Originally posted on 08/12/2017:

No matter how ugly the ideology behind the position is, you can't denounce free speech.

The question is, why is the city removing a statue that's been there for 100 years? I live in Lee County, no-one complaining here. Sometimes this constant need to politicize everything causes more issues than it solves, and the selective nature of such is always amazing....Lee statue down, but Lee homestead ok (Arlington National Cemetery). General Lee bad, General Washington good (Washington, Jefferson, etc were slave owners).

Lee was a well documented objector to slavery citing it as a political an moral evil, and thou he inherited slaves he subsequently freed them in 1861, 3.5 years before the EP...conversely Union General Sherman was very conservative on the slavery subject and was known to be one of the few northern slave owners....yet no-one is tearing down his statues.

Everyone latches onto a cause looking for 15 minutes in today's social media age, but their ignorance and failure to comprehend historical settings and politics of the time is embarrassing to them and the country's a whole.