You’re stuck with them
A Virginia judge has ruled that statues of Confederate generals Robert E. Lee and Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson in Charlottesville are war monuments that the city cannot remove without permission from the state.
In a nine-page ruling obtained from the University of Virginia School of Law website, Circuit Court Judge Richard E. Moore said neither the intentions of the people who erected the statues nor how they make people feel change the fact that the statues pay homage to the Civil War. Moore cited state code in his ruling that says it is illegal for municipalities to remove such monuments to war.
Gotta keep those monuments to war, because war is such a great thing.
The ruling comes nearly two years after the Unite the Right rally, a white nationalist gathering, left counterprotester Heather Heyer dead. The Charlottesville City Council voted to remove the statues in response to the rally, CNN affiliate WVIR-TV reported.
The city also covered the statues with black tarp while it mourned the deaths of Heyer and two troopers who died during the rally. However Judge Moore ruled the tarps had to be removed because the city never defined what a “temporary” shrouding meant. Moore also said the tarps have interfered with the public’s right to see the monuments and enjoy the parks.
In your face, people of Charlottesville and Richmond and other Virginia municipalities.
New solution: do as they did elsewhere and deface and destroy them.
If the state dithers in ordering their removal, a mob will do so overnight sooner or later.
I would think the absence of the tarps interfere with some of the public’s right to enjoy the parks. Not the part of the public regarded as important, I suppose.
Regarding the display or removal of these statues I do think there is a compromise possible. Crown them with bronze castings of the shape suggested by a poo emoji. The statue on display says that here is a historical figure once admired (trying to dodge accusations of rewriting history here) while the poo addition says that we know better now and do not think so highly of him.
I would like to see the statues gone, but…
Read the state code cited. On the merits, this judgment seems to be clearly correct.
We want to do things legally, right? We don’t want people just ignoring the laws to do what they think is right. We may agree with them here, but if that’s the standard then how do you object when people on the other side follow that standard?
I’d suggest not criticizing the judge for this. Change the law and take them down. The law references the Gulf War so it was amended within the last 16 years. It can be changed again.
Or maybe it can be challenged as unconstitutional. It seems weird to have a law that lets municipalities erect statues of their own accord but then forbids them from taking them down.
(I wouldn’t feel at all bad if someone ripped them down, but I’d be concerned about this escalating.)
Skeletor, I actually hate to agree with you on this, but…
Yeah, the problem with allowing the law to be ignored by one is that it will later be ignored by another, with much less noble motives. Sort of like how everyone was willing to ignore Obama’s executive orders, but now…
On the other hand, why aren’t the statues considered a monument to rebellion?
The South keeps thinking it was a noble cause, it is time they admitted that the despicable institution of slavery was more important than USA. Exploiting people was more important than unity.
I grew up and attended high school in the south. In history class “we” referred to the rebels, and “they” referred to the United States of America. They are not patriots no matter their MAGA hats, they are vile bigots who think white is right and get back black.
Barbara, I went to high school in Oklahoma, which seems unable to get past the belief that they were a southern state (they were still “Indian Territory” then). Fortunately not all my teachers were local, and a little reality crept in, though they often had to play the “good people on both sides” game.
Also w/Skeletor on this one. Memphis finally got rid of our Confederate statues by selling the park land they stood on to a private buyer. I don’t see that particular “out” in the VA law, but there must be a legal way to get rid of the statues, whether it’s by changing the law or staying within the current one.
Obviously changing the law would be best. A majority of TN isn’t ready to do that, and apparently a majority of VA isn’t, either.
I didn’t explicitly blame the judge in the post. That’s a bit weaselly, but still, I avoided doing so on purpose. I don’t know enough to know if the judge could have ruled otherwise or how hard it would be to change state code or how binding state code really is or anything else like that.