Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from House Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry over there. So this is Stuff you Should Know Controversy Edition. Yeah. Sure, there will be some of that in here, for sure. But I also think it's important when we're talking about removing public monuments that it's not all about Confederate monuments. No. Actually, I'm glad you said that, because that actually brings up a pretty good intro. There's some monuments in New York City, New York City, New York City. Um. Yeah, that was such a great commercial, wasn't it. And it's endured. Um. There's four of them actually that are being targeted for removal by UM activists. Baldy no all. The Columbus is one of them. I believe that the Columbus statue in Columbus Circle one of Teddy Roosevelt. I think it's at the Museum of Natural History. Interesting, and um, I was like, what's wrong with this one? It's from Teddy Roosevelt. And then if you go and look at the statue in this context, you're like, yeah, Okay, I can kind of see that one. He's like valiantly astride this horse, and this African tribesman and this Native American chief are down on the ground on either side of him, like he's just in charge of the show, right, So I can kind of see that one. There's another one of a guy named J. M. Sims I believe is his name. He's known as the father of guy in ecology. He I don't know why I laughed at that. I just I guess I'll just go ahead. So his that's why he had a statute. So it's just him, just him with a giant volva right behind him. It's just him, like you know, a normal statue honoring a man and um. The problem is is that although he's the father of gyne incology, he was also known in the first half of the nineteenth century to carry out like um experimental surgery on slave women with like zero anesthesia, obviously without consent, and he's been compared to Joseph Mangel It basically it's just this mad scientist with zero regard for human life. And you might say, well, this is the first half of the nineteenth century, but some people argue that even at the time what he was doing would have been considered by his contemporaries as as unethical. Well, and as you will see as we go through this, uh so, much of the conversation around this controversy is, Um, do we look at it through the lens of when it was put up, why it was put up, who it was put up by? Or do we look at it do lens of Hey, it's do we still need to honor someone now who we know did monstrous things? Yeah, those are all really great questions. Or should we leave it up as a cautionary tale is another argument? And we're gonna wait into all these waters. So the reason that we're even talking about this and and the reason why you can had you been around towns like Baltimore, New Orleans, um, Helena, Montana in the summer of two thousand seventeen, you would have seen Confederate statues being removed, uh sometimes in the dead of night. Um. The whole reason all of this started was actually back in two thousand and fifteen when the the was it the Columbia. It was Columbia, South Carolina. It wasn't Charleston, right, it was Charleston. The church. Yeah, the church shooter, the Charleston church massacre where nine people died by an a bowed white suprema assist right, really started up this idea that and I think it woke a lot of you know, the establishment up to the idea that there's all this iconography all around the country that a pretty large section of people have a real issue with and that everybody has just totally ignored their their problems with it for decades. Right. That really kind of woke a lot of people up. And it got a lot of city councils around the country reevaluating why they had these things up still was it worth just taking down? And a lot of them did take some stuff down, right. And then in the summer of two thousand seventeen, I think it was, was it May or August? Um was it August, the Charlottesville rally was held. I can't remember the month, but but it was. It was two thousand seventeen. The hotter months of two thousand seventeen, there was a there was a white supremacist rally in favor of the Roberty Lee statue that was marked to be It was it was controversial the statue of Roberty Lee from Charlottesville UM and people have been talking about taking it down. So white supremacists met to support the statue. Counter protests UM were met the white supremacists and violence broke out. One woman died UM and it was just a bad scene that created even more like a second wave of people looking at these statues and said, Okay, not only are these possibly like creating an unfriendly public environment for people like whole swaths of people that are Americans here in the United States, but they can also serve as flashpoints for violence, and we should really rethink these. And by the time the second wave happened, state legislatures around the country, especially in the South, had intervened between the first wave and the second wave and started passing UM legislation that said, you can't move public monuments, especially ones that are dedicated to UM war heroes, wars that have been around for like forty years or more, basically putting an end to the easy removal of Confederate monuments around the country. And so all this is done is created this huge conflict. Well it was already a conflict one way or the other, but this the the the conflict is is now both sides are just butting up against each other. And you know, when you push two masses together, they tend to go upward. And and that's basically what's happening right now. Lava is going upward here in the United States as tensions are rising, and it has never been more tense in my lifetime and probably your lifetime as well, Chuck, which are virtually the same thing. But that's where we stand right now in January of two thousand and eighteen. Right, Uh, can we cover some history here though? Yeah, let's all right, So this is nothing new though, Um, as far as just taking down public monuments, the world since the beginning of time has erected monuments and then eventually had someone that wants to take down that monument um right here in America when we one of the first things we did when the Revolutionary War kicked off was said, Hey, let's go down to the King George the Third Statue in Manhattan and let's pull that thing down. Uh. In on July six we just heard the Declaration of Independence for the first time and we got them. Yeah, and let's take down that statue. And you know what, let's not only do that, let's melt down that thing into forty plus thousand bullets to fire upon them with. Yeah, that's pretty sweet. It's pretty pretty ironic. You know. He said, here's some King George for you red coat. I think that's what they said. Uh. And this, this goes well well beyond that. Of course, um Spanish raised Aztec and other temples in the America's so Catholic cathedrals could be built. Like basically someone would would take over, tear down those statues, put up their own. Then someone else would come along tear down those statues. And you know it wouldn't always a lot of times it was a good thing, So you would have like in in Hungary in ninety he had the Hungarian uprising against the Soviets and they storm Budapest and tore down a statue of Stalin. Stalin had quite a few, and Lenin quite a few statues of themselves the years. Yeah, wherever communism spread, if there was like a communist backed regime or country, or even just a non backed communist polarized country, you could probably find a statue of at least Lenin, if not Stalin two in this country, even like places like Ethiopia had them. Right, And so when there's an invading army or a revolution or a regime change. This is usually when you see a statue torn down. It's a symbolic gesture, sure it it is, and and it's almost like not it's but it's also like a part of the healing process that seems like too, or at least the transition process, let's call it that. Right. Yeah, Then there's another there's another type of situation where statues tend to get torn down, and that's when there's like a cultural shift. And that's kind of what we're seeing now in with this um with the Confederate monument controversies, right, and what you've also seen in the two thousands in Latin America where in places like Venezuela, statues of Columbus started to come down and replaced with things like uh indigenous chiefs who once tried to fight off people like Columbus. Yeah, Gouai kai Porto, Yeah, which is a that's a full shift from not only are we gonna not walk by this Columbus statue every day now that we know we know, but we're gonna put up a statue of people that try to defend against him, right, right, So It's almost like they are hundreds of years later throwing off the uh, the shackles of imperialism, I guess, the stank of imperialism. Right. Should we take a break? I'm pretty worked up? Yeah, yeah, I feel like we need to go rub each other's shoulders for a minute. All right, prepare for it, Josh, Okay, So the the place we find in ourselves right now? Well, how about this, chuck? Why why are there any public monuments anywhere anyway? Right? Look like, I think that's kind of the core of this. We have to get to what is really being talked about here, because it's if it's just some statue or something like that, especially in some places like far flung as Helena, Montana. Um. What does the statue of the Confederacy have anything to do with? What does any statue have anything to do with? Yeah? Well, first of all, they're more than um according to Southern Party Law Center, more than statues, flags, plaques, city names, county names, street names, and holidays uh named and even military bases named after Confederate generals or dedicated somehow to the American Confederacy. UM. And that includes everything from like like you said, street names and flags and all that. There's like, there's seven hundred statues and monuments just on public property UM in the so seven statues and monuments and thirty two of those who have either been dedicated or rededicated since two thousands, right, So what these these range anywhere from uh Confederate Avenue over on the east side of Atlanta, which is just a street name to um. You drive through Atlanta and you see, if you pay attention, you see Civil War battle plaques all over the place. And these are I put these in a slightly different category because they are literally just historical markers. Like they're very neutral on this in this sonic parking lot, there once was was a battle waged between this brigade and this brigade on this date, and this is what happened here, not even that. Sometimes it'll be like the the the Confederate Army thought about making camp here but decided not to, So they did a quarter mile east of this because it's a little hilly, don't you think. Can you blame them? Yeah? And those I put those in different category because those are historical markers of where something happened. It's not saying maybe some of them do, but it's not saying this is where the proud sons of the eighteenth Brigade fought off the evil Yanks in their bid to ensure slavery. Yeah, that tends to be. You'll find those more unlike monuments or statues, especially ones that were bankrolled by private individuals or private groups who were just one and the same with the people who were running that that little town at the time. Yeah, I mean all right, So that's that's sort of the crux for me with this whole thing is when, where, when, and why were these things erected to begin with, and by whom and in many many cases, uh, some private rich person paid for this thing to be put up as a definitive screw you to what was going on in the country at the time. And it's very rarely has it just been like, hey, you know what, we should just put up a statue because we think Robert Lee is a great general um. Time and time again, you see stories, for instance, Charlottesville, that statue of Robert E. Lee. It was commissioned and paid for by a wealthy individual named Paul Goodlow McIntyre in nineteen seventeen, when he also bought the surrounding park and said this is for whites only, and let's put a statue of general lee Like, the context of how that happened is key to me, right, and actually, Chuck, that still goes on today. A lot of the monuments that are erected to the Confederacy are erected through private funding, private land, which makes them wholly out of reach of any debate over whether they should be removed or not. Because that, uh, that is covered by two very important American rights, which is the right to free speech whether people like it or not, and private property rights. You put those two things together, something is basically untouchable. Yeah, and and listen, we say all of this, uh, like, I'm not really weighing in. I think people probably know I feel let's be honest, Um, I'm not weighing in here one way or the other. But we say all that just to say that just because there is a statue, uh that looks great and it was really expensive, um in a in a town square, it doesn't mean that it represented ever maybe or certainly now the um wants of the community at large. Sometimes it may have just been a single individual that had enough sway and money to say I'm at the statue. Yeah, you know what I'm saying. So it's a very and I think who wrote this was a Dave Ruce. He put it best. He said, you know, what it represents is a very narrow historical record. Right, especially at the time, it might have really not represented a lot of people. It might even in some cases it may more people may feel represented by it now than they did at the time. Um. Apparently, especially for some of these older ones, it was not a normal thing to erect some sort of memorial to the Confederacy immediately after the Civil War. Two for a couple of reasons. One is that there are plenty of Union veterans still around the country and they would not have been very happy to have seen something like that. And then secondly, the South was very, very poor for decades after the war. Um it was. It was not a wealthy place. There's not a lot of money running around for towns to put together, um enough money to erect a decent statue that would last for a hundred years. Um. But like you said, though, by the time that they did start to be erected, um there there there, it's it coincided with some really important something very important, which was the Jim Crow era. Yeah, either Jim Crow a lot of them or the civil rights movement. Yeah, so this it's not an accident. Now, the Southern Poverty Law Center UM is a it's an organization that tracks hate groups. And if you're a hate group, you probably don't put much stock into studies created by the Southern Poverty Law Center. But um, the the SPLC did a study of Confederate markers, monument statues, street names, all that stuff around the country tree and they found that the vast majority of these things were erected in like the Jim Crow era at the from like say eight ninety till just after the First World War. That that's when most of the statues to the Confederacy and monuments were erected. And this is a time when the South had gone through reconstruction, the North had abandoned the reconstruction project. From what I understand, I didn't realize this before, but basically there was this period what was called a period of healing between the North and the South, that the divisiveness between the two areas grew so so deep that war broke out, and then afterwards the hurt feelings started to subside enough that there was this desire to to come back together to heal, and the North and the South decided that they would heal at the expense of the African Americans and they would find common ground by saying, yeah, I think we can find we can all agree that that whites are the supreme race. And the African Americans, who had just recently been freed in the South and we're carrying out reconstruction, said wait what and um, this is the Jim Crow era that kicked off the Jim Crow era, and this was the time when these monuments started to be erected. Like you said, it doesn't seem to have been much of an accident the timing. And if you talk to some historians, they say, Nos, no accident whatsoever. This was white saying you might not be under by law under white control any longer. But it's pretty plain and simple. We've just directed a monument to remind you that about white supremacy and that that's the law of the land. Where's your statue and your monument. I don't see it anywhere, So I guess we win. Yeah. I mean the Georgia State flag controversy is the prime example I remember when that was happening on the early two thousand's. For those of you don't know, the Georgia state flag, uh, from nineteen fifty six to two thousand one, um was was changed and had the the good old Confederate stars and bars on the right hand right half of it. And I remember at the time a lot of people saying, you know, this is our history, this is uh, you can't change our flag. You can't change our flag racing history. And I think many of them may not even have realized that that was not the original flag. They went back to the original flag after two thousand one, but they they threw those stars and bars on there in nineteen fifty six. And what what was going on in Atlanta in nineteen fifty six, you know, right the civil rights Sarah de segregation or desegregation, I should say, yeah, And it was just very plainly a middle finger to desegregation and once again a reminder, we're gonna fly this flag now that has the Confederate battle flag on it. And in you know, fifty something years later in the two thousand's, maybe a lot of people will forget that this was not the original flag. And that's exactly what happened. Man, it happened in aces too, So the that so the SPLC study found the same found what you were saying that there are basically two big and and there are always Confederate monuments and statues being erected or streets being named that, or flags going up. But there were two periods, the Jim Crow era in the Civil Rights era where they really increased. And the fact that those those statues and monuments really increased and coincided with these these times of struggle for white supremacy um really provides a pretty compelling case that those Confederate monuments and those rebel flags on those state houses are meant to express white supremacy. Yeah, it's tough to it's tough to look at it any other way when you when you look at this timeline like that, And that's what's that issue. You know, what what is the meaning of the Confederate flag on a state house, What is the meaning of a Confederate monument or statue in a town square? What is it ultimately trying to say? And that's that's really at the heart of this controversy, is what are you trying to say with that thing? What are we now, as the society in the small little town in Georgia, Alabama, or Louisiana wherever, What are we saying by fighting over keeping this statue or this flag flying? What's what's what's the argument here? Well, yeah, people in favor of keeping them will say that it's uh, you know, it's dangerous to a race history. You're we can learn from these things. They can serve as reminders of how not to be maybe, Um. But at the very least, you can't erase history. So don't even try to erase history. Um. So that's basically the one of the main arguments against taking these down, right, Just you can't whitewash history. You can erase history, right. So that's one. Another one is um and this is a big one. That's that's really kind of kept a lot of these things up so far, is that, Um, the Confederate monuments, the Confederate statutes, the Confederate flags are not meant as symbols of hatred or slavery or oppression. They are Um. You'll see people say that it's heritage, not hate, right, And what they mean with that is this thing called the lost Cause narrative. Right. So the Lost Cause narrative is this idea that um, well, actually I found that there's like six parts to it. All right, are you ready for these, because I'm gonna lay them out. So the Lost Causes basically this narrative that says that the the South, the Confederacy, the Civil War, none of it had to do with slavery, or if it did, it had very very little to do with slavery. That really the Civil War was the War of Northern aggression. There was the North that started it. The South just wanted to seceed from the North, just wanted to get away from this federal government that cared not about states rights, that cared not about the South and it's its economy or it's anabellum mansions or anything like that. That really was the War of Northern aggression, and that the Confederacy was just protecting their homeland, protecting their way of life, and that it was secession not slavery that was um at issue here. And a lot of people say, well, what was the South seceding from if not the the the right exactly right. There's some other tenants to it too. There's this is very important. This is an important part of the Lost Cause narrative is that actually e slaves were happy to be enslaved. They were happy with their servitude. They didn't have to think about what to do with life, they didn't have to worry about wondering what they were gonna do, and they were maybe too shiftless to really be responsible to manage their own life anyway. So they were actually happier under the Anabellum plantation system of slavery than they were free. That's a huge tenant of the Lost Cause UM. And then the other part of it, and the whole reason that it has the name the Lost Cause, is that the only reason, the only reason that the Confederacy lost the Civil War was because the UM the North was just so so vastly richer with resources, manpower, UM industry, that the South from the beginning UM was destined to lose the war. It just couldn't couldn't compete in that respect. Hence the name lost cause. The South's cause was lost from the outset. So if you were a defender of Confederate at monuments, this is probably the reason you're giving for defending them, that these are these things are not up to intimidate anybody that the people who are intimidated by them, the people who are taking them as white supremacy are simply taking them the wrong way. And then Chuck, there's one other thing that, like is a question that has to be answered around this whole thing, and that is that, like, if if it's true that like the original Confederate monuments that were put up around like say the eighteen nineties or up to the nineteen twenties or something, right, if those things like actually were put up out of like respect for the people who fought for their homeland, um, and for family members who have just recently died, and was actually out of like this respect for heritage, rather than as a symbol of hate and oppression. Isn't it possible though that those still those same monuments could develop racist symbolism over time for some people. And if that's the case, then you know, if you are somebody who believes in them as a point of heritage and pride, how do you reconcile that that for other people there there? Um they're saying, hey, yeah, white supremacy, buddy, I'm with you on that. How do you how do you separate those two? And if that is the case, if you do agree that there are people out there who you have nothing to do with who view these things as a as a symbol of white supremacy. Then isn't your beef with them rather than the people who are offended by that and want to take those things down. That's a good point. I don't have the answers, of course. Well no, I don't either, But I mean, just the this is just such a hornet's nous. It's just a ball of worms writhing around. Yeah, it's complicated with with you know, seven hundred plus like literal statues, each with their own backstory. It's kind of hard to make some huge generalization probably for sure, for sure it's true. All right, we let's take another break. Let's take our final break, and what's talk a little bit about just the ins and outs, like the sort of the mechanics of really removing these and how that works. Uh and uh the counter argument to lost cause legally, which would hinge on the equal protection argument right after this. Alright, so, um, here's how these things are generally, um, not only taken down, but how they're how they're put up. To begin with, we already mentioned the private, wealthy citizen who UM, just want to do something like this. It's obviously one way you can go down. Uh. The other way is as a lot of cities now UM, starting in the nineteen nineties, have commissions for approving these monuments. UM. The US Savannah, Georgia, very historic city in our own state as an example, they have a Historic Site and Monument Commission. They meet every month. They look at applications. Most cities will have an application process that you fill out that has to prove certain criteria to us if you want a public monument. UM. And they look over these all over the country all the time and either approved them or not. UM. I always thought it was funny that one of the big parts is usually like what's this gonna cost us? Right exactly? You know, like upkeep like what are we looking at here? Um? And like I said, these are pretty new, starting mostly in the nineteen nineties and later. UM. But it's generally to ensure that newer monuments has public support, whereas many of these older monuments did may not have had wide public support, but it was influential, wealthy few that decided what went up, right, right, Yeah, So like what like we said, the the the massacre at the church in Charleston really set off the first wave, and then the um Charlottesville protests set off the second wave of statue removal. But in between, a lot of state legislatures intervened and said no, because you towns and cities, you're in our state and where the law of the land. So we're saying you can't remove these monuments without our approval, and we're not going to give our approval to these things. Right. But previous to that, when the states previously them reacting to that and making these laws, it could be the city that decided or the county or whatever the local government was, or if it's on state owned land, obviously it would be the state legislature. Yeah. So I mean there's a lot of ways that, Like if the state hasn't intervened and created a state law that says you can't remove that, Yeah, if you're a city council or a board of commissioners in a county or something like that, you have full authority to remove these things. Um, and you can remove them for all sorts of different reasons. Um. There's this the article sites the statue in New York, the scary lucile ball statue. Remember that, man, I went back and looked, and oh, I feel so bad for that sculptor. The fish guy. The second lady nailed it. I mean she did such a good job. I didn't see the second one, man, the first Oh yeah, I did see the second one. It's just when you see him side by side, you just one looks like Lucio Ball and one looks like Lucio Ball. Got um zombie Lucio Ball. Yeah, you're drawn by Ralph Steadman or something weird like that, you know, so um her, No, it really doesn't. So the city council of Sellern, New York, Lucio Ball's hometown, said, uh, we're we don't like the statue. It's terrible. We're gonna take it down, scaring the kids. So they took it down because it was an ugly statue. But a city council could say we're gonna take it down because we've heard from enough of our citizens that they're intimidated by it, or they think that this is um uh, they it's it's it's creating an unsafe place, like it could be a flashpoint for violence, or it could it's in the way of the new whole foods that our town's getting. So let's get rid of this monument. So they can do this stuff unless the state has said, you guys can't move those things. This is where the state and you guys can't move these monuments, even on city land right right. So there's there's been I think in Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, UM at the very least, and I think several other states UM they've have have passed these laws that say you can't, you can't remove these things. So some states have had or some cities have had to get creative where their will has continued. Their desire to take these statues down has continued even after the states that they can't. So the city of Memphis, which had a couple of statues that wanted to take down, one of Robert E. Lee and one of one of Nathan No, they're not touching that one of Nathan Bedford Forest, who was one of the early leaders of the clan Um. They wanted these these statues taken down, but they couldn't take them down because they resolved to take them down after Tennessee passed its protection law. Well, the city of Memphis sold the land that those two statues were onto a nonprofit, and the nonprofit just immediately took them down to work around. So, as I mentioned before the break, we talked about the the lost cause narrative, and the flip side of that legally is the equal protection argument. So we're talking about the fourteenth Amendment, ratified in eighteen sixty eight to grant citizenship and equal rights two former slaves. UH. And this, to be clear, has not been used successfully yet in court as an argument to have a statue removed, but it is what groups like the a c l U or UH does, the Southern Poverty Law Center, they actually argue cases like this probably, I'm sure this is what they would try to use, most likely as a legal argument or a tactic at least to say that this isn't right, because basically what it means is what you were saying earlier, is it would be it would be under the guys that this was erected as an expression of white supremacy, and that's why it was erected, That's why it's there. States supported racism that's still there to make people feel unequal in the fourteenth Amendment says we can't do that. Yeah, that's the that's the approach that there will be some test case at some point in the next year two that will make it to the Supreme Court. So the Supreme Court will probably rule on that, and then that will either open the floodgates or shut down that legal argument one way or another. What's interesting to me, though, is that historians are probably going to come into these lawsuits. Right Like, if you ask just about any professional historian what started the Civil War, the consensus is and has been for a long time that it was slavery. That all the other stuff, the ability to succeed, states rights, um, hatred of Lincoln, all of these other things are are follow slavery, the the South's um desire to continue aus as slave based economy. Right. Um, If you ask the general public what caused the Civil War, apparently something like forty percent will tell you that it was secession, and only like will say slavery. So here's here's the problem with that. This is part of a kind of a larger trend that we've been seeing the last like five years or so maybe less, where there's just been a loss of faith in expertise, right where like the people who we used to turn to for answers, we we have just kind of tossed to the wayside, and so just shut up. We don't want to hear what you have to say any longer. We'll will decide what's true on our own, and when that happens with enough people, then history has a chance of being rewritten just by just by sentiment. Hey can I have nothing to do with reality, But everybody can decide that they're going to collectively remember things a certain way, and brother, that's history. That becomes history, whether it's fact based history or revisionist history or not. And that's a that's a problem. Like we have to remember history, whether it is enjoyable, whether it's um something that it stands as a cautionary tale, whether it's something that is painful, whether it's something that's inspiring. We have to remember our history. We just have to, or else we're gonna lose a lot of valuable lessons. The question that still remains is whether we have to remember that history in through monuments and statues or if we can in other ways. So it's weird. There's a defensive history, but there's also a loss of faith in historians and and their reading of history. It's pretty interesting. It's a bizarre and it's a weird place to be right now here in the States. It is. And that's why I'd never buy the you're a racing history argument because it's not like these are. It's not like the Civil War placke that just says this thing happened here. Like to me, that is a historical marker, that just says this, this action took place. It's not a monument glorifying the thing. Yeah, there's just this. There's a monument in Rossville, Georgia, which is close to Andersonville, South Carolina, and it's a it's a monument to a guy named Henry Wors who was one of the few executed war criminals from the Confederacy. He ran Andersonville Prison and um basically ran like a concentration camp, and he was executed by the North. Publicly, he was he was hanged, and very quickly, within a couple of decades UM, I think the Daughters of the Confederacy UH erected this monument to him and basically explained that he had been unfairly tried, that evidence against him had been faked, and that he was actually a war hero, not a war criminal. Yeah, so that's kind of like not the neutral plaque that you're talking about. It's the the antithesis of that. Well, I certainly don't have the answers. It's a complicated thing. But and there's so many of these and things, and you know that there's the whole can of worms argument that like do we then where where does it stop? Do we blast off the face of Stone Mountain or or Mountain rot more people think we should? Yeah, so stone Mountain one for sure, Yeah, yeah, Or where does it stop with the founding fathers because at the time some of them on slaves and this and that. Um, I don't purport to have the answers. I just my my advice would be to encourage people to just for a moment, to think about to walk in someone else's shoes and think about what how some of these monuments might make you feel. In twenty thousand eighteen, that's the way in the future in two thousand eighteen, just maybe step outside yourself for a minute and walk in someone else's shoes. That's just Uncle Chuck's advice. I think it's good advice no matter what. And I think what this is is a symptom of the need to a society that needs to heal and is not healing in productive ways right now? Ye what I think? Well, I don't have the answers either, though I certainly don't purport to. So I agree with you on that. I look forward to hearing all sides and email. Yeah, no death threats, please, no death threats. Oh quickly. We should talk about very famously in the Iraq War, when Saddam Hussein's statue was toppled on television, uh, And there was always a lot of speculation like this really reeks of something America cooked up as a bit of a rara thing um, and apparently Pro Publica looked into it along with the in the New Yorker magazine was where the piece was said. It was a crowd of Iraqis and it was it happened to be a statue in front of the Palestine Palestine Hotel, which is where a lot of the journalists were, so that's why it got the coverage. And they there were Americains and they were saying, hey, can we have that sledgehammer? Can we have a little help? Can we use that crane on that humby Now that we think about what you guys, just go ahead and do it for it. Well, apparently there was an official request submitted by the army sergeant saying, hey, they want to use our crane. Can we do this? And they got to go ahead to do it. So that is the party line story at least. Yeah, take it or leave it. Yeah, but very indelible image. You know when that statue was taken down, Oh yeah, it definitely was, like it felt pretty hard. And Saddam was still alive at the time too, which made it even more shocking. He's hiding in a hole. Kind of an interesting time, like I said, to be in America, weird, weird time. Well, I've seen other people call for saying like maybe don't take it down, Maybe erect another statue next to Roberty Lee of Rosa Parks or something, and maybe add to the stone Mountain my hum it and make it a history of it of Atlanta, and add Martin Luther King to it and make it more of a diorama and more inclusive. So it's I've seen arguments all over the place with all kinds of suggestions, because with fifteen hundred Confederate markers of some kind, I mean that's a lot of it's a lot of stuff, a lot of statues to balance things out that we'd have to erect that kind of thing well, or a lot of statues to tear down. Um. I mean, obviously it's going to come down to and should come down to, whatever they want to do locally. But we have one right here indicator Georgia still you know which one. I can't remember the name of it, but it's right there in the town square. And there there's been a lot of talk in the obviously the last couple of years about getting rid of that. So yeah, and then also like some people dig in so much to leave that statue there, they take it down and then a week later, like, is your life really changed materially? Is it that big of a deal that that's not there anymore? I don't know. I don't know. I think this whole I think this is all just innuendo, nuance, um and illusion and allegory and nobody's really talking about where most people aren't talking about what's really being discussed here. It's it's weird, weird time, man, such a strange time. It's a sad time for America, but it's also a very hopeful time too, if you really think about it in the right way, it is and you know what this uh, I know this is gonna be a lightning round in some ways, but I am happy we're a part of this conversation in some way. Nice again, No death threats, please everyone, No one likes to get those. Put yourself in our shoes. You wouldn't like getting them. If you want to know more about Confederate monuments, monuments in general, and possibly removing them, go type those words into the search bar how stuff works. That common will bring up the article. And since I said that it's time for a listener mail, I'm gonna call this, um, well, this one's pretty current, so I'm gonna call this current clearing up of accordion definition. Oh boy, that's good choice, Chuck. Okay, so this is a day or too late, guys, But I just had a chance to listen to the Great Mary Celeste episode, and I figured i'd be remis if I didn't heed the call of the alluring weird Al Yankovic shout out, because everyone loves weird Oult. So it now comes apart where I say that I don't actually know anything about accordions, but I think Josh pretty much nailed it the second time through. According to my sources, in general, melodeon is an accordion with buttons, and an accordion technically known as a piano accordion is an accordion with piano keys, not unlike the style played by both Alfred and Frankie Yankovic. No relation, believe it or not, No way, Uh yeah. Basically all melodions are accordions, but not all accordions or melodians, So that, in a nutshell, is how melodians work. Not to be confused with the concertina pictured here. And that is the literal handheld thing that you like, I might think of an old Italian man playing in the eighteen hundreds that you just there are no there may be, but it's it's a squeeze box, like the who talked about mom has got a squeeze box. Yeah, and that is from anonymous? Is it really? You're not gonna say who is from? Wow that anonymous? Have no idea who it's from. It's just some some weird, weird al fan. That's funny. No. My My exclamation of surprise was that Alfred and Frankie Yankovic have no relation to weird Al Yankovic. That's beyond bizarre. Yeah, I not don't even know who Alfred and Frankie Ankovi car I don't either, but surely every Yankovics related to weird Al Yankovic. Right, Yeah, but I also have a feeling that like they're eight percent of Yankovic's play the accordion. All right, well, weird Al, please please, as is custom, we end every episode like this, please get in touch with us and let us know how you're doing. Okay, if you're weird Al Yankovic and you want to get in touch with us, you can tweet to us. I'm at josh um Clark and you can also hit up the official s Y s K podcast one. You can join Chuck on Facebook dot com, slash Charles W. Chuck Bryant or slash stuff you Should Know either one. You can also send us an email and Jerry too to Stuff podcast at how Stuff Works dot com, and weird Al join us as always at our home on the web, Stuff you Should Know dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, is it how Stuff Works dot com

Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from House Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry over there. So this is Stuff you Should Know Controversy Edition. Yeah. Sure, there will be some of that in here, for sure. But I also think it's important when we're talking about removing public monuments that it's not all about Confederate monuments. No. Actually, I'm glad you said that, because that actually brings up a pretty good intro. There's some monuments in New York City, New York City, New York City. Um. Yeah, that was such a great commercial, wasn't it. And it's endured. Um. There's four of them actually that are being targeted for removal by UM activists. Baldy no all. The Columbus is one of them. I believe that the Columbus statue in Columbus Circle one of Teddy Roosevelt. I think it's at the Museum of Natural History. Interesting, and um, I was like, what's wrong with this one? It's from Teddy Roosevelt. And then if you go and look at the statue in this context, you're like, yeah, Okay, I can kind of see that one. He's like valiantly astride this horse, and this African tribesman and this Native American chief are down on the ground on either side of him, like he's just in charge of the show, right, So I can kind of see that one. There's another one of a guy named J. M. Sims I believe is his name. He's known as the father of guy in ecology. He I don't know why I laughed at that. I just I guess I'll just go ahead. So his that's why he had a statute. So it's just him, just him with a giant volva right behind him. It's just him, like you know, a normal statue honoring a man and um. The problem is is that although he's the father of gyne incology, he was also known in the first half of the nineteenth century to carry out like um experimental surgery on slave women with like zero anesthesia, obviously without consent, and he's been compared to Joseph Mangel It basically it's just this mad scientist with zero regard for human life. And you might say, well, this is the first half of the nineteenth century, but some people argue that even at the time what he was doing would have been considered by his contemporaries as as unethical. Well, and as you will see as we go through this, uh so, much of the conversation around this controversy is, Um, do we look at it through the lens of when it was put up, why it was put up, who it was put up by? Or do we look at it do lens of Hey, it's do we still need to honor someone now who we know did monstrous things? Yeah, those are all really great questions. Or should we leave it up as a cautionary tale is another argument? And we're gonna wait into all these waters. So the reason that we're even talking about this and and the reason why you can had you been around towns like Baltimore, New Orleans, um, Helena, Montana in the summer of two thousand seventeen, you would have seen Confederate statues being removed, uh sometimes in the dead of night. Um. The whole reason all of this started was actually back in two thousand and fifteen when the the was it the Columbia. It was Columbia, South Carolina. It wasn't Charleston, right, it was Charleston. The church. Yeah, the church shooter, the Charleston church massacre where nine people died by an a bowed white suprema assist right, really started up this idea that and I think it woke a lot of you know, the establishment up to the idea that there's all this iconography all around the country that a pretty large section of people have a real issue with and that everybody has just totally ignored their their problems with it for decades. Right. That really kind of woke a lot of people up. And it got a lot of city councils around the country reevaluating why they had these things up still was it worth just taking down? And a lot of them did take some stuff down, right. And then in the summer of two thousand seventeen, I think it was, was it May or August? Um was it August, the Charlottesville rally was held. I can't remember the month, but but it was. It was two thousand seventeen. The hotter months of two thousand seventeen, there was a there was a white supremacist rally in favor of the Roberty Lee statue that was marked to be It was it was controversial the statue of Roberty Lee from Charlottesville UM and people have been talking about taking it down. So white supremacists met to support the statue. Counter protests UM were met the white supremacists and violence broke out. One woman died UM and it was just a bad scene that created even more like a second wave of people looking at these statues and said, Okay, not only are these possibly like creating an unfriendly public environment for people like whole swaths of people that are Americans here in the United States, but they can also serve as flashpoints for violence, and we should really rethink these. And by the time the second wave happened, state legislatures around the country, especially in the South, had intervened between the first wave and the second wave and started passing UM legislation that said, you can't move public monuments, especially ones that are dedicated to UM war heroes, wars that have been around for like forty years or more, basically putting an end to the easy removal of Confederate monuments around the country. And so all this is done is created this huge conflict. Well it was already a conflict one way or the other, but this the the the conflict is is now both sides are just butting up against each other. And you know, when you push two masses together, they tend to go upward. And and that's basically what's happening right now. Lava is going upward here in the United States as tensions are rising, and it has never been more tense in my lifetime and probably your lifetime as well, Chuck, which are virtually the same thing. But that's where we stand right now in January of two thousand and eighteen. Right, Uh, can we cover some history here though? Yeah, let's all right, So this is nothing new though, Um, as far as just taking down public monuments, the world since the beginning of time has erected monuments and then eventually had someone that wants to take down that monument um right here in America when we one of the first things we did when the Revolutionary War kicked off was said, Hey, let's go down to the King George the Third Statue in Manhattan and let's pull that thing down. Uh. In on July six we just heard the Declaration of Independence for the first time and we got them. Yeah, and let's take down that statue. And you know what, let's not only do that, let's melt down that thing into forty plus thousand bullets to fire upon them with. Yeah, that's pretty sweet. It's pretty pretty ironic. You know. He said, here's some King George for you red coat. I think that's what they said. Uh. And this, this goes well well beyond that. Of course, um Spanish raised Aztec and other temples in the America's so Catholic cathedrals could be built. Like basically someone would would take over, tear down those statues, put up their own. Then someone else would come along tear down those statues. And you know it wouldn't always a lot of times it was a good thing, So you would have like in in Hungary in ninety he had the Hungarian uprising against the Soviets and they storm Budapest and tore down a statue of Stalin. Stalin had quite a few, and Lenin quite a few statues of themselves the years. Yeah, wherever communism spread, if there was like a communist backed regime or country, or even just a non backed communist polarized country, you could probably find a statue of at least Lenin, if not Stalin two in this country, even like places like Ethiopia had them. Right, And so when there's an invading army or a revolution or a regime change. This is usually when you see a statue torn down. It's a symbolic gesture, sure it it is, and and it's almost like not it's but it's also like a part of the healing process that seems like too, or at least the transition process, let's call it that. Right. Yeah, Then there's another there's another type of situation where statues tend to get torn down, and that's when there's like a cultural shift. And that's kind of what we're seeing now in with this um with the Confederate monument controversies, right, and what you've also seen in the two thousands in Latin America where in places like Venezuela, statues of Columbus started to come down and replaced with things like uh indigenous chiefs who once tried to fight off people like Columbus. Yeah, Gouai kai Porto, Yeah, which is a that's a full shift from not only are we gonna not walk by this Columbus statue every day now that we know we know, but we're gonna put up a statue of people that try to defend against him, right, right, So It's almost like they are hundreds of years later throwing off the uh, the shackles of imperialism, I guess, the stank of imperialism. Right. Should we take a break? I'm pretty worked up? Yeah, yeah, I feel like we need to go rub each other's shoulders for a minute. All right, prepare for it, Josh, Okay, So the the place we find in ourselves right now? Well, how about this, chuck? Why why are there any public monuments anywhere anyway? Right? Look like, I think that's kind of the core of this. We have to get to what is really being talked about here, because it's if it's just some statue or something like that, especially in some places like far flung as Helena, Montana. Um. What does the statue of the Confederacy have anything to do with? What does any statue have anything to do with? Yeah? Well, first of all, they're more than um according to Southern Party Law Center, more than statues, flags, plaques, city names, county names, street names, and holidays uh named and even military bases named after Confederate generals or dedicated somehow to the American Confederacy. UM. And that includes everything from like like you said, street names and flags and all that. There's like, there's seven hundred statues and monuments just on public property UM in the so seven statues and monuments and thirty two of those who have either been dedicated or rededicated since two thousands, right, So what these these range anywhere from uh Confederate Avenue over on the east side of Atlanta, which is just a street name to um. You drive through Atlanta and you see, if you pay attention, you see Civil War battle plaques all over the place. And these are I put these in a slightly different category because they are literally just historical markers. Like they're very neutral on this in this sonic parking lot, there once was was a battle waged between this brigade and this brigade on this date, and this is what happened here, not even that. Sometimes it'll be like the the the Confederate Army thought about making camp here but decided not to, So they did a quarter mile east of this because it's a little hilly, don't you think. Can you blame them? Yeah? And those I put those in different category because those are historical markers of where something happened. It's not saying maybe some of them do, but it's not saying this is where the proud sons of the eighteenth Brigade fought off the evil Yanks in their bid to ensure slavery. Yeah, that tends to be. You'll find those more unlike monuments or statues, especially ones that were bankrolled by private individuals or private groups who were just one and the same with the people who were running that that little town at the time. Yeah, I mean all right, So that's that's sort of the crux for me with this whole thing is when, where, when, and why were these things erected to begin with, and by whom and in many many cases, uh, some private rich person paid for this thing to be put up as a definitive screw you to what was going on in the country at the time. And it's very rarely has it just been like, hey, you know what, we should just put up a statue because we think Robert Lee is a great general um. Time and time again, you see stories, for instance, Charlottesville, that statue of Robert E. Lee. It was commissioned and paid for by a wealthy individual named Paul Goodlow McIntyre in nineteen seventeen, when he also bought the surrounding park and said this is for whites only, and let's put a statue of general lee Like, the context of how that happened is key to me, right, and actually, Chuck, that still goes on today. A lot of the monuments that are erected to the Confederacy are erected through private funding, private land, which makes them wholly out of reach of any debate over whether they should be removed or not. Because that, uh, that is covered by two very important American rights, which is the right to free speech whether people like it or not, and private property rights. You put those two things together, something is basically untouchable. Yeah, and and listen, we say all of this, uh, like, I'm not really weighing in. I think people probably know I feel let's be honest, Um, I'm not weighing in here one way or the other. But we say all that just to say that just because there is a statue, uh that looks great and it was really expensive, um in a in a town square, it doesn't mean that it represented ever maybe or certainly now the um wants of the community at large. Sometimes it may have just been a single individual that had enough sway and money to say I'm at the statue. Yeah, you know what I'm saying. So it's a very and I think who wrote this was a Dave Ruce. He put it best. He said, you know, what it represents is a very narrow historical record. Right, especially at the time, it might have really not represented a lot of people. It might even in some cases it may more people may feel represented by it now than they did at the time. Um. Apparently, especially for some of these older ones, it was not a normal thing to erect some sort of memorial to the Confederacy immediately after the Civil War. Two for a couple of reasons. One is that there are plenty of Union veterans still around the country and they would not have been very happy to have seen something like that. And then secondly, the South was very, very poor for decades after the war. Um it was. It was not a wealthy place. There's not a lot of money running around for towns to put together, um enough money to erect a decent statue that would last for a hundred years. Um. But like you said, though, by the time that they did start to be erected, um there there there, it's it coincided with some really important something very important, which was the Jim Crow era. Yeah, either Jim Crow a lot of them or the civil rights movement. Yeah, so this it's not an accident. Now, the Southern Poverty Law Center UM is a it's an organization that tracks hate groups. And if you're a hate group, you probably don't put much stock into studies created by the Southern Poverty Law Center. But um, the the SPLC did a study of Confederate markers, monument statues, street names, all that stuff around the country tree and they found that the vast majority of these things were erected in like the Jim Crow era at the from like say eight ninety till just after the First World War. That that's when most of the statues to the Confederacy and monuments were erected. And this is a time when the South had gone through reconstruction, the North had abandoned the reconstruction project. From what I understand, I didn't realize this before, but basically there was this period what was called a period of healing between the North and the South, that the divisiveness between the two areas grew so so deep that war broke out, and then afterwards the hurt feelings started to subside enough that there was this desire to to come back together to heal, and the North and the South decided that they would heal at the expense of the African Americans and they would find common ground by saying, yeah, I think we can find we can all agree that that whites are the supreme race. And the African Americans, who had just recently been freed in the South and we're carrying out reconstruction, said wait what and um, this is the Jim Crow era that kicked off the Jim Crow era, and this was the time when these monuments started to be erected. Like you said, it doesn't seem to have been much of an accident the timing. And if you talk to some historians, they say, Nos, no accident whatsoever. This was white saying you might not be under by law under white control any longer. But it's pretty plain and simple. We've just directed a monument to remind you that about white supremacy and that that's the law of the land. Where's your statue and your monument. I don't see it anywhere, So I guess we win. Yeah. I mean the Georgia State flag controversy is the prime example I remember when that was happening on the early two thousand's. For those of you don't know, the Georgia state flag, uh, from nineteen fifty six to two thousand one, um was was changed and had the the good old Confederate stars and bars on the right hand right half of it. And I remember at the time a lot of people saying, you know, this is our history, this is uh, you can't change our flag. You can't change our flag racing history. And I think many of them may not even have realized that that was not the original flag. They went back to the original flag after two thousand one, but they they threw those stars and bars on there in nineteen fifty six. And what what was going on in Atlanta in nineteen fifty six, you know, right the civil rights Sarah de segregation or desegregation, I should say, yeah, And it was just very plainly a middle finger to desegregation and once again a reminder, we're gonna fly this flag now that has the Confederate battle flag on it. And in you know, fifty something years later in the two thousand's, maybe a lot of people will forget that this was not the original flag. And that's exactly what happened. Man, it happened in aces too, So the that so the SPLC study found the same found what you were saying that there are basically two big and and there are always Confederate monuments and statues being erected or streets being named that, or flags going up. But there were two periods, the Jim Crow era in the Civil Rights era where they really increased. And the fact that those those statues and monuments really increased and coincided with these these times of struggle for white supremacy um really provides a pretty compelling case that those Confederate monuments and those rebel flags on those state houses are meant to express white supremacy. Yeah, it's tough to it's tough to look at it any other way when you when you look at this timeline like that, And that's what's that issue. You know, what what is the meaning of the Confederate flag on a state house, What is the meaning of a Confederate monument or statue in a town square? What is it ultimately trying to say? And that's that's really at the heart of this controversy, is what are you trying to say with that thing? What are we now, as the society in the small little town in Georgia, Alabama, or Louisiana wherever, What are we saying by fighting over keeping this statue or this flag flying? What's what's what's the argument here? Well, yeah, people in favor of keeping them will say that it's uh, you know, it's dangerous to a race history. You're we can learn from these things. They can serve as reminders of how not to be maybe, Um. But at the very least, you can't erase history. So don't even try to erase history. Um. So that's basically the one of the main arguments against taking these down, right, Just you can't whitewash history. You can erase history, right. So that's one. Another one is um and this is a big one. That's that's really kind of kept a lot of these things up so far, is that, Um, the Confederate monuments, the Confederate statutes, the Confederate flags are not meant as symbols of hatred or slavery or oppression. They are Um. You'll see people say that it's heritage, not hate, right, And what they mean with that is this thing called the lost Cause narrative. Right. So the Lost Cause narrative is this idea that um, well, actually I found that there's like six parts to it. All right, are you ready for these, because I'm gonna lay them out. So the Lost Causes basically this narrative that says that the the South, the Confederacy, the Civil War, none of it had to do with slavery, or if it did, it had very very little to do with slavery. That really the Civil War was the War of Northern aggression. There was the North that started it. The South just wanted to seceed from the North, just wanted to get away from this federal government that cared not about states rights, that cared not about the South and it's its economy or it's anabellum mansions or anything like that. That really was the War of Northern aggression, and that the Confederacy was just protecting their homeland, protecting their way of life, and that it was secession not slavery that was um at issue here. And a lot of people say, well, what was the South seceding from if not the the the right exactly right. There's some other tenants to it too. There's this is very important. This is an important part of the Lost Cause narrative is that actually e slaves were happy to be enslaved. They were happy with their servitude. They didn't have to think about what to do with life, they didn't have to worry about wondering what they were gonna do, and they were maybe too shiftless to really be responsible to manage their own life anyway. So they were actually happier under the Anabellum plantation system of slavery than they were free. That's a huge tenant of the Lost Cause UM. And then the other part of it, and the whole reason that it has the name the Lost Cause, is that the only reason, the only reason that the Confederacy lost the Civil War was because the UM the North was just so so vastly richer with resources, manpower, UM industry, that the South from the beginning UM was destined to lose the war. It just couldn't couldn't compete in that respect. Hence the name lost cause. The South's cause was lost from the outset. So if you were a defender of Confederate at monuments, this is probably the reason you're giving for defending them, that these are these things are not up to intimidate anybody that the people who are intimidated by them, the people who are taking them as white supremacy are simply taking them the wrong way. And then Chuck, there's one other thing that, like is a question that has to be answered around this whole thing, and that is that, like, if if it's true that like the original Confederate monuments that were put up around like say the eighteen nineties or up to the nineteen twenties or something, right, if those things like actually were put up out of like respect for the people who fought for their homeland, um, and for family members who have just recently died, and was actually out of like this respect for heritage, rather than as a symbol of hate and oppression. Isn't it possible though that those still those same monuments could develop racist symbolism over time for some people. And if that's the case, then you know, if you are somebody who believes in them as a point of heritage and pride, how do you reconcile that that for other people there there? Um they're saying, hey, yeah, white supremacy, buddy, I'm with you on that. How do you how do you separate those two? And if that is the case, if you do agree that there are people out there who you have nothing to do with who view these things as a as a symbol of white supremacy. Then isn't your beef with them rather than the people who are offended by that and want to take those things down. That's a good point. I don't have the answers, of course. Well no, I don't either, But I mean, just the this is just such a hornet's nous. It's just a ball of worms writhing around. Yeah, it's complicated with with you know, seven hundred plus like literal statues, each with their own backstory. It's kind of hard to make some huge generalization probably for sure, for sure it's true. All right, we let's take another break. Let's take our final break, and what's talk a little bit about just the ins and outs, like the sort of the mechanics of really removing these and how that works. Uh and uh the counter argument to lost cause legally, which would hinge on the equal protection argument right after this. Alright, so, um, here's how these things are generally, um, not only taken down, but how they're how they're put up. To begin with, we already mentioned the private, wealthy citizen who UM, just want to do something like this. It's obviously one way you can go down. Uh. The other way is as a lot of cities now UM, starting in the nineteen nineties, have commissions for approving these monuments. UM. The US Savannah, Georgia, very historic city in our own state as an example, they have a Historic Site and Monument Commission. They meet every month. They look at applications. Most cities will have an application process that you fill out that has to prove certain criteria to us if you want a public monument. UM. And they look over these all over the country all the time and either approved them or not. UM. I always thought it was funny that one of the big parts is usually like what's this gonna cost us? Right exactly? You know, like upkeep like what are we looking at here? Um? And like I said, these are pretty new, starting mostly in the nineteen nineties and later. UM. But it's generally to ensure that newer monuments has public support, whereas many of these older monuments did may not have had wide public support, but it was influential, wealthy few that decided what went up, right, right, Yeah, So like what like we said, the the the massacre at the church in Charleston really set off the first wave, and then the um Charlottesville protests set off the second wave of statue removal. But in between, a lot of state legislatures intervened and said no, because you towns and cities, you're in our state and where the law of the land. So we're saying you can't remove these monuments without our approval, and we're not going to give our approval to these things. Right. But previous to that, when the states previously them reacting to that and making these laws, it could be the city that decided or the county or whatever the local government was, or if it's on state owned land, obviously it would be the state legislature. Yeah. So I mean there's a lot of ways that, Like if the state hasn't intervened and created a state law that says you can't remove that, Yeah, if you're a city council or a board of commissioners in a county or something like that, you have full authority to remove these things. Um, and you can remove them for all sorts of different reasons. Um. There's this the article sites the statue in New York, the scary lucile ball statue. Remember that, man, I went back and looked, and oh, I feel so bad for that sculptor. The fish guy. The second lady nailed it. I mean she did such a good job. I didn't see the second one, man, the first Oh yeah, I did see the second one. It's just when you see him side by side, you just one looks like Lucio Ball and one looks like Lucio Ball. Got um zombie Lucio Ball. Yeah, you're drawn by Ralph Steadman or something weird like that, you know, so um her, No, it really doesn't. So the city council of Sellern, New York, Lucio Ball's hometown, said, uh, we're we don't like the statue. It's terrible. We're gonna take it down, scaring the kids. So they took it down because it was an ugly statue. But a city council could say we're gonna take it down because we've heard from enough of our citizens that they're intimidated by it, or they think that this is um uh, they it's it's it's creating an unsafe place, like it could be a flashpoint for violence, or it could it's in the way of the new whole foods that our town's getting. So let's get rid of this monument. So they can do this stuff unless the state has said, you guys can't move those things. This is where the state and you guys can't move these monuments, even on city land right right. So there's there's been I think in Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, UM at the very least, and I think several other states UM they've have have passed these laws that say you can't, you can't remove these things. So some states have had or some cities have had to get creative where their will has continued. Their desire to take these statues down has continued even after the states that they can't. So the city of Memphis, which had a couple of statues that wanted to take down, one of Robert E. Lee and one of one of Nathan No, they're not touching that one of Nathan Bedford Forest, who was one of the early leaders of the clan Um. They wanted these these statues taken down, but they couldn't take them down because they resolved to take them down after Tennessee passed its protection law. Well, the city of Memphis sold the land that those two statues were onto a nonprofit, and the nonprofit just immediately took them down to work around. So, as I mentioned before the break, we talked about the the lost cause narrative, and the flip side of that legally is the equal protection argument. So we're talking about the fourteenth Amendment, ratified in eighteen sixty eight to grant citizenship and equal rights two former slaves. UH. And this, to be clear, has not been used successfully yet in court as an argument to have a statue removed, but it is what groups like the a c l U or UH does, the Southern Poverty Law Center, they actually argue cases like this probably, I'm sure this is what they would try to use, most likely as a legal argument or a tactic at least to say that this isn't right, because basically what it means is what you were saying earlier, is it would be it would be under the guys that this was erected as an expression of white supremacy, and that's why it was erected, That's why it's there. States supported racism that's still there to make people feel unequal in the fourteenth Amendment says we can't do that. Yeah, that's the that's the approach that there will be some test case at some point in the next year two that will make it to the Supreme Court. So the Supreme Court will probably rule on that, and then that will either open the floodgates or shut down that legal argument one way or another. What's interesting to me, though, is that historians are probably going to come into these lawsuits. Right Like, if you ask just about any professional historian what started the Civil War, the consensus is and has been for a long time that it was slavery. That all the other stuff, the ability to succeed, states rights, um, hatred of Lincoln, all of these other things are are follow slavery, the the South's um desire to continue aus as slave based economy. Right. Um, If you ask the general public what caused the Civil War, apparently something like forty percent will tell you that it was secession, and only like will say slavery. So here's here's the problem with that. This is part of a kind of a larger trend that we've been seeing the last like five years or so maybe less, where there's just been a loss of faith in expertise, right where like the people who we used to turn to for answers, we we have just kind of tossed to the wayside, and so just shut up. We don't want to hear what you have to say any longer. We'll will decide what's true on our own, and when that happens with enough people, then history has a chance of being rewritten just by just by sentiment. Hey can I have nothing to do with reality, But everybody can decide that they're going to collectively remember things a certain way, and brother, that's history. That becomes history, whether it's fact based history or revisionist history or not. And that's a that's a problem. Like we have to remember history, whether it is enjoyable, whether it's um something that it stands as a cautionary tale, whether it's something that is painful, whether it's something that's inspiring. We have to remember our history. We just have to, or else we're gonna lose a lot of valuable lessons. The question that still remains is whether we have to remember that history in through monuments and statues or if we can in other ways. So it's weird. There's a defensive history, but there's also a loss of faith in historians and and their reading of history. It's pretty interesting. It's a bizarre and it's a weird place to be right now here in the States. It is. And that's why I'd never buy the you're a racing history argument because it's not like these are. It's not like the Civil War placke that just says this thing happened here. Like to me, that is a historical marker, that just says this, this action took place. It's not a monument glorifying the thing. Yeah, there's just this. There's a monument in Rossville, Georgia, which is close to Andersonville, South Carolina, and it's a it's a monument to a guy named Henry Wors who was one of the few executed war criminals from the Confederacy. He ran Andersonville Prison and um basically ran like a concentration camp, and he was executed by the North. Publicly, he was he was hanged, and very quickly, within a couple of decades UM, I think the Daughters of the Confederacy UH erected this monument to him and basically explained that he had been unfairly tried, that evidence against him had been faked, and that he was actually a war hero, not a war criminal. Yeah, so that's kind of like not the neutral plaque that you're talking about. It's the the antithesis of that. Well, I certainly don't have the answers. It's a complicated thing. But and there's so many of these and things, and you know that there's the whole can of worms argument that like do we then where where does it stop? Do we blast off the face of Stone Mountain or or Mountain rot more people think we should? Yeah, so stone Mountain one for sure, Yeah, yeah, Or where does it stop with the founding fathers because at the time some of them on slaves and this and that. Um, I don't purport to have the answers. I just my my advice would be to encourage people to just for a moment, to think about to walk in someone else's shoes and think about what how some of these monuments might make you feel. In twenty thousand eighteen, that's the way in the future in two thousand eighteen, just maybe step outside yourself for a minute and walk in someone else's shoes. That's just Uncle Chuck's advice. I think it's good advice no matter what. And I think what this is is a symptom of the need to a society that needs to heal and is not healing in productive ways right now? Ye what I think? Well, I don't have the answers either, though I certainly don't purport to. So I agree with you on that. I look forward to hearing all sides and email. Yeah, no death threats, please, no death threats. Oh quickly. We should talk about very famously in the Iraq War, when Saddam Hussein's statue was toppled on television, uh, And there was always a lot of speculation like this really reeks of something America cooked up as a bit of a rara thing um, and apparently Pro Publica looked into it along with the in the New Yorker magazine was where the piece was said. It was a crowd of Iraqis and it was it happened to be a statue in front of the Palestine Palestine Hotel, which is where a lot of the journalists were, so that's why it got the coverage. And they there were Americains and they were saying, hey, can we have that sledgehammer? Can we have a little help? Can we use that crane on that humby Now that we think about what you guys, just go ahead and do it for it. Well, apparently there was an official request submitted by the army sergeant saying, hey, they want to use our crane. Can we do this? And they got to go ahead to do it. So that is the party line story at least. Yeah, take it or leave it. Yeah, but very indelible image. You know when that statue was taken down, Oh yeah, it definitely was, like it felt pretty hard. And Saddam was still alive at the time too, which made it even more shocking. He's hiding in a hole. Kind of an interesting time, like I said, to be in America, weird, weird time. Well, I've seen other people call for saying like maybe don't take it down, Maybe erect another statue next to Roberty Lee of Rosa Parks or something, and maybe add to the stone Mountain my hum it and make it a history of it of Atlanta, and add Martin Luther King to it and make it more of a diorama and more inclusive. So it's I've seen arguments all over the place with all kinds of suggestions, because with fifteen hundred Confederate markers of some kind, I mean that's a lot of it's a lot of stuff, a lot of statues to balance things out that we'd have to erect that kind of thing well, or a lot of statues to tear down. Um. I mean, obviously it's going to come down to and should come down to, whatever they want to do locally. But we have one right here indicator Georgia still you know which one. I can't remember the name of it, but it's right there in the town square. And there there's been a lot of talk in the obviously the last couple of years about getting rid of that. So yeah, and then also like some people dig in so much to leave that statue there, they take it down and then a week later, like, is your life really changed materially? Is it that big of a deal that that's not there anymore? I don't know. I don't know. I think this whole I think this is all just innuendo, nuance, um and illusion and allegory and nobody's really talking about where most people aren't talking about what's really being discussed here. It's it's weird, weird time, man, such a strange time. It's a sad time for America, but it's also a very hopeful time too, if you really think about it in the right way, it is and you know what this uh, I know this is gonna be a lightning round in some ways, but I am happy we're a part of this conversation in some way. Nice again, No death threats, please everyone, No one likes to get those. Put yourself in our shoes. You wouldn't like getting them. If you want to know more about Confederate monuments, monuments in general, and possibly removing them, go type those words into the search bar how stuff works. That common will bring up the article. And since I said that it's time for a listener mail, I'm gonna call this, um, well, this one's pretty current, so I'm gonna call this current clearing up of accordion definition. Oh boy, that's good choice, Chuck. Okay, so this is a day or too late, guys, But I just had a chance to listen to the Great Mary Celeste episode, and I figured i'd be remis if I didn't heed the call of the alluring weird Al Yankovic shout out, because everyone loves weird Oult. So it now comes apart where I say that I don't actually know anything about accordions, but I think Josh pretty much nailed it the second time through. According to my sources, in general, melodeon is an accordion with buttons, and an accordion technically known as a piano accordion is an accordion with piano keys, not unlike the style played by both Alfred and Frankie Yankovic. No relation, believe it or not, No way, Uh yeah. Basically all melodions are accordions, but not all accordions or melodians, So that, in a nutshell, is how melodians work. Not to be confused with the concertina pictured here. And that is the literal handheld thing that you like, I might think of an old Italian man playing in the eighteen hundreds that you just there are no there may be, but it's it's a squeeze box, like the who talked about mom has got a squeeze box. Yeah, and that is from anonymous? Is it really? You're not gonna say who is from? Wow that anonymous? Have no idea who it's from. It's just some some weird, weird al fan. That's funny. No. My My exclamation of surprise was that Alfred and Frankie Yankovic have no relation to weird Al Yankovic. That's beyond bizarre. Yeah, I not don't even know who Alfred and Frankie Ankovi car I don't either, but surely every Yankovics related to weird Al Yankovic. Right, Yeah, but I also have a feeling that like they're eight percent of Yankovic's play the accordion. All right, well, weird Al, please please, as is custom, we end every episode like this, please get in touch with us and let us know how you're doing. Okay, if you're weird Al Yankovic and you want to get in touch with us, you can tweet to us. I'm at josh um Clark and you can also hit up the official s Y s K podcast one. You can join Chuck on Facebook dot com, slash Charles W. Chuck Bryant or slash stuff you Should Know either one. You can also send us an email and Jerry too to Stuff podcast at how Stuff Works dot com, and weird Al join us as always at our home on the web, Stuff you Should Know dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, is it how Stuff Works dot com