Statue you'd tear down

[fairhful]

I totally agree! While I don’t believe in the unlawful destruction of any public property, if there is truly a monument to white supremacy, it is the Margaret Sanger bust in the Smithsonian. It needs to be removed

 

[christofirst]

If St. Padre Serra has to to go, then Clownerina in Venice, CA, also must go! Fair is fair .

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[Maximian]

I would remove

1 the statue of the Regicide Oliver Cromwell outside the House of Commons and

2 the statue of the rebel George Washington in Trafalgar Square

… actually I wouldn’t because the whole business of tearing down statues of people you don’t like is barbaric.

 

[jvickers]

I will have to agree with this. What a hideous statue!

 

[tad]

This is what my community thinks public art looks like

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And then there’s this. This is an expensive piece of public art that sits in front of our public library. It’s titled ‘Sonora’ and was made by some guy in Ohio. I’m not sure what it has to do with Sonora. Currently it’s in dire need of a paint job.

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[JanR]

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This is a publicly funded art project being proposed for development in downtown Sydney. People have variously called it “the space noodle” or “the tapeworm”. Thanks be to God, the project has been delayed. Further contrite prayer is required before God destroys the project’s viability completely.

What would be the point of such a piece of “artwork”? Hey, I can achieve that same shape with a jump rope.

 

[Inbonum]

Statue of communistic dictator, killer and ex president of former Yugoslavia - Josip Broz Tito. You wouldn’t believe it but it still stands in his birthplace, Kumrovec in Croatia. Even after so many years and after condemnation of totalitarian communist regimes in our country it still stands there. Every year there is celebrated “feast” of his birth and many people come to venerate him.
God, have mercy on us!
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[JanR]

Now, the artichoke I would KEEP. I LOVE artichokes. And they are one of the most nutritious veggies one can eat – full of anti-oxidents.

 

[EmilyAlexandra]

@RhodesianSon Presumably you mean that you would tear down that statue because it’s not a very good likeness of President Mandela, rather than because there is anything wrong with commemorating President Mandela as such. We have two statues of Mandela in London, both by Ian Walters. There is a bust on the South Bank which was erected by the Greater London Council while Mandela was still in prison and a statue in Parliament Square erected after his presidency and unveiled in his presence.

Anything Abraham Lincoln.

Surely not all of them. As I understand it, the controversy concerns only the Emancipation Memorial, which some people have criticised because they consider the depiction of the emancipated slave to be itself racist. I must say, it had never occurred to me that it would be considered racist, and I certainly do not endorse the view that it should be removed. On the other hand, I am not black, and I can appreciate why some black people today may find it offensive. The Lincoln Memorial, however, is hands down the finest monument in the country and a fitting tribute to the greatest hero of American history.

the statue of the rebel George Washington in Trafalgar Square

The statue of Washington was accepted by the foreign secretary, Lord Curzon, as a gift from the Commonwealth of Virginia in 1921. By that point, Britain and the United States were allies, and it was clear that our alliance would be increasingly important in the future. There is also something peculiarly British about erecting monuments to our sometime opponents. We also have a statue of Gandhi in Tavistock Square.

Statue of communistic dictator, killer and ex president of former Yugoslavia - Josip Broz Tito. You wouldn’t believe it but it still stands in his birthplace, Kumrovec in Croatia. Even after so many years and after condemnation of totalitarian communist regimes in our country it still stands there. Every year there is celebrated “feast” of his birth and many people come to venerate him.
God, have mercy on us!

If you don’t mind my saying so, that oversimplifies Marshal Tito and his achievements. During the Second World War, he was recognised by all the Allies and by the king of Yugoslavia as the legitimate prime minister of Yugoslavia and as commander-in-chief of its armed forces. He fought against both the Nazis and Yugoslavian collaborationists and prevented his country from being occupied by the Soviet Union or drawn into the Soviet sphere of influence after the war. Tito was undoubtedly a dictator and a killer as you say, but he was also a patriot and a hero.

 

[F_Marturana]

The restaurant serves artichokes and espresso.

That’s a cool combo.

I love artichokes.

 

[RhodesianSon]

Mandela was a terrorist and deserved no commemoration.

 

[RuthAnne]

The Lincoln Memorial, however, is hands down the finest monument in the country and a fitting tribute to the greatest hero of American history.

Lincoln was the greatest enemy of the Constitution in our nation’s history. I would tear down all of his monuments if it were up to me.

 

[Inbonum]

During the Second World War, he was recognised by all the Allies and by the king of Yugoslavia as the legitimate prime minister of Yugoslavia and as commander-in-chief of its armed forces. He fought against both the Nazis and Yugoslavian collaborationists and prevented his country from being occupied by the Soviet Union or drawn into the Soviet sphere of influence after the war. Tito was undoubtedly a dictator and a killer as you say, but he was also a patriot and a hero.

Well, I don’t agree with you that he was a hero, he was hero in eyes of his supporters and those who had benefits from the system. He fought against things that he felt were threats to his position. He did fought against Soviets with communism (or call it socialism). This cannot be called good or heroism. Evil is not defeated by another evil. It is like when someone say that Hitler was a hero because he fought against the enemies of the Germans (with nacism).
I cannot accept any positive thing someone says about him because even something that looked good was just an illusion. When he would give one good thing he would take ten another at the same time.
My family was under great persecution and opression by him and his people so I will never have any positive attitude towards him.

 

[Beryllos]

Lincoln was the greatest enemy of the Constitution in our nation’s history.

Greatest enemy! That is a fairly audacious claim. Could you point me toward some reading that explains/defends the view that Lincoln was such a threat to the US?

 

[EmilyAlexandra]

Mandela was a terrorist and deserved no commemoration.

Mandela was indeed a terrorist, but he fought for a just cause against a heinous regime. He paid a high price, spending 27 years in prison. His imprisonment became identified with the struggle of an entire people. He came out of prison a better man than he went in and played a crucial role in overseeing his country’s transition to a free and democratic society without racial segregation. His legacy has of course not been an unqualified success, and South Africa continues to suffer from many problems. It is, however, much more prosperous and much better governed than almost any other country in Africa.

Lincoln was the greatest enemy of the Constitution in our nation’s history.

This has been debated over and over, but I think the consensus is that most of his actions during the Civil War were either constitutional under Article II or received congressional approval retroactively. Freedom of speech was abridged somewhat during the course of the war, although this is not uncommon during wartime. At most you could say that Lincoln took some small liberties with the Constitution in the service of a much greater cause, namely, the United States of America itself.

@Inbonum I certainly do not mean to diminish the undoubtedly awful things that were done in Yugoslavia under Tito’s regime. However, one must acknowledge that the period of the Second World War and the following decades was a period in which many countries faced unprecedented and unsurpassed challenges. Many statesmen of this period of history have to be considered in more nuanced ways than we are used to. The Polish leader Wojciech Jaruzelski, for example, is a fine example. On the one hand, he was a communist dictator who imposed martial law on his own people. On the other hand, he was first and foremost a patriot who preserved his country from the incomparably worse fate of being invaded by the Soviet Union and its allies. Even leaders who are almost universally praised, such as Winston Churchill, are not entirely immune from criticism over their conduct of the war. In London recently a statue of Haile Selassie was destroyed by members of an ethnic group he had persecuted as emperor. Such things are rarely black and white.

I would add that one certainly cannot compare Tito to Hitler. Hitler did not fight against the enemies of the Germans. Hitler waged a war of aggression against most of Europe and committed the worst atrocities in the whole of human history, attempting the systematic extermination of entire peoples.

 

[adamhovey1988]

I wouldn’t because it’s not my property and that’s vandalism. HOWEVER, we should DISCUSS IT before we take statues down. TAKE, not TEAR. I’m no fan of Andrew Jackson, but I would not tear down Old Hickory’s statue. This is the issue I have. LACK OF DISCUSSION. Mob rule is NOT rule.

 

[RuthAnne]

Greatest enemy! That is a fairly audacious claim. Could you point me toward some reading that explains/defends the view that Lincoln was such a threat to the US?

You can research it yourself. I don’t ask people to do my research and I don’t do other people’s research. Just google unconstitutional acts of Lincoln or something like that.

But to just give you a few thoughts, here are a few of his unconstitutional acts:

He started a war without the consent of Congress
He illegally declared martial law
He illegally blockaded Southern ports
He illegally suspended habeas corpus and arrested tens of thousands of political opponents
He illegally orchestrated the secession of West Virginia
He shut down hundreds of opposition newspapers and imprisoned their editors and owners
He also ignored the Ninth and Tenth amendments
He orchestrated the rigging of Northern elections
He introduced the slavery of conscription and income taxation
He waged war on Southern civilians

 

[Beryllos]

I don’t ask people to do my research and I don’t do other people’s research.

Not asking you to research it. Just curious about your sources. If you don’t want to reveal them, that’s all right with me.

Thanks for the list of unconstitutional acts. That is a help.

 

[Tommy999]

I wouldn’t mind seeing statues of Nathan Bedford Forrest relegated to a Civil War museum and not shown in public like he was a hero.

While he was an excellent military leader and tactician in military strategy for the Confederacy during US Civil War, he was also one of the founders and proponents of racist hate group Ku Klux Klan.
He is from Tennessee and I read where there were/are big statues of him in Memphis and Nashville.

While I don’t believe in mobs tearing down statues, if the citizens were to remove them through the legal democratic process, I wouldn’t mind.

 

[EmilyAlexandra]

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I wouldn’t actually tear this statue down. Indeed, one has to admit that Nye Bevan was undoubtedly a very admirable man. However, it represents something that I believe has inflicted immense damage on this country. Nigel Lawson once said that the NHS is the closest thing that we have to a national religion. I would add that if the NHS is indeed our national religion, Nye Bevan is its chief deity. The prime minister (a Conservative prime minister at that) now daily invokes “our NHS” (never just “the NHS”). The NHS was even, bizarrely, included in the opening ceremony for the 2012 London Olympics. The British people have for too long resisted the fact that the NHS is not fit for purpose. The whole edifice needs to be torn down and rebuilt from the foundations up. But that will never happen, not because we can’t do it, not because we can’t afford it, but because it is virtually enshrined in our uncodified constitution that the NHS is sacrosanct.