You know how the idea of “people tearing down confederate (and others “problematic”) statues is a bad thing” is something that seems to pop up regularly on one of the shows, and the argument against tearing down statues is “we shouldn’t erase history even if it was oppressive” (this is ignoring the more frequent “you don’t know what you’re talking about, this statue is actually about hope not oppression” reason to not tear them down)? One devils advocate point I just couldn’t shake until I had an answer was “OK, then why do you applaud people that tear down statues of dictators when the regime falls, it’s the same thing dude.” I’ve never heard this argued before, but I figured it’s an “inconsistency” that should be addressed before anyone does bring it up, since I can see people say “well Robert E. Lee did inexcusable things just like Saddam.” I think I have a pretty good argument for why one is OK and the other isn’t, and also gives a good rule for who can tear down statues and who can’t.
YOU can tear down a statue if YOU personally were there for all the atrocities; you can’t advocate on behalf of someone else, YOU the advocate have to have been there for it. Who do WE (conservatives) celebrate when they tear down statues of dictators and bad people? The people that suffered under those bad people, and ONLY those people. We don’t cheer when a team of American soldiers knock down a Saddam statue, we cheer when the Iraqi people tear down the Saddam statue. Who do we condemn as idiots for tearing down statues? People 5 generations removed from the instillation of the statue who never experienced the person that the statue is of (like civil war generals). Bill and Zo regularly say “we don’t understand the statue better than the people that put up the statue and the other people that let it stand for decades,” so if the people that “lived under” the statue didn’t take it down, they must have had a good reason to leave it up, otherwise they would have taken it down a long time ago (like if other freed slaves saw the Abe Lincoln statue and said “no, I’m not OK with that, we should replace it with something else, something more empowering” they would know, not college boy saying “any depiction of a slave is bad and must go”).
Here are the only places where it may get a little muddy (but that’s the fun of “philosophizing”). What about “generational rule, where different statue same policy,” and the only reason Castro the 1st’s statue is still there is because Castro the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th would have anyone that even looked at it funny shot. In that case it should be OK for the now free people to take down everything from the old regime, but after a year or so that should be it. Another thing would be “always opposed, but minority turned majority.” Like, let’s say a city voted 70-30 to erect a statue of Robert Byrd in full Klan robes in the park, and that 30% petitioned for years to take it down, each time losing but gaining more and more support as the original 70% died out or was convinced otherwise, until they finally win 60-40 to remove it and now it’s no longer “Ku Klux Park.” I think if the people that originally voted against and kept petitioning non-stop won after years, they kind of fall under the “lived under the statue and would have gotten rid of it if they were allowed to originally,” and “majority doesn’t mean correct.” Both of these “what-ifs” open themselves up to “slipping to 5 generations removed,” but I think the “you experienced what it stands for, you decide if it stays” is a good way to decide what stays and what becomes rubble. Feel free to come up with answers for the “what-ifs.”