As most of you probably know, cities such as New Orleans have chosen to take down every confederate monument from the area. While the Confederacy was in favor of slavery and preached racism, the removal of their statues and monuments is flat-out wrong. Have Germany and Austria torn down all their concentration camps? Has Cambodia blocked off all their killing fields? Has South Africa removed all evidence of the apartheid? No. And the United States should not remove monuments from the Confederacy.
Before I go into why, I must get something straight. I am a liberal. I am embarrassed that people in this country still raise the confederate flag like it represents America. But I am still appalled that cities like New Orleans are tearing down Confederate monuments. While these monuments represent hate and racism, they need to be kept intact. Why? Well, for several reasons.
First of all, like it or not, the Confederacy is a part of American history. It is horrible that it is, but it still represents an era that America went through. To tear these monuments is to act like it never happened. There are still the remains of concentration camps in Germany and Austria that people can visit. Concentration camps do not remain because Germany is proud that they once used them to kill thousands of people, they are there because they represent a big part of history. We cannot deny that slavery ever happened or that the Confederacy fought to keep it that way.
Secondly, Confederate sites are educational. It is important that we learn from history. Now that we know how Hitler came into power and how the Holocaust happened, we should be better equipped to prevent that kind of thing from happening again. As we tear down these monuments, we lose more and more of the history of what happened. Our children need to learn from these monuments that slavery and racism was a big deal, and these monuments are a good way of teaching them about that era.
One of my favorite books in George Orwell's 1984. If you haven't read it, it is about a dystopian society run by a dictator known as "Big Brother." The government shapes history by removing news and providing fake news to its citizens. They can erase wars and add patriotism by controlling what people hear. While tearing down Confederate monuments is not nearly to that extent, it does resemble Orwell's dystopia. By tearing down monuments, we are removing a major part of American history. We are deciding that, because slavery was awful, we need to remove everything that symbolizes it and erase it from history. It would be like if Germany got rid of all evidence that the Holocaust happened because they are embarrassed that it ever happened. Confederate monuments are historical evidence of an era in American history, and taking them down is the same thing as controlling our history and putting it out of our memory.
Keeping Confederate monuments up does not make a city racist. Cities in Austria containing a concentration camp are not evil for doing so. It is simply retaining history. Keeping statues is not the same thing as agreeing with them. Today's society wants to get rid of everything in life that bothers them so they can only see things they agree with. Liberals watch CNN because they know they will like what they hear. Conservatives watch FOX News because they know they will agree with what is being said. And Liberals avoid FOX and Conservatives avoid CNN because they do not want to see or hear something they disagree with. The same goes for Confederate monuments. They are being torn down because people do not want to acknowledge what happened. Instead of looking at these monuments and saying, "we can learn from this," people are getting rid of them so they do not have to remember what happened. It is flat-out horrible. Keeping these monuments up is not racist — it is accepting history and acknowledging that we can learn from the past. I hope no more cities choose to take down their monuments. While they represent racism and slavery, they also teach us about an important part of American history and show that even we have not always been an accepting society.
