“If someone erected a statue to the VietNam War soldier today, would that mean an endorsement of the war and the warmongers behind it? No!”

One of the problems is that several recent wars, esp Iraq, Vietnam, and WW2, have been dramatized over and over to the point that people can understand the moral ambiguity of war and the myriad reasons why people fought and died (and why we can sympathize with those who lost their lives). It’s not a simple matter of good vs. evil, which is the fairy tail that most have been fed re: the Civil War.

The few popular films about it have been Glory or Lincoln-style works that border on anachronism and propaganda, and when you find an amateur with a real interest in delving into the war, you inevitably find someone who understands what people endured. It was a worse spectacle that WW2 or Vietnam, yet it’s treated in the press like some dry fact of history that can be ignored by referencing slavery ad nauseum.

The South was invaded by huge armies that burned everything in their path. The Confederates lost their war for independence, a whole generation of fathers was decimated, and Lincoln and co. used total war against people who were once their own countrymen out of their desire to preserve a union that didn’t want to be preserved. Respecting their flag and monuments to the war dead, if not their generals, is the least Americans can do if they’re not going to try to understand the motivations and suffering of citizens of the CSA.