Toppling Monuments, a Visual History
But first this quote, because resistance to the Gov. is as American as Apple Pie and was celebrated by the founders and the movers and shakers of the European Enlightenment:
"The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it to be always kept alive. It will often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be exercised at all. I like a little rebellion now and then. It is like a storm in the atmosphere." --Thomas Jefferson to Abigail Adams, 1787.
http://www.ahl-alquran.com/English/show_article.php?main_id=5908
Toppling Monuments, a Visual History - New York Times
By Jacey Fortin
Aug. 17, 2017
History is littered with the shattered remains of toppled statues, and more are toppling now in the American South.
A violent rally this weekend in Charlottesville, Va., centered in part on the city’s plan to relocate a statue of the Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee. A memorial to Confederate soldiers in Durham, N.C., was pulled down by protesters on Monday. Four Confederate monuments were taken down by the city of Baltimore on Wednesday; New Orleans did the same earlier this year.
But stiff opposition remains. Debates are raging over whether the statues should fall because they commemorate those who fought to uphold slavery, or stand because they remind us of a history that cannot be erased.
The United States has been dismantling statues since its very foundation.
One of the earliest recorded instances came in 1776, just five days after the Declaration of Independence was ratified. In a moment that was immortalized in a mid-19th-century painting, soldiers and civilians tore down a gilded statue of Britain’s King George III in Manhattan.
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That dismantling was more than symbolic. The leaden king was to be repurposed “to make musket balls, so that his troops will probably have melted Majesty fired at them,” during the Revolutionary War, said a letter from Ebenezer Hazard, New York’s postmaster, to Gen. Horatio Gates.
Globally, iconoclasm has been practiced at least since ancient times. Instances were recorded in the Bible. Medieval Christians smashed sculptures of Ancient Rome. Spanish conquerors destroyed temples of the Aztecs and the Incas.
More: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/17/world/controversial-statues-monuments-destroyed.html?auth=login-facebook
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