Eight People Have Been Arrested for Pulling Down Durham’s Confederate Statue—There May Be More Soon

In the wake of the deadly violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, images of Confederate monuments being pulled from their platforms have taken off on social media. But no image stands out as strongly as that of the statue of a Confederate solider in Durham, North Carolina, collapsed in a crumpled heap after being torn down by a group of protesters on Monday. Now, days after the monument was ripped from its base, several protesters are facing charges, and local law enforcement says that more arrests could be on the way.

State Rep. Praises KKK, Wants New Holiday To Honor Confederacy

The Ku Klux Klan has gotten a bad rap, according to one Georgia lawmaker. He says the terror group “was not so much a racist thing but a vigilante thing to keep law and order” that “made a lot of people straighten up.”

That leader is now hellbent on stopping the “cultural cleansing” of the South’s heritage. So far this year, State Rep. Tommy Benton (R) has co-sponsored two bills to preserve the Confederate’s legacy.

When Canada turns 150: The politics of celebrating our history

The 150th birthday of Confederation is now less than five years away. Beginning today, Postmedia News offers a special series on how the country should mark the occasion.

OTTAWA –  It’s a major milestone in Canada’s history that’s still nearly five years away, but the approaching 150th anniversary of Confederation — a national birthday bash that will culminate on July 1, 2017, touch every corner of the country and cost hundreds of millions of dollars — has already inspired one showcase sesquicentennial project and, just as quickly, sparked the event’s first controversy: the Conservative government’s decision not to appoint an independent commission to oversee what promises to be the biggest cross-Canada celebration since 1967.

Canada's ongoing project of Confederation

History is incorrigible. That's because we're forced to read it in reverse, from the now to the then, instead of the order in which it happened. That's why it often seems to make sense. Take the War of 1812. Looking back (as if we're on a ship or train), it seems to have worked out. Canada avoided absorption by what became a colossal, violent, rapacious U.S.; it became an independent, fairly harmonious place. But at the time? The U.S. was youthful, idealistic and egalitarian. It had a democratic constitution and a bill of rights! Britain -- our side -- was a class-ridden old empire, leading efforts in Europe to beat back the liberatory impulses still alive in Napoleonic France. We may have wound up on the "right" side but who could have known? History makes fools of us all and goes its own way.