I appreciate you all for taking the time to read this, and allowing yourselves the openness to read through the reasons behind different sentiments felt in our beautiful country. I’ll start with this; I don’t think my chosen topic for this piece is one of the top few issues we face today. However, the message behind it, and the absence of that message in today’s world is.
Statues aren’t built to remember the flaws of the people they represent. Those that see themselves as “perfect,” have my permission to tear down the first statue. But if you are perfect, you have the power to inspire, correct, and lead change towards all your perfectness and prosperity you live and preach by. You should constantly work to build the power to replace those monuments with your voice, not your fist. These monuments were put there for the monumental prosperity that we evidently possess. These figures lived in a different world than you and me; where different religions and nationalities were bigger dividing issues than skin color is today. Yet they still fought for all Americans, white, black, atheist, Jewish, or Buddhist. They fought for the beliefs of their own people, to be able to think and say whatever they wanted. To have their voices resonate, they fought to create change in their time and in ours. Today, with the information and technology we have, our views of the world are continuing to change. Why has that led to us changing our love for our country, when we can change the country.
The attacks on these figures, become attacks on their ideas. They diminish the achievements and progress they made, and demonize anything they can about how they got us here. These attacks are using fear and intimidation to prevent bold ideas from being thought, or spoken. If the beliefs you have fall in a general line with those of our forefathers, it is considered hateful, because if we look back they did hateful things. These ideas become attacked and misaligned with their true message, just as these monuments have.
Instead, I propose we choose the path of reasonable discussion about the issues in an honest and mutually beneficial manner.
