I had to use sarcasm as many people are willingly ignorant. Trying to convey the real importance would be lost on them.
I was on a math blog (nerdy,I know.) And someone was arguing that we spend too much time studying history in schools, because, unlike math, it had no "real world" value. I countered that we should not teach math (particularly arithmetic) in schools because everyone has a calculator on their phone. The guy thought that was idiocy. But he failed to see that just because in the "real world" I don't go around solving trigonometry problems in my head daily doesn't mean learning math is useless.

Peter, thanks for a reasoned opinion on this issue.

There are many who want to destroy all evidence of the confederacy, and many who wish to flaunt it, yelling, "The South shall rise again!" Those are fantasies, surely, but many just want to preserve their heritage, while many others just want to erase a sore spot.

I agree, putting the statues and monuments in a museum is smart. Greensboro just renamed a school and a park to forget the original namesake's dedication to slavery. But his story remains in the local history.

Violence and extremism of all kinds are unnecessary and only lead to conflict.

It's been weird, living in the Carolinas most of my life, but having Midwestern parents. I have learned a good bit of history as presented by Northerners and a good bit of history as presented by Southerners. Each points to quite different reasons for that war, with quite different outcomes. I tend to see both sides... to a point.

Yes, it was most important as the war to end forced slavery, but it was also a war of protest against Northern economic oppression of Southern progress. In the mid-19th century, most of the South had an agrarian economy. In NC, many grew tobacco, cotton, peanuts, rice, and other crops. Most of the crops and other raw materials were shipped North to manufacturers, converted to finished goods, and sold all over. But there were some onerous taxes involved, and there was social and economic suppression of information and technology that would have allowed the advancement of the Southern economy to include manufacturing. Southerners knew that if they lost the almost free labor of slaves, their economy would be brought to the brink of ruin, at least for a time. The war proved that true, although most *Americans* would agree the abolition of slavery was worth it.

It wasn't until the turn of the 20th century that the economy of the South began to include a lot more manufacturing. The pace of change accelerated slowly at first, and rapidly after air conditioning became widely available in the 1950s. "Rust belt" companies gradually located plants in the rural and suburban South, mostly to get away from union labor and exploit cheap water, power, natural gas, and wood. The rise of educational institutions had much to do with it, as did urbanization and urban migration in some areas.

Of course, after NAFTA, companies escaped the South for the Far East and South America... Ah, the law of unintended consequences is always hard at work!

The aristocratic sons and daughters of the Confederacy still bear grudges over the loss of their economic status "way back when", and the subsequent "economic punishment" they endured for several decades after the war. The resentment is different among upper, middle, and lower (white) classes, too. Poor whites tend to have a completely different set of resentments (labor competition among the races) from the learned upper class. And the middle class tends to be irrationally schizoid about their history. They, too, resented the introduction of another (paid) labor pool after the Civil War, but no longer want to perform the menial labor in fields and mills that immigrants and foreign workers will do willingly. They'll flip burgers or do data entry, but won't scrub floors or pick crops, and they won't lower their living standards to compete with foreign workers. It's taken several generations for education to become a priority as a ticket to success here. In the North, that ticket was identified rather clearly during the depression, as my parents were always quick to point out.

If I've heard it once, I've heard it a hundred times. "The sins of the forefathers are passed down for seven generations." Well, 7 generations after the war was the year 2005... So we ought to see some progress by now. We do, but pockets of cancerous, racist, narcissistic nostalgia remain.

So it's complicated... Cities like Charlotte, NC, where I lived for 35 years, are huge melting pots of people from all over the USA and the world, in addition to their small contingents of local descendants. So they tend to be pretty liberal and tolerant, by comparison with smaller towns. That liberalism is another source of conflict. NC is a purple state, with the main urban markets predominantly liberal, and most of the rural areas quite conservative.

So when I see news like we saw last week, I cringe and wonder what will pop up next --- and where?

We have a neighbor on our block that displayed a large Stars and Stripes as well as the Gadsden flag on Independence day. Why not, we are supposed to be a free country after all, although we're not sure what the intent was. They remained up until the Charlottesville incident. Now they are gone. I have no idea of the home owners' beliefs, affiliations, or attitudes. I respect their right to hold them, and to express them, but I very much appreciate their sensibility to not furthering any more civil discord by a display of symbols that could be misinterpreted.

I live in a very liberal and multi-ethnic city, but even if our neighbors' political views are not the same as mine, I would not want to see them or their property targeted by anyone with a differing point of view. They are our neighbors and part of our community. We also have a couple of cops living on our block. They are very discrete, but I'm sure that it doesn't do us any harm! Oh, and to be clear, it wasn't our LE neighbors displaying the flags.

I realize that the focus of this thread has veered from the original intent, but such is the nature of conversation.

Here are applicable words from a well-known liberal-turned-conservative, published in 1949:

“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.”

― George Orwell, 1984

"Yes, and no. First it is secession not succession. They are slightly different.

Secession from "The Union" or any other regime is an option under a democratic process. How or whether it is done is certainly an issue and worthy of discussion. ...
Let's not confuse this by disregarding the rights of democratic processes however misguided they may be. Brexit appears to be a dumb move by the UK, but it was the result of a democratic process. Should California be allowed to secede if its population wants to? Sure, it may not be a smart thing to do, but it should be allowed under a democratic process. Should the civilized parts of the US be allowed to secede from Texas? Sure if enough people wish to. What is to be done about Crimea, Ukraine, and Russia? It is all very complicated.

Yes, and no. You are correct about my word use. I usually copyproof myself better. My bad.
The U.S. is a democratic Constitutional Republic, not a Democracy. The number one issue that was settled by the Civil War is that no state may secede from the Union. There were other issues - slavery being a major one, but NO secession by a state was won and guaranteed by the Union victory, and paid for in lots of blood. I live in the Bay Area of California myself, and have heard too much of the Cal-exit nonsense. It may well get enough signatures to be put on the ballot as a proposition. I highly doubt that it would pass - but even if it somehow did - there is zero chance of the U.S. surrendering it's west coast. We have much bigger problems to deal with in this state - like the coming pension tsunami, to be wasting time on foolishness that has no chance of happening. Brexit is for the Brits to decide. Crimea, Ukraine and Russia is very complicated - but Russia illegally annexed part of a neighboring country, a country whose sovereignty the U.S. and the U.K. guaranteed in 1994 in the Budapest Memorandum of Security Assurances, when they surrendered their nuclear weapons to Russia. While Crimea is of primarily Russian ethnicity today - that is because Stalin expelled the majority of the original inhabitants, that Taters, by force.