My little contribution to this discussion is JWs-sounding. If you want statues
to be just "good" make them for ethics or ideals--not people (except JWs would
go farther and make it a concern not to be idolatrous which I wouldn't bother
with). Nobody's perfect and in some cases it could get pretty thorny. If you
make them for people you better know your history and be ready to make explana-
tions.
If you're going to take down any statues to people who aren't consistent with
modern outlooks (don't be 'centric and intolerant about things that don't merit
being that way--gender, sex orientation, age, handicap, race, nationality, basic
belief in God or not, etc.) it's like "Jaws"--you're going to need a bigger
boat. You're going to need bigger museums and more of them to put them in. You
can't just put statues for confederate generals in there.
For example:
Many of our rock heros, like Lennon, financed organized crime to buy their
heroin or cocaine. (The latest Beatles PR is that they didn't know where the
money was going to. Big money Beatles PR must be powerful stuff.)
Gen. Patton had a virulent antisemitic streak--and let it be known at the end
of WWII!
MLK--justifiably renowned for braving threats of bullets to combat racism--
had the conservative doctrine about homosexuals according to a 1958 letter he
wrote. (They choose to be sinners like crooks and if they persist they're going
to hell). An associate of his was homosexual but that just shows he wasn't as
strict as a JWs leader about fellowshipping--most Christians aren't in compari-
son. He maintained a conventional consideration of the Bible as a source of
wisdom for his speaches as a pastor up to the time he died in the late 1960's.
(What is this--what kind of bigotry do you prefer?)
Think of all the plaques to wars. Every modern war I know of comes with war
crimes.
The biggest bloody mess in the history of big bloody messes--WWII--is usually
thought of as controversial due to the two atom bombs. Actually, they just made
killing non-combatants more convenient. Firebombing of non-military targets had
been going on for a while by then.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firebombing
FDR and Churchill initially wanted bombs to hit military targets only but the
Axis anti-aircraft weaponry was so good the bombers couldn't fly in the day low
down they had to fly high up at night. And they couldn't be surgical about it.
(I vaguely remember a source saying Hitler bragged that his strategy of killing
non-combatants forced his opponants to emulate it to combat it.)
Who is better remembered as an Allied hero than Jimmy Stewart? There's a
statue for him in Indiana, PA. He led bombing raids of Berlin near the end of
the war. How many men, women, and children non-combatants did he kill?
God said so, what else could we do rationalization, we didn't know back then,
etc. Get ready to explain something.