I am willing to listen to a cogent argument to defend memorializing pro-slavery figures, if there is one.
Let me ask a question, do you think most of these "kids" flipping out over these statues would even know who they hell they were? Forget Lee, any of the Confederate statues that are being taken down? I bet most have no clue who is what. I think the point of this whole exercise (pulling down statues) is not to eliminate hate, but to make a point. As I said before, it is virtue flag waving and self serving before anything else.
When Rome converted to Christianity, it's my understanding most the old pagan statues were either absorbed into the new norm or repurposed as someone else. What's the point? They weren't trying to split Rome in half. When the dipshit likes of Antifa get involved, it's less about "slavery" and more about testing the limits of suppressing free speech and expression. Everyone who makes this a slavery/racism issues is WAY oversimplifying it. No one denies what General Lee was, most sane people are in fact NOT racist. Defending freedom to offend is not an endorsement of its message.
What ever happened to do "don't feed the trolls"? There will probably forever be a small band of white hate idiots, there is no Jehalapeno coming to make the world perfect, so there are no bad people and we can all pet pandas. Most likely these statues would have come down in a different way, maybe moved to a museum that memorialized mistakes of America's past, who knows, maybe they would have put someone else name on them. The point is we are speeding down a dangerous road of censorship.