Putting the Confederate Legacy Into Context

A reader sent me the meme here, and asked (implicitly) for my comments.

It’s hard to know where to begin.  Robert E. Lee was a traitor to the United States, and led a force that would have promulgated slavery, an institution that the entire rest of the civilized world had long since condemned, as far into the future as possible. This resulted in intense combat that left between 620,000 and 750,000 soldiers dead, along with an undetermined number of civilians. The Civil War remains the deadliest military conflict in American history, and accounted for more American military deaths than all other wars combined until the Vietnam War.

Now, let it be known that essentially every one of the 200+ sovereign nations on Earth has had its bad actors.  Germany had Hitler, Italy had Mussolini, Serbia had Milosevic, and the list goes on.

There is, however, one important difference between these countries and our own:  No other country on the planet celebrates its worst people.  I’ve been all over Germany, and I’ve yet to see a statue of Hitler.

Hope that addresses your question.