Why do we want to tear down his statue when he hated slavery?
I read a Citizen Tom Post titled, Gen. Robert E. Lee: A Man Worth Remembering, Not Erasing, In the post was a writing by the General expressing his hatred of slavery, yet he chose to side with the Confederates during the Civil War..
A commenter provided a link that explained that even though he hated slavery, his leadership resulted in the loss of thousands of lives during the Civil War.
The Purpose of This Post
Is to relate two King Solomon verses to the folly of how removing his statue will not only erase his memory but will also erase hope for future generations.
King Solomon
No one remembers the former generations, and even those yet to come will not be remembered by those who follow them. (Ecclesiastes 1:11
Anyone who is among the living has hope –even a live dog is better off than a dead lion! (Ecclesiastes 9:4)
What’s My Point?
The Citizen Tom post contained this following statement and question.:
“It is history that teaches us to hope.” Why would we want to erase it?
My point is to question the wisdom of the statement “that history teaches us to hope.”
In other words, if the statement is true and we choose to erase history, are we are engaging in the same folly observed by King Solomon 3000 years ago?
In My Opinion
What we all should consider is why we humans wind up repeating the same foolish decisions of past generations.
When we choose to either forget or erase history, we erase the lessons we should learn and understand about the folly’s in history along with the hope that the future will not repeat the same follies of past generations.
If we read and understand the folly of why the General choose to side with the Confederacy, we will better understand his decision was based on his belief that the politicians in his time were wrong about States’ rights vs. Federal authority, not the issue of slavery.
In other words, when we erase the memory of people who by made foolish choices in their lifetimes, we increase the chances resulted in a war because of a political disagreement.
For example, consider the General agreed that slavery was wrong, yet decided that there was no other choice but to war to serve his political beliefs at the time.
The General decision resulted in thousands of lives lost along with the hopes of both those who lost their lives, their families, and their Nation engaged in a war.
Sad, what King Solomon observed was future generations will never wise up and learn not to repeat the same follies that he both observed and engaged in during his life time as a result of human vanities.
The same vanity that Adam and Eve chose to believe we humans know more than our Creator.
In other words, unless we wise up to understand our susceptibility to vanity to believe we know better than past generations, or our Creator, there will never be any hope in the future that we humans will wise up and learn from history.
The lesson we can learn from General Robert E. Lee in my opinion was his folly to choose to engage in war instead of finding political compromise for his disagreement about States vs. Federal authority.
While some will say the end of the Civil War served to end slavery, I disagree and believe slavery would have ended by political compromise same as other Nations in the world were changing to end slavery at that time in history instead of choosing to engage in a war to solve political disagreements.
If Interested
Read the Source links below and a previous post suggestion of a solution for Civil War statues.
You Decide
Is there any truth in the statement, “It is history that teaches us to hope?”
Is there any hope that in the future we humans will ever wise up to understand the lessons of wisdom and love in the Bible instead of continually erasing the lessons of wisdom and love and over time repeating the same follies?
Is it wise to also tear down statues of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Columbus, etc. etc., instead of learning about either the good or bad wisdom and follies they engaged during their times of lives because it is worth remembering so as to either learn to emulate the good in their lives or not repeat the bad in their lives to aid hope for the future?
Regard and goodwill blogging;
Source Links
Citizen Tom Blog Post
Commenter Doug’s Link
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/06/the-myth-of-the-kindly-general-lee/529038/
Source link of statement, “it is history that teaches us to hope.”
Previous Post – Pondering a Civil War Statue Solution
https://rudymartinka.com/2017/08/19/king-solomon-pondering-a-civil-war-statue-solution/
interesting post, Jesus reminds us, that those who say the right words are not to be followed in deeds, as they rarely meet up, he was referring to the practices of the Pharisee’s who were making it difficult for the people, by putting all sorts of burdens on them. Jesus wasn’t against instructions, he was just advising us, that human folly, was vain in many ways. As regards the lessons in History, there are many great causes, and every cause drags or forces people to have an opinion, being a conscientious observer was frowned upon by those who advocate war, they spoil the action. If you want an example of the horrors created by war, world war two is the best example, there were so many examples to chose from, say, as when the allied air force concentrated on ending the war by destroying the military machine, rather than going to bomb the concentration camps where people were being slaughtered on an industrial scale; history teaches us, that the allied strategy was correct on One MAJOR POINT, the Nazi’s were near to perfecting the atom bomb themselves, and that was a threat to the entire planet. Understanding the background thinking, and the intelligence is easy in hindsight. In a nutshell, when tyrants get their way, horror occurs.
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Thank you for your insightful comment.
Yes indeed horror occurs once wars begin and even worse means of horror such as the atom bomb are invented to create even greater horrors..
Regard and goodwill blogging.
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thanks for your comments Rudy, history is a great teacher of the habits we don’t need to pass on, be blessed, and may wisdom shine on Chicago, amen.
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@scatterwisdom
Thanks for the link.
That quote from the post I reblogged was not something I gave as much thought to, but that illustrates what makes blogging interesting. We see different things, and we can share our observations.
Love the optimism, but would the South have given up slavery? I wish so, but the Civil War started because the South would not accept the election of Abraham Lincoln. At that point Lincoln was trying to save the Union, not end slavery. Therefore, I think war was inevitable. Lincoln tried for compromise, but the South was determined to break up the Union to preserve slavery.
Slavery has been around in some form all through human history. Even today some Americans do their best to exploit illegal aliens in low wage jobs. Others prostitute young women and children. Overseas, other nations allow even worst human rights violations. China, for example, produces goods for our markets using slave labor.
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Tom
Interesting your comment that South would not accept Lincoln.
Kinda same scenario with the Dems not accepting Trunp, perhaps?
Reading the news ever since 2016 could easily be interpreted as a repeat Civil war less cannon fire, in my opinion.
Regards and goodwill blogging
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@Scatterwisdom
I describe what we have as a cold civil war. This is what makes election integrity so important. If enough people lose confidence in our election system, no one will accept our leaders as legitimate. Unfortunately, Democrats are doing everything they can to undermine the system. I would say their behavior is insane, but I don’t think most of them truly understand the foolishness of what they are doing.
Think about how ridiculous this is. They accuse Trump of colluding with the Russians to stealing the election, but they have no use for voter ID and they want everyone to mail in their ballots. They even support crap like ballot harvesting. And they cannot see the hypocrisy? Curiously, I don’t think they can, and that is scary.
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Tom
I agree with your choice of words to describe the dams logic. Sad.
What is even more sad is when someone I’m talking to tells me he hates Trump and when I ask why, their answers never include for the most part a reason of something he has done during his term as to why they hate him.
The exceptions are usually because of his stance on immigration. Seems a lot of people no longer believe it is unlawful to cross borders ior obey immigration laws.
Regards and goodwill blogging
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@Scatterwisdom
Illegal immigration is just another way to get cheap labor, like slavery, and cheap votes. Meanwhile, we get loads of phony virtue signaling.
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