Statues of racists need to be removed from the world.

Oh, gee, BMMyers. Sorry to hear about "Hurricane Harvey destroying your Texas town." Maybe it's God punishing you for committing centuries of injustice upon black people. Maybe people should just move away from the south. If I lived somewhere where my home was destroyed every ten years, I'd probably move away. Just sayin'. If any judges are listening, please donate to all the poor people who live in Colorado and Oregon. They may not have to deal with hurricanes, but they do have to deal with republicans, which are just as bad. Anyway, let's get back to the stuff at hand, ok? First, your argument one. US has zero authority to remove statues outside the US. Well, that may be true. But we can give those countries friendly advice, tell them that if they have any statues of racists, they might want to take them down-since statues of racists are evil no matter where they are. Look, the US has done some pretty messed up stuff-but other countries have too, I gotta say. If a country had a monument of Hitler, why wouldn't most of the world, including the US, want to take it down? Of course they would! And if the country with the Hitler statue refuses to take it down, it means that something is seriously wrong with that country and that there might be grounds for war. But all that stuff about outside the US is filler. Like I said in round one, I don't want to focus on that too much, but I'm glad you took the time to get that out of the way. Other countries do have some weird stuff up in their countries, like sculptures of evil people and like that, so those should go away too. Ok, point two. There are no "racist statues" in America. Okay, I'll go along with that. The statues might not be celebrating the guy owing slaves, or leading them out to the torture shack, or raping their wives and beating their children. The statues are probably celebrating some civil war victory, some battle won, some tremendous achievement, something that the guy did to help out. It doesn't matter. Like that one guy said in the comments- "The civil war wasn't just about slavery!" You're very wrong it wasn't. It was only about slavery. Nothing but. there was nothing else going on in the country at the time that divided people up as much as slavery. Sure, there might have been a few other little political issues going on with the white people-there always are. But for the black people, the only thing they cared about was, "Oh, gee, maybe slavery will end now, and we'll get to live like human beings now." Slavery was it. That is the only reason why the civil war was ever fought. Abraham Lincoln once said to Harriet Beecher Stowe, who wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin, "So you're the little woman who started this great war." And if that doesn't sum it up, I don't know what does. But like I was saying, these statues don't memorialize RACISM-they don't depict the blood or tears. They just memorialize RACISTS doing non racist things. They just look like a normal guy, a guy you'd see everyday. They don't bother to mention that the guy MURDERED TWENTY PEOPLE BECAUSE OF THE COLOR OF THEIR SKIN. Why would any statue do that? It would be too honest. You mentioned how these statues were built with "taxpayer money." Racists can pay taxes just as well as normal people can. These statues were built by racists, for racists. Nobody except racists would ever memorialize a murderer for ANYTHING, slavery or otherwise. Now, argument 3. Removing a statue doesn't accomplish anything. It does, Myers. It does. It accomplishes a whole lot. If I saw a piece of graffiti, I'd remove it, right? Well, aren't these statues just a type of graffiti, albeit made by important people? These statues are like drawing a swastika. They are just as ugly and disgusting. Think of a tourist coming here. He sees a statue of Robert E. Lee, and he thinks, "That's ugly. Why haven't they cleaned that up yet?" But if he sees the Lee statue replaced by a statue of Lincoln, the guy will think, "Wow. they really know how to improve their country." Removing our racist statues could improve tourism by a whole lot, and improve our identity in the eyes of other nations. Wouldn't it make black people happier? A black guy wouldn't want to pass by that statue every day. Lots of black guys probably live in Charlottesville. They don't want to see Robert E. lee every day. They hate him. He owned slaves. He should go. Not removing these statues is a crime against the people who hate him, and whose ancestors were killed by them. People hate these statues, except for racists. Finally, argument 4-that it only increases hatred and division. How could it do that, really? Black people will be happier, everybody would be happier. Except people who like the statues. And I don't want to be friends with them. In the days following Charlottesville, people were angry. Now, everything has kind of settled down. The division only lasts a few days. then everything is ok again. You say it's causing negativity, and not positive solutions. I ask you, in your next argument, to tell me another positive solution-an alternative to ripping these sick people out of the ground and carting them off to the junkyard. I don't see one. If you do, it can't be as good as mine. I'd like to leave you with an image of the statue in Charlottesville: https://static01.nyt.com... I ask you, is this statue acknowledging that this man is a racist? Does it show a killer, a man who murdered thousands for a bushel of cotton? Does this show a man who hated people because of the color of their skin? Does this show a murderer? Or does it show a hero? I'll leave it up to you. I must say, you made a pretty good argument for only an hour. I await your next one.