Monuments are statues, plaques and any other kind of physical medium used to commemorate a specific person or grand event that happened in time. There are numerous national monuments all around the United States, landmarks or statues that are protected by law. Monuments exist to establish a feeling of wonder, ‘why is this here?’ and ‘what has happened for this physical representation here’. It is those kinds of thoughts that makes one think about the overall historical background of a certain monument and then prods the question, ‘is this offensive to anyone?’. Personally, I think monuments should just be moved into a museum were history is remembered and learned from without bias of any kind.

There are a lot of confederate monuments being petitioned to be removed, the confederate flags and all things to do with confederacy makes a significant amount of people very uncomfortable and uneasy because of the history it represents. Gregory Smithers from washingtonpost states that “the removal of confederate monuments would quite literally, erase an unsavory, but important, part of our nations history”(Smithers Washingtonpost). I am inclined to agree with this because our nation is built upon the enslaving of many, many people. It should be necessary to see and learn about the thoughts of the people living in the past and learn from them because since then times have changed, nobody likes talking about it but in order to learn from past mistakes the nation must face the mistakes and collectively and effectively correct them.

These monuments have been posted up for years, I find it a bit odd that the statue situation is only now causing an outrage despite the many, many times numerous people has walked past them and has not said a word about it until now. These days people are all about political standing, resistance and opposition of the current system. While it is good to stand ground against the many injustices and flaws the government has, mob mentality has people jumping in on the bandwagon without having a shred of knowledge on the matter and I think that’s exactly whats going on with the conversation of removing statues. Ben Shapiro of the Daily Wire argues that, “confederate statue removal is a local issue, not a national one…if we’re going to have a real debate about confederate statue removal, lets do it. But lets not lump all statue supporters or opposers into the realm of the saints or the devils. That’s dishonest identity politics.”(Shapiro DailyWire). Shapiro makes a very strong claim by saying that confederate statue removal is a local issue which I agree with, all things confederate is mainly a southerner problem rather than a national problem because of the history that has taken place specifically in the south. Every argument has become some kind of subjective good vs. bad conversation and that should not be the way to go about the political issues. The keeping or removing of these statues are in no way a “step forward to equality” because of the stigma about them, while I agree that these statues shouldn’t be up because of the history behind them I also think that they should just be put in a museum where people can find out and learn more about the statues in an area that’s for all people by all people protected by the law and public.

Museums are put up so that people may learn from the past and experience what kinds of circumstances the world had that lets us all have the future we have now. There are different kinds of museums, museums for art, nature, science and history as well. Which is why I propose that all these controversial monuments that are being taken down should be put in a historical museum so that both the people who are for or against monuments being put up can come to a compromise. Despite the various horrendous events that has happened in the past, history is a concept humans cannot change which is why removing or destroying a monument all together would be like erasing history. Putting them in a museum would also solve the problem of people worrying when will criteria for monument removal should stop.

In conclusion, I think that people should be more open minded about the topic rather than engaging in the social mine field territory that is ‘good’ vs ‘bad’. Monuments are just statues, plaques or any other kind of physical representation of a person or an event that has happened, any kind of monument that sends a message that is racist or potentially threatens a certain group of people should be removed and placed in a museum where the public can observe it in a place where learning and knowledge takes priority over everything else.

Works Cited

Website Title: Richmond Times-Dispatch

Article Title: SMITHERS: A Historian’s Plea for the Removal of Confeder[…]

Electronically Published: July 27, 2015

Date Accessed: October 03, 2017 Author: Gregory D. Smithers

Website Title: Daily Wire

Article Title: Why Are We Really Talking About Removing Confederate Monumen[…]

Publisher: The Daily Wire

Electronically Published: August 17, 2017

Date Accessed: October 03, 2017 Author: Ben Shapiro