August 17, 2017

"The removal of City-owned monuments to confederate soldiers in Forest Hill Cemetery has minimal or no disruption to the cemetery itself."

"There is no disrespect to the dead with the removal of the plaque and stone," said a written statement from Madison Mayor Paul Soglin, after the removal of the memorial. My post on the subject is here, where there's been a discussion under way for a couple hours. In that time, I walked over to Forest Hill and found the Confederate’s Rest section:

P1150066

P1150068

P1150069

I had hoped that perhaps the plaque was not yet gone, because I wanted to read the text. But here's a photograph from William Cronon that shows how it looked. The text is mostly readable. The soldiers (who died as prisoners of war) are called "valiant." We're told they surrendered "after weeks of fighting under extremely difficult conditions" and that they arrived in the prison camp here in Madison "suffering from wounds, malnutrition and various diseases."
Within a few weeks 140 graves were filled, the last resting place for these unsung heroes, far from their homes in Alabama, Tennessee, Mississippi, Louisiana and Arkansas.
It's a neutral, informative account except for that word "heroes." They were called "unsung heroes," but to say "unsung heroes" is to sing — however slightly — of their heroism. "Unsung" was thus untrue, and that little bit of singing of heroism was enough to incite the passion for cutting down monuments. Don't call them heroes just because they fought hard and suffered and died!

Who are heroes? "If somebody’s a prisoner, I consider them a war hero." That's what Donald Trump said after he said "He’s not a war hero. He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.”

My dictionary, the OED, says "A man (or occasionally a woman) distinguished by the performance of courageous or noble actions, esp. in battle; a brave or illustrious warrior, soldier, etc." It doesn't say the man had to fight on your side, but who puts up monuments using the word "heroes" for the courageous fighters on the other side? We know the answer: Our city. We had whatever reason we had to express kind thoughts toward the men who suffered and died in our prison camp. But our city's thoughts are harsher today. To paraphrase Trump: I like people who weren't fighting for slavery. 

Here's an article from last May about veterans honoring the different sites, including Union Rest and Confederate Rest:
“You want to honor the soldiers. It doesn’t matter what side they were on,” said Carol Gannon-Hembel, who accompanied her husband, Alan Hembel, to the ceremony....

At the Confederate Rest service, Alan Zeuner and Dan Bradford, dressed in Confederate regalia, lamented the removal of the flag pole holder in front of the Confederate Rest grave site. Bradford called it a “slap in the face” to Confederate veterans who were repatriated after the war.

“It’s a part of history that is largely ignored,” Bradford said, regarding the role of Confederate soldiers in 19th-century Wisconsin history. “I want to see to it that people see it for what it really is, rather than outright lies.”

Bradford, a member of the 61st Georgia Infantry, has both Union and Confederate ancestors. He said he is a descendant of Union Army General James Shields, who is known for challenging Abraham Lincoln to a duel, prior to his presidency.

“These are just interesting little points of history,” Bradford said....

441 comments:

1 – 200 of 441   Newer›   Newest»
Fabi said...

Let the grave robbing commence!

Sebastian said...

Thanks for checking, and posting.

The removal of this small and innocuous plaque shows, as if there were any doubt, that leftist hysteria knows no bounds: only a blank slate will do, properly scorched and scoured, to be filled by progs in power.

Matt Sablan said...

Will something replace the plaque, or will it stand empty?

rhhardin said...

Trump on McCain was more subtle. He was saying McCain is a grandstander and has always been a grandstander.

It's how McCain gets out from under the shadow of his father and grandfather without himself being very good.

So he's not a hero. The prisoner thing is a schtick just like every other McCain posture.

Jupiter said...

Matthew Sablan said...
"Will something replace the plaque, or will it stand empty?"

How about some tasteful gang tagging? Maybe the Bloods and the Crips could get together and choose a few suitably non-disrespectful obscenities to spray-paint on the plaque where they buried the White Devils.

rhhardin said...

That is, McCain is trading on being a prisoner, rather than just being one like the other guys and having a history.

Bay Area Guy said...

The Mayor of Madison is a Leftist weasel. He's long forgotten Lincoln's words, something about, "With malice toward none, with charity for all."

Healing the wounds from the Civil War was an important component of re-unifying the country. As a counter-example, the wounds of WWI did not heal, which lead 20 years later to WWII. And, the wounds of WWII did not heal, leading to 45 years of a Cold War.

Modern-day Leftists are blind to this, because they are ignorant.

rhhardin said...

So McCain needed to reply, "no no I really was a hero," which he can't do.

rhhardin said...

A Trump trap.

rhhardin said...

A regular guy would not reply that he was a hero but that he was a prisoner.

Quayle said...

Righteousness through (re)moving and recategorizing the photos of history.

How easy it has all become.

It used to be that you had to - you know - actually do something good yourself to be good.

Now we can be good merely by pointing out dead people's sins and removing their pictures.

A few caustic tweets, a repost on Facebook, the right comment on a blog, and you've appeased the Gods for today and can rest easy in the knowledge that the Gods won't destroy you.

(The Gods being, of course, your neighbors and colleagues, who are a lot more fickle than the Gods former generations feared.)

Matt said...

How did humanity exist for so long without the 21st Century Western Liberal, the acme of human advancement?

The Bergall said...

No respect, that's all I can offer.

Rusty said...

Is the plaque for sale? Perhaps we can buy it and put it back.

rhhardin said...

The erased explanation is apparently left for posterity.

Maybe they can sell namimg rights.

Laslo Spatula said...

The plaques have been removed, and the signal has been sent.

How long before the cemetery is vandalized?

One week?

Two?

I am Laslo.

Static Ping said...

Evil. This is evil. Evil always has justifications and rationalizations for its evil, but it is evil.

jg said...

The point Ann seems(?) to miss is that we adjust for our heroes' moral luck (being indoctrinated into cultural standards that determine the baseline from which one is to take a courageous stand in cultrually unspecified or even counter-cultural directions). What if I had been born in Sparta 400BC, etc

This is a very obvious point. I assume she misses it to draw us out.

That said, "every person who suffered is a hero" does cheapen "heroism".

Fabi said...
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chickelit said...

Soglin got his start as a weasely anti-war protester in Madison. He had friends and mayoral aide who publicly cheered Leo Burt, the still at-large Sterling Hall bomber. So Soglin should know better than to mess with plaques and old wounds.

Fabi said...

After the lefties dig up the remain they can make jewelry from some of the bones. Think of the fashion statement the noble Antifa members and their virtuous supporters will make!

Richard Dillman said...

This is a graceless, mean-spirited, ugly act. At least people who placed the plaque had the grace and generosity to honor soldiers
who were part of the great tragedy that was the Civil War.

Nonapod said...

So the grand old tradition of grave desecration by conquering barbarians who wish to erase, rewrite, and change history to fit their whims continues in 2017. Humans never change.

Jupiter said...

Jonathan Graehl said...
"What if I had been born in Sparta 400BC..."

Well, that depends. You might have been a Helot, or you might have been a Spartan. The Helots were slaves, the Spartans were their masters. That's why all those high school football teams are named The Helots.

DanTheMan said...

Do our lefty friends realize the Memory Hole was supposed to be a *bad* thing?

traditionalguy said...

Defending ones home from invading Armies and Navies is heroic. That is the root of the Star Spangled Banner poem about the home of the brave. (But the NFL owners now dishonor that war song at will.)

And why do we ever honor losing soldiers who died defending Hawaii from Japanese liberation on Sunday, December 7, 1941. Hawaii was still a legal slavery territory up until 1959 when the locals passed a bill ending slavery so the could become State #50 in a Union that had outlawed it 94 years earlier.

California Snow said...

" Humans never change."

The Left is trying to recreate man in it's own image thus the belief that if we have the correct cultural attitudes and laws in place they can perfect man and civilization. Their disgust with religion stems from this.

Cheryl said...

Your mayor should be ashamed of himself. Of course, he probably isn't capable of that.

Think of the grace and generosity of spirit that was involved in calling those enemy soldiers "unsung heroes." It wasn't necessary, but maybe it gave a modicum of comfort to their families when they came to see where their soldiers lay. Or maybe it gave pause, just a moment, to one of the returning Union soldiers, not to be too triumphalist, to remember "malice towards none," a high bar.

And now, one person got to decide that it was repugnant. I think this is what breaks my heart. I think we will walk this back but I don't know how.

Rabel said...

A better photo.

Chuck said...

rhhardin said...
Trump on McCain was more subtle. He was saying McCain is a grandstander and has always been a grandstander.

It's how McCain gets out from under the shadow of his father and grandfather without himself being very good.

So he's not a hero. The prisoner thing is a schtick just like every other McCain posture.


You're worse than the liberal nutjobs who want to purge all history of the Confederate States of America 1861-65.

Remember the calumny of Trump's original remark about McCain not being a hero and preferring people who weren't captured; it was Trump recycling an Al Franken joke, of all things. And Trump was doing it in a remarkably mean and witless way. Franken at least tried to focus the joke on the irony of "prisoners of war" not exactly being the guys who actually win wars. Trump's hamfisted theft of the joke just turned it into a dull insult.

It is one of those things that nobody should ever let Trump live down.

eddie willers said...

""There is no disrespect to the dead with the removal of the plaque and stone,
"


That could not possibly be said with a straight face.

What next..."Rape is an act of love and not disrespect".

BarrySanders20 said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Richard Dillman said...

It's a good time to read Walt Whitman's Civil War poems, which take a balanced approach to honoring the dead on both sides.
Try reading his "Drum Taps" section of "Leaves of Grass." Whitman's depiction of the struggle was often elegiac and quite moving.
It seems that elegiac ways of contemplating the Civil War are dead for too many people.

"When Lilacs Last in Dooryard Bloomed" is one of my favorite poems. It offers interesting perspectives on Lincoln's death and
the subsequent national mourning.

David Begley said...

So what happened to the metal plaque? Sold for scrap? Melted down and used to make something else?

I'm guessing ithe Mayor has it in his office as a scalp.

rhhardin said...

You're worse than the liberal nutjobs who want to purge all history of the Confederate States of America 1861-65.

Trump wasn't taking credit for the joke but taking down McCain's act.

McCain had no countermove. Just as the media has no countermove when Trump takes down takes down the media.

Trump throws sand in the gears of the deep staters.

holdfast said...

So what's the end goal here? A wholesale rewriting of history? Purges of the Deplorable? Another Civil War?

Because that's the way this is going. And it's going to push a lot more folks into the arms of those Nazis/Neo-Nazis we saw in Virginia, if they are seen as the only ones confronting this madness.

Which is sort of how the Nazis came to power in Wiemar Germany - the middle and moneyed classes saw them as the only ones standing up to the Commie madness.

Again: Trump isn't Hitler, he's Hindenburg.

exhelodrvr1 said...

"They lost friends and brothers in the fighting, maybe even to the Confederates in the cemetery. And yet they didn't protest calling them unsung heroes or prevent the installation of the plaque."

It was brother-against-brother, and if you read about the attitudes of the Civil War vets in the years after the war, the great majority of them went out of their way to reconcile with the vets from the other side. In my mind, that is what these statues symbolize - the healing of the wounds. Which is why I am against tearing them down.

Wince said...

Soglin isn't done yet...

A larger, stone monument naming the deceased still stands but is planned to be taken down. Soglin said heavy machinery will be needed given its significant size.

"We will restore an appropriate monument or plaque with the names of the deceased," he said, but added not one that gives "reverence for the Confederate insurrection and treason against the United States."

...But the mayor brushed aside any idea to replace the plaque with a market explaining the burials. He said the complexities of the Civil War and how people came to join the Confederate Army may have factored into why the soldiers ultimately died in Wisconsin.

Ken B said...

What is missing from the debate is the acts of reconciliation made by the Union and its soldiers. Not just Lincoln's second inaugural speech, but important symbolic events such as the salute after the surrender at Appomatox. That salute was ordered by Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain. It is ridiculous to suggest he was honoring their cause. he was honoring their bravery, and sacrifice, and making a grand gesture of reconciliation.

But perhaps, since he saluted Lee's troops, we should tear down his statues too?

rhhardin said...

The Allies tended German soldier cemeteries too.

There's a photo somewhere of German soldiers having buried an enemy, "Here lies an unknown brave US soldier."

traditionalguy said...

McCain is famous in Congress for being a nice guy until he suddenly comes unhinged and attacks anybody who refuses to give him what he wants. That can be atoned for by a story of POW abuse for a while until finally none of his friends want to be around him anymore.

But now that he has become a paid water carrier for Soros and allies with the never Trumpers, what good is he.

exhelodrvr1 said...

Think about the joint USMC/Japanese military ceremonies on Iwo Jima, as a current example of something similar.

exiledonmainstreet, green-eyed devil said...

In the meantime, another Jew-hating Nazi drove a van into a kosher market in Barcelona, killing 13. Except this murderer was brown and Muslim, so well, it's different.


"JUST IN: Wolf Blitzer wonders if Barcelona terror attack was a Charlottesville "copycat" http://washex.am/2uMvAJY"

Because no Muslim has ever aimed a vehicle at pedestrians before! Also, because Trump and Republicans are responsible for All Bad Things, Everywhere.

rhhardin said...

It's of a piece of losing an election with grace. There's no such thing as grace with these people.

Somehow they missed learning about it. Perhaps no example to work from.

They see grace as stupidity.

mockturtle said...

Honestly, I think this conflagration is a direct result of the kind of 'education' kids receive today. Short on history and long on propaganda.

Mr Wibble said...

Modern-day Leftists are blind to this, because they are ignorant.

Nah, just weaklings who suddenly have power.

They want to hurt those they dislike, because they harbor grudges. They want to feel powerful, but they're still scared deep inside, so they target those who can't fight back.

chickelit said...

Holfast wrote: "Again: Trump isn't Hitler, he's Hindenburg."

If that's a tasteless joke about Trump's shape, it's not funny.

bgates said...

who puts up monuments using the word "heroes" for the courageous fighters on the other side?

"They are the REVOLUTION, the Minutemen, and their numbers will grow — and they will win."

"Staying in the airplane when it hits the building, say what you want about it, [it's] not cowardly."

"The only true heroes are those who find ways to defeat the U.S. military."

Those are the first three quotes that come to mind, from 15 years ago. The people who put up the monuments in Madison weren't dealing with "the other side", they were dealing with their countrymen, with whom they reconciled after the war. The left, who were appalled by the toppling of statues of Saddam Hussein, aren't being swept up in some pro-Union, pro-Lincoln, pro-American fervor. They're not going to follow up the destruction of Confederate memorials with a pledge to care for the grave of William Tecumseh (trigger warning for cultural appropriation!) Sherman, even if he did to Atlanta what antifa wants to do to every majority-white city in the south - hell, he was Commanding General of the Army during the Indian Wars! Dig him up and give the corpse a dishonorable discharge!

Madison in the past recognized that Confederate veterans were still American, and therefore accepted them.
Madison in the present recognizes the same thing, and hates them for that reason.

rhhardin said...

Heroism is of a piece with defending your wife and kids, just gone abstract a little.

Women don't necessarily follow it.

They're wired to live, not to die.

sparrow said...

I think a great deal of this hypersensitivity comes from the loss of a sense of honor. We don't value honor much anymore, but in that day it was part of the culture. What is lost by removing this plaque is what it says about the generosity of the Madisonians who showed respect for their fallen enemies and recognized their shared humanity. Today we dehumanize each other routinely and the sense of an honorable confllict is lost.

Patrick Henry was right! said...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four


Totalitarian gotta be totalitarians.

Unknown said...

I find it interesting that Chuck only bothers to comment to defend McCain, not to defend the brave Confederate soldiers who died far from home in a Wisconsin POW camp.

It is truly sad that a person can be so fixed on hating Trump that his comments always, always, without fail bash Trump.

Not even antifa hates Trump more than Chuck does.

And they are out there desecrating graves of people who died 100 years ago.

--Vance

Yancey Ward said...

It is now a full on virtue signalling Olympics, and it won't end any time soon. The leftists will one up one another endlessly with a few spineless Republican cretins joining in.

I wrote several months ago that the goal for the left ultimately is to get Trump impeached. At that time, I didn't think there was any chance at all the Republicans in D.C. would be dumb enough to fall for it, but the last week has me doubting this confidence a bit. If the party falls for this ruse, they will get crushed at the next election and lose both houses and then the presidency two years later. They are already in risk of going into 2018 with almost no accomplishments other than Gorsuch and some federal judges, but an attempt to remove Trump will be an utter disaster. It is almost as if all of them have forgotten 2006.

Fabi said...

Wait until Chuck finds out that Trump just tweeted out the Pershing anecdote!

Unknown said...

Chickelit: The reference to Trump being Hindenburg is quite chilling. Paul von Hindenburg was a great German WWI general; who became President of Germany... the guy right before Hitler. Today we remember the blimp, but Hindenburg was the guy who signed the papers making Hitler the effective leader of Germany.

And he did it because he was tired of the fighting in Germany.

--Vance

Night Owl said...

There's a memorial in Concord MA for the dead british soldiers. It's at the sight which marks the start of the American Revolution. I've never seen it vandalized.

Static Ping said...

Do keep in mind that the word "hero" has multiple different meanings. The popular one these days is one who does good things, as defined by what we consider "good." Hero can also mean someone who is brave in general, or someone who strives in good faith for causes we dispute. For that matter, the ancient definition is someone who simply accomplish things that regular men could not, even if the act itself was morally questionable or even reviled. The use of "hero" here certainly fits here by some definition.

Of course the mayor does not fit the term by any definition. What a cowardly, idiotic, evil twit.

lgv said...

Wow, clearly this was of great importance, apparently an almost emergency in the hastiness of the decision and its execution. The world is now a better place now that we have rid it of a fairly innocuous plaque. The future will now be free of the pain and anger of having such words hurt people who stumble upon them.

Perhaps it should now be replaced with a new, more appropriate plaque, "Buried here are a bunch of worthless racists who deserved the misery that surrounded their last days. May these motherfuckers, who were on the wrong side of history, rot in hell".

Wondering if they did this to all German soldiers buried outside of Germany. They removed all reminders of white South Africa, too?

chickelit said...

@vance: It's almost like Trump cheated Chuck out a deep state job in a Romney DoJ.

Yancey Ward said...

And if you don't know the history of POW camps in the Union and the Confederacy, you might well take at face value that assertion that the cemetery was filled by prisoners who were already dead when they reached the camp. Prisoners on both sides were considered mostly expendable and not worth the resources to feed, cloth, and shelter properly. That cemetery needs a plaque or monument of some sort, surely.

Unknown said...

What heroic deeds did these unsung Confederate soldiers do? Maybe a new plaque could read "Rest In Peace, the war is over for you".

Michael K said...

I assume the Mayor does not mention his own treason.

You're worse than the liberal nutjobs who want to purge all history of the Confederate States of America 1861-65.

Poor chuck. Trump is a "Neurocysticercosis" tunneling through your brain.

Marc in Eugene said...

So the larger, still standing stone is inscribed with the names of the dead? Nothing else? I can't see the logic of Mr Soglin's own justification for removing that, if it is simply the names.

Left Bank of the Charles said...

"At the Confederate Rest service, Alan Zeuner and Dan Bradford, dressed in Confederate regalia, lamented the removal of the flag pole holder in front of the Confederate Rest grave site. Bradford called it a “slap in the face” to Confederate veterans who were repatriated after the war."

And what flag was allowed to fly from that pole? I'll give you two guesses ... Of course that was allowed due to the corrupt bargain between the Northern Democrats and the Southern Democrats. The Southerners didn't keep their end of the bargain.

ihasch said...
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Ralph L said...

The plaque looks fairly new to me since some of the bronze is still brightish.

Someone started putting small Stars and Bars on the Confederate veterans' graves in our cemetery about 15-20 years ago on Confederate Memorial Day (which varies by state). After a couple of years, they switched to NC flags with the colors rearranged. An acceptable compromise IMO.

This removal just looks petty.

ihasch said...

This was so petty and immature that it is shameful. History is fraught with complexities and ambiguities. Great men can be flawed. Common soldiers can fight bravely and nobly for an ignoble cause. Nations are always a combination of the noble and the regrettable. (There is not a single nation not scarred by slavery). Sensible, decent people can judge these things, can appreciate the good while acknowledging the bad, can show respect to the dead and leave old grudges buried with them. Only historically illiterate, mindless thugs believe that aspects of history they do not like should be erased, that something as simple as a grave needs to be urgently desecrated in the ironic name of "justice." Not only did this clownish mayor not show any empathy, not do what an historical education teaches us in seeing the world from someone else's shoes and recognizing in doing so their common humanity. But he actually rewarded the neo-Nazis in Charlottesville who clearly were looking to provoke just such a rash response to damage race relations. The man is a fool, one of many unfortunately.

I guess the only thing to do is to pledge a solemn vow to find his grave no matter what and piss all over it. Karma.

Bay Area Guy said...

The Night they Drove Ole Dixie Down:

Virgil Caine is the name
And I served on the Danville train
'Till Stoneman's cavalry came
And tore up the tracks again

In the winter of '65
We were hungry, just barely alive
By May the 10th, Richmond had fell
It's a time I remember, oh so well

The night they drove old Dixie down
And the bells were ringing
The night they drove old Dixie down
And the people were singing
They went, "Na, na, la, na, na, na"

Back with my wife in Tennessee
When one day she called to me
Said "Virgil, quick, come see,
There goes the Robert E. Lee!"

Now, I don't mind chopping wood
And I don't care if the money's no good
You take what you need
And you leave the rest
But they should never
Have taken the very best

The night they drove old Dixie down
And the bells were ringing
The night they drove old Dixie down
And all the people were singing
They went, "Na, na, la, na, na, na"

Like my father before me
I will work the land
And like my brother above me
Who took a rebel stand

He was just 18, proud and brave
But a Yankee laid him in his grave
I swear by the mud below my feet
You can't raise a Caine back up
When he's in defeat

The night they drove old Dixie down
And the bells were ringing
The night they drove old Dixie down
And all the people were singing
They went, "Na, na, la, na, na, na"

The night they drove old Dixie down
And all the bells were ringing
The night they drove old Dixie down
And the people were singing
They went, "Na, na, la, na, na, na"


-- The Band (1969); Joan Baez (1971)

Michael K said...

Hindenburg was the guy who signed the papers making Hitler the effective leader of Germany.

And he did it because he was tired of the fighting in Germany.


No, Pence is Hindenburg after the left finally gets Trump impeached.

There is not much good about being old but this is one of them. I won;t have to watch much of the result of the left's getting what it thinks it wants.

The Charlottesville vice Mayor would make a good vice president for president Maxine Waters.

I hate white people. White women are the devil.

roesch/voltaire said...

This seemed a fitting and fair plaque noting their treatment here in stark contrast to the Andersonville prison, and should have been left sanding.

The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...

I understand and respect why people in predominantly African-American neighborhoods might want statues honoring Confederate leaders removed from those neighborhoods. If someone put up a statue honoring Lenin, Castro, or Mao in my neighborhood I'd vandalize it every single fucking day. But this seems a singularly craven bit of virtue signaling. Your mayor is indeed a very little man and I don't think this is going to end the way the Left imagines.

Paddy O said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Lauderdale Vet said...

I had relatives that fought on both sides, four that fought as adversaries on the same field of battle, Antietam.

Not everyone fought for slavery, but everyone fought for their home. We cannot speak to their hearts, but at the end of the day they were all Americans. We even paid pensions to Confederate widows to affirm that bond.

My opinion on the matter aside, it is one thing for a town to decide they no longer wish display their own history but quite another to desecrate a cemetery. Where does it end?

Earnest Prole said...

Desecration is the noun and desecrate the verb -- and I say that as a person of entirely Northern ancestry and sympathies. There's a reason Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address is so admired. "With Malice toward none, with charity for all . . . let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds."

Rabel said...

"Pence is Hindenburg after the left finally gets Trump impeached."

No, no, no, no.

Pence is Admiral Donitz because Trump is...

Earnest Prole said...

Maybe you can implore Scott Adams to come up with some branding that will heal our wounds.

Paddy O said...

What do memorials do? They memorialize. What about memorials that are forgotten or ignored? As long as I've read this blog, Althouse has (as far as I can remember) not talked about a POW camp where Confederate soldiers were imprisoned, some of whom died and were treated with respect.

Now, we have a stirring post that reflects on the realities of that time and the soldiers who fought in a horrifyingly messy war.

Taking away the plaque led Althouse to seek it out, and having found it removed in that spot, found it still existing in photographs. Having sought it out, she posts about it, sharing a story of her life that intersects the lives lived so long ago, connecting their story with our current crises of identity, power, meaning. That plaque still exists for me in the only way it likely would ever exist for me, as a picture.

It's interesting because having been so long forgotten, they are now remembered in a way more expansive than ever before, on a popular blog. All because they are no longer being represented by a very old plaque.

We've spent many days now hereabouts, massive amounts of words and time, remembering as we can the realities of that era, and even though there's not agreement, there's a telling worth hearing.

The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...

Next up, Stars of David removed from Jewish graves because Zionism!

I'd bet on it.

Rosalyn C. said...

Personal anecdote: back around 2005 my father said, "Some people are still fighting the Civil War." Turns out he was right.

At the time he was making a wry comment in response to the fact that many of the African American caregivers, who had come to take care of my elderly parents in their home, left with many of my parents' possessions. In some cases, some aides left with boxes and bags of items, blatantly and in full view of my parents who were too old and frail and too afraid to even say anything. My mother was upset by that, but my father tried to remain objective and philosophical.

wholelottasplainin said...

Fer chrissake: near the Normandy beachhead is a well-tended cemetery for Germans killed there.

French people living today suffered under those Nazi-led soldiers, yet somehow the gravestones are intact and not desecrated by revanchistes and historical illiterates.

Here, no living person ever suffered under the Confederacy or slavery. On top of that it was the GOP, not the Democrats who ran the South from the end of Reconstruction all the way to the 1990's, who ended Jim Crow by passing the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

NO dem wants to hear that, however.

Unknown said...

"Next up, Stars of David removed from Jewish graves because Zionism!

I'd bet on it."

You people are getting ridiculous.

Wince said...

Forget it, Jake. It's Madison.

holdfast said...

"near the Normandy beachhead is a well-tended cemetery for Germans killed there."

It's also creepy as hell - solemn, but really dark. A great symbol about the brutality of war. Of course, there's also a giant cross in the middle, so I assume the Muslims will remove it at some point.

Fun fact - after the disastrous Allied raid on Dieppe, the Germans had to deal with the bodies of all the fallen Canadians. So they buried them with proper military honors - but they did it German-style, head-to-head in double rows, instead of single rows like the Commonwealth War Graves Commission uses. After WW II the CWGC installed proper, Canadian headstones but didn't move the bodies. As far a I know, Dieppe is the only Commonwealth cemetery with double-rows. It would have been pretty easy to re-organize - tens of thousands of other graves were moved - but part of building a post-war peace is to try and find the humanity in your former enemy. That cemetery is a reminder that not all the Germans had lost their honor and humanity.

iowan2 said...

As others have noted. What do the protesters want? What ever is identified, it will not be enough.

Now we have devolved into insulting the dead. Yes that's the society structure sought by the Democrat Party. Insulting the dead.

There is never enough appeasement.

Earnest Prole said...

Fer chrissake: near the Normandy beachhead is a well-tended cemetery for Germans killed there.

Exactly. Tens of thousands of French died in Normandy as a result of the German occupation and expulsion, and yet the French somehow manage to behave as civilized people -- although I hear Scott Adams thinks that is bad branding.

Susan said...

The ghosts of Salem's witches cackle with glee. It's been a long time coming but soon now, very soon, we will all have to prove we weigh more than a duck.

Of course the only way to prove that is to drown, but hey, at least you'll die vindicated.

Murph said...

IIRC, the first time I ever saw/heard the name Soglin was in the Maraniss book, "They Marched Into Sunlight." In the book there's a photo of Soglin, a UW-Madison campus radical who led a protest against Dow Chemical in October 1967.

http://a.co/0TeJxKk

I am not in the least surprised that present Madison Mayor Soglin would join in the obliteration of memorials of events in U.S. history. I am only surprised that it took him so long.

MadisonMan said...

I wonder when the jail at Camp Randall is removed.

Alan said...

Ann, thank you very much for posting these moving stories. I had not heard this before. I believe it was one of Lincolns most fervent hopes before his death that the south would be treated with at least some dignity so that the nation could heal. It is my belief that we as a nation are dishonoring the memory of Lincoln for the sake of this inane and childish virtue signaling. Paul Soglin was a disgrace back in the 60's and is more of a disgrace today.

Humperdink said...

So I mentioned to my lovely bride the antics of the left with respect to confederate cemeteries. She proceeds to fish out her genealogy papers.

Her great grandfather was conscripted at the age of 19 into the West Virginia (Confederate) Calvary in Nov 1864. Captured March 1865. Paroled April 1865 after swearing the loyalty oath. His timing was good.

Ralph L said...

It is recent: Erected 1981 by Mr. and Mrs. William Austin Huggins.
the Madison Landmarks Commission designated Forest Hill Cemetery and Effigy Mound Group as a landmark (no. 33) in 1975 (revised 1990), stating that "Forest Hill Cemetery was developed from 1857-1862 as the new city cemetery

Does this mean it is protected from removal?

MadisonMan said...

I'll say it again: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, is offended.

YoungHegelian said...

You know what just occurred to me? That the Left has now, in their attempts to read history through a purely moral prism, now, in essence, have adopted a theological view of history. It's like a history out of a deformed reading of Augustine's City of God or the English/American Calvinists who sought to build a shining City on A Hill as the fruit of their election, a beacon to the heathen.

This isn't Marxism. Marx sees history as the play of inexorable, deterministic economic forces. The proletariat's morality is like that a surfer, who gets in front of a wave to ride it. That's what the proletariat does -- it rides the crest of historical forces that inexorably will bring it to power. But, it's not about morality...

A Marxist analysis of slavery would emphasize the economic conditions that made slavery necessary to the means of production. For example, if you have wage labor, you must pay them. If your society lacks "liquidity" in its supply of currency (as so many pre-Industrial Revolution cultures did), you simply don't have enough free-floating currency to pay an entire society of laborers. Thus, bonded labor of some form --- slave, serf, servant, "hangers-on" --- because such labor can be embedded in a autarkic household based economy that doesn't require money.

Does this make Marxists seem cruel in their reading of histories suffering masses? Yep. The great mass of humanity is lumpenproleteriat, & thus outside of the driving forces of history. Until Lenin's Imperialism as the Last Stage of Capitalism, that posited that lumpenproletariat "Struggles of National Liberation" could be used as a stick to beat Capitalism, they didn't give a tinker's damn about the suffering non-white masses.

So, where is the modern Left getting this new found religion from?

Humperdink said...

Unknown said: "You people are getting ridiculous."

Yeah, us. We're the ridiculous ones here.

HoodlumDoodlum said...

Paddy O said...Taking away the plaque led Althouse to seek it out, and having found it removed in that spot, found it still existing in photographs. Having sought it out, she posts about it, sharing a story of her life that intersects the lives lived so long ago, connecting their story with our current crises of identity, power, meaning. That plaque still exists for me in the only way it likely would ever exist for me, as a picture.

So, ok, by tearing this plaque out the Mayor of Madison actually memorialized the dead--since he made you and others aware of it, and that's a good thing because otherwise no one would be talking about it, so really this is a positive development form the standpoint of actually remembering things...so I guess the best way to memorialize things is to remove their physical memorials in a way that generates controversy? I mean, you're not wrong, but how does that interpretation of these events work as a predictor and/or guide to what future actions we should take?

If I paint some graffiti on a few headstones and that story gets picked up in the news you'll probably see some pictures of markers you otherwise wouldn't have, so...

John henry said...

Has anyone asked why so many pwos died in Madison?

While under the care and feeding by northern troops?

John Henry

Etienne said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Humperdink said...

The question I have for the "Let's tear down the monuments crowd" is why now? What happened over the last few days/weeks to start this snowball down the hill? Were people just to stooopid to realize they should have been offended? Too afraid to pipe up? Why now?

Etienne said...

John said...Has anyone asked why so many [EPW] died in Madison?

It's common knowledge that war injuries were usually fatal. Some survived the amputations, many did not. Also disease was rampant in close quarters.

Otto said...


"The removal of City-owned monuments to confederate soldiers in Forest Hill Cemetery has minimal or no disruption to the cemetery itself." Also sadly the removal will have minimal or no disruption in obscenely high unemployment rate of black males, obscenely high unwed rate of teenage black mothers, obscenely high rate of black on black crime and low black PSAT scores. Sound and fury signifying nothing.

The Godfather said...

Do the leftists know why we fought that war? It was to restore the Union. So when the war was over, part of the victors' task was to bring the defeated back into the Union. Honoring the Confederate dead was part of that task. It was a way of welcoming the Prodigals back into the family. But some leftists want to keep scratching the scabs, keeping the wounds open, keep the blood flowing, a century and a half after the last battle was fought. They are the enemies of peace and harmony and patriotism. They should be ashamed. They should be shunned.

HoodlumDoodlum said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
John Nowak said...

But perhaps, since he saluted Lee's troops, we should tear down his statues too?

For God's sake, tell NOBODY there's a mural with General Lee and the Confederate battle flag in Grant's Tomb.

Etienne said...

Why now?

Before Air Conditioning, no one wanted to live in the south, and they erected monuments because there was no one to stop them. The Negro's were still second class, and they had their own water fountains and everything.

Then Air Conditioning. All the rich yankee's started coming south.

Extrapolate from there...

Etienne said...

That empty stone in the cemetery is ripe for Graffiti!

Better run over there and put the Mayors name on it.

Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...

John said...
Has anyone asked why so many pwos died in Madison?
While under the care and feeding by northern troops?


Although I would put nothing past the Northern Aggressors, in those days even a minor cut could kill you. The injured soldiers probably died of their wounds.

Calvin Coolidge’s son, in 1924, raised a blister on one of his toes playing tennis, which soon became infected. He died of pathogenic blood poisoning a week later.

Humperdink said...

Humperdink asked: "Why now?"

Etienne responded: "Air conditioning."

I would submit the commie-pinko lefties have a checklist of protest topics and this was next on the list.

Njall said...

"There is no disrespect to the dead with the removal of the plaque and stone"

I would argue that there is a great deal of disrespect to the dead, in what they have done here. I don't think there is a shred of evidence that these poor soldiers, who died while prisoners so far from home and family, were anything but honorable soldiers.

My wife is from Krasnogorsk, Russia. That's where the Soviets kept many German and other Axis (Hungarian, Romanian, Finnish) prisoners during WWII, including many of those who went into the bag in Stalingrad. My wife'e mother remembers seeing the Germans marched out to work, when she was a little girl after the war (many were not released until the death of Stalin, 8 years after the end of the war....)

My wife's aunt, when I was visiting the grave of her son with her, showed me a cemetery deep in the woods, outside the Russian cemetery. It was an Axis cemetery. Most of the graves were anonymous mass graves (hier ruhen 7 unbekannte deutsche Soldaten, hier ruhen 11....) but some were identified by name, and many of those died young, in their 20's. I think the German government, after perestroika, had dug them up, identified who they could, and reinterred them with pretty German military stone crosses.

Anyone who knows any Russians knows how deeply and personally they still feel the "Great Patriotic War", as they call the Eastern Front. I have been on vacation with Germans in Russia and they have been shoved violently on the street. The wonder to me is that this German military cemetery is allowed to exist, unmolested, in a country which still hates Germans so deeply.

Those Russian have more class than these assholes.

Mark said...

When we hear or read the words "prison camp," no doubt many think of something with barracks or tents with other various facilities.

In fact, many of these prisoner of war camps were essentially nothing more than a fence around a field. The only shelter was what you had on you. And many had none, sleeping on open ground which often quickly became a mud pit. And an open latrine nearby.

HoodlumDoodlum said...

ChicagoSunTimes: Bust of Lincoln Vandalized

wholelottasplainin said...

Lesseee....Muslims had slaves. Burn down all mosques!

Romans and Greeks? Slaves!

Aztecs and Mayans? Slaves. Destroy those pyramids!

Ditto the Egyptian pyramids! Slaves!!

Let's face it: it's slaves all the way down.

So to be consistent, we need to destroy the world.

And I bet we can find some FUBAR nihilistic and batshit-crazy antifas eager to do so....



Hagar said...

It is August, all the big kahunas are on vacation, and the second-string anchors and pundits are dancing on the tables.

Is this what is meant by the expression "jumping the shark?"
Can the Democrats (and especially Mayor Soglin) be said to have "jumped the shark" with this?

StarBanker said...

I really don't know how this narrative and its subsequent actions ends without a significant amount of bloodshed. Do these prognazis realize that when the shooting starts it will become a massacre in very short order for them. Baseball bats and off-the-street cheap handguns won't cut it against the enemies they are creating. As I have said before, there are two America's but only one side knows how to shoot.

YoungHegelian said...

@Humperdinck,

The question I have for the "Let's tear down the monuments crowd" is why now? What happened over the last few days/weeks to start this snowball down the hill?

The second in my series of Deeeeeeeeep Thoughts?

The Far Left honestly, in their bones, thinks that right now is a time of revolutionary fervor in the US. The situation is so appalling that it demands direct, radical action. But, who will prevail -- them or the forces of reaction?

I think the American Far Left is trying to create a Tet Offensive moment. The "legend" of the Tet Offensive, the legend that shaped American foreign policy after it, was that the Allies were caught flat-footed, & pushed almost to defeat. The truth? The Americans & SV Armies absolutely destroyed the Viet Cong as a fighting force in the Tet Offensive. It was so bad that later Viet Cong veterans swear the North Vietnamese Army deliberately threw them into the buzz saw so that they could take over. But, the legend is what lives on.

So, now the Far Left seeks to build a legend of an uprising, one that they hope will swing disaffected squish-lefties & liberals to their heroic struggle. My guess --- and hope -- is that this is a cultural overreach that will destroy the Far left in the US as a cultural force. Too many lefty nutjobs will be handed microphones on CNN & MSNBC & the populace will let out a communal "Holy Shit! Where'd they find these clowns..."

Rico said...

Here's what I don't get: While I understand the desire to remove statues to key Confederate leaders, I don't understand the animosity toward the Confederate soldiers who fought and died in that war (or at least their memorials, gravesites, etc). Surely they fought for a wicked cause, but they also fought for their homes, as attachment to states was much stronger then than it is now. So they died, far from home, and they certainly were "heroes" to their families.

In the long run, what is served by removing the plaque? Does it make anybody's life that much better? I know nothing of Madison, but are the city's problems so minor that the mayor has time (and money) to tackle this issue? Of course, I know our government representatives are supposed to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time, but this strikes me as nothing more than grandstanding.

Mark said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Big Mike said...

@John Henry, four reasons. First, the large, heavy, relatively slow-moving ammunition used back then inflicted terrible wounds on people, particularly when compared to the wounds inflicted by jacketed .30 caliber supersonic rounds before researchers figured out how to make them tumble inside the wounded person. Second, Louis Pasteur's work was pretty much still in the future and doctors didn't scrub tools or hands between patients. Third, measles and comparable diseases were urban diseases, so soldiers from a rural, agrarian society had poor immunity to them. Fourth, POW camps were were managed not by veteran, front-line troops (who felt a kinship with the soldiers they had faced), but by poorly disciplined rear echelon troops.

Mark said...

During wartime, amidst all the hostilities, it is not unheard of for opposing sides to have come together during cease fires or holidays for a meal or drink.

It happened during the Civil War. And after the war, the veterans of both sides were able to come together for anniversaries and embrace one another.

If they who fought and bled and lost limbs and loved ones can reconcile and make peace, so we should today. And so we did for 150 years.

rcpjr said...

What idiocy. This made me think of the lovely words at the entrance to the war memorial at Gallipoli (ascribed to Ataturk though it turns out he never said them):

Those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives ... You are now lying in the soil of a friendly country. Therefore rest in peace. There is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets to us where they lie side by side here in this country of ours ... You, the mothers who sent their sons from faraway countries, wipe away your tears; your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace. After having lost their lives on this land they have become our sons as well.

If the Turks could honor the dead of an enemy that killed or wounded 250,000 of their soldiers, I think we can leave these graves alone.

Kevin said...

"Next up, Stars of David removed from Jewish graves because Zionism!

I'd bet on it."

You people are getting ridiculous.


It's always ridiculous today. Today they just want the Confederate memorials removed. Today it's ridiculous to suggest anything more.

You know what was really ridiculous a few weeks ago? That leaders of the Democratic Party would be taking down Confederate memorials in the dead of night and demanding all monuments be removed from all public spaces.

Had he suggested it to you then, you would have found it just as ridiculous.

Michael K said...

"Third, measles and comparable diseases were urban diseases, so soldiers from a rural, agrarian society had poor immunity to them"

My great great uncle died of measles contracted in a Civil War camp. He was 18,

The first war in history where more soldiers died of wounds than of disease was WWI.

Kevin said...

The reason we honor the Confederate soldiers is because they were Americans too and we wanted to put the country back together after the war. We did not seek reparations. We did not try Lee or Davis for treason, which was well within the law to do so. We did not assign them junior status and take one Senator away from each Confederate state.

No, we wanted a united country. We put our differences aside and did what was right for the nation.

Lincoln ended his Second Inaugural Address with the following:

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

If the people who fought the war and suffered under slavery could put aside their real grievances to unite the nation, surely those who never fought and never suffered could honor their noble actions.

It seems, however, they were made of better stuff than the present generation.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

Oh no! A Michael K thread!

Balfegor said...

Re: The Godfather:

Do the leftists know why we fought that war? It was to restore the Union. So when the war was over, part of the victors' task was to bring the defeated back into the Union. Honoring the Confederate dead was part of that task. It was a way of welcoming the Prodigals back into the family.

It's a bit dispiriting reading Frederick Douglass these days -- his third (last?) autobiography includes quite a bit of detail about the aftermath of the American Civil War, including various incidents when he goes back to meet his former owners and is received (so he writes) with open arms.

One of his masters (Thomas Auld) offers on his deathbed a bit of an apologia for slavery, including the obviously false claim that he actually wanted to free his slaves when they reached the age of 25. This Capt. Auld is earlier described in the narrative as an incompetent slaveowner, not brought up owning slaves but married into a slaveowning family and so unused to the management of a slave workforce, a man grasping and mean, constantly worried that his slaves are disrespecting him, and erratic in his efforts to instill discipline. He relates all kinds of instances in which Auld mistreats him, including sending him to the slave-breaker Covey (although in terms of personal viciousness, Auld's brother in law, the son of Douglass's original owner, seems a lot worse).

But they have a friendly talk before Auld dies, and Douglass lets him have his self-serving say and they part on good terms. It's a remarkable show of generosity of spirit. Even if it's partly put on -- Douglass was a celebrity writing for a national audience who were probably keen on a reconciliation -- it's also consistent with his approach before the abolition of slavery where he publicly broke with Garrison, who was much more of an extremist as far as dialogue with slave-owners. Having been a slave, having been whipped and jailed for trying to escape, his great ambition was the abolition of slavery. He wasn't in it for revenge.

Not everyone can show Douglass's generosity of spirit, nor should we expect everyone to. But still -- he's an example. Far, far from the attitude today.

Michael K said...

I think the American Far Left is trying to create a Tet Offensive moment. The "legend" of the Tet Offensive, the legend that shaped American foreign policy after it,

Not a bad theory. My addition is that people have said Black Lives Matter has been quiet even though it is summer.

What happened ? Maybe the money from Soros ran short ?

The racist black vice Mayor of Charlottesville is behind the Lee statue agitation.

Why ? Fund raising ? Bad summer TV ratings ?

Earnest Prole said...

If the Turks could honor the dead of an enemy that killed or wounded 250,000 of their soldiers, I think we can leave these graves alone.

We've lost the wisdom of past and now make profound national decisions based on "branding" and 140-character incitements.

BGrear said...

So everything related to the Confederacy is now considered offensive and racist? Really? Are the Democrats going to let Antifa and the Workers World Party be the face of the Democratic party along with other hard-leftists like Keith Ellison? Do the Democrats want to lose every election? Who/what is now bad according to the Left and the ultra-biased MSM: anything related to the Confederacy (which includes millions of people who had relatives who fought for the South), anyone who supports owning guns, anyone who is against abortion in any way, anyone who isn't 100% supportive of the LBGT community and everything they want (e.g. gay marriage), anyone who is White and doesn't apologize for it (cultural appropriation, white privilege, micro-aggressions, etc.), anyone who doesn't believe in climate change apocalyptic thinking, anyone who criticized/s Obama or Obamacare in any way, anyone who supports Israeli's/doesn't support Palestinians, anyone who doesn't support a $15 minimum wage, anyone who doesn't fully support wide-open or illegal immigration, vocal Christians, conservatives, anyone who supports or voted for Trump, and the list goes on and on. The GOP establishment in Washington DC isn't much better. This is why we got Trump and will continue to get Trump.

Balfegor said...

Re: rcpjr:

If the Turks could honor the dead of an enemy that killed or wounded 250,000 of their soldiers, I think we can leave these graves alone.

Oh, you poor fellow. Have you not heard? Turkey is removing those words from ANZAC memorials at Gallipoli:

Ataturk’s famous tribute to fallen Allied soldiers was gouged under so-called “restoration” works in Turkey, with up to 15 other memorials on one-time ­battlefields of the Gallipoli Peninsula slated to be “modernised” under orders by the fundamentalist Islamic government led by anti-West President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Here is another article about it.

bneville said...

At Appomattox, after the surrender papers were signed, Robert Lee was introduced to General Grant's staff. He was momentarily startled by Col. Ely Parker, of the Seneca tribe of the Iroquois Confederacy. Lee reached out to shake his hand, saying "I am glad to see one real American here." Parker replied, "General Lee, we are all Americans."

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

How is it that Germany can remember its history of Nazism without statues of Hitler?

Why can't those who attacked the United States - such as Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, Major Nidal Hasan and Osama bin Laden - be given equal reverence to flawed slaveowners such as Washington and Jefferson? I guess founding the United States and attacking and dissolving it are equally good and noble acts in the minds of these right-wing white supremacist simps.

Balfegor said...

Haha, I should have read to the bottom -- Turkey is recasting Gallipoli as a crusade, but a Turkish agency claims:

The statement reads: “There has been misunderstanding and rumours in some media outlets regarding the Turkish monument at Ariburnu. The monument at Ariburnu is not being destroyed or altered. The stonework has been removed due to deterioration that has occurred over the years, and will be restored and replaced

“Fifteen similar monuments on the peninsula are also being restored in the same way as part of a programme. With regard to those monuments, history is not being destroyed or rewritten, and Ataturk’s words will not be lost. The wording will be the same as in the past.”
.

So the Johnnies and Mehmets line will remain. Unless this is a clever dodge, and they're going to get rid of the words because they're probably not actually Ataturk's words.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

WaPo has a great summary on how America was forced to commemorate these anti-U.S. white supremacists.

Sebastian said...

@YH: "So, where is the modern Left getting this new found religion from?"

It's not much of a religion, is it? More a thin veneer on the will to power. Which makes it more dangerous: the communists at least had some standards, and we know roughly what the Islamists want. But what is the left really slouching towards now?

Whatever they got, they couldn't get it from the old grand narratives: nobody really believes them anymore, and Marx is just another DWEM. But the will to power remains. For the moment, the left doesn't want see it naked, though antifa already doesn't care. Gender won't do: too bourgeois. Sexual identity? Sure, insofar as you can use it to transvalue old values, but it is weak tea. Race is best: America's original sin, potentially unites all nonwhites, readily includes Mexicans and Muslims, has potential for endless havoc. It's the neo-Fanonization of the left.

rhhardin said...

Andrew Klavan today, an indirect remark on the pain of black people. Klavan is all spiritual and good and evil in his criticism of Trump...

Jessie Leigh Peterson on Andrew Klavan https://soundcloud.com/andrewklavanshow/ep366

AK What do you think of the argument that there is something unique in America about the journey of black people out of slavery to equality that [Trump] is missing that he doesn't address, that deep well of feeling that some blacks and whites have that there is this terrible racism in this country, should he address that more, are they wrong about that?

JLP He's addressing it. First of all black people are not on a deep journey

AK I thought you were going to say that

JLP Black people wouldn't recognize a deep journey if it slapped them in the face. Black Americans are not suffereing due to racism. The ones who are suffering and most are is due to the destruction of the family and the lack of moral character. Black people are angry, they're angry first at their mothers who have turned them away from their fathers. And the mothers are impatient and imposing their will on them, too mothery, and it causes the kids to become angry.And when you become angry whoever you become angry at you become like them. So the anger that you see in black men and women is the anger of their mothers, and their yearning for their fathers. The worst thing that can happen to a child, male or female, is to turn them from their fathers...

And so instead of telling them to forgive their parents, they're told that it's racism or it's the white man or something else that it's not, so black men are being used for political purposes...


Character matters. There's no tempest, there's no teapot.

chickelit said...

This all battleground prep. for Soglin who wants to replace Walker.
He's going to need outside money and this is virtue signaling on a statewide/national
scale.

HoodlumDoodlum said...

Marist NPR Poll Results on Charlottesville

Click the "results" box. This poll was conducted Monday and Tuesday.

Page 9:
Do you think statues honoring the leaders of the Confederacy should Remain as a historical symbol, or be removed because they're offensive to some people, or unsure? [my bold]

National Adults: 62% Remain, 27% Remove, 11% Unsure
National Registered Voters: 62% Remain, 28% Remove, 11% Unsure

There are a lot of categories--please read the full results.

Region - Northeast: 53% Remain, 33% Remove, 14% Unsure
Race - African American: 44% Remain, 40% Remove, 16% Unsure


But hey, "the people have spoken." Right?? How much of what you think you know about what the people of this nation believe is the result of what the Media decides to tell you? Ridiculous.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

"There is no disrespect to the dead with the removal of the plaque and stone,"

What leftwing crap. It's all about disrespect. That is the left's butthurt anti-free speech anti-history ISIS point.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

The best part of that WaPo piece is when it recounts a sarcastic bill by a Michigan senator to build a statue to John Brown in Richmond.

This was before pro-Confederates accomplished their goal of whitewashing their execrable history. Back when the debate was more knowledgeable. Before know-nothings like the types who populate these threads filled the ranks of our government without better suspicion of what they were really up to.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

These were simple men, not Hitler.

Fuck - is everything Hitler to the brain dead ISIS left? Godwin called, sez you're pathetic.

Kevin said...

How is it that Germany can remember its history of Nazism without statues of Hitler?

Because it's brought up in every comment thread on any topic in anything published on the internet.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

It's all about disrespect.

People who take up arms against the United States don't deserve fucking respect.

Where's your respectful memorial commission to Nidal Hasan?

Oh, I get it. He wasn't a white supremacist.

White supremacy is such a greater cause to you than Islamic supremacy.

rhhardin said...

The lack of moral character is a feature, not a bug, in the lefty plan.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

Re-fighting the civil war- brought to you by ISIS leftists.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

ISIS is so proud of you, balls. The leftwing proggy mayor too.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

Nidal Hassan was a product of leftwing failure.

Etienne said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

"How is it that Germany can remember its history of Nazism without statues of Hitler?"

Because it's brought up in every comment thread on any topic in anything published on the internet.


Good.

Then let's bring up the Confederacy's atrocious and execrable history at every opportunity online, as well.

They fought against the U.S.

For the cause of white supremacy.

Not something to commemorate. Unless you want to commemorate the way some poor white non-planters were forced at bayonet to fight. But then, they always knew that they were white enough to become planters, too, someday.

Just the same way a lot of y'all are poor whites who fight politically for billionaires and the billionaire class.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

If these graves were so offensive, why now?

Shall we start burning our history books?

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

Nidal Hassan was a product of leftwing failure.

And the U.S. army.

And the way you indoctrinate people to hate the U.S. for having a government.

So it looks like he takes more of his influences from you than from "the left."

Any other non-issues you'd like to take up?

YoungHegelian said...

@TTR,

How is it that Germany can remember its history of Nazism without statues of Hitler?

Actually, they don't. The average post-war German has such a mush-headed understanding of Nazism & WWII, a mish-mash of war guilt, guilt over the Holocaust, not expressable in non-German company anger at the horrors that the Allies & especially the Red Army wrought on the German people, & the feeling that the Germans are singled out among a the nations, when almost every country has a blood-soaked history ("You Americans wiped out the Indians!"). But, a strategic understanding of the war, of the doctrines of National Socialism, not a clue.

Some statues of Nazis might help them to actually, you know, learn some facts about the war rather than the pieties that are served up as the Proper German Thoughts About WWII.

Oh, by the way,I actually read a lot of 19th C philosophy & cultural history. The 19th C was the golden age of scientific racism. If you ever expect to see an attitude on race acceptable to modern standards, well, it ain't there anywhere in the 19th C.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

ll removing these grave markers make Hillary president?

readering said...

So, no one uses "alt-left" anymore?

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

Nidal Hassan was given the go to kill by leftwing bureaucratic rules where our military are not allowed to defend themselves. His presence was all do to bowing to the PC left and allowing Islamic radicals to infest.

Francisco D said...

Nobody is offended. This is all about the far left exercising power through false moral persuasion.

They have been doing this for years and creating false narratives to further their Marxist agenda.

The bright light at the end of the tunnel is that they mostly fool idiots like Ritmo.

readering said...

News report:

A large stone monument at Hollywood Forever Cemetery commemorating Confederate veterans was taken down Wednesday after hundreds of people demanded its removal.

The 6-foot granite marker stood since 1925 in a section of the famous Los Angeles graveyard where more than 30 Confederate veterans and their families are buried.

It was loaded into a pickup truck and taken to a storage site.

Hollywood Forever president Tyler Cassity told the Los Angeles Times that the cemetery fielded a torrent of calls and emails asking for the monument's removal. A Change.org petition calling for it to be taken down drew more than 1,300 signatures.

On Tuesday, someone vandalized the granite boulder monument, Cassity said, using a black marker to write "No" across its bronze plaque.

Cassity said he reached out to a local chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, which owns the monument and ultimately made the decision to take it down to prevent further acts of vandalism.

buwaya said...

This is just one particularly petty episode in the long running process of erasing history and culture. Confederate monuments are just a minor and recent manifestation.

Long ago the progressives removed Longfellow, Homer and Cervantes from the schools, and replaced them with nothing.

The end is, as often remarked, power, but power for and by nothing. There is no sort of virtue in mind. There isn't even a Marxian end state. The partisans of that side are remarkably vapid.

exiledonmainstreet, green-eyed devil said...

readering said...
So, no one uses "alt-left" anymore?"

I prefer "ctrl-left."

Big Mike said...

Shall we start burning our history books?

Replacing them with history written by Howard Zinn is pretty much the same thing.

Jael (Gone Windwalking) said...

I’m against all these removals. Including Confederate.

Build one, and another, and another to Tubman, and best of all, all those small anonymous farm houses, of mostly strangers, with ephemeral candles burning in midnight windows, they don’t need monuments, only matches to their candles. You can’t stop that kind of true sanctuary - not with any war.

I sojourned cross country once in Coronado National Memorial, and partly by accident came to a crude memorial to gold-glittered and desperate-dying good old boy, Coronado, who wanted to follow after gold-worshiping Cortez, and right there, and right then, I hijacked Coronado’s memorial to my own private repentance, asking the Ask, that all the Treasure of the Sierra Madre with gold-lust be burned out of me, inwardly, where it counts ...

I like my enemies’ monuments up close. And personal. And out in public, because ...

Because, it’s not too hard to do heart-repentance at memorials that we don’t like – if only we learn. It’s not hard at all.

Beside, I do think some (at least some) old Confeds were honorable, and that many (at least many) young Rebs were never going to own slaves or plantations anyway (doesn’t excuse profiteering), and were hopefully confused and dedicated unto their deaths, and deserving honor, yes honor – yet mixed with repentance, sorrow, contrition ....

And ...

...with malice toward none ...

buwaya said...

Ritmo is an excellent example of the victims. What purpose does he live for? What people does he serve? Where are the ashes of his fathers and the temples of his Gods?
When he goes, what sons will light his pyre, and speak well of him as an ancestor?

Some people have treated him with enormous cruelty, which I think he does understand.

Unknown said...

Who is surprised that TTR is here cheering the Mayor for desecrating war graves? Not me. I'm sure TTR would be totally in favor of digging up all Confederate people and their descendants and hanging the corpses too, those traitorous bastards.

Nothing says "Reconciliation" and "creating a Union" like not even leaving the dead alone more than 100 years later, right TTR?

Question, TTR: Did the North err when it didn't gather up every person in the Confederate states and execute them in gigantic camps? Because that's what you are arguing for: that they were so bad nothing, not even their lives and names on their graves, should be left to them.

--Vance

Mea Sententia said...

The more statues and monuments are removed, the more likely is Trump's reelection.

buwaya said...

Needless to say, the schools don't bother with Macaulay either.

Kevin said...

"How is it that Germany can remember its history of Nazism without statues of Hitler?"

Because it's brought up in every comment thread on any topic in anything published on the internet.

Good.

Then let's bring up the Confederacy's atrocious and execrable history at every opportunity online, as well.


Oh don't worry. In the future every comment thread won't be about anything other than the government-sactioned topics like Nazism and slavery. All real discussion will stop and any exchange of real ideas will be impossible because we'll all have to log in daily to express our hatred of the approved groups. Those who fail to do so will immediately be dispatched to the appropriate reeducation camp to instill the proper level of disgust.

Lucky for you, you're ahead of the curve.

David Begley said...

More to come per the Madison newspaper below. I note that the newspaper does NOT permit comments. Just emojis.

"A larger, stone monument naming the deceased still stands but is planned to be taken down.

Eric Knepp, who heads the Parks Division that operates and maintains the Forest Hill Cemetery, said city officials are working on the logistics of removing the second monument. It'll involve heavy machinery, such as a crane, Knepp said.

Soglin said an "appropriate monument or plaque with the names of the deceased" would be restored, but added that it won't give "reverence for the Confederate insurrection and treason against the United States."

Will someone strap themselves to the monument to stop this? If it was a tree, yes.

Michael K said...

"it won't give "reverence for the Confederate insurrection and treason against the United States."

Any mention of the Mayor's treason during the Vietnam War ?

MayBee said...

sparrow said...
I think a great deal of this hypersensitivity comes from the loss of a sense of honor. We don't value honor much anymore, but in that day it was part of the culture. What is lost by removing this plaque is what it says about the generosity of the Madisonians who showed respect for their fallen enemies and recognized their shared humanity. Today we dehumanize each other routinely and the sense of an honorable confllict is lost.


Beautifully and powerfully said.

This makes me very sad. The people who fought against these men, lost friends to them, lost family members to them, were injured by them....they were able to honor them.
But all these years later, we have to override their judgement and the beauty of this gesture. For what?

Do we still believe in forgiveness?

exiledonmainstreet, green-eyed devil said...

Remember Lincoln's words about "malice toward none, charity toward all?"

Ritmo thinks he's pissing on the Confederacy's grave; he's actually pissing over Lincoln's grave too.

He is nothing but malice - and it has destroyed his soul.

Unknown said...

What TTR is really saying is "Give no mercy to my opponents, for they deserve none." That's it. He would advocate that any "white nationalist" be executed My Lai style. That we shouldn't ever take a prisoner because they are traitors.

Well and good, but remember: no quarter goes both ways, TTR. You demand that your enemies are worthless and not worthy of mercy?

Then may you get exactly that same level of mercy from someone who sees You as the devil. Like, say, a member of Allah's horde. --Vance

Guildofcannonballs said...

The victors, in the Valley of the silly con, will write history as they see fit.

And don't forget it ever.

Every blogger adds to the pain when the opportunities lost are realized to never be seen again.

exiledonmainstreet, green-eyed devil said...

Do we still believe in forgiveness?

8/17/17, 6:02 PM

Forgiveness is a Christian virtue.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

Remember Lincoln's words about "malice toward none, charity toward all?"

Yeah, we tried that. And successors Andy Johnson and U.S. Grant were even more charitable to the white supremacist enemies of the U.S. than he was.

It didn't work.

Lincoln pursued the war ruthlessly, once he finally got the right generals. I think it's time we returned to that approach. Didn't accommodate unconstitutional secessionist sentiments one bit, either.

Sydney said...

I blame the internet. So easy to posture these days, and it gives politicians a false sense of the mood of the electorate.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

Vance is really trying to break the Guiness Book of World's Records for the number of straw men in one comment.

He's every bit as delusional as Trump. Just makes stuff up whole cloth.

Hey, Vance! (German for "bedbug"). How many me's do you have to fixate on to invent and attribute to me this many positions?

Must be tiring. Hope he wears himself out soon.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

Oh don't worry. In the future every comment thread won't be about anything other than the government-sactioned topics like Nazism and slavery.

Well, as long as you keep finding something noble in Nazis and the Confederacy then that's the way it will be.

But you can always choose instead to mature, put those childish things away, and allow progress to happen.

Unknown said...

Ok, TTR: You aren't advocating a mass genocide of all white people in the confederacy? Then what should they have done that they didn't already do?

Guess what: we didn't have a massive guerrilla war after the civil precisely because the North decided not to go all Versailles on the South.

You disagree with that decision, apparently. You want... .what? What should the North have done that they didn't do? Specifics, man.

--Vance

Big Mike said...

Vance is really trying to break the Guiness Book of World's Records for the number of straw men in one comment.

He should give up; he's never going to beat you or ARM.

Balfegor said...

Re: readering:

So, no one uses "alt-left" anymore?

They're not "Alt-Left." They're just the Left.

Humperdink said...

A commenter posited: "Nidal Hassan was a product of leftwing failure."

TTR responded: "And the U.S. army."

Just when you thought the aforementioned TTR couldn't out do himself, he posts this gem.

Fabi said...

"Lincoln pursued the war ruthlessly, once he finally got the right generals. I think it's time we returned to that approach. Didn't accommodate unconstitutional secessionist sentiments one bit, either."

Ritmo is so cute when he's righteously indiganted!

Big Mike said...

And, FWIW, that's not really a strawman. I think if you were suddenly transported 155 years back in time, Toothless, you'd either be a Copperhead or arguing eloquently for hanging every captured Confederate soldier. You have no center.

MayBee said...

http://www.nbcnews.com/id/6491844/ns/us_news/t/day-mourning-will-honor-german-pows-held-us/#.WZYjka3My2w

In 2004, the US Military took a day to honor the German POWs buried on US Soil:

FORT BENNING, Ga. — They are foreign enemies buried thousands of miles from home, but they are not forgotten.
Less than a week after U.S. soldiers were honored during Veterans Day, dignitaries on Wednesday were to gather and salute the hundreds of thousands of German prisoners of war taken to camps in the United States during World War II — most of them in the South.
“The minimum you can do is honor these soldiers who sacrificed,” said Lt. Col. Herbert R. Sladek, a member of Fort Benning’s German Army liaison team, which hosts “Volkstrauertag” — Germany’s day of mourning.
“They were educated in another time period, with another political guideline. In their opinion, they also fought for freedom, liberty and for their fatherland. That’s why these people gave all they had — their own lives.”

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

The average post-war German has such a mush-headed understanding of Nazism & WWII, a mish-mash of war guilt, guilt over the Holocaust, not expressable in non-German company anger at the horrors that the Allies & especially the Red Army wrought on the German people, & the feeling that the Germans are singled out among a the nations, when almost every country has a blood-soaked history ("You Americans wiped out the Indians!"). But, a strategic understanding of the war, of the doctrines of National Socialism, not a clue.

So, you're complaining that they do know the things that actually mattered about the war, and made it different, and less about the things that don't.

Typical YH.

Some statues of Nazis might help them to actually, you know, learn some facts about the war rather than the pieties that are served up as the Proper German Thoughts About WWII.

This god-awful bullshit is enough to choke a horse. Germans know a lot more about their history than you confederacy-apologists know about the confederate cause. Davis and his buddies (not all of them attempted to escape U.S. troops dressed as a woman, like Yasir Arafat) - engaged in a deliberate attempt to cover up and whitewash the whole secessionist cause. The lost cause. They abstracted it to technical terms like "states rights" and left under the surface the whole main point about building a slave-owning empire of white supremacy to ultimately take over the Caribbean and South America, too.

Kind of like the Nazis.

Hitler was a huge fan of the Confederate cause. Look it up.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

And, FWIW, that's not really a strawman. I think if you were suddenly transported 155 years back in time..

So pretending that the year is not 2017 is not a straw man? Ok, then.

Rusty said...

Hitler was also a huge fan of Margret Sanger and Woodrow Wilson's progressive policies. Look it up.

Big Mike said...

They're not "Alt-Left." They're just the Left.

I think Balfegor is referring to yesterday, when ARM was arguing that the number of antifas in the melee was small or negligible, and it was the "good citizens of Charlottesville" who rose up in their righteous indignation to break the law.

But that was so yesterday. Who knows what ARM believes today?

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

Hitler was also a huge fan of Margret Sanger and Woodrow Wilson's progressive policies. Look it up.

As well as advanced technology interstate highway travel. Look it up.

But it makes sense that the part that bothers you is how you can't make his love for a slavery-based empire of white supremacy sound any better than you wish it did.

Rosalyn C. said...

I'm wondering how much racism exists against affluent and successful "African Americans" among affluent and successful Caucasian Americans? I don't really know for a fact, but I would suspect very little. We just don't hear about extremely talented and brilliant Blacks being denied opportunities just because they are Black. I suspect the same is true for middle class Blacks living and working among middle class Whites. I could be wrong but that's my suspicion.

So where is all this racism we hear about non-stop from the Left? The police treatment of young AA males? check. Failing inner city schools? check. Mostly the effects of racism are persistent poverty and lack of upward mobility and lack of opportunities for economic development. This racism is not about white supremacists or Confederate statues. That's Trump's point of view, and his solution is to change the education system, offer better private schools and bring back economic opportunities. For that he's accused of being a racist and white supremacist. He's focused on solutions, not politically correct rhetoric. All talk, no action politicians are not Trump fans. Eventually people will figure this out.

Regarding another commenter: I find disturbingly ignorant the argument that if we can show respect for soldiers of the Confederacy in US we should also honor Nidal Hasan, the Ft. Hood terrorist murderer, AKA self described "Soldier of Allah." We won the Civil War and part of healing is forgiving the past. We are still fighting the war against Islamic supremacism and terrorism. This is not the time for forgiveness. That's the difference.

exiledonmainstreet, green-eyed devil said...

When you read about the French Revolutionary leader Marat, you find that what primarily motivated him was not concern for the injustices of pre-Revolutionary France, but what he felt was unjust treatment of him. He had been a brilliant student yet was unable to advance in his career or gain the recognition and honor he felt he deserved. Partly it was because Parisian intellectual circles were very insular and snobby and difficult to break into without connections; partly because he was just an unpleasant asshole to be around. But his lack of success embittered him and filled him with hatred, and when he finally found himself in power, his bloodlust knew no bounds. He wasn't about helping the poor; he had plenty of them killed without a second thought. He was about inflicting pain on others because he had been hurt.

I think there are many Marats among the left (and among the neo-Nazis too). Not their elite masters, who are cynical manipulators. But the rank and file - oh yeah. They're not about "social justice." They're about burning the world down.

Let us be thankful that Ritmo has no political power.

Humperdink said...

TTR makes inane arguments. You need not look it up.

Molly said...

On the evening of April 10, 1865 [just after Appomattox], a crowd of some 3,000 people gathered outside the White House, hoping for some rousing words from their president. In response to their cries of “Speech!” Lincoln demurred, saying he would deliver an address the following evening, after he had adequate time to prepare. As consolation, he issued a special request for the Marine band. “I have always thought ‘Dixie’ one of the best tunes I have ever heard. Our adversaries over the way attempted to appropriate it, but I insisted yesterday that we fairly captured it.” As the crowd laughed and cheered, Lincoln added, “It is good to show the rebels that with us they will be free to hear it again.”

http://www.history.com/news/what-lincoln-said-in-his-final-speech

Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...

Big Mike said...
it was the "good citizens of Charlottesville" who rose up


When you look at videos of the counter-protesters what fraction are wearing black clothes and hoods. The black clothed rabbis and clergy in attendance do not count.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

I find disturbingly ignorant the argument that if we can show respect for soldiers of the Confederacy in US we should also honor Nidal Hasan, the Ft. Hood terrorist murderer -

He fought U.S. troops and they fought U.S. troops - and then supported a reign of terror across the South after losing.

Let me know how their deadly attacks on U.S. troops was more honorable than his, mkay? Attacks that led to the deaths of nearly half a million in the conflagration altogether.

Tell me what was honorable about that.

Codebanger said...

Showing respect for the losing side has always been a way for the winning side to show that the fight is over. Grave markers and statues are much cheaper than lives.

Lefties disagree, which is why leftie regimes prefer unmarked and mass graves.

Balfegor said...

Re: The Toothless Revolutionary:

Davis and his buddies (not all of them attempted to escape U.S. troops dressed as a woman, like Yasir Arafat)

For some reason, I had thought Judah Benjamin was the one who disguised himself as a woman, but I see it was Davis himself (Benjamin's disguises during his successful escape were a lot more boring). Benjamin is in a lot of ways the most fascinating member of the Confederate cabinet -- from potential nominee to the Supreme Court (he declined), to first practicing Jew elected to the Senate (1853, Louisiana), to holding practically every senior office in the Confederacy at one point or another (Secretary of State, Secretary of War, Attorney General), he escaped to the UK, where he started a successful legal practice. An eventful life.

Guildofcannonballs said...

"They want to hurt those they dislike, because they harbor grudges. They want to feel powerful, but they're still scared deep inside, so they target those who can't fight back."

The abortion more in anger than sorrow.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

TTR makes inane arguments. You need not look it up.

That's exactly what Jefferson said after his capture, when he and his friends spent their dying days re-writing the history of what happened in the form of the Lost Cause narrative. It was a deliberate attempt to change everyone's understanding of what the Confederacy was all about and what its aims were - in the form of the ultimate cover-up. One that Humperdink swallows whole and asks everyone else to lap up with him.

Here it is. Ignore it and deny as you ignore and deny everything else that's crucial to our survival and flourishing as a nation and as a people. But the facts are out there, and their publicity will grow. I know it's an uphill battle for you to deny knowledge to others. But take heart, you can still choose to keep denying it to yourselves.

Unknown said...

I find it darkly amusing that TTR has zero problems with Stalin and Mao's genocides of tens of millions. Leftist violence is always justified, because it's always aimed at the "right people".

I mean, Che guevara is a leftist hero. Gazillions of leftists proudly wear his shirt and TTR sees absolutely nothing at all wrong with that.

--Vance

D. said...

Is the mayor open to a Federal lawsuit?:

US Public law 85-425 Section 410

"Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the
United States of America in Congress assembled,
That the Veterans' Benefits Act of 1957 (Public Law 85-56) is amended:


(3) Section 432 is amended by adding at the end thereof the
following new
subsection:
"(e) For the purpose of this section, and section 433, the term
'veteran' includes a person who served in the military or naval forces
of the Confederate States of America during the Civil War, and the
term 'active, military or naval service' includes active service in such
forces." "

https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/STATUTE-72/pdf/STATUTE-72-Pg133.pdf

exiledonmainstreet, green-eyed devil said...

"Yeah, we tried that."

No we didn't, Ritmo, because Lincoln was assassinated, remember? When that idiot ham actor John Wilkes Booth shot Lincoln, he didn't realize that it would hurt the South most.

"Lincoln pursued the war ruthlessly, once he finally got the right generals."

Sure. During the war. Not out of vengeance, but because he wanted it to end as quickly as possible. From the great Second Inaugural speech:

"It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged."

Those are the words of a great man, not a petty little Ritmo. Don't pull Lincoln down to your own sorry level.

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