The Robert E. Lee Problem
Hat tip to Steve M.
My comment at Steve M's was this.
Now, if Lee had sponsored an officers' plot to assassinate Jefferson Davis and end the war by surrender to the Union forces, it would be fine, though some might think it perhaps a bit over the top, to memorialize and honor him.
Otherwise, as for their supposed private opinions on slavery or anything else, it does not matter what these allegedly honorable and decent men said or thought.
It matters what they actually did, when push came to shove.
A Reconstruction variant of the Nuremberg trials would not have been out of place or unduly harsh, not for war crimes per se but for crimes against humanity related to secession and war for the defense and advancement of slavery, itself a crime against humanity, though the concept would have had to be invented nearly a century earlier than it actually was.
Anyway, the present issue fissures into at least two parts.
One is the question what to do about public honoring of the Confederacy and those who fought for it, and the answer is that the relevant public authorities need to stop all that, take down the flags and monuments and rename the schools and streets, etc.
And the other is the question what to do about private honoring of those things and people, and the answer is to resist with public obloquy but not coercion.
But as to that last, on this matter as on others I think the First Amendment needs to be enforced as a suitably qualified guarantee of the freedom of employees against employer retaliation, as well as a suitably qualified guarantee against government coercion or retaliation.
Here I realize I am more on the side of individual freedom of opinion, speech, and association than liberals generally are, and that my preference is directly opposed to the activities of our contemporary Red Guards of PC.
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