Comment 18 by cynicaloptimistrealist :

A comparison with the Banyam Buddhas is silly. Nobody is suggesting flattening the cross.

Perhaps that particular comparison is going a little too far, but isn't demanding its removal a reactionary act of cultural cleansing?

Actually it was the comparison between this legal dispute and the Year Zero genocide in which 2 million Cambodian's died which I thought was "going a little too far".

There are not many differences between flattening the thing and locating it somewhere out of view because we fear what it represents and lack the cultural maturity to ignore it. It was erected during a time when most of the population of the area were devout Christians. The next logical step is removing other such memorials in public places, so in Arlington Cemetery for example, are we to return the gravestones to the homes of living descendants or perhaps chip off the crosses like an angry mob dismantling the symbolism of the previous regime? If we were to make such demands in Europe we would have to find space on private land for 1,400 years worth of monuments, which with the costs involved would lead to many of them being destroyed. I think a future secular society would look back with derision at a group which demanded the cultural clensing of its spaces.

This is just a ridiculous exaggeration of what anyone is requesting.

Michael