Due to the shooting in Charleston, South Carolina, anything involving the Confederate flag was wiped from many retailers. This led to a petition on change.org for the removal of the statue of Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederate States of America during the Civil War, on the University of Texas campus. This is simply just another step on the road for America becoming oversensitive, as we should keep this on campus in order to remind people of our history, not to pretend it never happened.

By taking this statue down, we are removing history. The same could be said of the Confederate flags, but I digress. When this statue is removed, a bit of history is too. We are refusing to acknowledge our history, and without accepting it no matter how dark, we will not improve as a nation and we will merely be people cowering in fear repressing things we need to let lie open and let people view it.

This also helps shine a light on something else. As a nation we are becoming more over sensitive than we ever could be. Do the words “trigger warning” ring any bells? That is a creation of people trying to help others cope with PTSD by stopping them from reading or watching a thing that might trigger it. That’s all well in good, but when trigger warnings include “Nazi paraphernalia, colonialism, dental trauma, and slimy things” I think we might be going a little bit too far. Like seriously, no one in this modern American society has ever experienced colonialism in America, so why is there a need for such a trigger warning?

Both of the previous points slowly churn together in a poisonous melting pot to create the greatest echo chamber we will ever experience: college. All this education center has turned into is one big thing of social justice, where everything has to agree with their views or else they will feel attacked and everyone will come to protect his or her frailness. All they want to hear now is their own opinions and people who agree with them, which will doom them from going into the real world.

Many people assert that it was a symbol of racism and that it had to go. However that is not the case. People don’t look at the statue and call UT racist for having it up there in the first place, they look at it as a piece of history. And that’s how it should be looked as, not as a hate crime waiting to happen. History has always had a dark side for everybody and everything, the history of America being no different. There’s no point in trying to brush it away instead of accepting it with open arms. It happened and we want to forget it, yes, but there’s no shame in acknowledging it happened during a dark time.

The moving of the statue is absurd. It’s nothing more than a reminder of how politically correct and emotionally sheltered both colleges and the public at large is turning into. History is history, and nothing will ever change it, no matter how hard you try to erase it. That just means we’ll be doomed to repeat it.

Photo provided by:Rob Shenk / Foter / CC BY-SA