[Leica] IMG: Czech Holocaust memorial

[hlritter at twc.com (Howard L Ritter Jr)]

Douglas?

One of the wonders of the U.S., not an unmixed virtue, is that the freedom 
to say any damn fool thing you want to, with few limitations, is as prized 
as the freedom to own (and sometimes carry) firearms. It would be 
unthinkable for any American legislative body to prohibit any form of speech 
that does not directly seek to incite violence or to reveal official 
secrets. That is why white-supremacist organizations are able to 
demonstrate. No one is willing to trust the government to decide what speech 
is impermissible. In my opinion, even to attach additional penalties to the 
commission of a crime when the criminal was motivated by ?hate? is 
indefensible; it is to punish a person for his thoughts as well as his 
criminal actions. A law such as Ireland?s of 1989 would be unthinkable here.

The response I keep wishing for to these terrified losers when they assemble 
is: Don?t attend. If you must attend, stand still with your back to the 
marchers and don?t make a sound. If you can?t stand still, shake your 
finger. Videos of marchers eliciting no emotion, not even outrage, at most 
silent condemnation, would help to give them the ridicule they deserve by 
documenting their impotence.

Many people, of whom I am one, feel that to bring down statues commemorating 
consequential figures on the wrong side of history is to risk whitewashing 
history and leading future generations to forget the sins of the past, at 
the risk of sinning in the future. The arrogance of a society pretending to 
be better than it is is a peculiarly pernicious trait. I think it would be 
particularly fitting for Confederate statues to be relocated from public 
places of business and traffic to, say, Confederate cemeteries, like with 
like, or other Civil War cemeteries, with explanatory plaques, as if to 
force the historical figures, and onlookers alike, to contemplate the human 
cost of their treason.

?howard


> On Aug 16, 2017, at 5:41 PM, Douglas Barry <imra at iol.ie> wrote:
> 
> 
> Bizarre that the lessons of history are so quickly forgotten. Listening to 
> those sad sacks shouting slogans like "Jews will not replace us" in VA and 
> getting away with it, makes my blood boil. In Ireland, we use the 
> "Prohibition to Inciting Hatred Act 1989" and shouting slogans like that 
> would have the shouters in jail before they could blink.
> 
> I'm amazed at all this keruffle over controversial statues which, in my 
> opinion, are works of art - for better or for worse - and should not be 
> destroyed, but rather moved to less prominent places such as museums or 
> sculpture gardens where the public still has access. Proper education 
> about the secession seems to be missing in US education, and needs to be 
> implemented too.
> Apologies for the rant, but the US seems suddenly a weird and backward 
> place to us, viewing it from afar through the media prism.
> Douglas