"Take the statues down through the democratic process, not through vandalism and mobs. I'm all for that. Put them in museums."
Pretty sure that is exactly what happened in Charlottesville when the town council voted unanimously to remove the statues. That resulted in Walter Kessler and his pal Richard Spencer blackmailing the city into granting them a permit to hold a "defend the statues" rally, which was originally their own Identity Europa/ Vanguard fascist followers along with the KKK. But other supposedly non-Nazi conservatives decided to include themselves and it became the "unite the right" rally, wildly promoted on Fox news...
So apparently you disagree with the "conservatives" who responded to the LEGAL removal of the statues with violence? The problem is attitudes like yours were in short supply, as "preserving the statues" became the culture war cry of the day among your less rational (fellow) right-wingers. The whole reason I'm on the other side of the CRT issue is that it's obvious the same folks who were the money/power behind the "save the statues" campaigns are filling the same role in the anti-CRT crusade. Before that, they were tea party "volunteers" who attacked Obamacare while backed by Big Tobacco...
I just read that Texas is banning the teaching of slavery being a major issue in the dispute between Mexico and Texas leading up to the Alamo. Really, Texas Legislators are afraid that kids learning history can't handle that much truth? I mean I didn't learn that truth until later, but I'm not sure teaching false history and ignoring facts is the way to go.
I think this is interesting, the perspective of a Black mom on what her kids were and were not taught in history.
"There is a great deal of confusion surrounding critical race theory (CRT), which is being hotly debated among the constituents of our nation’s independent schools."
www.yahoo.com
Yes, I disagree with people if they believe we should have statues and monuments that might glorify those individuals who fought against the Union to preserve slavery. It's perverse--they were traitorous insurrectionists who were fighting to defend an abhorrent principle that I believe even they knew was immoral. Those are my political and moral beliefs. But my beliefs do not rule everyone else--I believe in the democratic process.
I also believe in the tenets of philosophical liberalism: I think honest debate on ideas can lead to agreement based on reason, I'm a proponent of the consent of the governed, liberty for individuals, equality before the law, free speech, secularism, freedom of the press, freedom of and from religion, and the older I become, I am more and more a proponent of the free market vs. government direction of markets as yielding the best results, as long as we have correctives and safety nets for times when the market isnt working in the way we, as a society, think it should. (CRT questions many of these liberal principles and I think it does so in a particularly poorly reasoned way and I am against it.)
If you believe those beliefs make me a right-winger, so be it, I guess. I just don't think it's very interesting to label people like that (and a lot of other people do on here and in society) and it typically turns people off, shutting down the ability to persuade and communicate. That is to say, I think it's boring and shallow to think and talk about two political tribes and then engage in verbal war with them to prove which side is more hypocritical or evil in their stances.
I find it much more productive and interesting to follow the Ted Lasso-ism: Be curious, not judgmental. I think you'll find if you dig down on people's concerns and what drives their opinions, that those with a more philosophical, thinking bent are quite a bit more heterodox than you believe them to be.
If you are curious, I'm pretty heterodox in my individual political stances on what meets my general beliefs. It's odd: I've studied Marx, Nozick, Rawls, and Hayek quite a bit and have plenty of criticisms of capitalism to this day, have studied the history of the civil rights movement more than most, have actually litigated, for free and on my own dime, on behalf of transgender, Muslim, and African Americans under Sec. 1983 (two successfully, one not), and 25 years ago was a proud, card-carrying member of the ACLU when that was not so popular a thing. Now I'm being labeled a "right-winger." My friends from college and law school find this very funny, by the way.