Heroes & villains

If we take it to extremes it's crap. If we hold up someone like Joseph Gobels for his contributions to society we have gone to an extreme. At its core it's true though. Name one historical figure who has contributed greatly to shaping the world who has no dirt. From lying, cheating, having affairs, abusing power- next to no one, arguably no one is free of wrong doing, especially when viewed from a different point in history with different values. So yes, condemning the memorial of a person because they have done wrong basically means never remembering anyone. That's said using this as justification for mass murderers and others who have done great wrongs is garbage. One persons villain is always another's hero and vice versa, but there is some gray between good and evil in which normal people live, and decisions must be made case by case on wether tribute is appropriate given the whole of what a person was and did in their life.

Gandhi

Well- in Africa Gandhi referred to blacks using racial slurs of the time, referenced the inferiority of blacks, and didn't have a problem with whites ruling over blacks, just that he thought Indians were better and should be treated better than blacks. His sleeping naked with young girls (many not women- but girls), having them bath him, naked massages, colonics, and other things raises some concerns. I don't know if spending enough time with another woman and inviting her to live in your domicile while getting preferential treatment to the point of enraging your actual wife, and calling the other woman our "spirit wife" is cheating but there's that too. Admiring Benito Mussolini as a statesman of modern times and excusing his "heavy hand" because "violence is the foundation of western civilization" also gives pause. Here are some quotes:

"I understand why the white man hates against a black man, but why against us the Hindus. We share the same values with the white man.”
"We believe as much in the purity of races as we think they do.”
(On white Afrikaners.)
There are more- including one where in paraphrase he says that black Africans were hunters who only cared about getting enough cattle to buy a wife, and then live in naked depravity.
Ghandi was also a classist who subscribed to the Indian caste system of the time and believed people had their "place" and it defined them. He was one of the voices calling to separate India into two countries based on religion as well.
He had many great ideas and did many good deeds but like all men was not perfect.

I mean, uh, his wife died (he didn't want the doctors to give her foreign medicine i.e. penicillin and said god would pull her through if he wanted. Spoiler alert: he didn't). Quite a few controversies around the guy.

I did not know that.
But still he didn't send people into battle or anything like that.

Tesla wasn't perfect. Asides arguably JP Morgan I don't have many people to cite he directly screwed- but he had some "bad habits." He was REALLY financially irresponsible. His poverty wasn't entirely Edisons fault. He was very big in appearances. Asides his known hate of pearls (and not talking to those wearing them) he felt if you didn't look successful then you weren't. He wanted society to be like a bee hive in which men worked and were used for breeding only, but as he got older he shifted views saying good that women trying to compete with men was the greatest travesty he'd ever seen. He was not in any way about gender equality seeing women's lib as "making women just as bad as men the closer they got." He was prone to wild exaggerations, and many myths on his research are still held as fact despite concrete evidence they were false. He underwent construction on a $150 mill+ radio tower that even modern science says shouldn't work (it didn't) and more.

Speaking in generalities I agree. There's also a distinct question of why you would allow the find memory of treason. But- you partially answer your own question with your last line. While revisionist history tried hard to paint the whole confederacy as "fed up" and "wanting freedom" over the unpleasantness of racial and other factors- it is true that some confederates Did in fact fit that bill. They would be considered no more or less racist than the "average" Northerner and were duped by propaganda. To those poor southerns fooled by propoganda it was a war as advertised. They didn't know better as you say. Their valor and courage wasn't spent on racism but on love of their land. So some of it comes down to a case by case and some comes down to hero worship and propoganda. To counter though: Oscar Schindler was a Nazi and history begs the question of he was near as "innocent" as often portrayed. Yet he is a hero of Israel and lived his entire life on donations from Jews ... cont

At the same time men who did as much or more to help, or less to harm were hung for their association with the Nazis. All while we pardoned other war criminals despite their inhuman experiments just so we could benefit from that knowledge. It's all very dirty and never so simple as saying who did what. There's an argument to be made that in memorial thins should be considered case by case and people not just painted in caricature.

I totally agree with your point...