What’s happening with Manatee’s Confederate monument?

Manatee County commissioners voted to let the statue to the lives lost in the Civil War be taken down in the middle of the night by inexperienced people, thus breaking it into three pieces. They bowed to the threat of a minority group of violent protesters so they wouldn’t have to deal with the possibility of problems.

OK, I get it, they took the easy path, which I don’t think is how our country was founded. The right thing to do was let it be on the next ballot and let the citizens decide, And for not doing the right thing, I will be exercising my voting choice next election cycle for my leaders.

But here is my question: What is being done to fix the statue that they allowed to be broken? I just loved the news coverage the next day, where officials said “well, it was weak and gonna fall on someone anyway...” Too funny, it has only been standing there for 93 years through countless hurricanes.

No, the only weak things we have is our commissioners. It looks like they will just let the remains of the statue languish in some warehouse somewhere. But once they repair it, if ever, what’s the outcome? They want to move it to some unwatched out-of-the-way cemetery, where it will be destroyed beyond repair.

This country’s history, good or bad, must be respected and remembered.

This story was originally published October 28, 2017 at 2:07 PM with the headline "What’s happening with Manatee’s Confederate monument?."