Leave the Washington and Jefferson monuments alone

Washington and Jefferson do not have the same complicity on this matter as do Confederate soldiers. In my judgment, this is a distinction worth making.

While it’s true that our first and third presidents were slave-owners, this is not central (or even relevant) to why they are memorialized. What’s more, they did not push for the permanent establishment of slavery.

On the other hand, a Confederate monument has an inextricable, and therefore enduring, connection to the aims of the Confederacy…

There is no meaningful way to pay tribute to the valor of Confederate soldiers, or to the vast assortment of perfectly benign traditions in the antebellum South, via Confederate monuments. The very act of prominently placing a Confederate monument within a city space is inherently celebratory. There is no way to do so without at the same time eulogizing the Confederate cause.