test Statues Debate - Munk Debates

Statues Debate

September 28, 2021
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Statues Debate

Be it resolved, the statues must come down.

It has become one of the more divisive topics in today’s culture wars: what to do with the statues of historical figures with controversial pasts. And while many can agree that the monuments of Robert E Lee and Edward Colston should not stand in city centres, the debate becomes murkier when the likes of Winston Churchill, John A MacDonald, Queen Victoria, and Abraham Lincoln enter the fray. Those calling for statues to come down and streets to be renamed argue that this is not a case of ‘cancel culture’. Rather, it is an overdue re-examination of past heroes and their subjugation of marginalized groups. Those who promoted racist and imperialist policies in their time should not be given the privilege of public glorification in ours. Others argue that social justice “mobs” are ignoring the context in which these transgressions took place, viewing history through a distorted lens comprised of their own values and assumptions and purposely rewriting the past to serve their ideological purposes today. If progressives succeed in their purity purge, we will be left with no heroes, no history, and no nuanced understanding of our own past.

“When you have commemoration, as opposed to education, it leads to misinformation. And it literally debilitates our ability to grapple with the past in order to come to grips with the present.”

– CORNELL WILLIAM BROOKS

“My worry is about the question of control. I don’t want to control the past. I want the past to be faced as what it was, and not controlled for any political agenda, good, bad or indifferent.”

– GEORGE WILL

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