I read with interest recent articles on moving the statue “Fame” in the Salisbury Post.

While I applaud the willingness of Ms. Stauffer and Ms. Bullock to get actively involved in a cause which they believe in through petitions, their reasoning is illogical and inaccurate. First of all, if the statue “memorializes a treasonous government, whose founding principle was the perpetuation and expansion of slavery,” as Ms. Stauffer alleges, then why would you want to keep it at all? Why should a monument to such evil even be allowed to exist?

Even more interesting is the fact that she calls the Salisbury prison “an important part of the Civil War.” If that war was treasonous and evil, then why would you want to maintain any sites or monuments, let alone call them important? She also called the “Civil War” “treason” and that is inaccurate. Treason is the attempt to overthrow the government, not to separate from it.

The Confederate states sought to create a new, separate nation, not to overthrow the government in Washington, D.C. Finally, attempting to erase history is a Marxist concept that teaches that if you get rid of all monuments to history. Then, people will only know what they are taught and the focus will only be on the  present and the future.

In contrast to that notion, we must realize that remembering history is how we learn from it. That is why such places as Auschwitz and Buchenwald, which herald true evil, are maintained to this day. We should recall George Santayana’s sage wisdom when he said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”  

— Dennis R. Sheppard

Salisbury