Free Republic

The Eisenhower Memorial is dead. Not the memorial itself, but the wildly unpopular design by Frank Gehry. The decisive blow is Congress’ 2014 budget, which denied the $49 million in construction funds requested by the Eisenhower Memorial Commission, the body charged with building the memorial. Instead, Congress allotted $1 million for operations, thereby halving the Commission’s previous annual budget. Congress also reinstated the requirement that the Commission possess 100% of construction funding before it can break ground. This sets an impossibly high bar. The Commission’s 2014 budget request estimated that it would need an additional $25 million in construction funds...

...The present Eisenhower Memorial design, by postmodernist Frank Gehry, has virtually nothing to do with the Dwight David Eisenhower of history. Plans call for Ike to be memorialized in sculpture as a barefoot farmboy on the Great Plains: not the great wartime leader; not the soldier-diplomat; not the chief executive of the United States who presided over eight years of peace and prosperity. The Gehry conceit seems both obvious and entirely in tune with the postmodern deconstruction of history: There are no great men; there are no great virtues; there is no great striving; nor is there great accomplishment or...