Confederate Monuments Removal Cost

[Mr. Reactionary]

https://www.google.com/amp/pilotonline.com/news/government/virginia/judge-rules-in-favor-of-groups-trying-to-keep-charlottesville/article_bb1af08e-f426-53ee-ad72-c73239f99b45.amp.html

Hopefully the cost argument will be irrelevant soon.

[Mr. Reactionary]

Charlottesville http://www.richmond.com/news/virginia/removal-of-lee-jackson-statues-could-cost-charlottesville/article_3b328d33-2f05-5efe-b1e7-9650164522f4.html

New Orleans  http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/12/us/new-orleans-confederate-monument-removal-price-trnd/index.html

Two cities - $2.8 million.  They could help a lot people who are truly in need in their cities with this kind of money.

That money would be spent on maintenance over time anyway. Non-story.

What sort of maintenance is this that costs so much?

On the other hand, why should it cost $2.8 million to remove a bunch of statues?  It doesn't cost anywhere near that much when a person moves to move their stuff.

Persons don't normally have to rent heavy machinery and large work trucks and government contractors who make prevailing wages and file an EIS and sue in court to remove their stuff. Apparently every time the flaggers pulled the tarp off the Lee statue it cost several thousand dollars to send a cherry picker out to place it back on. Local government ...

[Mr. Reactionary]

When people advocate for Confederate monuments and other symbols they are literally advocating for something that is un-American and unpatriotic.

If we had Nazi symbols on government property, would we not spend money to remove them?

Both were enemies of the country, and it's the same principle.  Anyone who doesn't realize that the Confederacy was an enemy of our country surely failed US History.

I'm not a fan of the Confederacy, but to compare the Confederacy with Nazi Germany is a false equivalency.  Neo-Confederates and Confederate Revivalists are a different matter. 

Folks have been raised to believe Lee, Jackson, Davis, et al were heroes.  And, at a certain level, they were heroic.  They were brave in battle, they were courageous, and Davis was a courageous President of the Confederacy.  Were they racists?  Davis certainly was, and they probably all were by today's standards, and they defended the indefensible of slavery, but there were other issues that drove the Civil War besides the slave question.

This yanking out of monuments, the "kneelers" at football games; there is absolutely no good will in how they go about things.  I'm not saying that this isn't a case of the shoe being on the other foot; no one cared about the thoughts and feelings of blacks for a century after Appomattox, save for Reconstruction.  And the revival of Confederate imagery during the Civil Rights Revolution years are isn't about history at all.  But a good part of the "dig 'em up" crowd's actions are a case of taking two (2) wrongs and making a right; it never works.  The wrong is in the total disregard for the other side. 

 

My point was more that both were enemies of the United States and neither should be celebrated.  Being raised in the south, I certainly understand that most people here are brought up believing the “heroes” of the Confederacy are heroes of the United States. It’s wrong to believe that and people need to be called out on it.  These men were not patriots, they were traitors.  I know many southerners do not see that, but that doesn’t make it any less true.

Geronimo, sitting bull,  Tecumseh, and Osceola were technically enemies of the United States too. As was John Brown.