand still, shake your finger. Videos of marchers eliciting no emotion, not even outrage, at most silent condemnation, would help to give them the ridicule they deserve by documenting their impotence.

Many people, of whom I am one, feel that to bring down statues commemorating consequential figures on the wrong side of history is to risk whitewashing history and leading future generations to forget the sins of the past, at the risk of sinning in the future. The arrogance of a society pretending to be better than it is is a peculiarly pernicious trait. I think it would be particularly fitting for Confederate statues to be relocated from public places of business and traffic to, say, Confederate cemeteries, like with like, or other Civil War cemeteries, with explanatory plaques, as if to force the historical figures, and onlookers alike, to contemplate the human cost of their treason.

—howard


> On Aug 16, 2017, at 5:41 PM, Douglas Barry <imra at iol.ie> wrote:
> 
> 
> Bizarre that the lessons of history are so quickly forgotten. Listening to those sad sacks shouting slogans like "Jews will not replace us" in VA and getting away with it, makes my blood boil. In Ireland, we use the "Prohibition to Inciting Hatred Act 1989" and shouting slogans like that would have the shouters in jail before they could blink.
> 
> I'm amazed at all this keruffle over controversial statues which, in my opinion, are works of art - for better or for worse - and should not be destroyed, but rather moved to less prominent places such as museums or sculpture gardens where the public still has access. Proper education about the secession seems to be missing in US education, and needs to be implemented too.
> Apologies for the rant, but the US seems suddenly a weird and backward place to us, viewing it from afar through the media prism.
> Douglas