Do we really want to be like the Taliban?

The reasons being advanced by The Sun for removing the Lee-Jackson Monument and the Roger Taney statue from Baltimore seem to me to be the same as those advanced by the Taliban and other extremist groups for destroying ancient Buddhist sculptures and other irreplaceable antiquities that don’t meet a narrow conception of who we are today (“Baltimore City commission recommends removal of two Confederate monuments,, Jan. 14).

I have lived all of my 77 years in Baltimore and its environs, and have been mostly proud of my city. We built monuments, the more the merrier, to be permanent, not torn down at the whim of ever-changing fashion.

One thing about Baltimore that has not changed since the Civil War is its sobriquet of “Mobtown.” Apparently the mob in the street still holds sway.

Martin K. Van Horn, Towson