gcomeau, don't be ridiculous and don't invoke Godvin's law. It's rude.
Sixty years ago our nations finished the Nazi, cleansed off their evil legacy AND decided that they must never be allowed to rise again. It was decided THEN.
One hundred and fifty years ago YOUR nation decided that "
hey, confederates weren't all that bad" and you allowed them to regain parts of their honor and military glory. It was decided THEN. It may be a mistake, from the modern point of view, but it was decided. And NOW, you decided to change all this.
I repeat again: if you wanted to deal with Confederacy memory, you should dealt with them as with the Nazi THEN. One hundred and fifty years ago. Trying to do it NOW - it's just making things totally ridiculous. Because there basically no end in useless attempts to "make old wrongdoings right".
You could bring the dead of Civil War back to life? You could undo the misery of black slaves from history? No? Then you could not "undo the wrong things", no matter how many statues you demolish. The past exist not to "undo it" by some stupid symbolic means, but to learn from past mistakes and never allow the evil to rise again.
If you start to babble about the "symbolic", then I repeat: are you ready to return all the USA lands & property to the indians? Because it would be "right"; your ancestors counquered their lands, your ancestors exterminated their people, your ancestors build all their prosperity on the resources and lands that was taken from indians. So, are you ready to dissolve the USA and gave all the american's property to indians just to remedy the long-past wrongdoing?