Don't repeat a lie, refute it

In his first inaugural address, Thomas Jefferson declared that “error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.” In November of 1963, three weeks before the Kennedy assassination, when Adlai Stevenson was harassed by conservative hecklers in Dallas, he expressed his belief in “the redemption of ignorance.”

Some of the letters to the Sun make those sentiments seem like wishful thinking.

The climate change deniers offer three assertions:

1. The climate is not getting warmer: the overwhelming scientific proof can’t be trusted because some of it is based on government funded studies.

2. The climate is getting warmer and that’s good news because more carbon dioxide in the air is good for us.

3. The climate is getting warmer and that might be bad, but keep burning oil and gas and coal!

As we used to say in interscholastic debate, to repeat it is to refute it.

And then there’s the statue of the rebel soldier in front of the courthouse. Defenders say removing it would be denying history.

When the United Daughters of the Confederacy donated the monument it was not to teach history but to honor their insurrectionist kin. Their version of history was the revisionist “lost cause.”

As explained by historian Stephanie Mc-Curry: “Long after they had lost the Civil War, Jefferson Davis and other Confederate leaders tried to cast secession as a wholly constitutional move designed to restore government to what the Founding Fathers had intended.”

The Myth of the Lost Cause, by Kentucky historian Edward Bonekemper, documents this deception.

In Look Away!, Virginia historian William C. Davis makes it clear that slavery, not “states’ rights,” was the heart and soul of the Confederacy — without it, there would have been no secession, no Confederacy, and no Civil War.

If we’re really interested in preserving history, our Legislature should let public school teachers inform students about slavery and segregation. And Williamson County should erect a courthouse monument honestly calling attention to those dark legacies.

JAMES C. TODD

Ashberry Trail