Trump thinks good people were marching Friday night, with Neo-Nazis, good people who wanted to preserve a memorial statute of Robert E. Lee. Now some have managed to say that good people do not march with Neo-Nazis. I do not think good people march to preserve memorials to Lee, or to preserve memorials to the Confederacy. Lee abandoned his country, led the war against his country, discarded his oath to uphold and defend the Constitution. Not enough to be a good general -- there are not and should not be memorials to Rommel scattered around Germany. Benedict Arnold was good general, shall we have memorial statutes put up for him? No. Lee committed treason. I do not see how any memorial to him is not a memorial, and celebration of treason, when the memorial is in a public space. This is a rather different category -- Lee, Stonewall Jackson, etc. -- from Washington, Jefferson, Jackson. The latter were certainly racists and slavers. And sexist. But they also helped make the nation. Memorials celebrate that, not that each was a good man. I am doubtful any would meet the latter standard. Or consider Churchill, for whom we get an adulatory film in the fall. Celebrate him for the role he played for the UK in World War Two. But he was not a good man. Aside from the absurd monetary incompetence, and self-indulgence, he was a pretty vile racist -- his views and policies re India establish that.
There is a hard problem underneath, about patriotism and nation. Another time I think.
Oh, and political silence here in Utah on Trump's remarks about Charlottesville. As expected. (Romney is not Utah.)
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