Taylor Swift Speaks Out Against Confederate Monuments

Taylor Swift has found her political voice, recently calling out the president, while advocating for police department reforms and mail-in voting.

Friday, the singer-songwriter took to Twitter, to demand the removal of Confederate monuments, in her adopted home state of Tennessee.

In the 10-message thread, Swift shares her upset with officials who vow to replace the statue of newspaper editor Edward Carmack, which was torn down during recent protests. “Taking down statues isn’t going to fix centuries of systemic oppression, violence and hatred that black people have had to endure but it might bring us one small step closer to making ALL Tennesseans and visitors to our state feel safe – not just the white ones.”  Swift adds, “We need to retroactively change the status of people who perpetuated hideous patterns of racism from ‘heroes’ to ‘villains.’ And villains don’t deserve statues.”

Swift is joined by some serious brass.  This is from The Hill:

Former CIA Director David Petraeus argues in a new opinion piece that names of Confederate “traitors” should be removed from U.S. military bases.

The retired Army general wrote in The Atlantic that “it is time to remove the names of traitors like Benning and Bragg from our country’s most important military installations,” referring to the training bases named after Gen. Henry Benning and Gen. Braxton Bragg, whom Petraeus argued were subpar military leaders “who left much to be desired.”

“These bases are, after all, federal installations, home to soldiers who swear an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States,” the 67-year-old wrote. “The irony of training at bases named for those who took up arms against the United States, and for the right to enslave others, is inescapable to anyone paying attention.  Now, belatedly, is the moment for us to pay such attention.”

See the full story, at TheHill.

Does any other nation mount statues, for leaders of attacks, against it?  Here’s how the Marine Corps marches in on this battle:

“The Confederate battle flag has all too often been co-opted by violent extremist and racist groups whose divisive beliefs have no place in our Corps,” a Marine Corps statement on Friday read. “Our history as a nation, and events like the violence in Charlottesville in 2017, highlight the divisiveness the use of the Confederate battle flag has had on our society.”