> When we erase history, we lose this guidance and direction.

The AHA has specifically put out a statement[0] about monuments. The prime quote:

> To remove a monument, or to change the name of a school or street, is not to erase history, but rather to alter or call attention to a previous interpretation of history.

Thucydides, arguably the very first historian ever, criticized statues and monuments as poor representations of history. It is important to understand the difference between history and historical memory. Monuments are not pedagogy tools. Actual professional historians do not see them as relevant for teaching us about the people they represent.

[0] https://www.historians.org/news-and-advocacy/aha-advocacy/ah...

Historians are record-keepers of history, they are not arbiters of ethics, spirituality, and guidance. Statues of people are not meant to teach us about those people per se, but rather hold to us an example of exceptional attributes of those people that should be considered timeless so that we can follow them into the future. The determination of relevance in this context is not something that should be ceded to historians in any capacity other than to simply confirm or reject that the specific attribute that we appreciate in a figure is based on a historical accuracy. Did Lincoln free the slaves? Yes. Did Washington help lead a revolution? Yes. These are easy questions. The distinction between history and historical memory is not lost; based on an accurate history, we can highlight good attributes use them to reinforce timeless principles that we'd like to continue to carry through time.

> History is important because it lets us see ourselves in the arc of time and be more cognizant of how and why we arrived at the present moment.

I think that framing minimizes the extent to which we can and do choose how we portray history in order to choose how we see ourselves.

Choice is certainly a factor and I don't think it needs to be minimized. If we choose well and isolate and elevate symbols of positive and productive principles, we create better guidance for ourselves and for future generations.

Part of doing this well is being able to isolate properly, identifying what made historical figures exceptional, and being able to forgive sins which are considered sinful now, but were common behavior in the past. If you can't do that, you can't preserve people as symbols of principles at all, because the morality of the moment is not guaranteed to be held forever.

That's great. And the growing shift of culture suggests that slave owners are not emblematic of people who did good things, so we should remove them from the public display. The intent is not to erase history, it is to signal changing values.

My response to that is here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23717398

So the statues belong in museums and history textbooks, not the public square:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/06/19/destroying...

It feels tired to still be repeating this when so many others have said it, but Germany is capable of learning about Hitler and Nazism without the monuments glorifying it; Americans can learn about Robert E. Lee without the whitewashed monuments everywhere. And anyway, there was none of this clutching of pearls about history-erasure when the Saddam Hussein statue was toppled in Baghdad in 2003.

I think you're still taking as a foregone conclusion that (all of) the statues represent bad men with evil ideas, and that's what I'm disagreeing with.

Then it's a good thing people aren't toppling statues randomly.

I mean all of the statues that are in fact being toppled.