Posted on 08/23/2020 4:33:22 PM PDT by crusher
The Editor
I am not a Southern Partisan (even though I hail from southern Minnesota, the tropical part) nor am I a political partisan having renounced party affiliation in 1988, so I have no particular dog in the fight over historical monuments. That said, I discern some unfortunate (and I hope inadvertent) parallels between the anti-historicists of our current time and numerous misanthropic regimes of the past. In this matter I draw on the wisdom of philosopher George Santayana, who famously said, “Those who ignore the past are doomed to repeat its mistakes.”
This debate is not about the “offensiveness” of particular public monuments or expressions, although that is how it is earnestly presented by those arguing for the removal of statuary commemorating the past. It appears to be instead the advocacy by those who consider themselves enlightened and virtuous when compared to their neighbors and forebears who were doing/saying/being what these new self-anointed gatekeepers of acceptable thought do not like. Given the decadence of our present culture I find this righteous certainty to be unpersuasive.
In short, the support for removing monuments strikes me as advocating for sterilizing and eradicating history itself.
I wonder if the anti-monument activists are using “offensiveness” as an excuse so that they might mimic the policies and practices of tyrannical and conquering regimes of the ancient and recent past, including in our own time the Soviets, the Maoists, the Taliban, and the Oceana of Orwellian fiction and countless others who ardently erased and recreated historical and cultural remnants in order to enhance and legitimize their own status.
We need not celebrate the shortcomings of the human condition along the path to where we are now, rather we should remember and learn from history as Santayana admonished. Slavery was and is an abomination present throughout the history of humanity up to (literally) today as practiced in Mauritania, the brothels of Asia, and Epstein Island. Rather than ignore that historical reality I want my knowledge of it to inspire me as an advocate for human agency and liberty. I find offensive the virulent racism and totalitarianism of Karl Marx, but intend to remember him and oppose his destructive ideology at every turn. I am offended by the eugenic bigotry espoused by Margaret Sanger but have no desire to relegate her down a memory hole. I want to learn from the genocidal infanticide she promoted and counter it instead. I find offensive the ruthless police states that once existed in places like East Germany and still exist in Cuba and North Korea, but I do not want to forget them. Instead I want to consider them with sharp clarity as a cautionary tale about concentrating power in unaccountable political, elites including our own. I find offensive the so-called “conversations about race, class, and privilege” that resemble nothing so much as Maoist “struggle sessions” of brutal public humiliation, but need to recall them in counterpoint to the omnipresent organizational training sessions of our own time, the agendas for which are often coercive exercises of debasement. I find offensive the ridicule of my own Christian faith yet recognize those doing the condemnation are the very persons in need of Christ’s transforming grace.
I have no right to live without being surrounded by that which is offensive to me. That’s right, neither I nor anyone else have the right to not be offended. At best I can separate myself from that which offends me, and if that is not possible I am free to oppose it. I strive to be an adult, to make allowance and perhaps even accommodation for that with which I disagree and treat each person I encounter with the respect or contempt they have earned. My prayer is that I can live according to that standard, and that our local and national communities can as well.
It’s just modern day book burning. That only leads to ignorance, not enlightenment.
Good on you.
Yes, I just noticed the misplaced comma. Sometimes I hate compewders. They do precisely whatever you instruct them to do.
Lincoln said with malice toward none...
Excellent!
Thanks for sharing.
After Trump wins we can pull down all the Democrat statues across the country and remove them from Statuary Hall.
Excellent letter!
Do not tempt me to become that which I despise. Makes much more sense to remember them, and rub the noses of their supporters in their transgressions!
I agree with the possible motives you cite for the behavior of those tearing down monuments. And will add the succinct possibility that many of those engaged in the destructiveness are acting out of hate, racism, jealousy etc., not just a real or imagined contempt for past and/or present issues.
I’ll forgive the one misplaced comma that I found, as the whole thing is well said!
Bump
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