Looks Like We Got the Votes....

[BrunswickDawg]

This. There has to be some middle ground found or we're screwed. There has to be some compromise from both sides on all issues. When people start drawing lines in the sand and no compromise exists bad s*** starts to happen.

I really don't think it is as hard as most people think. I spent 3 years as a director of Civil War Museum, and another 15 running Civil War and antebellum related historic sites and African-American related sites, and done time as a Confederate re-enactor. I have been having these conversations with people since the mid-1990s. When you have detailed conversations, most people understand the differences in battlefield memorials and Jim Crow monuments to power.

And this concept of "losing or history" is just false. There are more museums commemorating the Civil War - or hell, just about anything - then at any point in our history. There are more documentaries, books, scholarly articles, interpretive trails, preserved sites, and organizations dedicated to preserving history (and specifically CW history) than at any point. And we are doing these things broadly - from all perspectives - providing accounts from common soldiers, to leaders, to enslaved peoples, to women on the home front, to freedmen. Guys like you and I are old enough to remember going to a battle field in the 1970s, seeing the NPS made diorama of the troops on the field, seeing some poorly produced video or slide show all narrated by the same NPS employee, and seeing a bunch of guns on the wall. Go to that same battlefield today, and it's a whole other learning experience. At every NPS Civil War site, you learn the entire context of the war, the politics leading up to it, the impact on all communities, and what we can learn from it. Go out on the field now and you have narrated walking tours you can download, podcasts, full color maps in the field, and so many other ways to learn you didn't have 40 years ago. It's astounding. And it grows by the year.

But, none of this absolves us from trying to get better, from striving to understand perspectives, or from trying be decent enough human beings to understand that we have a 400 year legacy issue that we have to rectify. It is our original sin as a country, and we have only really been trying to fully understand the legacy and ramifications of it for a few years. To solve it, we have to have conversations. We have to commit to working past it. And we have to be willing to admit our wrongs. And we have to admit that despite all the advancements we have made, that we still have work to do.

Sorry - bit a soapbox there. CC most of that wasn't directed at your comments. I just hit reply and started writing.