text: It's good to look at our history and try to see how we can best live up to the ideals we say we believe in. Part of this is looking at our own past with unblinkered eyes, and looking at evidence and facts in a rational manner in a whole range of areas. 
  
  To me this is the highest expression of what is best in 'Western' or 'European' culture - the growth of rational thought, of democracy, science, and of increasingly equality among all individuals, ideas many of which go back to the Golden Rule. Of that particular culture I am a passionate defender.
  
  Many who say they want to defend 'white culture' however seem to me to be ignorant about its real highs and lows. The discomfort we experience in re-examining our past is a price to be paid if we want to stay on a better path. 
  
  As for Robert E Lee, it's worth remembering that he fought for the expansion of a system where fellow human beings were bought and sold as chattel. His statues should be in museums, not in places of civic honour.